Episode 15: Allen Cheney: A Grandfather's Forte
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: What are you?
Patsy: And I’m a Boomer. What are you?
Andrew: I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: Oh, you are. Well, you’re listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations.
Patsy: Alright, let’s have one, and I think we should talk about legacy because we’re all writing our legacies everyday that we live. We don’t think of it that way, but others who are experiencing us, especially those who are younger than us, are watching and taking notes. And Allen Cheney did that, and he wrote about his grandfather, who gave him a great big permission slip to be as creative as he possibly could. And he took that permission slip and ran with it, and along the way, he stopped to pen this book.
Andrew: He did, absolutely. The book is called Crescendo: The Story of a Musical Genius Who Forever Changed a Southern Town. This is a drama in real life, and it’s about his grandfather, who pursued his musical dreams to the highest excellence in the most exotic of places in the music industry, and yet returned home, returned back to his roots, to change the lives of students in Thomasville, Georgia, forever.
And so this is that story. Not only did he impact, influence, and inspire the life of his grandson, who’s here with us today, but he also inspired the lives of thousands of students who grew up in southern Georgia.
Patsy: So we hope that you’ll take time to join us because I think it’ll be a great reminder for us all that our story matters and it’s being written every single day, so invest yourself well. Come join us.
We have a different kind of bridge today. There are a lot of bridges I know about. I’ve been talking about any number of them from all over the world, but this one is just beyond me. I don’t quite grasp it, but I think you might because you’ve dipped both fingers and toes into the pool of music. And since we’re in Nashville and since we have the guest we do, I think it’s the perfect bridge. Talk to me about the musical bridge.
Andrew: Musical bridge, yes, in musical terms. So growing up with a classical background, of course, depending on the format of music, the medium of music, it can indicate different things, but it’s always a way of bridging ideas in the songs. And so what I think about more in songwriting, which is my history here in Nashville, and more kind of pop songs, country songs, et cetera, is really you’re introducing ideas in the verse, right.
So verse one kind of begins to introduce what is the song about, what is the story. The chorus already kind of lands you there. It takes you there before you’re ready or before you even know what it is. It’s a bit of the home base. Verse two gives you a little bit more of the story, and you go back to home base again. But you’re still not sure how you connected to that home base, and the bridge is always what gets from that verse to that final chorus, which then really feels like the payoff, right, because you’ve kind of been anticipating, This is where I feel at rest, but I’m not sure how to exactly get there.
And I thought of a song. Of course, this is perfect for Nashville because it’s country music, but Tom Douglas is a profound songwriter no matter what genre you’re in, and he wrote this song for a country artist named Miranda Lambert that’s called “The House That Built Me.” It’s this girl, this person, going back to the literal house they grew up in. This is the scene, and she knocks on the door and wants to just go in and starts identifying to the current owner, “That’s where I learned to play guitar. My dog is buried in the backyard under that tree.”
But you get a sense that she’s lost, maybe emotionally, internally. She’s not quite sure where she’s going, and she’s hoping to find a connection to her roots by going back to her homeplace in her hometown. And the bridge literally reads: “You leave home, you move on, and you do the best you can. I got lost in this ol’ world and forgot who I am.” And then it takes it into that chorus you’ve been hearing the whole time: “I thought if I could touch this place or feel it, this brokenness inside me might start healing. Out here it’s like I’m someone else. I thought that maybe I could find myself if I could walk around. I swear I’ll leave. I’ll take nothing but a memory from the house that built me.”
Patsy: Wow.
Andrew: Yeah, it’s a perfect example, in my opinion, of a musical bridge.
Patsy: Well, that sounds very familiar because as I read Crescendo by Allen Cheney, I was mesmerized, I was drawn in. The music of the story itself is woven so beautifully, and I loved the love story in it. It was very touching.
And you, Allen, are giving us a bridge back to someone that’s very special and near and dear to your heart. Talk about it.
Allen: Well, thank you. Yeah, I like to think that I was able to take the world back to somewhat of the house, the world, that built me, and a big part of my life has been my grandparents, my mother’s parents, and that’s who the book is about.
My grandfather was born into extreme poverty, abuse, neglect in rural Georgia back in the ‘30s, and by all accounts really shouldn’t have had much opportunity in life. But the one thing that carried him through his life and that gave him opportunity and gave him hope was music and people who surrounded him and wouldn’t let him fall through the cracks.
And so he went on to become just an incredible, incredible musician and ultimately teacher and mentor to countless young people because of the music that he had when he was young. And my whole life music has been a language of mine. I get it from him.
To tell this story, to put this book together with Julie Cantrell, who’s an incredible best-selling author, this has been the greatest project that I’ve ever gotten to work on. It truly is my passion project to take people on this journey in this story.
Patsy: I’ve been doing ancestry.com learning about my family, so I’ve been kind of circling back to see more of where I came from and who these people were. So when I started reading your story about your grandfather, I just really was mesmerized. I thought, oh my goodness, for this man to have been brought up in such superstition and for God to have placed along his path people who could sense they needed to intervene on his behalf in ways that would not offend the family, and therefore separate them from this young man, but they could stabilize him and help along. It’s just amazing.
Andrew: Well, and take us back into that story. We don’t want to give the whole story away because we want them to buy it…
Patsy: I do. I would give it away in a heartbeat.
Andrew: Well, I mean, that’s kind of the trend of our market today.
Allen: Spoiler alert.
Andrew: But take us back into your grandfather’s childhood. The reason that community was so imperative, the community outside of his family, is that music was not encouraged, the arts, that was already within him. Kind of tell us, first, I mean, we were fascinated by at what age 2 or 3 he was able…
Allen: Yeah, 3-years-old he could sit at a piano and play classical pieces by Mozart and Chopin and things like that perfectly. He had never had a music lesson in his life. I mean, he was one of those kids who just is born with it.
I jokingly say “those Oprah kids” because you know when you used to watch Oprah and they’d have the kids come on and play piano, violin. It’s just these prodigies, and you’re like, Where in the world did you learn how to do this? And nobody could figure it out. Well, he could do that.
Patsy: It’s like it’s written in him.
Allen: It’s written in your soul. It’s like God put it in there before you were born. And he was barefoot and didn’t have anything but an upright piano to sit at and would sit and play hymns and classical pieces.
It terrified his family to death, not that they were around much to begin with, but when they were around, they were uneducated, superstitious because of the time, because of sort of just the area they lived in, just a rural area. I don’t know. They were terrified by what they didn’t know.
One of the most interesting parts of this story, and it’s actually how it starts — I don’t mind telling this part — is that when he was born, the family had just lost his mother’s brother, also named Fred, who was a musical genius. He could also play instruments from a young age. He died at about 18-years-old. And he could play the violin, the guitar, the piano perfectly.
He died from unknown causes at a young age, and I think that just deepened the fear and the anxiety that his parents must've felt when he started to exhibit these unusual traits and abilities. And so they almost looked at music as something that can take you, take you away, along with being something they don’t understand. So keep him away from it — that was the key. They took his piano, and they locked it behind a door, threw the key away, when he was a young boy and that’s all he had to survive.
Andrew: Which nowadays we would look at a scene like that and relate it to abuse really.
Allen: Very much so.
Andrew: But of course, tracing it back, like you’re saying — his parents, your great grandparents, were afraid of what they did not understand. And to some degree in the ‘30s, the country is becoming a product of the Depression. It’s becoming extremely practical, and sometimes when we become very practical, out of necessity we draw inward a little bit or we close down. Our imagination is not as encouraged. There’s not time for leisure, if you will. Music and the arts has always been seen as something that’s a bit more hobby-driven, can’t make you a living, that kind of thing.
Let’s fast forward a little bit — we’ll go back to your granddad’s story. But I’m wondering how that scenario in his life, and then he being such a strong influence and mentor in your life, like how did that shape him and how he’s mentoring people, the fact that he was taken away from the craft that was so much a part of his giftedness. You know, he had to find his way out.
Allen: I think that it let him be able to see deep, deep inside of the young people in front of him what they might need or that he could give to them in ways that they might not even know it. With groups that he ended up creating in my hometown, this performance organization that saw thousands and thousands of young people in our hometown go through it. He took baseball players, football players, he took cheerleaders, he took popular kids, unpopular kids, musical kids, kids who can’t carry a tune, and he used this innate ability of his to just sort of sense and see deep into these kids in front of him how he can help them. And I think it came from being at a place where he wasn’t given that, and so he just knows how to see through sometimes the shell, the exterior that we put on, the facade, and he can see brokenness, he can see fear.
And he does have his doctorate in psychology from Columbia. He went on to have an incredible education.
Patsy: Well, he certainly did, and he was doing it all at once.
Allen: Yeah, at once, and Juilliard, and theological seminary, and all these things, which was a testament, again, to the music that saved him as a child and also the people who wouldn’t let him fall through the cracks.
But he was able to combine all of these elements and to use them to really not just teach, not just know how to pep talk, but to really get ahold of a young life and pour into it, and it comes from what he didn’t have and the fact that he didn’t have anyone doing it for him.
Patsy: And how has that impacted your own journey?
Allen: My journey? I was very fortunate, still am, to have a great family, very tight knit, very loving. They’ve always been supportive. But I’ve definitely had a unique relationship with my grandmother and grandfather. They’re a unit, absolutely a unit, and the powerful work that they’ve done, they’ve done together. They call each other “the we of me.” That’s always been their thing. So when you get one, you get the other, and thank God you do.
I’ve always had a very special relationship with the two of them. It’s different than the relationship with my parents or my brothers or my other grandparents. It fed the right side of my brain, some of the just deeper need I think to create. My dad is in finance, my brothers are in finance, my mom is a creative, but I think that I just always sort of leaned more toward that creative side. And so I think that he saw that in me at a young age when I was probably just running around, running amok, being annoying, didn’t know what in the world I wanted to do.
I think he knew how to sense something in me that he wanted to help grow and he wanted to help foster. And together, both of my grandparents poured into me like that.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
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Andrew: Was there any shyness on your part or caution or just kind of reserve growing up in Thomasville, Georgia, right? We’ll catch up on your granddad’s story of how he got back to Thomasville after he left because that’s where he grew up.
Allen: He actually grew up about two hours north in LaGrange, Georgia. That’s where he was born.
Andrew: Oh okay, so even further rural.
Allen: It’s an even crazier story how he ended up in Thomasville, but that’s where I grew up.
Andrew: Which could still be considered rural Georgia to some degree.
Allen: Very much so.
Andrew: It’s southern in that way. But my question, you know, because I grew up in rural Texas. Thankfully, I had parents who were in the arts. Well, my dad was a therapist but very much creative, and my mom is in the arts. And so that was, for my brothers and me, an easy path, an easy permission slip. But for many of my friends and peers. I remember, in fact specifically, a family that were literal peers of ours. They had three boys the same ages as us. We went to the same church, same school. It was a small town.
I remember the middle one coming to my mom and talking to her about how much he loved singing. This was when he was in high school. But his dad was the football coach, and he was a fine athlete, he was not a star athlete, but he could play well, and his dad would not let him sing for the sake of people. And this young man was really pining to literally sing.
And so there is still this thing in rural towns at times. You could call it small town thinking. Again, I think it’s we’re afraid of what we don’t know. So did you ever feel, just growing up in that environment, like creativity is kind of just for Saturday?
Allen: I’ll tell you this: I grew up in the coolest little town. It’s actually very hip, it’s very forward-thinking, it’s very artsy, but I have grown up with a lot of people telling me that that is partially because of my grandparents. When they came in the ‘70s, it wasn’t too long after desegregation, and I think there was still very much a set mind about what is acceptable, what’s not. If you play football, then you have to be a certain way.
One of the things that he did is he became a church choir director, which is what brought him there, a high school music teacher, and then started a performance arts group called the Thomasville Music & Drama Troupe, basically a massive show choir — 200 kids a year for 45 years, high schoolers.
And this was the group that he used this incredible brand of magic that he seems to have. When you meet him, I always say it’s like your soul takes note. He’s a very quiet man. He’s not loud, he’s not excitable; he’s just there, but he draws you in. And within just a couple years of being in our little town — and they had never been there before; they really knew no one — people were hooked by what he had to give, and they wanted to spend time with him. They were fascinated by him.
He came from New York at the time, and he knew how to relate to young people. And he started to bring these people from different sectors — like I said, the athletes, some musicians, some artsy, some not. The people from the country whose parents are farmers — they would’ve never done anything like singing and dancing. He just managed to pull them together.
And one of the brilliant things that he knew how to do was put people together where they were comfortable to express themselves. He would invite certain people and then encourage them to bring their friends, and then he would put groups together that had not ever hung out together — city kids and country kids — and he created this family where honestly it became the thing to do in our hometown. And I mean from every sector.
Patsy: Sounds like a good church to join.
Allen: I know, right. One of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard said about my grandfather was that he was a preacher without a pulpit because this was non-church related. This was just anybody and everybody. And he was a very strong man of faith, but he never procelatized through it. He just gave people something to help with their own life, music and an outlet to create to express themselves.
But I would say that, yes, growing up in small towns, and Thomasville I’m sure has people who still feel that way. I mean, that’s natural. That’s in cities. That’s anywhere. But I do think that we were fortunate because of the work that he did to ultimately sort of break that mold a little bit, and of course with a lot of other people. Thomasville has a lot of amazing outlets, but I think music and the arts have really made our town special, really special.
“One of the most beautiful things that I’ve ever heard said about my grandfather was that he was a preacher without a pulpit.”
Patsy: I love that. It sounds like he was salt and light on a regular basis, and it sounds like that legacy is going to be around for a long time.
Allen: I sure hope so, and I think so.
Andrew: Tell us, in your grandfather’s story — we do want to give a lot away.
Allen: Oh, there’s a lot here that we’re not even going into.
Andrew: Tell us how he got from his upbringing, his rural upbringing in the ‘30s, where that took him, because he ended up in New York City and, like we alluded to, has three degrees at the same time. He was also a Grammy-nominated orchestrator and instrumentalist. Take us on that path, how he got away and then what brought him to Thomasville.
Allen: People that would not give up on him. People that saw a broken child with potential and cared enough to pull him up. That was what set him on the journey to success in his life.
Patsy: Boy, that really speaks loud, and that’s something that we need to be sensitive to.
Allen: And it’s such a relevant thing today. This world is full of people, and it’s so easy to pass by someone who you feel like is a burden if you give too much time or effort or money.
I mean, people paid his way through college, people in their little town who just saw this kid and said, “He’s special. There’s something there, and it’s being neglected.” And so he had his way paid through LaGrange College, which is where he met my grandmother, was a music student. He went from there. He ended up taking classes at Auburn. Then he went to Georgia. Then he ended up getting accepted to Union Theological Seminary, which he went for the music side of the school, but it was the No. 1 music school in the world at the time in New York. And while he was there, he did a congruent program of Union Theological, Juilliard, and Columbia.
He’s Mensa. He was inducted into Mensa at a young age, and so he’s a brilliant person. Again, it’s just interesting when you meet him — he doesn’t waltz into a room and play the intellectual card. He’s just this quiet person who never wants to be in the spotlight, but he is this very profound presence.
But I would also say that what got him there was my grandmother — the support, the love, the hard work; the fact that while he was in school she was the one working, bringing in money to be able to support them. And so his life has been a testament to the power of people caring and being willing to step into someone else’s life and the power of having a support system like he had with my grandmother, that one person who at the end of the day can help guide you home. When the world gets hazy or out of control, or when it seems overwhelming, that was her for him, and it’s so important for everybody to have that person.
Patsy: Isn’t it interesting how often a natural introvert ends up being in a position of an extrovert?
Allen: Absolutely.
Patsy: It balances them out, but it can’t be an easy journey for them to deliberately put themself in a spotlight they never really sought for. And yet, to use it so wisely and well, a lot of wisdom in that and sensitivity. Do you not believe that his brokenness added to that?
Allen: Absolutely, absolutely.
In being a mentor, he never sought to be a mentor to anybody. He’s just that personality that you sit with him and you feel like you just received some life notes that he wasn’t even formally offering you. It’s just talking to him.
But he’s never given advice to people. He doesn’t sit down and say, “Here’s what you need to do. This is how you get better.” There’s a sensitivity to his heart and his voice and his presence that I think that’s why people loved him so much, and still do love him, and a lot of people learned from him and admired him so much was because nothing was forced on anyone.
And we live in a very loud, abrasive, forceful world where everybody has an opinion and they want it heard, and everybody wants to be recognized for knowing better and doing better. And you know, social media world — this is what I can do, this is what I can offer, this is who I know. And I think that that touch of his that was just calm and loving and sensitive and quiet, but profound, is what absolutely lit our town on fire in a good way.
Andrew: I think of that, about people like that, as not solution-based but soul-based. They’re being led by something way more intuitive than here’s the checkboxes. Here’s your problem or here’s your predicament, and here’s your solution or here’s a prescription. And instead, it’s actually being with people. It sounds like your grandfather knows how to be with people, not just talk to people.
But someone obviously talked to him, your grandmother, in a little bit of a straightforward tone because he did get to Thomasville not of his own accord. This was not necessarily a doorway that he was looking to walk through.
Allen: I don’t want to give all this away because it would be doing an injustice to try to do the abridged version, but a lot of the brokenness in his past, a lot of the demons that he had as a young person, did come back to haunt him. While he was in New York at the top of really a successful career, there was a lot of money, there was a lot of fame, there was a lot of things that are hard to control, and I think that he fell prey to the industry and to that dangerous world.
At the same time, my mother, who was an only child, was being cared for mostly by my grandmother. He’s abuse as a child went far beyond simply his parents not letting him play the piano. I mean, it was extreme abuse that’s in this story. And he just went through a terrible, terrible broken period where he was really almost unsavable. He pushed away my grandmother or anyone around him that wanted to help him. Alcohol began to play a very prominent role in his daily life, not sleeping, partying, associating with the wrong people, and it got to a place after a long period where it wasn’t the healthiest thing for my mother to grow up in or for my grandmother to exist in, no matter how hard she tried.
And so through a very difficult period, and hopefully people find it a very interesting journey that I take them on with this story, they spent time apart, and then, ultimately, when they came back together, her condition was we leave all of this behind. And you’re talking to a man who was Grammy-nominated, who’s friends with some of the top industry people in the world at the time, who’s producing albums for some of the top artists, who really has anything he could ever want and the financial gain to go along with it from all that he’s doing. And literally for the love of his family had to choose between walking away from it or keeping it all and losing his family.
And then he made a series of decisions that brought him to Thomasville, Georgia, because they were driving down to Florida to interview for a job opportunity. For him, it was irrelevant what he got. He didn’t care. He was broken. He was so broken that he didn’t care. And they stopped overnight in this little town that they were not very familiar with, just mildly so because it’s in Georgia and a lot of people just know the name. They stopped in Thomasville, and he took a choir rehearsal because there was a posted sign on a door for the First Methodist Church needing a choir director. And on that, I’ll just say the rest is history.
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have a new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
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Patsy: Which do you think is more difficult: failure or success?
Allen: What an amazing question. More difficult? Success. I think that there’s nothing more difficult than extreme success because that just leads to so many more pitfalls and so much more work to maintain success and to validate success. And when you’re successful, other people come for your success. I don’t know. I think that success, while of course everyone wants to be successful and that’s a very vague term because it can mean a lot of things — I don’t mean to talk down success as a whole — but I think it can be a very slippery slope and I think it can be very hard to manage.
Patsy: I agree.
“Which do you think is more difficult: failure or success?”
Andrew: I think what you’re getting at with the kind of ambiguity of the definition of success is success or healthiness, in the sense of you can have healthy success. A healthy person can feel success, but a healthy person also begins to dream of different things as success.
The healthier I get, if I speak for my own brokenness, the more I learn about that brokenness, discover who I am, and begin to walk in a path of healthiness, the more I’m completely redefining success for my own life. No longer is the success that has the hollow bottom in it anything of desire, which is so difficult, as you’re saying, to maintain. True success really is foundational. It has a foundation.
Patsy: Can you tell his father was a therapist?
Allen: I can, I can. It’s a great thing.
Andrew: So I’ll be billing each of you at the end.
But you know, to turn it back to you, how does that translate to your life, Allen, in the sense of do you feel like the brokenness in your own life — and I don’t want to speak for you…
Allen: Everyone has brokenness.
Andrew: How does that shape you, even at 31? How has that begun to shape your own life journey and your definition of success?
Allen: You know, I look back at my life and I think about things that I wish I could do over sometimes, the things we regret, the things where we say, “I didn’t get to do this. I wish I would’ve done that,” but I always come back to the same place of I really don’t think I would change any of the things that I’ve been through because I am very content with the path that I’m on and I know what I want to be, what kind of a man I want to be. I know how I want to make other people feel, I know what kind of work I want to produce, and I think that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing because of what I come from.
And I think to a degree that’s how everyone should recognize their life, and instead of having regret or letting your past haunt you, you should realize that you are who you are for a reason. It’s a good place to be. It may not always be the most healthy. It may not always be the shiniest, the brightest place. It may not be where you want to be.
I think that for me, whatever I’ve been through in my life has led me to be where I am today, and I am okay with that place. I’m happy with that place. And I’m always going to strive to be better, but I think that’s my take on what brokenness I’ve been through in my life. It’s made me a better person because I’ve overcome it and I’ve learned from it.
“Everyone has brokenness.”
Patsy: I think anytime pain becomes a teacher to us that we’re going to benefit if we have the heart of a student to really learn. I think that it’s so easy to get old and lose the wide perspective of life if you’re not in touch with the younger generations coming up behind you. And you fall into the young level of my children as far as age, so I very much am mother — not grandmother yet, am I?
Andrew: To me?
Patsy: Yes.
Andrew: No.
Patsy: No, I couldn’t be your grandmother. What a relief.
Andrew: Your grandboys are younger than me.
Patsy: Yeah, but that’s by my second, my youngest.
Andrew: True, true. Perhaps by your oldest.
That’s what I love about age, that if the ages continue to commingle, then suddenly, Allen, your and my generation can relax a little bit, can go, There’s always been brokenness and there’s always been hope. There’s always been both sides of the coin.
I don’t want us to stop before hearing a little bit specifically about your relationship with your granddad. We’ve talked about your grandad, we’ve talked about you, but tell us about that relationship and how that has grown.
Allen: They had this big, beautiful Steinway piano in their living room, and I grew up standing beside it singing and him playing, or I would lay on the sofa or underneath the piano and listen to him play. He plays at dinner while my grandmother cooks. Music’s always filled that house. And so my brothers and I have all kind of had that growing up.
And then also, he’s a big gardener. They have a beautiful little yard and garden. My idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon when I was in middle school, even times in high school, was to be hands deep in the dirt with him, just talking about life. That to me was happy, relaxing time.
And so my relationship with him has always been sort of in that vein. It’s been at home — their home typically — but it’s been at home, it’s been with music, it’s been working alongside him in some way. That’s been my relationship with my grandfather. But through that, being really just inspired and poured into by him.
Patsy: The nurturing aspect of whether he’s nurturing music out of a piano or he’s nurturing plants out of the earth or he’s nurturing a young grandson into manhood, I mean, it’s amazing and it’s beautiful and it’s part of what we do talk about. When you bridge generations, you bring life to him by your youth and he brings life to you by his experience.
Allen: Absolutely, yeah. That’s beautiful.
Andrew: Yeah, it is, right? I write it, and she says it.
Patsy: Where did you write it? I missed something.
Andrew: On the strains of our hearts.
Well, we are grateful for your presence here today, and I know that you just flew into town and walked straight in here after washing your hands.
Allen: I have to say though before we close this out, this book, and I tell people this all the time, this was a collaborative effort, and this book is here today because of the incredible writing and mind of the author Julie Cantrell. I always recommend people check out her other books because she guided me through this whole process. I was going to say she’s a guiding light. She was a teacher. She taught me. Being a first-time author, she taught me how this world of writing works, and I’m so thankful to her.
Patsy: You had an amazing teacher.
Allen: Absolutely. I’ve been surrounded by amazing teachers. My parents have been amazing teachers. My teachers have been amazing teachers. My grandfather.
I love learning. You said something about learning earlier, always wanting to learn, being the forever student. I love to learn, and I try to never be too proud to admit when I don’t know how to do something, and then I beg for people to teach me how to do it. For a year and a half, I got to hang on everything that Julie told me, every word, every note, and tried to get as much out of it as I can. So I just want to say thank you to her and encourage people to read her work because she’s incredible.
Andrew: And know that perpetual students often make some of the greatest teachers without knowing it. To remain a student, the students have influence.
“Perpetual students often make some of the greatest teachers without knowing it.”
Patsy: And that’s one of the things that has kept the two of us connected is we both are constantly learning new things and can hardly wait to share it with the other.
Allen: I love that. It’s such a beautiful thing.
Andrew: Including the book Crescendo. Yes, that’s right. I couldn’t wait to share it with her, and now we’re glad to share it with a lot of others. So thank you, Allen, so much for being here with us today.
Allen: Well, thank you two for having me on.
Andrew: You bet.
Patsy: Again, it’s the story of a musical genius who forever changed a southern town, and I think it could change your heart toward a lot of people around you because there’s a lot of beauty and a lot of inspiration in it. And the name of the book is Crescendo.
Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.