Steve Martorano 
The Behavioral Corner is produced in partnership with Retreat Behavioral Health -- where healing happens.

The Behavioral Corner 
Hi, and welcome. I'm Steve Martorano, and this is the Behavioral Corner. You're invited to hang with us as we discuss how we live today, the choices we make, what we do, and how they affect our health and well-being. So you're on the corner, the Behavioral Corner. Please hang around for a while.

Steve Martorano 
Hi, everybody, welcome again to the Behavioral Corner. It's me, Steve Martorano, this is what I do. It's a great gig. I hang on the Corner. It's a concede, I agree, and wait for interesting people to come by and talk to us about their lives, and their work because this is a podcast about everything. Everything affects our behavioral health. So made possible by our underwriting partners Retreat Behavioral Health, you'll hear more about them a little bit later. If you're following along at home, wherever your podcasts are kept. And you've heard us in the past, you know that many times we visit the issue of art in our lives and what art what the effect it has, obviously a big factor in our mental and spiritual health and physical well being or its important. And we've talked to all kinds of people, painters, sculptors we've had writers on, and lots of musicians and people in the music business because I had a little background in that myself. So I know some folks, and we've turned to the issue of music. Because it is so much a part of our lives today. You know, a lot has been read, written, and read about music. One of my favorite quotes and one of the oldest ones, I guess is that music...music has charms to soothe the savage breast. It's very often misquoted. But that's the quote. And I know our guest agrees that there is a lot to be said for soothing the savage breast through music. Shannon Curtis is a singer-songwriter. She's currently on tour in support of her latest album, Good to Me, and she's squeezing us in on that tour. Shannon, thanks so much.

Shannon Curtis 
Thank you so much for having me. Steve.

Steve Martorano 
Are you familiar with that, quote?

Shannon Curtis 
I feel like I've maybe heard a misquoted version of it. Because it's not as familiar but not quite what I've heard in the past.

Steve Martorano 
So it's always the savage beast to the savage breast.

Shannon Curtis 
Interesting.

Steve Martorano 
That's a fancy way of saying, you know, "life," as a matter of fact, which can be savage, unfortunate way. I heard Shannon do an interview locally, several weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago. And in talking about her art, and what informs it, I said that she's got to come on the Corner because she's talking about the stuff. That's important. She's only doing it through music. So let's do a little bit of background stuff. For folks who might not know who you are. You're...you're from, I mean, you are living in Tacoma, Washington. Where did you grow up?

Shannon Curtis 
I grew up in Stockton, California, and the Central Valley, California. Went to college in San Francisco. Lives sometime after college in the Central Valley, Sacramento area, that kind of thing. Went through a big life change in my late 20s, and early 30s, including a divorce and just a massive shift in my life - entering a 12-step recovery. We were talking about that off the air a moment ago was part of that time when I moved to Los Angeles for a decade. And about five and a half years ago, my husband -- my now husband -- and I moved to Tacoma, Washington, and we love it. The Pacific Northwest is _____.

Steve Martorano 
His name is Jamie?

Shannon Curtis 
Jamie Hill.

Steve Martorano 
He's your producer as well, right?

Shannon Curtis 
Yep. We are partners in crime and everything that we do. And yeah...

Steve Martorano 
That's a nice lifestyle right there. Did you grow up in a musical family?

Shannon Curtis 
I grew up...I took piano lessons starting at the age of four classical piano, I took 14 years of classical piano lessons. So I was trained that way. I also grew up in the church. So there are lots of opportunities for young people to sing in church. So church is no longer part of my life, my experience, but that is definitely a place where I have a lot of musical background.

Steve Martorano  
And do you remember...well, I'm sure you do. The first song you ever wrote?

Shannon Curtis 
I do. It was for my church, actually, of the teenagers, my sister and I put to music, a couple of Psalms. And it was actually a really encouraging experience because we took it to the choir director at our church and said, "What do you think of our little song?" And he said, "I love it." And he printed it out on sheet music and taught it to the congregation like...they sang that song for years that I wrote as like a 16-year-old, which was pretty cool.

Steve Martorano 
You can't minimize something like that happening to a young person. That can be very, very inspiring for somebody you must you must have thought, wow.

Shannon Curtis 
Yeah, I was not expecting that at all. It was I feel very encouraged and like, okay, maybe I can do something like this. This is cool.

Steve Martorano 
And when was the first time you stood up and sang for your supper?

Shannon Curtis 
Oh, gosh, I guess that was probably when I was in my first band in my early 20s. After college. I was in a rock band. And yeah, we did a lot of touring around the country playing college campuses and, and the big learning curve, they're getting, getting the experience of what is it like to write songs and record music and perform, you know, like, it's, it's, those were cutting teeth days, it was great.

Steve Martorano 
You're a veteran in the music business, you don't come by this accidentally. How many albums altogether now, as a solo artist?

Shannon Curtis 
Okay, um, well, I've recorded and released 10 studio albums every year for the last decade. So that's the bulk of it. Prior to that, I released a few EPs here and there as a solo artist. But when you're singing for your supper, you've got to stay busy, you got to stay on the road. And my husband Jamie and I did for the last 10 years, pretty much exclusively house concert touring. We've done over 600 concerts and people's living rooms and backyards. And so we would go out on tour every summer, and we would want a new album of songs to share new stories to tell new and all that stuff. So we were on this wheel of you know, producing and getting new music out every year.

Steve Martorano 
If for people who might not be familiar with living room concerts. How does that work? Do they? Do they pass the hat? How does it work?

Shannon Curtis
We kind of invented our own model for doing these. In fact, we wrote a book that became an Amazon Music Business bestseller book back in 2014, about how we started doing all of this, because so many artists were asking me, how are you doing this? You know, and so we would do it. Like, these are not...the people who would host our shows are not house concert hosts. And there is a large network of house concert hosts all over the country, we were not doing that circuit, we were connecting with the people who follow the music that I...that we make and turning them into house concert hosts, so we wouldn't help them create the event, they would invite their friends, neighbors, colleagues, whatever. And, we would create, you know, a new little market of people to you know, to play for. And we would do it it was donation-based it was not a suggested donation, it was an open donation always because it was really always a value of ours that anyone who wanted to come to experience an art event could do that. I don't think that art or really any pleasurable thing in our world should be saved only for people who can afford to pay for it. So you know, it was really a value of ours to make it so that anyone could come and so we just asked people at the end of the show to donate what they wanted to for the experience.

Steve Martorano 
The last topic we did like this was someone I've known in the Philadelphia area for four decades now, who has done this basically, for 40 years, bars, restaurants, back porches, gazebos in this town square, and I mean, it's the purest essence of what it's the troubadour it's the, you know, the, the bart that goes from village to village, you know, carrying the culture with them. So it seems to me that your living room situation was an effort to not merely get your music out in front of an audience that might be sympathetic towards it, but make sure they understood what you were about -- the things that were important to you that shaped the music, right?

Shannon Curtis 
Absolutely, yes. And it was so such a great vehicle for connecting to humans. You know, like, there's that intimate environment, I had so many experiences where, you know, I'd get done performing for an hour sharing my stories, my experiences, and my songs. And that's an act of vulnerability, right to open yourself up like that. And especially in that kind of an intimate environment where there's not like a stage separating you from other the audience, you know, and I had experiences night after night after night of people lining up at the merch table at the end of the night, to buy T-shirts and things like that, but also to get a moment to talk to me and share with me something about themselves that they needed to share with somebody and I was that person, even though we were practically strangers, you know, opening the door with sharing my own stuff kind of gave them an opportunity and an invitation to share a little bit of themselves to And gosh, it's just such an art is such a powerful force for forging those kinds of connections between people.

Steve Martorano 
Now that connection, metaphor is important. Completing that loop, from the performer to the audience, is what is really what it should be about. And by the way, playing in front of 25 people in their backyard takes more guts I believe in my opinion, than in front of 100,000 in a baseball stadium with rockets going off and big screens and you know all of that. I mean, I could probably do that. Anyway, Shannon, just one other sort of biographical background. Who are your influences? And I'm going to be for you. I'm going to say, I don't think you would be put off if I said that. Kate Bush must have been one of them.

Shannon Curtis 
Oh, I adore her. Yeah, she's wonderful. You know, I have been gaining new influences. Even in my 40s. You know, like, I feel like I'm discovering new folks all the time. Yes, she's a big influence. When I was first starting to write music, the female songwriters of the time, that were really influential were, you know, people like Sarah McLaughlin, and Fiona Apple and Tori Amos, you know, like, these women were out there and just doing really bold, raw stuff that that was was highly influential to me as well. But sonically, like I always, I harken back to the stuff that I listened to as a kid in the 80s on the radio, you know, the Depeche Mode, and, you know, Pet Shop Boys and things like that. So, it's been fun to pull in some of those influences, too.

Steve Martorano 
You're moving into that old guy yelling at the cloud crowd where there's a lot of good music now. But when I was young...

Shannon Curtis 
Oh, yeah, get off my lawn, you know, like, I'm definitely in that phase.

Steve Martorano 
I know that all too well. So let's talk about what you propose with this music. What I know from my reading, is that you mentioned, and I'll give it a direct quote, reclaiming serenity and agency in a stressful time. Explain that to us.

Shannon Curtis 
Yeah. So I want to give you the background of this album. I started writing it in January of 2021. And you remember, January 2021?

Steve Martorano 
Vaguely I read about it in your papers.

Shannon Curtis 
It's gonna be in the history books do. You know, it sort of felt like the thick of a really stressful time, you know, the year 2020 We saw the, you know, the arrival of the Coronavirus pandemic, and all the shutdowns and all of the just daily abuse that we were getting from our leadership, you know, surrounding all of that, and then the election and all the stuff that was, you know, I worked as a volunteer for I live in Washington State, but my husband and I volunteered online for the elections in Wisconsin, because we felt like we needed to do something, you know, to try to effect some change. But in my spirit at the end of 2020, the beginning of 2021, I just---excuse me, it was 20 it was 2022 when I started writing the record, I'm sorry, I'm getting my years mixed up. But the point is that I was in a space totally in my spirit, where I was super stressed out, like I, I wasn't sleeping well, I was spending a lot of my days feeling really angry and like unsettled. And I kind of it was, I was getting enough like cues that like I needed to get...I needed to get my act together, I needed to do something to change the state of being that I was in, I felt like I was so powerless in the face of so many, you know, crazy things going on in the world. And I wasn't feeling at peace in my spirit. And it occurred to me that I have a set of tools that I have had at my fingertips for the past 18 years that I first encountered and 12-step recovery, that can help me get back to that centered place. And so I decided it was time for me to dive back into some of those concepts. And what I did was I sort of took myself through a very sort of measured practice through concepts of the Serenity Prayer, which is a big, a big concept in 12-step recovery, we say it at the beginning of every meeting, you know, and for those of you who are not familiar, the saying goes God, and God is, you know, whatever you need for it to be I have a complicated history with religion. So I don't particularly love the word God but you know, in my imagination, it means it means that a power greater than myself but "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference." And I took myself through sort of a step-by-step set of journal prompts that I gave to myself from these concepts and, and began with just freeform journaling. The journaling then became each of the 10 songs on the record good to me, as an offering to folks who listen to my music just to say, Hey, I've been struggling. I've been out of touch with my own peace and my own power in my life. Here's some stuff that I'm trying to work through that. Maybe, maybe you're in that spot too. And maybe I can hold my hand out and say, let's go on this journey together.

Steve Martorano 
And that album is called Good to Me. It's the one year out touring to support and I will tell you having listened to a handful of the songs and heard you talk about it, it's and I'm, you know, I'm not here to flatter but it is one of the rare musical efforts I've heard in my lifetime. Not that it's immediately autobiographical. But it's one of the best expressions I've heard from an artist. Okay, here's what I'm going through. This is what I'm feeling. And it's in your music. I mean, I mean, my idol is Bob Dylan. And Dylan is given, due notice that, you know, blood on the tracks took place during a terrible time in his life and marriage. And it was as raw and as a beautiful expression of where he was. It's hard to tell where he was when he wrote Desolation Row, but we know where he was in Blood on the Tracks, and your album echo. It resonated for me that way I went, she didn't just write a song because it made her feel good. She wrote a song because she was feeling bad. Maybe this would help her feel better. So it's just...it's just...it's just a wonderful purpose to have when you're gifted and you are you have a gift for being able to do this, why not put it to work? Just to sort of relieve the stress, a very stressful period in everybody's lives. So talk a little bit about something else you mentioned that I'm completely, utterly fascinated with, and that is in a very stressful world. the political world is stressful. The culture is stressful trying to keep up with everybody. Oh, look, they're in Italy. Again, you know? Everything politics, and of course, the 900-pound gorilla in the room is the environment. I mean, we are...we are on the precipice of a disaster. No one seems to be doing anything about that, as you say, makes for a stressful existence. You talk about radical acceptance. Okay. I think I know what radical means. What are we accepting, they're radical.

Shannon Curtis 
So when I was walking through this step of acceptance in my journaling, you know, I had to actually do some reading about this, because there's a big huge part of me that did not want to accept because I'm like, No, it's not okay, all the stuff that's going wrong isn't okay. I can't just accept it. And I was so grateful to have found some resources, particularly, from folks who study and write about Buddhism. And the idea about acceptance doesn't have it...acceptance is not the same thing as approval. But those are two different things. And it was a very interesting concept to me. And one that was new, really, to me, the idea of acceptance is just the idea of essentially being with what is, and when I try to fight the reality of what just is like, and I give this example, in the show that we're doing the touring right now. So let's say it's raining, like obviously, it's, it's and I would rather it sunny, like, it's obviously stupid for me to try to go to battle with the weather I can't write, I have to accept the fact that it's raining. That's an easy one, room two, a little harder one. So something truly terrible happened. And I wish I could go back. And we spend so much time sometimes thinking that we shouldn't go back and try to do something to prevent that horrible thing that happened. The choice is acceptance because the past is the past and we can't time travel back there. Right?

Steve Martorano 
And in that context. It doesn't involve when you say accepting what you can't change, it doesn't suggest resignation, does it?

Shannon Curtis 
No, not at all. See, because what I've learned, what I've learned is that then the act of acceptance is just okay, this is what is, this is the reality of what's happened, climate change. And the fact you know, Powers That Be not doing anything about it. That is what's happening, like, my railing against reality causes me suffering. But if I can accept, if I can get to a place where I'm accepting that this is how it is, then I have space in my spirit, to turn toward how I feel about it. I can feel all that I feel about what it is like, but if I can then focus on what are these feelings telling me about what my values are or what I need in this situation, then I can access my power and what are my choices. What can I actually do to move forward, you know, and try to be part of some change in the world or in my life that's going to move me to slash us in the right direction? You know, the act of acceptance really just opens up for me the opportunity to have just the clarity and have the opportunity to be able to see where I do have the power to act.

Steve Martorano 
To free yourself from a sort of immobilized sense of helplessness. So in your case, you can first recycle, and use the same bag going back and forth to the market, but you also have some skills and talents that you can use. And that's why I find it fascinating talking to you about what you're doing. You're not just writing songs, but you're writing songs that come out of that real deep place, you know, in, you talk about uncertainty, and many of the songs on "Good to Me," one that struck me was a couple that did, but from, from the inside out, you talk about uncertainty and we have a show on that very recently, about something that economists are now calling radical uncertainty has to do with an economic model, if you can't, if you can't imagine what the uncertain factors will be, it'd be hard to figure out how to fix your economy. So they call it radical uncertainty. What happens when radical acceptance meets radical uncertainty?

Shannon Curtis 
When you mentioned that I kind of thought my first thought was, I think it's the same thing. Like I think that sitting in uncertainty to truly sit with the truth of uncertainty is an act of acceptance. You know what I mean? Like, so much of and this is, this is how I tend to deal with things when things feel uncertain, my knee-jerk reaction, is to want to try to make things certain to try to control things or set things up in such a way that I can predict what's going to come or, you know, like, but really, that's impossible, right? Like, the only way forward without getting yourself all wrapped up, wrapped around the axle, with worry, and all that kind of stuff, is to just accept and so that's when you mentioned radical uncertainty. I'm like, I don't know that. I think that the antidote to that is radical acceptance. You know, like, I think that, yeah, it's always going to be uncertain. So we were constantly invited to sit with...sit in the space of accepting that we don't know what comes next.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah, that's an odd concept when you think about it, because something cannot be uncertain until it happens.

Shannon Curtis 
That was uncertain.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. I didn't see that coming. Well, no kidding. If you didn't, it wouldn't have been an uncertainty. It is an odd concept. But it's an interesting application of, the Serenity Prayer. I'm going to do a show in two weeks on the Serenity Prayer, where we were down a little bit more on that.

Shannon Curtis 
What can I say about the uncertainty concept that just came to my mind as as we were talking? I think, also the concept of events certainty invites us to a state of being...of being fully present also, right? Because when you're when we're grappling with what's uncertain, we're trying to imagine the future. But in accepting uncertainty, I think it's an invitation to be fully present here and awake.

Steve Martorano 
Stay awake. Yeah. Stay alert and awake. Because things are happening.

Shannon Curtis 
And to stay grounded here because there's this is...this is always when life's happening right now.

Steve Martorano 
Right now.

Shannon Curtis 
Shannon Curtis is our guest singer-songwriter on the road now if you're hearing this anywhere near Burlington, Vermont, are you there tonight or tomorrow this weekend?

Shannon Curtis 
Saturday, the 16th.

Steve Martorano 
Where? At the Flynn right?

Shannon Curtis 
At the Flynn.

Steve Martorano 
We missed you unfortunately in the Philadelphia and the Delaware Valley area, you were in Phoenixville. You were lucky they finally caught that guy that was running around loose.

Shannon Curtis 
He was in Phoenixville, the same night we were.

Steve Martorano 
He couldn't get tickets, I understand. Anyway, her new album, her latest album is called Good to Me. I want to talk about Connections, which is an earlier album you had. But first, tell us how you distribute your records. You do it through something called Bandcamp.

Shannon Curtis 
That's one of the avenues Bandcamp is the most artists-friendly music distribution service out there. They have always had an artist's first approach to their model. Compared to all of the you know, the places where people the most...mostly people will listen on Spotify or Apple Music or you know, any of the other streaming music services that you know, don't pay anything really. It's I mean, like I could probably buy a sandwich on my next payout, you know, like it's kind of pathetic.

Steve Martorano 
Not even a large sandwich, I bet.

Shannon Curtis 
So Bandcamp is great because it is they do have a streaming option and some people do...some users do use the streaming option on Bandcamp. However, it's the community in the Bandcamp of creators and listeners is all about supporting artists and so as an artist I can put my music up there and I can price it however I want to, the way that we've chosen to do it is to make everything a pay what you want model on Bandcamp. So you can come and download my entire catalog for nothing if you want to on Bandcamp. Or you're given the option, to pay what you want. And most people who download music from Bandcamp do give what they can. And, you know, folks are who can be very generous and folks who don't have as much to spend, give what they can and it seems to work out.

Steve Martorano
Yeah, I show up before I forget people who want to hear your stuff and contribute to you for your good work. They can do that through Bandcamp. Or it's on your website as well, right?

Shannon Curtis 
Yes, absolutely. Shannoncurtis.net.

Steve Martorano 
Yeah. Connections. You did this. Six, or seven years ago, I saw your TED Talk. It was fascinating. We briefly, what was the intent of it. And tell us about your reaction to how people reacted to Connection.

Shannon Curtis 
Well, the intent of that album, I you know, I have been writing albums sort of, on it sort of as concept albums for a long time. Now, each album sort of has a theme. And the theme is always...has always been drawn from what I'm going through what I'm processing as a human, in this time on planet Earth. At that time, I had just discovered the work of Dr. Brené Brown and I was just fascinated by these ideas of how we make connections with other humans primarily with regard to how when we allow ourselves to be seen that is just an open door for connection with other people, the kinds of connections that we need to survive and thrive in our lives. And so the very first song that we did for that album was a song called "I Know, I Know" which is just about that idea. Like, Hey, I know, I know what you're going through, because I've been there too. I mean, I don't know exactly what you're going through. But, it's a song about just listening and seeing like, yeah, I feel you. We made a video out of that song and we invited our community to submit little 10-second videos, short, short videos of them holding up a card with some struggle they had been through. And I didn't know what we were going to get. We got just dozens and dozens and dozens of submissions of people sharing that they had been through addiction that they had been through eating disorders that they had been through abuse that they had been through, I mean, you name it, they shared so vulnerably for this video, and we stitch them all together as just an offering to the public, whoever would see it to be like, "Look, whatever it is that you're going through, you are not alone." Because that is the trick of our brains when we're going through something hard. Or for somebody who deals with depression. You know, our brains trick us into thinking that we are the only ones...who are the only one who has ever dealt with this. 

Steve Martorano 
Connection, I saw the video so that people's it's hard. It's heartbreak. There's so much pain out there. And the willingness for them to put that card up and say this is happening to me was something to see. I'd urge anybody who wants to see that to check it out. It's up on your site, right?

Shannon Curtis 
Yeah.

Steve Martorano 
Finally, because I know you're on the road. I, by the way, thank you so much for taking time out to do this. Can you just share one little quick story with me that I heard in the interview that I love so much? It had to do with an initiative on a train with his with his teacher. I think it's probably the best description of what the phrase "Be here now" means, but to tell. Tell us that story. And we'll let you add it here. Yeah, it was really moving for me too. So as I was going through my journaling for this album, good for me. I was nearing the end of that journey and grappling with the idea of like, when and where one accesses one serenity, right? Like, do I have to go to a silent retreat to get it or do like do it like, I had, right around that same time stumbled across an interview that I saw that Trevor Noah did with a man named Jay Shetty and he's a writer. He's got a book called Think Like a Monk I think is what it's called. But Jay Shetty, trained to be a monk some years ago, and he was sharing the story about how when he was training to be a monk in India, he went on a train journey with his teacher, and they were going to be on the on a 17-hour long train journey when you're studying to be a monk. You don't buy the fanciest train ticket, you buy the least expensive train ticket. And so that meant they were in the car that was the most crowded with people. Animals. It was smelly, it was loud it was, you know, pure chaos. And so at each stop on the trip, Jay would get off the train and find a quiet place to go meditate. And after several such stops, he said that his teacher stopped him and said, "Why do you keep getting off the train to meditate?" And he said, he explained why, you know, and the response that his teacher gave him was, "Do you think that life is like the stops or is life like the train?" And I thought to myself, "Wow, that is exactly what I needed to hear." Because, you know, we certainly are marketing a lot of ideas about how we have to buy this or go do that to find peace. But the reality is that my peace is inside of me all of the time. And, if I can use the tools that I have available to me to access it, I can do that on the smelly, noisy, dirty train. You know, I can do that in the midst of the struggle. And in fact, I've got to be able to do that because I take this one step further. If I want to keep moving forward in my life, and in my work being involved with making this place where we all live something better than it is...

Steve Martorano 
You got to stay on the train.

Shannon Curtis 
Exactly. You know, and so that was just a really powerful image for me.

Steve Martorano 
It's just the perfect metaphor. Someone online if he was a stand-up comic, it was very good. He he had he said the thing about life is it happens every day. I thought of your your story about the train in the monk and I saw Yeah, it does happen every day. And they're, you know, they're not a lot of stops along the road. Shannon Curtis, thanks so much. Good luck with the tour. With good to me, everybody should look for where she's playing. Maybe she'll be in your and if she's going into the Midwest real soon. Check her out if she's in your neighborhood, and you can hear our music online now. Hope you'll come back again sometime when we can talk again.

Shannon Curtis 
I would love that. I would love that.

Steve Martorano 
Terrific. Thank you all as well. Don't forget, you know the drill like us, follow us. critique us, whatever, hit the subscription button. That doesn't hurt. We appreciate it here on the Corner. See you next time. Bye. Bye, 

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