Amena Brown:
Hey, y'all. Welcome back to a new episode of HER with Amena Brown and I'm excited to have my husband and producer back in the living room with us so that we can get into a few more road stories.
Matt Owen:
Okay.
Amena Brown:
Shenanigans.
Matt Owen:
Oh, okay. That's my type of carrying on. You call me in here for the right reason.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So we picked out three or four moments that we can't decide if they're funny, if they're weird or if they are unfortunate or some combination of. I want to start with a gig that we did in Birmingham, Alabama.
Matt Owen:
Which definitely fills all three of those buckets.
Amena Brown:
That's a good point actually. It was weird, it was funny, it was unfortunate. And we were working with an organization that had had a moment that quite a few white evangelical organizations had over the years where their leadership had said some things publicly that were causing a lot of problems. And specifically because a person that was in leadership had said some things regarding race publicly that were very offensive.
Matt Owen:
It was my people.
Amena Brown:
Very offensive. So someone in leadership had said something offensive. And in a different podcast episode we may talk to you all about some of the other behind the scenes things that went on there. But for the sake of this being a road story.
Matt Owen:
That's for the meetings and conversations episode.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, because yikes.
Matt Owen:
Because there was meetings and there was conversations.
Amena Brown:
Oh man, there was so many meetings and so many conversations. But suffice it to say we had an opportunity to decide whether or not we were going to still do the gig. And for various sundry reasons at the time we decided to do the gig. And I remember there was another really big name gospel artist who was also brought in to do this gig because the artist was someone that the leadership of the organization knew. They felt that because this artist was very well known and was also Black and Birmingham being a city that also has a lot of Black folks, that there would be a way the event could bring people together in the midst of the fact that they had some leadership that were making some very terrible statements in public.
Matt Owen:
It was part try to do something helpful, part PR move.
Amena Brown:
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.
Matt Owen:
Large part PR move. Sprinkle a little, let's try to do something helpful.
Amena Brown:
Definitely a sprinkle. I thank you for saying sprinkle because I was about to say just a small amount, but I feel sprinkle is more of the accuracy.
Matt Owen:
Yes, enough.
Amena Brown:
It's definitely more of the accuracy. And I do want to say before we get into the, what is the funny part? Because I guess this is the part we're telling you that is the unfortunate part of it, is as you go on in your life and you learn the different things that you stand for, and I think for us it's learning not just the things we stand against, but the things we stand for. And I think also when you're growing up in church settings and also have spent a lot of the time of your youth, like your twenties and different things in church settings, there's just a whole lot of things that you let skate by.
Matt Owen:
You don't want to ask no questions.
Amena Brown:
That as you get older you realize these are things that you would not let skate by. So if you were asking Matt and Amena of today, if this exact situation were to happen all over again, I'm pretty sure that when those people came to us and said, "We give you the option to do the gig or not, we probably would've been like, no, thank you."
Matt Owen:
That's all I know.
Amena Brown:
I don't even want my name anywhere near any of this. No, thank you. But truthfully, at the time I think our minds were along the lines of some other artists that appeared at the same event thinking this terrible moment has happened. How can we help people come together? How can we help people continue doing their healing word, et cetera. And I don't judge us for having made that choice at all. But I think we have a little more wisdom behind us now to know that there are times that you are doing things to, "help people come together." But sometimes people in leadership use that language because they don't want to be held accountable for the things they say and do.
Matt Owen:
Yeah. Also have learned that money spends way too fast.
Amena Brown:
Boy.
Matt Owen:
And all money ain't good money. So just because somebody's paying you money, which you've talked about a lot on this podcast, that being an independent artist, being a young person doing something, when someone says, "I will pay you money to do this thing." You're like, "Really? You will pay me money. I've been doing this thing for free forever... Money and then pay some bills' money. Oh, wow." But once that money's gone, then you have time to look back at the thing you were part and be like, "Oh, there's got to be another way to make money." And that's the truth, is that there's always another way to make money.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Big facts. So that's that. Hopefully at some other point we will come back and tell you all some of those.
Matt Owen:
I also do think along the lines of what you were talking about, of looking back at it differently, there is a time most of us who grew up going to family events.
We were sitting at the kids' table and so the grownups were having a grownup conversations. We were at the kids' table. And for those of us who came up in the church, especially as artists and musicians, there's a lot of good that comes from that because immediately you've got a crowd in front of you and you've got instruments and you've got all programming and you've got all these things to figure out that formulates into you flash forward to you're standing on some large stage. Well that's the journey that started on that really tiny thing. But in the church family setting, when you're the musician, you're kind of sitting at the kids' table, you know what I mean? And so you don't really ask a lot of questions sometimes you're not even aware of what's going on.
Nowadays it's different, now than what it used to be. There was churches I played at where you were on the stage the whole time because you never knew when that pastor was going to kick into the "do do do do." You never knew when it was going to come for you a couple of times, so you might as well just stay there. Now you can go out there, play your music, and then go sit and you don't even know what they're talking about out there.
Amena Brown:
Right, right.
Matt Owen:
Flash forward to some of these large settings that we are performing in, like this one where you're in an arena and everyone has their own green room dressing room. There's common area where there's food that is for everyone. There's serving dinner, lunch, there's snacks, there's a hangout spot. But for the most part, if you want to be, you can be totally unaware of what's going on. And so you show up, you do your thing and you don't know what's going on. Well this guy happened to say some things on Facebook and they were highly insensitive. Highly unhelpful. And it's one of those moments where I started going, "Oh, just because you have a big platform doesn't mean that you want to be helpful."
So now all of a sudden we find ourselves not necessarily sitting at the grownup table in that we get to decide what this man is going to do. I don't feel like he handled it the right way, but I feel like for us we learned, "Oh, there's a different me and you grown up table." Where we can go, "Oh, what are we going to do?" And we sat down and ate lunch and dinner with all kinds of people helped us navigate it. And like you said, now we probably would even navigate it differently. But at the time we made the right decision based off of what was in front of us to do.
Amena Brown:
Sure. Made the best decision we could in that moment. We would really need a different type of series other than road stories to tell you all, all of the things that go on behind the scenes in this type of situation, but suffice to say-
Matt Owen:
I just talked to my therapist about this very scenario. And this was years ago. That is still got some things tangled up in me, man.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, it was such a moment, man. I feel like what you said there is really important, especially when you're looking back on your choices and decisions. And sometimes in a way too, I think for us, for those of us who are performing artists, I think there's also the element of, to the point of what you were saying about who are considered to be the kids, who are considered to be the people who have power in the situation and who are considered to be the people who don't. And a lot of times as artists, you are sometimes made to feel like you are in a situation where you don't have a lot of power and you have to concede to the people who do. And in some situations I think that is true. But I also think we had to learn over the years to accept the power we do have.
We can't control how the organizations are going to be run. We can't control the choices, the terrible choices, especially in white evangelicalism that many people in leadership made. We don't have control over all that, but we get to have control over what we get to stand with or stand beside or stand for how we want to represent ourselves, whose name we want our names to be next to and all of those things. And even aside from the really ignorant story we trying to tell y'all, we made some subversive choices in how we both performed our art that particular night because there were some things related to the organization and how the leadership handled that. That even in our efforts to try to bring people together and make people feel welcome, we still wanted to make it known, we don't rock with all this. So I can look back on us now and see the beginnings of us sort of taking our power back.
But I think that's really important to consider when you're in a situation where you feel like you're at the kids table, you may actually have more power than you think, to be able to use your voice and use your art and use whatever you have access to. So this brings me to this moment has come now in Birmingham, we are in an arena. I mean y'all, this arena probably seats somewhere between 14 and 18,000 people. This is a huge facility here. And Matt is the house DJ for the event and I am MCing. And then we had a couple of times in the show that we performed together in between the other acts. Okay, so Matt is DJing as people are coming into the arena. So you probably had anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes of a set.
Matt Owen:
Especially when things are running behind, then it gets put, you got to keep going. And also there was a broadcast element, if I remember correctly. This was one of those events where there was a broadcast element. So you've got the crowd in front of you that you're somewhat playing background music, but my job was to have the people on 10 by the time the first artist hit the stage. So it's me and a crowd for an hour plus and it's my job to get you in but also get you moving. So back then I like to do a lot of call and response with people. I'd yell something or I'd sing something and let the crowd sing it. And then with the broadcast element, someone would have a headset, they're talking with the people in where they were calling the show and they would let me know when I was addressing the broadcast crowd and there'd be certain cameras set up that you'd have to go to.
And so there were a lot of those elements that you were juggling on top of some of the stories that we'll share. Another fun thing about whenever you are DJing in a large venue like this and you are doing call and response type things with a crowd, most times in this case I'm in the middle of the arena, but by the time the sound gets to the audience and then bounces back to me, it's on a whole different beat than what I'm on. So I learned the hard way, you got to get some good headphones and hug them tight because if not, there is no way when you're DJing, you're blending all these records together and beat matching. And then if I'm like everybody say, "Oh." Where it should have just been right after, "Oh." But I've got to stay on beat. And man, it was a lot to learn. It was a lot to juggle on top of the fact that there was a lot we had to juggle.
Amena Brown:
For sure. I'm trying to set the scene for you all to understand that this organization, we were booked for six events with them over a two-year period. So by the time this Birmingham event came, we probably had done about half of the events. They had this stage set up for Matt in the center of the arena. So a lot of these arenas were set up hockey arenas where you had the arena seating, but then you had the large bottom of the arena where typically would've been the ice and all. But instead it was just the flooring and that was all standing room only, so people could come down actually to the floor of the arena to see the acts up close if they wanted to. So Matt is set up in the center of that. Now we learn the hard way through the first couple of events that people want to go up to Matt and talk to him during his DJ set.
And I'm talking about, he's on a setup where you can't just literally walk up to him, you got to walk down to the floor, you got to walk up stairs because he was on a elevated stage in the center of the arena. So you have to walk up the stairs to get to him. And I would typically be backstage working on something else or talking to people or whatever. And I realized this event in particular, I was going to have to stay out there during his DJ set to keep people from walking up there to talk to him. You have no idea what manner of things. People could be saying. Sometimes people have requests, sometimes people are there and they don't even go to church stuff. So they're requesting stuff from Matt that he can't play at this thing.
Matt Owen:
Not this thing. Just next weekend. I got you.
Amena Brown:
And then sometimes people will come up with very obscure requests for things, and he's like-
Matt Owen:
Philosophies.
Amena Brown:
I don't know what that's about. And then sometimes just him DJing brought up memories from them. A lot of back in my day I used to DJ stories that people want to tell them at.
Matt Owen:
I get that a lot.
Amena Brown:
So in Birmingham, I decided to just stand out there. I think they put security after a couple of dates.
Matt Owen:
I do think I remember that they put some stanchions around and then there was security at some places because some places the crowd I remember got really close. And also if I remember correctly, they didn't have an actual DJ booth or I've had to set up my DJ gear in some weird spots. But if I remember correctly, it was one of those big road cases.
Amena Brown:
Yep, that's right.
Matt Owen:
But it wasn't the road case, that was being used for something else. They had taken the lid, the flimsy lid from the road case, sat it on side and put some plywood on top, and I think taped it all together. So I remember a couple of cities where it was getting pretty rowdy down there, which is that's how I like to do. And so they're down there with me, I'm with them going, but I'm looking, I'm like, "Oh, I'm about to lose it all." We are at the edge right now and one of the city, Toronto maybe, big break-dance circle popped up, remember, because Toronto has a really cool hip hop scene and you looked out like, "Oh cool." But as the circle kept getting bigger and bigger and so I think they started adding the stanchions, the ropes around and some security.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, I want to tell y'all that it depended on the city if that security was reliable.
Matt Owen:
If they were paying attention?
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Some cities, people were very vigilant about making sure you don't walk right up. Other people didn't really understand what's the purpose of them being security. So I think sometimes they thought like, "Oh, they must want this here so people don't walk away with his equipment." We need security there so people will stop walking up the steps and talking to the DJ while the DJ is DJing. Okay, so.
Matt Owen:
It's a pretty funny phenomenon.
Amena Brown:
So I decided on this Birmingham date that I was going to stay out there and just watch. So there was security right by the stage where Matt was, and I was also on the floor, but I was standing a little further away and I see this older white woman, she, had to be close to the age of both of our grandmothers, probably in her seventies and her eighties silver hair. I see her walking very slowly towards the stage and I'm like, "I'm going to go ahead and circumvent this." So I walk over to her and I'm like, "Hey, is there something I can help you with?" And she's like, "I got to talk to him right now." And I was like, "Okay." I said, "Why don't you tell me what you were going to tell him and I'll make sure the message gets to him."
"Well I've been upstairs and I've been praying because a group of us are here praying." And I said, "Umm-hmm." And she said, "And I just feel that he's playing this music and this music is going to wake up all the demons in Birmingham." Now I want you all to know that since this time my comedic brain is turned on at a level that is very different from the level it was on then. Because if me today had had that conversation, I would've been like, "Honey, you think him playing this music is what's going bring back all the demons in Birmingham, honey, listen, some of the demons are here alive girl. What you mean what you mean?"
Matt Owen:
That demon of racism was real comfortable. He's walking around drinking a soda.
Amena Brown:
I'm like, the demons is awake out here. I don't know what you mean. I literally had to, "Umm-hmm. Yes ma'am," her all the way back to her seat. I said, "Well you know what, since you all were already praying, I think that's the best thing for you to do. You just keep on praying for him and just pray for everybody at your seat though at your seat." She said, "Okay, but all the demons in Birmingham." At your seat. Yes ma'am. Directly at your seat you all. Yikes.
Matt Owen:
It is so interesting, like you said, because people come up to me to talk to me and sometimes they don't all the way have it together what they want to talk to me, even if they're requesting a song. And so it still happens to me now I don't work nearly as much in the faith-based event side, which has its own kind of interesting thing to it because in a faith-based environment, I am there to keep the energy up, get people engaged and motivated. But the main thing that people love about music is familiarity. Ooh, that's my song. You can't utilize that in a faith-based environment because of what we deem secular versus what we deem sacred and however you draw those lines, and this lady clearly had a line drawn.
Amena Brown:
This lady probably didn't know that a lot of what Matt was spinning was air quotes Christian music by Christian artists.
Matt Owen:
I'm remixing whoever the Christian artist of that day is. Also using a lot of just instrumental music. A lot of it was music that I was making myself and just working it out as we were on the road. And so it's always interesting when someone approaches me, I can always tell when someone's walking up to me and they've got kind of this sheepish look on their face like, "Hey, I don't want to bother you, but I'm going to bother you." And now what happens to me live is people will say, "Do you take song requests?" And my immediate responses depends on what it is.
Amena Brown:
If you got a bad request then no.
Matt Owen:
Nah, no, no. And I've got my ways of handling that, working around that. But in an environment that was interesting because I would have someone approach me and be like, "Hey, is this Christian music?" And it would be absolutely instrumental. And I learned the best answer was just to say, yeah. It would happen at the merch table. I think we've talked about this. I had an all instrumental CD that I was selling at the time, and I would have people ask me, is it Christian music? And I would try to be like, "Well, but it's instrumental. There's no words on it's all just instrument, but is it Christian?" And so I learned that, oh okay, you just need to know is this safe? Yes. So when people would come up to me asking me, "Is this music Christian?" I would just say, yes. Because I realize what you're asking me, is this safe for the whole family? The answer is yes. You're not going to hear the things that you didn't show up here to hear. I get it. I DJ in nightlife entertainment where they show up and people will walk up to me. I've been at a wedding and somebody walked up to me and said, "Hey, what's your nastiest song?" I'm like, "Whose cousin is this?" Who invited-
Amena Brown:
It's not your wedding.
Matt Owen:
Who invited this guy?
Amena Brown:
It's not even your wedding.
Matt Owen:
It's the wedding. So when something like this happens and someone wants to walk up to you and have a philosophical or a theological conversation, again, remember, I'm in a room to where when I take my headphones off, I've now lost the beat of where I am and it's impossible for me to do my thing what I've been brought here to do. Somebody saw me doing a thing and said, "Yes, you come here, do this." And it's like, if you'll just hang out by the end. Everything ain't for everybody. I get it. But if you hang out, you'll probably have a good time. You might see that some of the things you're worried about. Oh, okay. But there is that element in those environments of we just got to make sure, we got to make sure.
And I get it, because you didn't show up for all that. I get it. I understand there's supply and demand, there's customer service. So I got you. My corporate gigs, when they bring me in, it's because they know that I'm not going to play something that's going to get them in trouble.
Amena Brown:
Sure, sure.
Matt Owen:
I've done gigs for very large corporations where they are the number one soda company in America. Well, at this gig you're not allowed to play anybody who's ever had a deal with the number two soda company in this country. Well that's a lot of people, but they entrust me with that, and by the end I got you. So it is interesting that if someone were to walk up to me and have a conversation and now what do I do now? Do I stop what I'm doing? What is about to change? Someone brought me here. I'm doing what I was brought here to do.
Amena Brown:
But what I was hired to do, what I'm being paid to do.
Matt Owen:
Another thing I is pretty funny that I enjoy about my relationship with Amena is that it's great when having someone else there to see things and experience things that you're like, "Okay, I'm not crazy. That just happened." Okay. And then also because of me and you. There's little things that we grab along the way and it's just a phrase that now lives in our house.
Amena Brown:
Oh, for sure.
Matt Owen:
So something's going to happen, "Hey, careful, you going to wake up all the demons of Birmingham."
Amena Brown:
Like, girl, what you mean?
Matt Owen:
You wilding a little bit. You might wake up them demons.
Amena Brown:
Boy, I tell you.
Matt Owen:
I can't even tell you how many years ago that was. But we have said that phrase so many times and you know what? I'm not even mad at that lady. She added to our little, she add so much joy and laughter in this house.
Amena Brown:
I also love it for both of us that we both have environments where we no longer have to be safe for the whole family. Because that's a pretty hands tying sort of experience for you as an artist, especially as a grown... We are grown people. We are two people in our forties. We have a lot of life that we've experienced, good, bad, ugly, and different, hilarious, whatever it is. And to B, in a lot of Christian spaces where art was only valuable if either A, it fit into the worship category and B, if it got too cool or too "urban" take with that what you will. But if it started getting into those categories for the youth.
Matt Owen:
Yeah, that's the teenagers.
Amena Brown:
But either way, it should be something that if you're 3 years old or you're 300, it's for everybody. And the truth is, there really isn't a lot of things in life. I mean like soap and water apply to you 3 to 300.
Matt Owen:
Honestly that's why DJing weddings is so difficult. Because I had a wedding where someone's maybe four-year old stood by the turntables the whole time and just kept saying, "Old Town Road. Old Town Road." It didn't matter how many times I played Old Town, he wanted to get where I'm going. This little kid, that's all he wanted to hear. And I've got to make you your young cousin dance. I used to ask couples, do you want an all clean DJ set for your dance floor segment or do you want, because some people would want the dirty versions, right? I've stopped offering that because you not going to have me up there playing bleeps and bloops. Okay y'all, why y'all walking up
Amena Brown:
Okay, while you all walking with your hands on your hips.
Matt Owen:
Grandma is going to be disappointed.
Amena Brown:
No. Speaking of disappointed.
Matt Owen:
That's a crazy transition.
Amena Brown:
One of my most hilarious stories of someone's feelings about Matt's DJ sets. We were doing a youth event this time, I can't remember the location actually, that's blurred in me now. But we were doing a youth event.
Matt Owen:
Some city somewhere.
Amena Brown:
Some city somewhere. But it was a big enough event. It had a hashtag and we were studying the feed, we were reading the hashtag feed as the event was going on. And at some point, an adult woman who was there as a chaperone with a group of kids at whatever this youth event was, decided that she needed to tweet her feelings about whatever the music was that she felt you were spinning. I just remember whatever her comment was to you, the last part of it was hashtag disappointed. You all the amount of times that Matt and I still say it to each other, wow. Went to the store and they were out of such and such, hashtag disappointed.
Matt Owen:
I think it was something like, I played just a little bit of teaching me how to Dougie or one of those songs that's like everybody do this dance and if I remember correctly, it was a real short segment. But that right there is why I put in a rule for myself that when I am performing anywhere, do not look at social media. Don't look at it immediately after. Maybe look at it before but not during. Nope. I've got to where Instagram, Twitter, any of those, none of them send me notifications to my phone at all.
Amena Brown:
Same.
Matt Owen:
I turned them off because in these environments you would have the hashtag disappointment. Now I'm supposed to go, there's a place that you have to take yourself to be able to get on stage in front of... This was another, I remember pretty large... at the time we were doing a lot of really large room festival style events. They were large events. And so the place you got to take yourself and now out of how many thousands of people are in front of me, just knowing this one person is so upset, they went on Twitter and hashtag disappointed me.
Amena Brown:
She hashtag disappointed us.
Matt Owen:
I mean, how do you pick yourself up? There's a certain level of confidence that it takes to approach a crowd and do something that makes them feel something and give that energy back to you. And then it's a give and take between you and the audience. So it didn't matter how many people were, "Aahh." Yeah, whenever I said, "Make some noise." And they're like, "Aahh", it didn't matter because this lady was hashtag disappointed and my day was wrecked. There was times where people would go in... They would go through my Instagram feed and there would be, who knows some picture that I put some caption with and they would Jesus juke me somewhere. No, Jesus the only solid rock and roll of, oh whatever, you got me, you win, you out argued me, I'm embarrassed. You know what, I'm shutting it down. I'm not doing this no more. What do you want from me?
Amena Brown:
Which we talked about this a little bit on the previous episode. I can't remember if it was here or Patreon, but we talked about previously just even a conversation, I think this might have been a bonus episode. We were talking about me in talks with a guy who led one of the bigger name Christian Bands at the time and he was very upset about ideas about secular music and blah blah, blah. And here's the thing that I guess we had to learn about ourselves though is for us it's like good music is good music. Now, I mean there's a lot of music that people consider, "Christian," that even though people who are Christian may agree with the message, I don't think based on baseline and groove and songwriting that it's good music. It's not inspiring to me musically.
So I do think it's a weird fragmentation in your brain almost. When we would be in these environments playing songs that are actually good, it's good music, it's good musicianship, it's good songwriting, the music, but people are hashtag disappointed because it doesn't have messaging on it that they agree with or it doesn't say it in the way they're used to it being said. And so I think there are a lot of those elements too where you would be like, but your hashtag disappointed and that was Earth, Wind and Fire. Why are you disappointed?
Matt Owen:
I think I remember also from that Birmingham gig specifically because there was a DJ friend that lived in Birmingham that we had met at a previous thing here in Atlanta and we were like, "Hey, we're in Birmingham." So she took us to her records store that she liked to shop at and I bought some vinyl while we were there.
Amena Brown:
Oh, that's right.
Matt Owen:
And for a soundcheck that night I went in and during soundcheck, I'm spinning... So I'm spinning, I think it was some Earth, Wind, Fire, some Sly and the Family Stone, some James Brown. I was picking up a lot of that. And I remember the sound guy coming to me, "Hey, are you doing something different? Something in the stereo field or something different?" I was like, I'm spinning vinyl. He goes, "Oh, that makes sense." It was good music. Forgot about that.
Amena Brown:
That was one of my favorite things about the road was going to record stores. We went to so many good ones. We'll circle back to that on another episode too. In closing for this episode, I want to bring up one more phrase that always is a weird, funny, unfortunate, and that is the phrase, we have such a young team. I just can't tell y'all the amount of churches, this is a very church specific thing. I didn't hear it as much from organizations.
Matt Owen:
A lot of college ministry,
Amena Brown:
But a lot of churches, especially churches that could be like megachurches, that had a younger pastor who was maybe in his early forties or he was in his thirties or something. It was always this type of church or the type of church that in your city would tell you that it's doing church differently. It was that type of church that we would get there and they would be like, they'd give us the tour of the facility and they'd be like, we have such a young team. And whenever they said it to us, they were very proud.
Matt Owen:
Isn't it cool?
Amena Brown:
So proud. I want to tell you all that whenever we heard that we knew that something in the gig was going to go terribly wrong. It either meant that the creative was going to be great, but when it came time to get the check, no one knew where it was because they have such a young team, no one knows how to do accounting or accounts payable. Sometimes they would say, we have such a young team that meant it was going to be terribly unorganized, that there was going to be no one there to actually make sure the ideas got completed. Sometimes they would say, we have a young team, and that would mean that it was going to be too many things we were going to be asked to do.
Matt Owen:
Oh yeah.
Amena Brown:
At one event
Matt Owen:
They about to make it count.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, they were going to be like, "Oh my gosh, we're so excited to have you guys. Thank you so much. So instead of just performing the one time, we actually all were in a really great brainstorm and we were thinking that since we're going to have morning devotional every morning at 6:30, we were thinking poetry and DJing is a great way to start that. And so we were thinking maybe for three days you guys could just open devotional at 6:30 and then we have our lunch session in the cafeteria and these students really need motivation. And so we were thinking lunch would be also a great time for you guys to share. And then we have a video series that we were hoping you guys could come and do and we set up a set that totally looks like a porch turned into a basketball court. And we were hoping you guys could also do that. Also, our theme is Jesus is the Bread of Life and we were wanting to do a mini cooking show. And we were hoping to see maybe you guys could also bake bread with us and maybe some fish. Oh, loaves. No, that's a totally good idea."
Matt Owen:
We're like, while you're cooking up a beat live on stage?
Amena Brown:
We're like, what are y'all talking about? You are not paying us enough money, number one, for all of these ideas.
Matt Owen:
I'm not that eager.
Amena Brown:
I want to really bring up what you said earlier is when you hear that, when you hear the phrase, we have such a young team, it means the people at the kids table have somehow been left in charge.
Matt Owen:
And a lot of times where the issue would come up would be in housing of where you were going to sleep. Those part of the details that don't involve lights, camera, action. Those are the details that more than likely it's going to be like, because when I was 20, I slept on a lot of couches.
Amena Brown:
Listen, listen. The mattress I was on in my twenties was a hand-me-down from somewhere. So I do want to tell y'all, when you are like high school, college age, it's some things that you would be willing to accept.
Matt Owen:
It felt fun. It was an adventure.
Amena Brown:
You'll be like, "Oh my gosh, this place doesn't have any blinds. All the windows are just open. Let's have a sleepover." You don't think about that. You get to be grown, grown. You have concerns. You have concerns. You're like, I didn't travel all the way here to sleep on a couch, to sleep on a bed that was made for children. We are also two people. Matt is over six feet tall and I'm almost six feet tall, so we can't really be playing no games out here.
Matt Owen:
Feet hanging over.
Amena Brown:
No, I'm a little mattress. So maybe you don't have a young team, maybe try having something intergenerational. Somebody there is going to know about accounts payable. Somebody there is going to know what a good mattress feels like. Somebody there is going to make sure there's food to meet the dietary restrictions. Just we need a mix.
Matt Owen:
At least make sure there's blinds, blinds on the window.
Amena Brown:
Just blinds on the window. That's such a-
Matt Owen:
A simple shower curtain. How many times have we stayed somewhere?
Amena Brown:
No, I swear for God.
Matt Owen:
No blinds, no shower curtain.
Amena Brown:
Nothing. And they were like, "That's okay. See you guys in the morning." What do you think I'm doing? What do you mean?
Matt Owen:
Because I'm going to shower. So you going to get a show.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Because I'm like, if that's the show you all wanted, me and Matt can start our OnlyFans, but we didn't come out here. We didn't come here to such and such camp in the middle of Kentucky or wherever to start our OnlyFans. That's not the thing. Anyways, you all, thanks for joining us for the weird, the funny and the unfortunate. We got some more roast tours for you all, so we'll see you all soon.
HER with Amena Brown is produced by Matt Owen for Sol Graffiti Productions as a part of the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartRadio. Thanks for listening and don't forget to subscribe, rate and review the podcast.