Growing up in Marshfield, Wisconsin, David Gungor and John Arndt made music together from a young age, moving across the US and eventually settling between New York City and Chicago. They continued this tradition remotely. Their friendship propelled them to keep creating, and eventually The Brilliance was formed. However, they never set out to become a band. It was only after they worked together on a side project for John's church that they began releasing their music into the world.

Their first independent album, The Brilliance released in 2010. And over the next two years, the creativity helped them roll out EPs in albums including Advent Volume One, Lent, Advent Volume Two and Cave Time Worship Experience, the Live Road Recordings and Advent B Sides. Known for the liturgical nature of their compositions, David's work as an associate pastor and John's as a composer, poised them to fill a niche in the market, mixing stunning compositions with compelling lyrics that discuss faith, theology, science, and art with musical influences as diverse as Bach to the Beatles and Cat Stevens, as well as theologians such as Mother Teresa, Henry Nouwen, Richard Rohr and St  Francis.

They cultivated our unique sound that was a blend of art, music, and empathy. This gave them a loyal following and they taught in small venues and churches across the US by the time The Brilliance was released. Then with the Our Children EP in 2014, they caught the interest of Christian music label integrity music, and were signed the same year with the intention of eventually creating an album that was less church based.

The Brilliance released Brother in 2016, a slightly more congregational release that was comprised mostly from songs they had released independently. This peaked at 36 on the US Christian charts and was received well by reviewers and Christian publications. In 2017, they released their eagerly anticipated follow up, All Is Not Lost, which peaked at 20 on the US Christian charts and made its way to 12 on the Billboard Heat Seekers charts. The album took them on tour to audiences as far away as Australia, and they were labelled as making “spiritual protest music,” with lyrics that challenge religious norms.

When asked about the purpose of their music, John described it as, “Music that opens the heart to society ,more than simple answers and dogmas.” In this way, they continue to push the boundaries, creating conventional church music as they discuss the concepts of evolution and creation, biblical interpretation and peaceful activism. Following album two, The Brilliance supported the Liiturgists on the songs, “God”, “Our Brother” and “Joy to the World,” allowing David to partner with his brother Michael Gungor, better known as musical artist, Gungor on recordings two years later.

The Brilliance grew with an evolving sound and mission, stepping away from integrity Music. They have set out to release at least five albums known as Suites independently, and have invited fans to support them on Patreon to create music that inspires empathy. Their first album in the series, the Oh Dreamer Suite dropped on November nine and was directly inspired by the stories of America's DACA Dreamers. Their podcast, The Brilliance has also released a coincide with this.

I spoke to David Gungor from his home studio in New York City about the relevance of the O Dreamer Suite, the political and religious divide in America, and why the band chose to go Independent. This is the Brilliances, David Gungor.

  Interview: Tell me about your EP. It's releasing, is it November 9th?

Yeah, so it starts off with how it all came about. So John, the other guy in the band and I have made music since we were little kids together, and at the end of this last year we were deciding whether we were going to continue to make music together as adults or what we were going to do. Because I mean, we've been adults since we've made The Brilliance, but we were kind of going, “what's the next stage of life? What are we going to do?” I think for us, 2017 was a really hard year for a lot of different reasons, and at the end of it we were like, John had gone through a terrible breakup and I have four kids living in New York City and we had done this tour and it was really stressful. It was good, but it was really stressful when we were coming into the end of it. it's like the end of the year. And we had all this music that we had written ,kind of the last two years that we hadn't done anything. We hadn't released it or anything, but we were like, what's the plan for this? And we were in Chicago and we played this show. And during it, I think I was maybe a little too brutally honest to the crowd where I'm like, “Sometimes we play these shows and we're like, what are we doing with our lives? We came here in a van, I'm away from my kids right now and John, well, we've been fighting and we're here.” And I just was really honest with the crowd and there was a guy there a good friend, and his name is Mark Reddy and he's actually from Australia. Mark lives in Chicago. And he came to the show. It meant a lot that he came to the show and he's like, “Hey, I'd love to take you guys to go get some food after the show or whatever.” So we went downtown Chicago to this really weird tiki bar that was, it was fantastic cuz it was snowing outside, but we went to this whole tropical themed bar with chicken fingers and that type of stuff we're eating. And I mean it was very silly, but we're eating and we're just throwing up all of our anxiety and angst about are we going to do this music thing? Are we going to do this? And he's like, what is your gut? And he kept on in a really good way, kept on pushing us. “What is the music that you wanna make? What's your dream scenario?” And I feel like every time we'd say our dream scenario, we'd say, “This is our dream scenario, but this is our dream scenario.” And he really challenged us to just be honest with ourselves and make the music that we wanted to make. And at the end of it we felt really encouraged. But that type of encouraged, it's like, it's just good to be totally honest with someone. And he was. He told us what he was working on, which he works for an organisation called World Relief that does all types of humanitarian effort and works with churches all around the world and people all around to help aid refugees and people who are displaced. And he does a lot of work that's really inspiring to us. But he told us that his main work for 2018 was all around DACA Dreamers and I kind of leaned in because I knew about DACA Dreamers from the news, but I didn't know any Dreamers and I didn't know much about how do you help DACA dreamers, what is that about? And so he just told us about this and he commissioned us. He's like, “What do you think about possibly writing a song for them?” And we're like, “Well, what is that about?” And he was like, “Why don't you meet first with some Dreamers?”  He knew that we lived in New York and so he connected us to a Dreamer and John and I had lunch with this guy and just, he kept on surprising us with things that would be normally, I feel like stereotypes for whatever you'd think. For instance, even the idea of, I would think that maybe right now in our country, in America, issues of immigration are so polarized. Oh yeah. And this guy was the most polarizing, interesting guy where his dream was to be in the military and be an officer and then to eventually be a firefighter. And John and I were just so taken back in a very good way by this guy, by his humility and his dream to serve. And then we started meeting more Dreamers and hearing more stories. And these were incredible people who really were grateful for America. And I felt like this was something that John and I, we were like, this is inspiring to us. So we started to write a song for it. I think we both wrote multiple songs that ended up when Mark – he is like, all right, “Do you have a song ready?” I think we sent him eight different demos of things and he's like, “This is more than one song.” And we were like, “Yeah,” we were inspired by it. So we decided with this other music that we have, we thought what we'd like to do is we'd like to release music that are based around stories, like people's stories that inspire us one way or another. And one of the things that came back from that conversation with Mark originally where he is, what type of music do you wanna make? What do you want to do? We were telling him stories that inspired us to keep on making music together and as The Brilliance and he's make that music. And so we came up with this idea for these suites where the first suite is around DACA Dreamers and we're calling it a suite because we also wanted space to be able to do instrumental music, John as a composer. And he wants, one of his dreams was, I wanna make music that is not just a pop formula. He wants to be able to create a lot of different stuff and he's a great composer. And so for these suites, there's lots of space for classical music as well. And so the first suite is around the theme of having a dream. So it is dedicated to DACA Dreamers, but it also goes to this place of going, what are our individual dreams?

  And when you say what your dream is sometimes if you say that out loud and you kind of go, well, this is my dream. When you see someone's dream who doesn't have as much privilege as you or I have, and their dream is something like to have clean water or to have a home or to have citizenship or to have whatever you want to go down the list of things where people for their daily needs don't have their needs met. It forces you in a healthy way to, I feel like be grateful for your own life to take a posture of humility and of openness. And so that's the theme of that first suite. And then the second suite is themed around, which we'll release in the beginning of 2019, is this the end of the world? A lot of people in America have a lot of hyperbole around. We're in this time where we've never seen such terrible things, which on one end in our lifetimes we haven't. But on another end, if you study any history, you're like, “wow humans have come a long way and we're pretty resilient.” And for as much hate and darkness there is in the world, there's still a lot of people fighting for love and for light. And so the second suite deals with the themes of hope in the face of hopelessness and the third suite deals with grief. And so each suite kind of dives into one of these themes and is musically really inspiring to us. We feel like it's the music that by far it's the first time we actually like our own music. I feel like we're not worried about saying the wrong thing or stepping on the wrong toes. We're excited about it.

  Why have you chosen to be so outspoken about this topic? I mean, for me, I grew up in The Salvation Army, so social justice has always been a huge part of my faith. And my parents have sort of worked in that sphere. So for me I'm like, it's just a given. But I think for so many people, this nearly not a questionable part of faith, but how that looks is very different than say, working proactively with the Dreamers or speaking up on different issues. And from my time in America and what I see on the news, the Church is so divided right now about these issues and how to go about them and even how to speak to people who were different from us. You choosing to create this not just for the Dreamers, but being honest in all your suites is nearly inviting all this commentary in from other people, some who will be like, “Awesome, I love it , they’re like me,” and some people who will just not get it and be like, “You are so far left it's ridiculous.” How do you prepare for that and why do you choose to open yourself up for that?  

Well one, we feel like this is so I can speak about that from a faith lens, but I feel like a lot of times it's easier and better. Easier is probably the wrong word for this, but for me it's better for my soul to not always try to use faith language because sometimes I feel like it charges faith language in a way that it can become violent. And there's already a history of violence within faith. I need to go like, “Hey, my faith is nonviolent, so I need to try to come up with ways that I could say this.” I'd be like, here's my best attempt at this one. There's no idea that is above critique, but there's no person below dignity. So when I invite you into this conversation, which this is an invitation, the invitation is to say we have right now a problem in America with a specific situation with our DACA Dreamers. There is no one who is above reproach for their ideas. Meaning we're saying let's come up with a creative solution for this. And it does not mean that my solution is the best solution. Every idea can be critiqued. Our one caveat is no person is below dignity. So if in our ideas we dehumanise people, that's where we go, well we can't even critique that idea. It's not an idea we can build on. So for issues you use the word social issues like social justice or whatever kind of issues that you'd want to call that I'd be like, well let's just talk about human issues. And I say that so that those who maybe go, they have a trigger with the idea of social justice. Look, my main thing is don't let feel all those feelings and throw it up. And now after it's all out, let's go what are we talking about here? We're talking about humans. We first see them a lot of times with issues of privilege. We go, oh, that's so terrible that that's happening. But for me, I can easily forget, because I can easily forget that is the definition of privilege only because it doesn't actually affect me in my conscious mind daily, as in though I'm aware of it now, it does affect me. The myth is that it doesn't affect you, but it always does affect you even though you may be aware it's affecting you or not aware that it's affecting you. So for us, for issues like this, anytime you have privilege, what are you to do with that privilege? Now for me, if I'm going to speak from a language of faith and try not to be violent about a certain issue, meaning you have to do this or you're going to blah, blah, blah, you're not this, you're not that. No, no, no. I'm just saying when I see Jesus, one of the key things about Jesus that I'm like, this is the watermark of discipleship, is the ability to see. Jesus was constantly seeing people that society or religion or whatever systems normally wouldn't see, even to His very big Sermon on the Mount where he goes, “Hey, all of you who are poor, the poor in spirit, yours is the kingdom of God.” It's this thing of I see you, it's how many times we get every story of Jesus calling out to people, seeing people, all these different parables where God sees us. And for me that's a great message and it's like, oh yeah, yeah, individually I can go look, God sees me personally. But the thing is, anytime you follow the teachings of Jesus… a lot of times he's like uhoh, as confident as I am that I'm in and that I'm the righteous, that I'm the one who saves people, I'm in the one who needs saving. I'm the one in the ditch who needs some help, not the good Samaritan. I'm the one that needs saving. I say that to say in most situations like social issues, when I'm this blessed, I'm this fortunate to not worry about my daily needs. How then am I to use that privilege? And I would argue that the ability to see, especially those on the underside of that privilege is one way that I connect to the other. And when I connect to the other according to Jesus, is when I connect to God, it's like when I am meeting the stranger or the unintelligible or even my enemy, that is the place that I meet God. Now that is the most Christian work that I can do, but the more work I do like that, it brings you into place of telling people's stories, which are often social issues. But I don't say those social issues from a standpoint of I know how to fix all of humanity. No, there are issues that are very complicated and they can be solved in different ways. And even when we solve them, usually as Americans, whenever we solve a problem, we make a bigger one. And so I try to say, well what do I do then? Do I lean into nihilism and just go? None of it matters. Who cares? Just leave it alone. No, that's a place of privilege. My job is to try to out of a place of gratitude and out of a place of love and light is go, how can I see the people around me? How can I love my neighbor and do I know my neighbor? Do I know their stories? And that's where I'd say we lean into issues like this, not from a place of a left or right partisan way, but it will get political because life is political. But how do we not use politics in a non-violent way? Just like I wouldn't want anyone to use religion in a violent way. I'd say no idea is above critique and no person is above reproach.  

You seem to put a finger on the humility that comes with loving something so strongly but also the dignity that's so important and found in people. And I really appreciate how you touched on privilege cuz it's something that I've become aware of in my own life too and I am, I'm learning to wrestle with. So I really appreciate that this is how isn't the narrative and the wrestling that you go through with it and that you are expressing it creatively. Does that make sense?  

Yeah. I think one of the things about privilege, just like anything, whenever you learn something, you are now held responsible for it. So I don't look at privileges in a way of going like, oh, it's bad if you're privileged. No, you are fortunate enough to not have the weight of whatever type of parts of life where you're not privileged. You have right now you are in a lovely home and you have a grandmother, you have family, you have, how many things can you go? I am so fortunate and blessed, I have water, I have all of these simple things. And usually out of that place of recognizing how fortunate you are, I feel like a lot of times the thing that comes with that is gratitude. And with gratitude comes an opening up of yourself to not be in fear. Because with gratitude you can't be fearful. So it's that thing where you go, okay, if I'm coming from a place of gratitude, how can I love people? And I think people get freaked out sometimes because to say when you start talking about issues sometimes it feels like, wait, so are you saying that I don't experience pain or I don't experience hard times or that I haven't, that I'm just so privileged that I've never felt any sorts of loss or underside of power? And of course not, there's all kinds. I mean that's crazy, but it still doesn't mean that you don't have your daily needs met. So can't you hold the two tensions? It doesn't have to just be either or binary thinking. It can be both and it can be a lot more nuanced and complex than that.

I wanted to ask about the Patreon campaign that you guys have started for the Oh Dreamer Suite and for all your suites. Can you tell me why you decided to move away from a label and go an independent again? Cause I think the last two albums have been the label, haven't they?  

Yeah. So I'll tell you the true story. The true story is we signed with a label that was very kind. Everyone that worked there, you could not say nice enough things about, they're all very great. Their strength was church music, getting congregations to sing your music. And the first record that we gave them, they kind of were like, what if you did a compilation thing of some of your older stuff? And then gave us a few new studio songs And we were like, okay. So we did that. We came out with a record called Brother and what I feel like this is where we were at from a church music place. And it was honest and I put it out, they were very kind and tried to push it in a lot of ways, it was well received. But on another way it's not a very popular thing in the large scheme of Christian music, meaning it was more niche and people that appreciated the music really appreciated this. But it wasn't a CCM hit. There weren't any CCLI top worship songs on that album. It was more liturgical in nature. And so it was just different. So right after that record we said, “Hey one of the things about that was, I remember Starbucks played “Brother” and “Love Remains” and it was in Starbucks. You'd go around, you'd hear this and it was like, oh that's cool cuz Starbucks is playing this record that has a lot of church music in it. But I noticed living in New York people would really appreciate the music, but then as soon as they saw the label worship duo or whatever the write-up was about us. One, it wasn't fully honest because I work at a church but John doesn't and he's in his own space which I by no means was he trying to be a worship artist. And so on one end it felt odd between us. On another end I'd show it to people and they'd love it, but then as soon as they heard, especially worship band, it just, if you're in that niche, if you're in into that kind of thing, it's like, oh cool, this is a kind of edgy worship band. But if you're just in real life, people are like, what the hell is that? But they like the music. So it was this weird divorced thing. And so I was like, we really wanna write music that we can show our friends or show. I wanna show my kid's School Sang Brother, which was amazing. It really touched me. They go to a public school in New York and it was amazing. They sang brother and I was like, this is the type of thing I want where they're singing “Brother” in a public school in New York. But as soon as they listen, the rest of the record just kinda not. It's like what is this? And so not at all that I was ashamed or anything of that,I  just meant I wanna make more music that more people can connect to, with the same spirit behind the music anyway. And so we told them that our record label that and they were like, that's cool. Our A and R guy was like, “Do it. That sounds amazing.” And so we started writing for that, and they came back to us and said, can you do this? Because technically it was a three album deal. The first album Brother, the second album, they're like, “Can you do one more church record and then you can do that third record?” We said, yeah we can do that. We'll try to make it work. So we did All As Not Lost, which was a real weird discombobulated thing for us because really most of the music that we wanted for it was going to be that third record and a song. “See the Love” was, I was just like, man, I don't really wanna sit on this song cause I really love it. So just put it in there. But it was odd to us. It was an angst in making it cuz we were really looking forward to that third record. So we make the second record, put it out, and then when it's time for the third record and I recorded it, everything is like, this is where a lot of these later suites are built on. We got told, “Hey, the record label is switching presidents and we're going to do what we do best on their end, which meant they're going to do congregational church music. And for us to come out with a mainstream album just was like, this is not going to be the best thing for us. And so they graciously dropped us, I say graciously cuz they, I'm sure they could have, if they wanted to at all be push us to do a third record that's just church music or something. They were, and they believed in us enough to say, do what you need to do. So that's good. But I was really stressed out on finances because we had first fronted the money for that record. And then John had been on a tour and then while he was gone I did a tour without him and I just spent too much money on a big band going on tour and then just came back with tour debt. And then I'm stressing cuz I'm like John, I'm sorry, we have made this tour debt and while he was gone, which then that cost rift between us, what are you doing? And so we were working that off and trying to figure that out. And so we made these other suites first. And it was funny because we got a record label that heard about the Suites called us and gave us a record offer and it was a very kind offer. It was much smaller than what our old record deal was. And when we asked about that, they're like, well you're doing the mainstream album. If you do a Christian album you can get, and they told us and it was five times more. And I just was like, okay, we're back in this tough thing of do I make a Christian album? I have four kids, I gotta feed my kids. I know it sounds stupid, I gotta feed my kids, I can feed my kids. But one thing that I can't do is our kids have my kids in flag football right now and it costs money. And the same thing with we rent, we live paycheck by paycheck and I'm not poor. I am very blessed. I live in a very beautiful place in this seminary. That's great. But it is the reality of pressure of living in whatever country you live in where you're like, I have to make sure I'm providing for my kids and doing these things. And so I thought, well I could do maybe a worship thing for him or what am I going to do? And so we were wondering what we were going to do. And then at that time we luckily got a call from another family that essentially wanted to be a patron but just a very large donor patron. And we spent months with them trying to figure it out and then they just all of a sudden went cold feet on us and it was confusing for us. And then it was like, ah, we just turned on this record deal and what are we going to do? And then it just kind of felt like it was staring us in the face actually a fan of The Brilliance who then ended up also opening for a show for us one time was like, have you guys ever thought about doing Patreon? And we're like, no. Because I don't know, I think we were just, maybe we didn't really fully know about the model and I feel like maybe we weren't ready to ask people for help, we just didn't know. And there's probably pride in that and there's probably also fear or people actually going to help Is this going to? And so we just got over ourselves and we're like, well let's just open it up. And it was great. I mean we have a couple hundred patrons that are really helping and it's able to go right away, oh wow this is incredibly helpful. And now we can just release the music and it's in the wild and old do its thing. But the fun thing for us is now, even though, so it's that couple really small audience, that couple hundred that are our patrons we're just doing stuff for them. So this week we released a video and then it'll come out again in a week or two and then I'm going to release all the demos for these to them. I'm going to release another song that won't be put up just for them. We thought about what if we maybe do a little Christmas thing just for them. We like thinking, oh, this is our family, this is The Brilliance – the real people that support us. They're our record label. So we are grateful to them and we wanna make sure that we can honor them. So some fun things that are going to be happening are this spring we're going we're headlining a tour with my brother's band Gungor. And then we have a special guest that I can't tell you yet, I'll find out tonight, but I think this artist is better than Gungor or we are so excited about this third artist it it'll come out here in the next week. But we are like, oh man. It's funny cuz that same way where we'd be like, what kind of music would you write and do? And we were like, oh, this is kind of the dream thing. And we're like, all right, well let's try to do it. It was the same thing for this tour where it was like, who would we wanna tour with? And I've been talking to my brother for a while. I'm like, every time we tour it's just fine. But there's something really fun about being with family cuz I live in New York, he lives in LA and we both have kids and stuff. So we're like, why don't we do another tour together? And just like, hey this means for us, it's just the family hang. And then when we were talking, who would we want to have open up? We were really excited. So it'll be really cool. So that's the spring, we'll be releasing these suites and then we'll also be trying to build on that Patreon some really different stuff. So for instance, John will he got hired to, we're going to be doing a concert at a university and he wants to write a classical music suite for them. So we'll probably release that to our patrons first and then maybe one day it'll be like, oh yeah, and here's another thing that comes out. So the fourth, we have at least four suite ideas that are, three of them are mostly done, just have to be finished mixing. And then the fourth one, we have two of the songs done, which is around social media. And that one one's going to be a little wild. Actually one of the things about your Patreon is that you are asking people to be on your unofficial board, which is wild because you are opening yourselves up once a month to have people who love you, but still people open up and give you feedback and talk with you about things. How did you guys come to a place where you felt comfortable and excited about that? So it's funny cuz right now we have two unofficial board members on Patreon and then one that said, Hey, I don't want to go through Patreon. I want to go through another way and wrote us a check. But it's funny that we're opening up, we're probably going to limit it eventually. But one of the things that we thought is, Hey, if someone wants to really support us, we want them. We want to know why do you wanna support us? So we're going to just tell you all of our ideas and our plans. And it doesn't mean that we're going to obey you. You're not like our boss on one end, but on another end you are our person that we want to hear from. You're the person that's like, Hey, I really wanna help support you. So if we go, Hey, we're thinking about doing this, and they go, are you sure we're going to lean in and go, oh, are we sure what? And we're going to talk to them, we're going to communicate. And that I feel like that for us is a really important thing, is being able to listen to the people who do support us. It. The image that I think of is and I feel like I've heard this analogy before, so I'm sure I'm stealing it from someone in my subconscious mind. But if you do art and you have these people that do support, you imagine having a garden. And if you make carrots it's good to make the best carrots that you can. And if you're going to make something else, be like, does this go with carrots? Well, but if I'm going to make carrots and also going to or garden with carrots and then also going to garden with, I don't know, name, whatever other weird vegetable, but actually that doesn't work in that climate. And that's weird. I feel like we need to hear from people that we're going, Hey, does this actually resonate within this? And do you get this? And so that's one of the, and especially when we're doing the hard thing, we're never going to be a huge band. We're never going to be, our goal is to not be pop stars or top 10 radio. I mean, that would be awesome for my kids. I'm not going to not take it. But we're not our goal, our goal is to make art that inspires empathy into action. And so if we're creating art that inspires empathy, then we're going, okay, that's what we garden. And how we do that. We can be really creative in how we create empathy, but we're going to tell people's stories. And then those who want to go, Hey, we really wanna help you make that art. We want to go over strategy. Cuz there are a lot of people out there that are better business minds than us or marketing minds or think outside of the box. Or the only way that we did Patreon was by listening to a fan that was invested enough to say, Hey, I really think you should do Patreon. And us kind of wrestling through and going, yeah, I think you're right.

So something I do with all my guests is I ask them three questions that people probably would like to ask, but the time never seems quite right. I wanted to know, do people ever confuse you with your brother? Oh my gosh, all the time. I will. There are so many times where – it would happen more. So The Brilliance hasn't played at churches in quite some time. I lead at my church every Sunday, but when we first started, we played a lot of churches and I would sing something, get off stage or whatever, and they would come up and without fail, at least every time we played, at least one or two people would come up and be like, “We just love Beautiful Things”. And eventually I would just say thank you. I mean, I've said it so many times, “Oh, my brother wrote that. That's great.” I said it. Many different versions of that, but eventually when you're like, you just go, “Thank you. I love it too. “  

That's amazing. Yeah, I hear that. What is your favourite record of all time? What inspires you the most? Oh, you can have a top two or three if it's easier.

Yeah, I do a top two or three. So what is my favourite record of all time and what inspires me the most is probably different. I'm going to just name a few records that inspired me out their time. And they don't mean that today I listened to them, but just at the time that they came, they grew me into the musician I am today. I'm going to start off with, I'll say David Baan and Pedro The Lion was a really big deal to me. And so was Curse Your Branches. Both records were amazing. I was in high end of high school, beginning of college when Sufjan started doing things. And I really got into Michigan and Illinois. I was a huge fan of Pete Yorns music for The Morning After, which was an incredible record and it still is an incredible record. And then later on after I actually started making music, I started going back and actually discovering, I would say my patrons saints of music, which for me, I'm a huge Paul Simon and Paul McCartney fan. So I'm a huge Beatles fan, but I'm like, a lot of people are like, oh, you gotta love John, which I love John and he's great. But Paul was just like I'm, every time I'm like from melody what's like speaking, there's no one who's written better melodies to me than Paul McCartney. And then lyrically and just Vibes, I love Paul Simon. And then for a record, I mean the record that gets the most play in my house is Miles Davis kind of blues. But I mean that's like the most stock jazz record ever. But we listen to it probably every night at dinner with my kids, which it just goes on. I just, wear the hell out of it.  

And last question, you started recording, well, you released your music 2010, I think was when you released, your first record. What would you say to yourself now back then, if you could speak to yourself in the past, what would you say to yourself? What have you learned since then?

Oh, that's a really interesting question. I've never been asked that question. Yeah. What would I say to myself in 2010? Take vocal lessons.