Amena Brown:
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to this week's episode of HER with Amena Brown, and it is holidays time, y'all. I don't know how much pretending you're doing at your jobs at this point. I feel like there's two groups of people. There's the group of people who are not doing anything at their jobs after December 1st, basically. The goal is to just look like you're doing something until your time off arrives.
Or there are some people who work jobs that now is a wild time at your job and you will not be getting any sleep, any rest, while other people are enjoying the holidays, you are busting your butt and working super hard. Shout out to both of you. Shout out to those of you that are shuffling papers in your cubicle just trying to look like you're doing something.
Extra special shout out to those of you that are working very, very hard. You're in an industry that gets super busy around this time of year. I wish for you a slow January, because wow. Also, Matt is back.
Matt:
Wow.
Amena Brown:
We are here doing a road stories holiday episode.
Matt:
Ho ho ho, y'all.
Amena Brown:
I always like to have a holiday episode of this podcast.
Matt:
For auld lang syne. I have no idea what that means.
Amena Brown:
I really like the way the pronunciation you gave us there. I really-
Matt:
I don't even know if what I said is right.
Amena Brown:
I like it. I'm going to go with it. I really like the Z there, the auld lang syne. That's it.
Matt:
I don't know. I just know that when it comes up in that song, I sing it ... It really touches me.
Amena Brown:
I'm just now in my adulthood even knowing that it was saying auld lang. I mean shout out to When Harry Met Sally because Sally and Harry were having that conversation at the end of the film, which is also a bit of a Christmas movie, where he was like, "Why say that? You supposed to forget the people you used to know? You supposed to know the people you forgot?" It's a lot of confusion.
Matt:
I like the pepper on my paprikash.
Amena Brown:
I'm a big When Harry Met Sally fan. I don't know why I haven't done an episode about that movie. Thank you for bringing that to my mind, babe. We going to get involved.
Matt:
Here for it.
Amena Brown:
That's not what we're doing today though, y'all. That's the future episode we're going to do. I want to talk about our road experiences around the holidays, babe. We've had quite a few.
Matt:
We have.
Amena Brown:
Okay. So I want to lay the groundwork for you all. We have discussed this in previous road stories episodes, the idea that when you live a life where most of your work is travel, depending on what you do, that does make the holidays kind of tricky. We've had some holidays. I know I had many, before Matt and I were married and in the first few years that we were married, where I would typically get booked to do poetry at churches around Christmastime, particularly for Christmas Eve services, and some churches even had services on Christmas Day.
Matt:
I do believe our first year dating, I picked you and your mom up from the airport. Was it Christmas Day?
Amena Brown:
It was Christmas Day-
Matt:
Christmas Day, yeah.
Amena Brown:
... because we flew to Oregon, I think, to do Christmas Eve services. The church was so large that the Christmas Eve services were on the 23rd and the 24th. It was five or seven services. And then we took the earliest flight we could take out on Christmas Day, and you had to pick us up there.
Matt:
You got me my very first ever Christmas gift from you. I got you a gift, also, but ...
Amena Brown:
Are we going to tell the truth on this podcast or are we going to tell the story that you've been telling other people is the first gift?
Matt:
Well, I am on the HER podcast, so maybe I should let her say what her thought she got him on that first Christmas.
Amena Brown:
I remember that I was in a Sean John phase, and I got you a very nice red Sean John shirt that I had prepacked in a gift bag and left it with you.
Matt:
Can't stop. Won't stop.
Amena Brown:
Told you not to open it until Christmas Day. So I can't remember. You might have showed up in it. I feel like you might have showed up in that shirt to the airport.
Matt:
Okay. Sounds like me.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That's the truth.
Matt:
Usually, if I get a gift, I put it on immediately.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, that is you. That is the MO right there. So that's the truth. The other story that you have told regarding what you believe-
Matt:
Well, the way I remember it is the very first gift that I opened from my lady-
Amena Brown:
No.
Matt:
... on our very first Christmas was some nose hair trimmers. Could it have been a message about the unkemptness of a man entering the age I was entering? Possibly. But ever since then, I've kept that nose hair job done.
Amena Brown:
I, first of all, want to let y'all know that the truth is not being told from someone on this podcast right now.
Matt:
Did you or did you not buy me a nose hair trimmer?
Amena Brown:
I did. That is true that I did buy you a nose hair trimmer. You were with me when I bought it.
Matt:
Listen, I don't know if there's any fellas listening to this podcast. I'm sure there are. But if there are, maybe you can come in the comments section and help a brother out. On your first holiday with your lady, would you have ever gotten her a skillet?
Amena Brown:
Okay. This is why I feel that an untruth is being told regarding this gift because we were actually Christmas shopping together for some other things.
Matt:
Would you have gotten her some hair rollers?
Amena Brown:
I don't remember how the question or the conversation regarding the nose hairs came up. I don't remember that part.
Matt:
Would you have gotten her some leg hair trimmers?
Amena Brown:
But we were at a TJ Maxx, if I remember. It was either TJ Maxx or it was the section of Macy's during the holidays where they have all the little gifts you can get for people. I did not buy your gift that day because I bought your gift when you weren't with me. But I went ahead, since we were ringing things up, and threw that nose hair trimmer in there. Let me tell y'all something right now, and I have said this to my husband repeatedly.
Many of you have been around an older man or it could be just a man over 30 years old. But I have seen this particularly in men who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s. As you get older, your nose hairs grow longer, and you know what else grows longer is hair in your ears. For me, you can tell if a man has people in his life that love him if he doesn't have enough ear hair just crawling out of his eardrums and if you're not mistaking nose hair for a mustache.
So I would like to correct the thought that I surprisingly bought my boyfriend at the time a nose trimmer and wrapped it up and that he opened that. I would like to say I don't remember how we were talking about it, but something came up regarding the grooming of a man and he did not have this tool. It's a great tool. It makes your life easier. You don't have to stick kitchen scissors up your nose hairs and things you shouldn't be doing.
It's a thing that's for your nostrils and your eardrums. That's what we're saying. So was it purchased? Yes. Was it purchased with the intent of you using it? Yes. Was it a Christmas gift? No. I rest my-
Matt:
Well-
Amena Brown:
Your Honor. Your Honor.
Matt:
There's just two of us in this room right now. Either way, thank you for bringing the awareness to my life that I was a man who had entered the nose hair bearing years of his life.
Amena Brown:
That's it. That's it.
Matt:
I've kept it fresh ever since.
Amena Brown:
That's right. You do. You keep it very fresh. Really, we've now been together long enough to have been two or three nose hair trimmers since then. So that's a long marriage when you can be like, "That's three personal grooming tools that we have used throughout our time."
Matt:
Is that how we're going to start measuring the length of our relationship is nose hair trimmers?
Amena Brown:
Yeah. I think we should. I think we should do that, be like, "Yes. We've been married 11 years, also known as three nose hair trimmers." I think that's fair.
Matt:
I'm with it.
Amena Brown:
I think we should do that.
Matt:
Okay.
Amena Brown:
The holidays was always an interesting time because, as we've talked about, you have birthdays of people you love. You have various and sundry holidays that other people are off work, but you're working, which is why I wanted to shout out those of you that that's you right now, that it's a busy season for you because that happens to us. Some summers, everybody's on vacation. We can't vacation because we working the whole summer.
Matt:
Whole time.
Amena Brown:
People are taking time off for Christmas, New Year's. Sometimes those were times that we were working a lot. I remember one particular Christmas that we were very broke.
Matt:
I can remember a couple.
Amena Brown:
I don't know why I said one particular Christmas because there were probably multiple Christmastimes that we were broke. But this one I remember we were very, very broke and, on both sides of our family, we would have different Christmas gatherings. Yes, insert parenthetical note that Christmas is not all about presents. Insert those thoughts because that's true, and it's also true that you still going to buy some gifts for some people sometimes.
Matt:
I love buying gifts for people. I look forward to it every year.
Amena Brown:
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. I think, for us, especially getting married in those first few years of being married, it's like that's a part of your family bond. You're getting to know your extended family members and what stuff they might like and us deciding. I remember we had one year that we got all of our gifts from independent stores instead of shopping in department stores.
Matt:
I love that.
Amena Brown:
You just have lots of fun you can have with that. But this particular year, we was broke as hell, and it wasn't no place buy that stuff. We got a last-minute Christmas Eve service gig that came in and came in very nicely that year.
Matt:
It did.
Amena Brown:
We were like, "Woo. We're going to Universal ..." No, sorry. That was a different time. No, but we were like, "We going to have Christmas."
Matt:
Oh, yeah.
Amena Brown:
It is a lot of work, in general, when you are the person coming into someone else's environment as an artist. But Christmastime was very particular because people, especially churches, they go all out.
Matt:
Oh, man. You've been a part of some productions that I've witnessed. Oh, wow.
Amena Brown:
I'm talking about it's orchestras. We went to some churches during Christmastime where they had adult orchestra and a child version. There's a children's orchestra.
Matt:
When they call it a cantata, uh-oh.
Amena Brown:
Watch out. Watch out now. That's bigger than a Christmas program. That's how I grew up. Our church, growing up, we had a Christmas cantata. I don't know. That was a vibe.
Matt:
Are there other cantatas?
Amena Brown:
I'm assuming not. I mean I really have never even looked up exactly what cantata means. Something is giving me the Spanish, encanto or something regarding singing. I'm assuming that. But yes, these things were super produced. Christmas and Easter were your biggest holidays. But Christmas is a big deal. It's lots of bells, and it's dancing. Sometimes it's a moment of theater that's going to happen in the middle of this, a sketch.
Matt:
Some lights that look like snow.
Amena Brown:
Definitely some glowy, some visuals.
Matt:
A lot of powder on the stage.
Amena Brown:
Okay. But we didn't come here to talk to y'all about that. What we want to talk about is one of our worst holiday experiences. We want to talk about the worst winter tour there ever was.
Matt:
That thing was raggedy.
Amena Brown:
Many score and however many years ago, Matt and I got booked for our first tour together because I had been on tour since we've been married, but we could not go together. They only had enough space on the bus for me. So I would have to be apart from Matt. Okay. This was very exciting for the first time that we knew about it until we actually got on the tour, that we were going to get to go on the tour together.
This was a bus tour. We were through the Midwest in December. That should have told us right there.
Matt:
I don't think I would have known up front what Midwest, that meant cold north middle.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Because I had been to the Midwest during cold times in the past, but definitely not around the holidays.
Matt:
I went to public school, and I'm not sure. Is all the Midwest in the North? Is it all cold? Is there a lower part? Is there a southern Midwest?
Amena Brown:
You know what? You're bringing up a good point though because, for me, geography-wise, it is once you start getting into Ohio, Indiana, Michigan-
Matt:
I just figured that's all up North. I don't know whether it's left, right.
Amena Brown:
That's all Midwest to me. But you have made a point though that it's like America almost doesn't fully have a North. Well, I guess we have Northeast a little bit, that tip of the country where Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire-
Matt:
I've heard of these.
Amena Brown:
And then we have the Northwest where Oregon and Seattle would be. But anything that's basically between Seattle and before you get into New York is Midwest. If it's not Texas and the South, it's Midwest. So as far as we knew, that was just some mystery land in the middle of the country. Some of it we'd been to, but some of it we hadn't. We Were very excited, and a few things went badly.
First of all, I want to talk about a tour bus for those of you that are not tour bus aficionados. You can tell the budget of the tour you are on based on the quality of the tour bus. Some artists and bands that you know and love are touring on Sprinter vans. There's not a bed in that van. The people are having enough room in this Sprinter van. I daresay some people are in a 12-passenger van, and that's it.
You might have a hotel. You might not. You just out and about, trying. I would say, based on the tour bus situation we received, we were mid. We were mid. It had bunks in it.
Matt:
It had bunks. It was a sleeper bus. Yeah.
Amena Brown:
So it felt all right. Our first little day meeting up with everybody, all that energy initially felt really great. I am not going to name for you all who was on the tour because some things we must keep to ourselves.
Matt:
(singing)
Amena Brown:
We must keep it to ourselves.
Matt:
(singing)
Amena Brown:
Needless to say, it was us, a couple of other bands, I think.
Matt:
Yeah. There were bands.
Amena Brown:
There's typically always a speaker at this because you can't really have truly a Christian tour of any kind if there isn't some sort of talking, preaching. It's a keynote.
Matt:
You're going to get talked at.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. You need to get talked at a little bit. So there was a speaker. And then, in this situation, the tour was being put on by an organization. We have had a lot of experiences with organizations. We know now, but didn't know then, that when you're working with an organization and they say things like, "Everybody that works here is so young-"
Matt:
Our team is so young. It's so fun.
Amena Brown:
Man, I'm just going to tell you right now, if people are talking about booking you for something and they say that to you, charge your highest price because that means you're going to be inconvenienced. Make sure that whoever cuts the checks isn't young. You want to see at least one gray hair on the person cutting your check.
Matt:
That's cool and all, But who run your QuickBooks?
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Who's handling Quicken? What y'all doing in here? Does the person running y'all checks know how to use something that's not Venmo is what I need to know?
Matt:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
Is it a check?
Matt:
Is it a check?
Amena Brown:
Will I get tax forms related to this money? Okay. The first bad thing that happened was related to the tour bus, y'all.
Matt:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
I do believe our tour bus driver had only driven in the South. I don't think he'd ever done a Midwest tour.
Matt:
Like us, tour bus driver's like, "What is a Midwest?"
Amena Brown:
What are we doing here?
Matt:
Okay, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold up. Doesn't Chili's have a Midwestern egg roll?
Amena Brown:
It's a Southwestern. See, that's it right there.
Matt:
So there is a Southwest.
Amena Brown:
There is a Southwest.
Matt:
Is Texas a Southwest?
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Matt:
Okay.
Amena Brown:
Yes.
Matt:
Okay.
Amena Brown:
Yes. But I'm going to tell you right now that if there was a Midwestern egg roll, it's a bunch of casseroles that are rolled up in a tortilla that is covered in either sour cream or something. And then it's encased in a cream cheese ball, and you have to use crackers to get to the actual Midwestern egg roll inside.
Matt:
I like that my newfound understanding of US geography has to do with a Chili's appetizer.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. Because, see, that helps you right there. You were like, "Oh, it's Southwest. It's a black bean."
Matt:
That's it.
Amena Brown:
It's a little guacamole.
Matt:
That's it.
Amena Brown:
You're like, "Okay, I know the vibes." I'm Texas. I'm New Mexico. I'm Arizona. I'm somewhere there.
Matt:
Basically, anything that has the word, southwest, in it has black beans.
Amena Brown:
You're pretty sure. You're pretty sure about that. When I think about Northwest, for some reason, I'm somewhere between weed and patchouli, somewhere between those things. Some sort of a fir tree, a Fraser tree is happening there. The Northeast, you're like, "It's a lobster roll." It's a clam out there. We're right there near the ocean. But people who are listening that live in the Midwest that aren't from Chicago, tell us your cuisine.
Matt:
Yeah, please.
Amena Brown:
We don't know.
Matt:
We don't.
Amena Brown:
In the South, you're pretty sure there's fried something. There's fried chicken. There's fried pork rinds. There's a fried Oreo in the South.
Matt:
I just remember the stops we made in the Northwest ... Northwest, is that what we're calling it?
Amena Brown:
No, it's the Midwest.
Matt:
Sorry. Who invited this dude on the HER podcast?
Amena Brown:
In the Midwest tour.
Matt:
Listen, the Midwest tour that we went on, I just know that the different towns we stopped in, when we went in the diners, them people were not ready to see us.
Amena Brown:
No, they were not.
Matt:
You could hear the forks-
Amena Brown:
No, They were not.
Matt:
... hit the plate like ...
Amena Brown:
I'm trying to think to myself. I would have noticed this a lot more now than I did then. But I was the only Black person on that tour, that I can remember. I'll say, of the people of color on that tour, that was maybe less than 5% of everybody who was there.
Matt:
I will say when we walked in those diners, you might have been the first Black person they seen in a minute.
Amena Brown:
Oh, boy. You don't never want to be in an environment where you're like, "Hmm, racist?" You especially don't want to be there when it's cold, and you're not sure how quickly your lungs can run in the freezing.
Matt:
I think walking into that room, for me, it wasn't as much, "Hmm, racist?", as, "Hmm, racist."
Amena Brown:
There was no question. We were like, "Oh, we know it's racist." That's great.
Matt:
Nah, It didn't go up on end. It was like, Oh, okay."
Amena Brown:
Okay. Y'all racist.
Matt:
I can't go to the bathroom and leave her standing here. I got to stand here the whole time.
Amena Brown:
Nah. Can't do that.
Matt:
I will be standing outside of her bathroom door.
Amena Brown:
Got to do it. One of the awkward things about this was the organization that was putting on the tour was headquartered somewhere in the Midwest. What that meant was everyone that was helping to organize the tour, all the people that worked behind the scenes, they lived in the Midwest. And then a couple of the bands that were on the tour, they had their own way they were handling transportation, so they weren't actually on the bus with us.
So it was us and maybe a couple of people that worked in the sound crew that basically had some days to ourselves. I won't say it was the middle of nowhere, but it was basically everyone did the tour Monday through Friday. If you could afford to fly home on the weekends, then you would fly home on the weekends. But you would be flying home at your own cost.
Matt:
If I remember correctly, they weren't happy with some of the folks flying home on the weekends. But those folks were like, "Oh, no."
Amena Brown:
"I'm going home."
Matt:
"I ain't staying here."
Amena Brown:
"No, not in this snow-ridden place. No, I'm not staying." But we didn't have money to do that. A couple of other people that were working behind the scenes from out of town didn't have money to do that. So basically, contractually, they had to provide lodging for us, and that's literally it. They pretty much dropped us off at a hotel that was across from a mall.
Matt:
It was a thing in walking distance.
Amena Brown:
They were like, "Have at it. You can go there. Get yourself some food, whatever." Now, thankfully, this wasn't like actual literal Christmas, but it was in the few weeks leading up to the holidays. So a lot of that time that you have to start slowing down your life and doing your Christmas decorations and starting to get gifts if that's what you do, we were taking our weekends and going over to this mall that anything you could do or eat in that mall, we must have done it.
Matt:
Yep. Saw it. Experienced it-
Amena Brown:
We must have done it.
Matt:
Tried it twice.
Amena Brown:
Okay. The next thing I want to talk about is the time that the bus froze. I need to speak about this because I mentioned to y'all earlier that our bus driver had never been to the Midwest, as apparently we had not either. Y'all listening that live in the Midwest are going to laugh when I say this probably. But apparently, you are not supposed to turn a bus, you're not supposed to turn it off when you are in weather that is below freezing, as Wisconsin and the Dakotas and Michigan and Minnesota were at this time of year.
I can't tell y'all all the secrets. But normal tour bus etiquette is that if multiple people are on a tour bus, you all have a way to get in and out of the bus. I'm not going to tell y'all what the way is so y'all won't be looking for it in y'all favorite artist bus.
Matt:
No way.
Amena Brown:
There's always a way that everybody has that's their secure way they going to get in and out of this thing. Typically, the bus is turned off and you come in and out like you would your car. But instead of it being your car, there's your bed in there, your luggage, whatever. So this bus driver is doing normal protocol as far as he's concerned.
Matt:
We show up after the gig, and I hand my turntable. There's this place turntables go under the bus, place our merch goes under the bus. Any of our stuff goes in a certain spot under the bus. They close it, lock it. We get on the bus.
Amena Brown:
That's all. So we had one night that the bus got turned off and froze. They had to tow the bus, y'all, to a mechanic to, First, thaw the bus out.
Matt:
Thaw the bus out.
Amena Brown:
Can't even see what the bus needs fixing.
Matt:
Let me tell you. I didn't even know the bus had froze because, apparently, it was enough to have the lights on. So I go to get in my bunk and when you get in your bunk, there's that curtain you close. Close the curtain. Well, I have a decent amount of body heat. You know what I'm saying?
Amena Brown:
Do. Do.
Matt:
I'm a well-insulated individual. I don't be cold in the wintertime, thank God. And so I'm in-
Amena Brown:
And now that we married, I don't either. Continue.
Matt:
I didn't want to say it, but-
Amena Brown:
Well, it's true.
Matt:
All right. Anyway, so I'm in my bunk and I'm warm. I hear all this commotion, so I open up the bunk and automatically see my breath for the ... In my bunk, it was toasty.
Amena Brown:
Because I'm going to tell y'all. The way low to mid budget tour buses are made is your bunk is not like a bunk bed. It's much lower down to the face.
Matt:
It's almost like you're in a coffin, I would assume. I've never been in a coffin.
Amena Brown:
But it's kind of that size though.
Matt:
If you're claustrophobic, it's going to be a problem. You looking immediately at the roof, the ceiling.
Amena Brown:
So imagine you fall asleep and wake up and all you can see is your breath and darkness. Let me tell y'all. Yikes. It was so cold in the bus. Matt's bunk was so warm. He got out of his bunk and let me get in his bunk until they figured out what we were all going to have to do. Yikes.
Matt:
I do remember. Because remember, they had to go thaw out this bus, but we still had to get to the next city.
Amena Brown:
Oh, yikes.
Matt:
So they pulled up in some hatchbacks, talking about we got to get as much of this gear in here as we can. So if I remember correctly, I was holding at least one turntable in my lap.
Amena Brown:
In your lap. Because it was us and three other people that were working the behind the scenes. So the car itself is full. There's five of us in a hatchback with our luggage and two turntables. There was not enough room for that at all.
Matt:
So we had to ride in the hatchback, turntables in laps.
Amena Brown:
Yikes.
Matt:
The show must go on.
Amena Brown:
Okay, period. I want to talk to y'all about the audience. We were being told that this was a young people's thing. It was supposed to be reaching college students to young adults.
Matt:
All the promotional materials we saw were lights and pyro and young people and made sense.
Amena Brown:
Everything. So we were like, "Bet, that's perfect."
Matt:
There were rock bands on this tour with guitars and amps. We're like, "Cool."
Amena Brown:
Cool. We love that. Well, we get there, and it's less of a young adults, more of a-
Matt:
Their greater grandparents.
Amena Brown:
70+ adults, like a literal Hey Boomer.
Matt:
They might have been the greatest generation. Boomers might have been they kids. That was people's memaws and pepaws.
Amena Brown:
Yes, it was. That's definitely some nanas were up in there. I'm going to tell you where you probably don't want to deejay for the most part. I can't necessarily tell you that you don't want to deejay in front of older people because, if they're older people that love to party-
Matt:
Cool.
Amena Brown:
... that's great.
Matt:
I gotcha.
Amena Brown:
But I'm going to tell you who doesn't love to party, and that's older Christian people.
Matt:
The number of times I heard, "We've never had a set of turntables in here before."
Amena Brown:
Yikes. I'm going to tell y'all. Older Christian people, the only kind of party they want to go to is a praise party. Y'all understand? They want to do that motion that they used to do back in the Maranatha, where they kick they legs out. They want to do that kind of thing. But they didn't come there to hear your rock rap. No.
Matt:
I'm talking about these people were old enough to where they still weren't sure about drums in church. You know what I mean? They go back to hand claps and tambourines.
Amena Brown:
Needless to say, Matt was getting what started out as some scowls and some eyebrows that were feeling concerned.
Matt:
These folks clapped on the one and the three.
Amena Brown:
Okay. Some of them just did not clap at all. Y'all feel me? So it went from-
Matt:
One lady clapped at me.
Amena Brown:
I was about to say, because it went from people looking like, "I don't think I like this," to them actually walking up and basically telling Matt off.
Matt:
That lady was mad at me.
Amena Brown:
She gave you all her heat about-
Matt:
The business.
Amena Brown:
... how loud it was and you need to turn it down.
Matt:
She could have thawed the bus back out with that heat.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to tell y'all, I am very protective about my husband. I do not like people talking sideways to my man. Can Matt handle himself? Absolutely. Most people going to look at Matt and they don't want to tussle with him. They going to size him up and say, "No, this is not what I want to tussle with." But that doesn't stop me from feeling like I need to step in if I feel like somebody's talking sideways.
Matt:
There's been a couple of old ladies you've really saved me from over the years though.
Amena Brown:
Boy, this silver hair lady, the way she was getting with you. I'm like, "The people literally brought us here. It's not a surprise."
Matt:
I don't remember word for word. It's been long enough. I've forgotten and forgave in my heart.
Amena Brown:
Amen. Amen.
Matt:
But she came at me in a way. She was like, "When you are playing that ruckus, I cannot hear what she's saying. I wanted to hear what she's saying." The truth of the matter is there's a sound man in the back who is mixing. I really have a very limited understanding of what I can hear from where I am on the stage. So I'm playing things at a certain volume. But once it gets beyond me, when it comes to mixing, there's a mixing board in the back of the house.
There's someone who does that, and it's not me. But in my customer service and in my trying to treat people like, hey, that's somebody's grandma. You know what I'm saying? Yo, man, I got a grandma, and she might not know how a mixing board works either. So I try to give people that grace. So I just did my customer service. "Yes, ma'am. I'm so sorry. Yes, ma'am. Oh my goodness. Yes, yes, yes."
Amena Brown:
Boy.
Matt:
She was mad at me.
Amena Brown:
I also want to let y'all know a moment that me and Matt both ... Most times on the road, if something went awry, one of us is mad and the job of the other person is to hold space for that person's anger and to try to be with them as they calm down. Every now and then, something comes up that makes us both so mad-
Matt:
That's problems.
Amena Brown:
... that then we have to stay in the hotel or whatever space we have to ourselves. Which truthfully, when you're on a bus tour, the space you have to yourself is very little-
Matt:
Very minimal.
Amena Brown:
... because it's not like we're on a tour bus and we have a little section of the bus that's just for us. All the beds are in the same area.
Matt:
Y'all stacked on top of each other, three deep.
Amena Brown:
Yes, it's three beds stacked on top of each other. And then it's probably two or three rows of that. So it was probably 12 beds probably in the bus, 12 beds-ish. So it's not like you have a whole lot of space to go to and cuss or whatever you feel.
Matt:
You can't roll over on the bus in your bunk.
Amena Brown:
The other thing that's wild regarding how people respond to deejays is people always have their own concept of deejaying that is typically not what happens in real life.
Matt:
When people walk up to me and start doing the deejay hands-
Amena Brown:
No.
Matt:
... where both hands are going back and forth in the wiki-wiki motion.
Amena Brown:
When they start making the wiki-wiki, yikes, no, no. So Christmas, you need to speak to this, babe, because holiday parties are already a fascinating thing to deejay if the request is that you play all holiday-themed music. But then if you take that down to now you're in a church setting because if you take me back out to holiday music, you've got (singing). You got some options.
Matt:
There's a few jams, Mariah Carey. (singing)
Amena Brown:
Yeah. You got some things. That narrows your playing field anyways though.
Matt:
There's maybe eight Christmas songs that have multiple variations. How many variations of This Christmas are there? But we only want to hear one.
Amena Brown:
That's right. Shout out to Donny Hathaway, big facts.
Matt:
We only want to hear one. If you play the whole thing, you've taken up about three and a half minutes.
Amena Brown:
If you are now narrowing down that playing field to those aren't holiday songs, those are Christmas songs, and those are Christmas songs that people want to hear in a church.
Matt:
Because you can't play some Santa Claus.
Amena Brown:
Those are out.
Matt:
Maybe Jingle Bells. But you can't do some Frosty the Snowman. So you take those eight songs. Now you down to about three or four. Away in a Manger is a beautiful song. It's a beautiful story. Everything's great, but-
Amena Brown:
It don't jam.
Matt:
Yeah. You know what's a good one? (singing)
Amena Brown:
Okay. Kirk Franklin did give us one. Kirk Franklin gave us a strong one. Fred Hammond, shout out to gospel music.
Matt:
Santa Claus ain't got nothing on this.
Amena Brown:
I'm sorry about it. I don't know what CCM music is doing with Christmas songs. Gospel music has plenty of Christmas jams. I don't know what CCM is doing as far as Christmas jams. So imagine Matt's playing field, what is allowed to be played, is now very narrow because now we're talking about Christmas songs that are about Jesus. Now, we are getting some feedback from the organization after we do the tour for a couple of nights.
They're giving us some feedback. Let me tell you what you don't want to hear is people walking up to you as an artist after you did a Christian type event and saying, "Hey, so are you open to some feedback?" When I was younger I would be like, "Yeah," because I always felt like maybe they'll tell me something. Maybe I'll grow. Now that I'm older, I'm like, "Hell nah. Whatever your feedback is, no."
Matt:
I'm like, "Let's roll the dice." You never know what what's about to happen.
Amena Brown:
The feedback for Matt was that what he was mixing was not what they expected. They were expecting to get mixes that were going to blend in Bing Crosby. Have y'all ever been at a dance party and danced to Bing Crosby? I want y'all to write me and tell me in DMs if you ever did the wobble to Bing Crosby.
Matt:
And again, a part of the story is that we thought we were coming into perform for a much younger audience. So all the prep work, any remixes that I built, anything like that was with the idea that we were performing for who we were seeing in the videos. So we get there and it's a much older crowd and it's, "You're playing too loud."
Amena Brown:
What is you wanting Matt to do with ... Bing Crosby just threw us all off. The way the person walked up to Matt to give him this feedback, I feel like Matt, as y'all may know from this podcast, but if you don't, my husband is a very laid back person. It takes a lot to get him to where he's mad, mad, mad. I don't know where we went because I don't remember that there was a hotel to go to.
Matt:
I remember this conversation happened because the person said to me, "When I was younger, I used to go to raves. At the raves, they could mix anything." But what was also being said to me was that, "The music you're playing is too danceable. It's too high energy. It's too fun." I'm thinking, "You brought me here."
Amena Brown:
As literally a deejay. As literally a deejay. I don't get it.
Matt:
Yeah. You brought me here. You know what I do. But okay. There were a couple of back and forths where it was like ... There's still customer service to this job. There's a lot of customer service to this job. So, okay, I hear you. Okay, let me see if I can interpret this vague thing that you've just said to me and do something exact with your vagueness. So let me try to do this thing next city.
So we had gone back and forth to where I was like, "I don't know how to ..." I think what happened was one night I actually did give them ... I played exactly what they had asked for. That's what happened. They were like, "Well, that actually wasn't quite what we were looking for." So it was like, "Okay, so don't use danceable drums, but can you remix out of this pool of three to four songs in this hour-long set that you've got, but don't make it danceable and just make it less." Also, I think it was the way the person was talking to me.
Amena Brown:
Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Matt:
It was very patronized, very talking down, very like, "You don't know." That's fine. I'm a pretty laid back, easygoing person. I'm not rattled very easily. But that one got me. It was enough back and forth, and it was enough of the way that person was talking with me that I remember when it was the next weekend that we were dropped off for the weekend. We were in that mall, and that's when we called back to-
Amena Brown:
Who was our manager at the time. It just makes my chest tight thinking about it because, y'all, I'm going to tell you. I took offense to a lot of that because, at the end of the day, there are certain things that people don't necessarily think of, I would say, the grand, mainstream people out there do not think of as being a skill, and deejaying is one of them.
People look at deejaying and literally think like, "Oh yeah, I could do that. I used to do that when I was in college. I used to ..." It takes a lot of skill. I was through the roof about it because I was like, "My husband is not somebody who just woke up yesterday and was like, "I think I'll deejay." He'd been deejaying at that point almost 15 years and almost 20 now. So I was through the roof about that.
But let me tell y'all one thing that really stuck me about the conversation that that person had with you. When they said to you, "Back in my day, when I was going to the raves," that almost took me out. Let me tell you why. Let me tell y'all why right now.
Even though when Matt and I performed in Christian market and we shared stage with a lot of other Christian artists at the time, some of those artists were people that if they posted they were drinking wine on their social media, people would be in their mentions talking wild to them. Basically, they feel like they're not Christian because they were drinking.
Matt:
It was a tough time.
Amena Brown:
Let me tell y'all something. Me and Matt been drinking, and me and Matt-
Matt:
Responsibly.
Amena Brown:
Responsibly, obviously. But not obviously because some people don't. We were drinking responsibly and legally. But we were people who had a drink. We were people who were still going to the club. People who knew us knew that that's the type of people we were. Yes, I'm going to go here, and I'm going to do my thing at this Christian event. When we get back, if the club that we like to go to was open, yes, we go there and we dance.
So no, what you're asking him to do, I don't care whatever the rave was doing back in the day, what you're asking him to do is not how the club right now is. So get out of here.
Matt:
And we are currently not in a club, not performing for young people. Also, I don't want to bring it back up, but you said that what I was playing was too danceable.
Amena Brown:
What's a deejay for? What's a deejay supposed to be Doing?
Matt:
So the reference to, first of all, back in my day, I know I was older than this person.
Amena Brown:
Was and was and was.
Matt:
But that's all right. But the reference to back in my day when I went to the raves, what were you going to the raves to do?
Amena Brown:
Dance, boy.
Matt:
To dance with young people. We don't have those ingredients here.
Amena Brown:
No, at all.
Matt:
You have set me up. That's a time where I learned I need to start asking some questions, not just, "You're going to pay me to come do the same thing." That was awesome. But that money, oh, wow.
Amena Brown:
No. After the experience we had, it's like if I had known that, I would have given it back. I would have rather have had a broke Christmas that we still could have been with our family and been at home and enjoyed our time together-
Matt:
Bought a bag of rubber bands and gave everybody one.
Amena Brown:
Good night.
Matt:
Here's your rubber band.
Amena Brown:
Good night.
Matt:
Here's your rubber band.
Amena Brown:
Period. I would have rather had that than had that money at that point.
Matt:
That is a pretty good gift idea though, because what is more fun than a rubber band?
Amena Brown:
Babe. Also, my last reflection is that I had just had to start making some dietary changes right before we went to this tour. You remember this, Babe?
Matt:
We have so many quotables from this one tour.
Amena Brown:
I'm going to tell y'all right now. I was having some health challenges. So the medical professional that I was seeing at the time had given me these really strict dietary restrictions that I needed to do for my health. Part of what is supposed to be provided when you're on a tour is food because you can't get up there and perform every night without nutrients.
But the way my restrictions worked, we even had gone through and listed for organizations like, "Here are some national chains where Amena and Matt can eat. Here's their orders." I mean we had just tried to simplify it as much as possible. I remember multiple stops of this tour going into the green room to be what was supposed to be dinner and getting there and looking at everything that was on the menu.
One night, I remember the only thing I could eat was green beans. A couple of nights, all they had that I could have was salad. That was it. I remember the organization that was putting on the tour kept coming up and being like, "We just have salad for you. Is that okay? Is that okay? Is that okay?"
Matt:
Yeah. They kept asking you if it was okay.
Amena Brown:
I'm like, "You think me getting up here performing my heart out on romaine lettuce-"
Matt:
You just parked me at the mall for the weekends.
Amena Brown:
No, it's not okay.
Matt:
You just parked me at the mall. I've been looking at the same mall for three weekends in a row.
Amena Brown:
Oh my God, no. No.
Matt:
Yeah, yeah, sure. Salad, huh?
Amena Brown:
Y'all, Matt and I both have been in quite a few tour experiences. That one, for me, is by far the worst one.
Matt:
Easily. Hands down the worst.
Amena Brown:
I feel like herein is what we learned. Number one, I think that was the beginning of the end of you deejaying in Christian market.
Matt:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. If there's not alcohol involved, then chances are people aren't there to have a good time. But chances are you can just play a playlist or whatever. That's cool. You know what I'm saying? I understand, look, everybody can't go where alcohol is. I know that some people have issues with it. It's a loaded topic. I get it. But if people are having something where specifically the point is to have a good time, I'm your dude.
Amena Brown:
Right. Mostly, that will not be in a church. Mostly, not in a church.
Matt:
No. No. Because you got to get that talk in. It makes the rock and roll okay. But you're going to pay for it by sitting down and listening to this talk.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. So I think, in part, we were trying to do what we were doing together on stage to see if that would gain some traction, which it did in a lot of places. We traveled on the road doing those performances together for a long time. But that tour, in particular, started to be, for me, that was the beginning of the end of us trying to figure out how you could be deejaying in that side of the industry.
Matt:
Yeah. No, they don't want it.
Amena Brown:
It was like, "Who cares? We don't need to try this anymore." I think it did put us in a position to be like, "There's some things that we're not going to take." There are plenty of things that that gig was like, "Honestly, that's the last time I'm taking that shit." That was the vibe that I felt at the moment.
Matt:
Remember the way this made you feel. Remember that soul-sucking experience and be like, you can do this again if you want to or just say no.
Amena Brown:
Or just say no.
Matt:
Just say no.
Amena Brown:
I think as an artist, there's a part of you that's always excited for people to ask you to do your thing. Even now for both of us, it's like that request that you get, your first feeling as an artist is not about how much money. That's not the first thought. Your typical first thought is someone's asking.
Matt:
Yes.
Amena Brown:
But now that we both have more experience, then you got them questions after that. If this is for an organization, what are they about? Is that what I'm about? Is that what I want to be onstage next to? Are those people I want to be sharing stage with? Is the money paying for the inconvenience of my time? Is it paying for the fact that I'm not going to be at my home? I am going to have to navigate whatever city this is in.
Matt:
The hoops I'm going to have to jump, how difficult it is to get into your building, all of those things.
Amena Brown:
All that stuff. So it did become this unfortunate lesson, but I'm going to tell y'all what. That was also, I think, one of the last times that we traveled around the holiday like that.
Matt:
You're right.
Amena Brown:
Yeah. That was one of the last ones. After that, we have enjoyed a lot of wonderful time at home, letting the year slow down. Now, Matt's deejaying still, but in better environments now. So he has some Christmas parties he has to deejay. He's had a lot of New Year's Eves that he's had to deejay.
But you know what? The plus to that is he's going to come home to our house at night versus when we would go on the road. And then you're gone all those days or whatever it is. Another time may come that the road may pick back up for us, and we'll navigate that, too. But right now, I'm enjoying the fact that, as we record this, we about to be decorating our Christmas tree.
We're about to spend time with our families and cook food in the house, and that is much better than being in a hotel across from a mall. Anyways, y'all, whatever your holidays are that you celebrate, even if you don't and you're just celebrating the end of the year, we hope that you will enjoy your life. Be with some people that you love. Listen to some music that brings joy to you.
We hope that you'll have some time to reflect at the end of this year and think about the things you made it through, the things you survived. If you're listening, just know that Matt and I are glad you're here. We're glad you're listening. We're glad we've all made it through what's been a tough year or couple of years. So, cheers to you all, and we'll be back soon with some more road stories.
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.