Don Reed (Part 1) - Never Too Late: The Power of Storytelling, Empathy & Arts with Don Reed - Part 1

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Legacy All Stars where we feature inspirational people making a difference in the lives of others. I'm your host, Alan Pavloski. This is a super special interview for me because of my personal connection to this amazing gentleman. From the bright lights of the Tonight show to the intimate stage of solo performance, Don Reed has spent a life telling stories that make people laugh, think, and feel deeply. I was first introduced to Don Reed by my friend Robert Townsend back in the early 90s. And I'm fortunate to have rekindled this relationship in recent years and I'm super proud to support his work. A Bay Area legend, Don's award winning solo shows have captivated audiences from Broadway to Berkeley. But beyond the stage, Don is making a profound impact, serving on the board of Elevate Oakland to ensure inner city students have access to music and the arts. Whether it's transforming the energy of a high schooler with a beat or teaching us that it's never too late to chase our dreams, Don Reed leads with humor, heart, and humanity. Today on Legacy All Stars, we're going deep on art, empathy, and why everyone deserves a second act. Don, welcome to my show. My friend.

So glad to be here. Thank you for that intro. Made me feel special.

You are special. Before we get started, I gotta tell a little story. When I first met you and when I first saw your show, I saw the bit about kung fu theater and I swear I almost pissed myself. I had to take an asthma inhaler just to make sure I could breathe again after I stopped laughing. How did you come up with that? That was just such an amazing bit.

It was back in like, came up with around 1983, Fred and I were watching Soul Train and right after Soul Train, kung fu theater would come on and they had all these movies from the 70s that were dubbed in a foreign country and brought to America and they never tried to make it better. Even up and straight through Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in Today, they never improved it. Every kung fu movie ended up looking like.

Hey.

Hey, kid, looks like you want to fight.

All of them look like that. No matter you got that how hard they tried.

Yeah. Such a great band. I appreciate that. Thanks for sharing that and bringing me back to that moment where I had to get an inhaler to get myself right. Let's jump right in and talk about Elevate Oakland and the power of Arts in schools. You serve on the board of Elevate Oakland, and you shared with me earlier on a previous conversation how important it is to you. But for our listeners who don't know, what is Elevate Oakland and why is it so important as an initiative at the Bay Area for Youth?

I've been with elevate Oakland over 10 years, and our goal is to bring music and the arts to Oakland schools. We brought it to over 30 different schools. We've reached over 3,000 students through our process.

And we've had over 30 different artists go into the schools. There are multiple funding challenges when it comes to some of these schools being able to keep their music and arts programs going. But another big thing is teacher retention. Sometimes we get a great teacher and they're right there in the mix, but then the finances are right. So sometimes we try to supplement their salaries. We do that kind of work as well.

But the whole goal, besides making sure they reach higher to education, is to have them engaged in something that won't have them making a left turn. And we know it can be easy to make a left turn in so many cities, particularly highly populated ones, where there's so many options that may not be as good for students. So we know that we're bringing music arts education. It expands people's learning scope in their other classes because they're more open to different elements that might come into play. But we also know we're out to keep them out of trouble, essentially, as well.

Yeah. You told me an incredible story about visiting Fremont High School, your alma mater, and seeing how arts programs had vanished. What was that moment like for you?

I was glad that I could be there, but it started out on a lower note, and that was that. When I was at Fremont High School, I graduated in 1977. They had a music program, and now here I was, 35 years later, visiting, and they didn't even have a music program at all. And so myself and a couple of the founders showed up, and I. I gave a presentation to the students. But if I can go on a side note for a moment, while I was giving the presentation, one of the students was being really disruptive. He was talking in the back. He was, you know, you know, pushing people and just super disruptive. And at some point, he started doing a B.

Right on his. His desk, where he was sitting right in the middle of me speaking. I'm like, okay, this isn't cool, but how do I work around it? So at one point, I said, hey, hey, hey. Do that beat a Little louder. He's like, no, no, no, no, I'm not. And he sat back in his chair. He's like, no, I'm not doing that. I said, no, do the beat. I'm gonna do something with you. He kept saying no. And his friends like, you know, maybe, you know, try it. So he started going.

I went.

With him. And he was like, what? At that moment, from then on, he was kind of like, he was clearly the biggest physical guy. Looked like the leader of the crew and the class. And after that, if any student made a peep, he said, hey, hey, hey. He's talking. Pay attention. Hey, hey. I'm like, oh, he's on my side now. Sometimes it just takes a moment to engage them and empower them with their talent in that moment. And the beat was on point. It wasn't like. It was like, this is a good beat. So I was able to engage him, bring them in, and that aided him in helping the entire presentation.

Yeah, meeting kids where they are, man, so important.

Absolutely. Yeah. And it's fascinating. You never know when it's going to happen. You never know. But if you stay in there and go that extra step, you'll find. You'll find some magic to bring to them. For sure.

Yeah. I mean, you know, you and I have talked about this, but you never know when the tipping point is going to be on the impact you make on a young person. As you know, my wife and I own a school, it's a preschool, and it affects young people. But any level that you can get into a kid's head and start changing their perspective on what they can do with their lives, you never know where that impact is going to be made. And you never know the long lasting effects that impact will be.

Absolutely. One school, one elementary school in Oakland that we visited after I spoke, there was this one kid who the teacher said he doesn't engage very much, but at the end of it, he came to me and, and he had a, like a, like a notebook where he'd drawn words, all these different words, but in his own special font. I said, that's some art right there, my friend. I said, you know, you look forward in your life. You know, you can create font styles, and every time someone uses them, you could be paid. He's like, what?

That's right.

And I spoke to that teacher about maybe six months later, and he had still been. He said, don Reed came to the school. He told me that I could sell these one day. And he got a lot of great, great motivation from that. From that moment. So you never know when you're going to hit them. It could be an instrument, it could be them making their own font like this young man was.

Yeah, they're just building confidence in general.

Yes, absolutely.

So important.

What impact have you seen elevate Oakland make, especially through people like Kev Choice in the schools?

Kevchoice has been a consistent artist in residence over the years at various Oakland schools. And that was brought about by the founders because the founders had a presence in Oakland. Our founder, Sheila E. Everybody knows that the glamorous life. Right. Lynn Mabry was a part of the Talking Heads. Yoshi. Yoshi Akiba, the, you know, founder of Yoshi's Oakland.

Favorite spot.

Exactly. And Jason Hoffman, who's been a strong engine underneath, and. And Natalie, on our board of directors and our executive director, they find these key people like Kev Choice. And Kev Choice was just at Yossi's this past weekend.

I saw that. I was wanting to go, but I was out of town.

Exactly. But when they see people who are making an impact, and that can be a difference. We have artists in residence, everyone who are journeymen, DJs to longtime high end artists like Sheila E. In the place, they get to see the spectrum of different ways they might enter that or just use.

Talent levels from different walks of life. It really impacts the kids very deeply.

I mean, as a drummer, as you know, the respect I have for Sheila E. And the whole Escavito family is just phenomenal. They're just amazing.

Yes. Juan's been involved as well. And other people from their overall group have stepped in schools as well. So it's. It's always a pleasure. And students light up. Then sometimes the parents are trying to sneak in and say, sheila, gonna be at your school on Monday? I'll be there.

Let's talk about storytelling as a tool for empathy. I mean, your show, your solo show, East 14th, which I have seen, is incredibly spectacular. And also many of your other performances peel back the layers of complex people and situations. Why is storytelling such a powerful medium for building empathy?

You know, I feel like, and I've said this before, when it comes to human connection, it's not enough to put yourself in someone else's shoes. You have to put yourself inside their story. And when you put yourself in someone else's story, it's immediate access to empathy. So when you share your story, people move towards empathy. And when you listen to another story, you move towards empathy. A lot of times, things that fall under kind of very organized rules and Regulations that don't have any fiber behind them to touch people. But a story can cut through that.

I've always felt from the moment that my father first started telling me stories. And for some listeners who don't know my background, I grew up in Oakland in the 70s, and my stepfather forced us to be in that religion that rhymes with Jehovah's sicknesses. I think people know what I'm talking about, but I learned so much about public speaking from that. But then I moved in with my real dad, who I didn't know was a pimp. I just thought he was really into hats. But it turned out he was more than that, far more. And that's where the complexity comes in. Somebody who's living the fast life. He's more like, if you will, a madam, a middleman for some of the women that chose to make a living in that fashion. But my father, although he was in this fast life, he was the first person to wake up, no matter what hour he came in, and say, baby, time to go to college. I was going to junior college out in Hayward at Chabot College, and my father redirected me. The same person I thought would have me deeper in that world was like, you're going this way. And he told me all kinds of stories about the way he grew up. And one of those stories, if I can explain this very quickly, take your time.

I love hearing about this stuff.

Yeah. My father, when they showed me a picture of him.

Holding a trophy in a tracksuit, and he said, baby, this is me when I was like 11 or 12 years old, and I used to run track, and I was really fast. Suit. Now, baby, let me tell you why I think I won all my races. We'd be racing, we'd be running. Everybody's running for the finish line, but I was always running for three feet past the finish line they wanted for right here. I was going for three feet past that. Do that when you're racing. Do that in life. Go for three feet past the finish line, and you do better than everybody every time. He said, now you should say four feet. But one time, I ran into a wall. So don't go too far. Don't take it too far.

But there you go.

The other thing, the other part of that story was he said, why don't you take a real good look at this picture? And my father holding this trophy, he said, that ain't no trophy, baby. It's a coffee maker. The trophies weren't ready yet, so my mama had me hold this coffee Maker. Because it looked like a trophy. And that ain't no tracksuit. That's my underwear. So we did what we could. Yes, we had.

But stories like that, that had a message underneath them, to go for three feet past the finish line, that made me have empathy for my father's existence and everything he went through. So storytelling is at the center of human connection.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about how your father's impact was on the influence that. How it shaped your art.

Yeah. You know, one of the things I was unaware of until quite recently, I got a wonderful book deal with Simon and Schuster. And it's.

Congratulations on that, by the way.

Thank you. It's making me dig deeper and deeper and look at things. And one of the things I didn't recognize was that on Sunday nights, my father would turn on Red Fox, Mom's Mabley, Bob Newhart. Everybody had a comedy album back then. Have to go back in time, rewind back in time. But.

All those albums, including Richard Prior, my father would always wrap up with Richard Prior on the night. But the thing was, my father would follow Richard Pryor. I don't think he was aware of. That's what he was doing. But we would listen to a whole album be screaming and just not try to outdo. But he's. He had more to say. He said, oh, I remember this time when I was in the fifth grade and people would just be rolling. And I realized he was following Richard Prior. So later on, when I got into intercollegiate speech and debate and my father was pushing me, he's like, baby, you know, you can really. You can really talk now. You know, use that. Use that.

I was very aware that his storytelling that he was sharing on those Sunday nights became the very reason why I became a professional storyteller and a comedian and a writer and a producer and a director. It started in that living room in East Oakland while they're sitting there with a couple of, you know, shots of brown liquor, telling stories about growing up in Fort Worth, Texas, or stories that happened in Oakland when they were teenagers. So he had a big impact on me that way. I didn't know at the time how much it was.

And I ended up being an answer for some of my father's desires and wants. My father got approached years back, I'll just say it this way, by a big comedian whose name rhymes with Phil Tosby. Right. Just. He was in this trio. My father played the Congas. He played the Congas. They were opening for him in San Francisco at this jazz Club. After the show, one of the guys said, hey, you know this guy Tag. Tag Reed? He's really funny. So I brought him backstage. My father told him, the comedian, some stories. He started cracking up. He's like, you're really good. He said, you want to. You want to do some stand up? I can get you connected. He's like, my father's like, no, no, I'm not interested in that. Just something I do for fun. He said, well, you could write for other people, make some really good bread. It's like, no, no. Just something I do for fun, for people. I ain't interested in that. But then years later, my mother told me right after my father passed, she said, you know why?

You know why? Your father never took them up on those comedy opportunities? I said, yeah. He said he didn't want to. She's like, no, Donnie, your father never learned to read and write. He never learned. And he said he didn't want to be embarrassed in front of people. So he just said he didn't want to. But that's why he was pushing you so hard. Of public speaking and writing. My father would say, hey, baby, we got this. Bill, read that for me. And he made it feel like I get to read it. I was sitting in his lap sometimes when I was 12 and read something, but I didn't know he couldn't read. So he had an ulterior motive to push me, push me. And who knows? If he knew how to read and write, would he have pushed me as hard as he did this complex man who has this hustler lifestyle, but chops it off to be the teacher and the pusher for his young son?

Yeah, you just never know what that trajectory, how the trajectory changes based on circumstance. So such a cool story. Do you think art can redirect youth in the same way your father redirected you and with a push toward education and purpose?

I think so. Because when students can find something to engage in, they might not be that excited about math. Like, after people get out of high school and college, they're not going, hey, let's go to the math club, or, let's go watch somebody do math live. The arts can get a student engaged in school, period. Like, they can look forward to it. That's their last class. On their first class, that's where they're going. And they're learning. So now that learning acumen is turned on via the art. So I believe wholeheartedly that music, art, the arts and writing, things of that nature, can really get a student Engaged. And when, like I said, when that learning acumen is turned on, it transfers to the other subjects as well.

Yeah. You know, Don, I been a drummer all my life since third grade, and I always thought of drums as longitudinal math. And I know for a fact that the fact that I'm really good at finance and business and things like that come directly from my love of music and love of drum. And so I just really resonate with what you're saying, because had I not had the opportunity to become a drummer at a very young age and learn about longitudinal math, I don't know if I would have had the same skill set that I have today. So, again, that trajectory change comes into play.

That's fascinating. I never heard that before. Thanks for sharing that.

Yeah. Let's move on to the theater. And you've been really instrumental in keeping theater alive, especially during the pandemic. The Mars Theater played a key role during the pandemic, and you kept it alive through live performances, you know, where many couldn't. How did that virtual platform evolve and what did it mean for solo performers?

It was a process of us, you know, all sheltering and having little to do other than go online and try and search for stuff, or you watch movies or binge TV shows. But there wasn't any real way to be in enclosed spaces in theaters. And so Stephanie. Stephanie Wiseman, the executive creative director of the Marshall, reached out to me. She's like, don, what can we do online? Do you have any ideas for what we could do online? And so we started by having truncated versions of our solo shows online. So I do a half hour version of East 14th of the Kipling Hotel, and other artists would do, you know, half hour versions of the shows. Brian Copeland, Dan Hoyle, Charlie Varen, different folks, Margo Gomez, different folks would do truncated versions. And then we said, we need to think of something besides those shows. What are other ways to bring folks in? And I came up with this idea with a friend named Bob Edinger called Smartest Person in the Room. But it's the Smartest Person in the Zoom Room. And it's basically a trivia show that we created as an offshoot of an entertainment offering to the public. And so we created this show, and people came in the Zoom Room and we have prizes. And the prizes were like, you know, when the pandemic's over, you get VIP tickets for a season or four free tickets for you and friends and dinner. But it was a way to engage people and have them, for a second forget that they Were alone, because they weren't when they were in this zoom room and we were having fun. But that gave an outlet to other solo performers as well to be able to join the show, like some of the folks I mentioned. But the Marsh Theater, if I can segue there, is one of the best dynamics for people in theater, particularly solo performers, because almost every theater has a bottom line. They got to make money. So they'll say, hey, you know, give us 3,000 bucks. And that's puts most people out of the mix right away in artists, you know, like, you start with $3,000, right? They want some fee for renting their space, for paying their tech people. But the Marshall's business model is, hey, don't come up with any money. Just come up with great content. Once that great content is approved, we'll support you as an artistic entity. Come in, and we'll take something off the top to pay the tech people. But then after that, it's split 50, 50 or 60, 40, whatever it's negotiated. But you don't have to come up with any money. You just have to be showing up with strong content and getting to the theater on the days assigned, and you might end up with a hit. Yeah, I was at the tonight show years back and traveling up, traveling up, traveling up to do my solo shows in San Francisco at the Marsh Theater, San Francisco. And then at a certain point, I'd been extended 22 times. I thought I was going to go for, I don't know, five weeks or something. It turned into a year. And then Stephanie came to me and said, hey, we're looking at another location, but we can't do it if you won't commit to doing East 14th and more shows. And I did the walkthrough with him. I said, I'm in. And so they gave Another Avenue. And there were a lot of people going, like, I'm not going all the way over to Berkeley. San Francisco's the spot. You know, why am I going all over the East Bay? But once I started getting to go in there, like, hey, now we got another place to perform, right? Yeah. Opened it up for a lot more people. So very proud of that work and how the Marsh is the leader in solo theater around the Bay Area.

Yeah, speaking of all those shows, you've created nine solo shows. And I can't imagine most artists being able to hold a room that long by themselves. But what kept you inspired to keep creating that amazing content that you put together?

Don, you know what? It was just a unique set of circumstances that really made it happen. That being because I was at the Tonight Show, I couldn't go very far. I could go as far as the Bay Area, but I couldn't really go to headline a spot in Chicago or a place in New York. Because if I don't make it back in time over the weekend, then Jamie's.

Like, hey, where's Don Reed?

I'm supposed to be here. What's going on? Right? I couldn't take a chance of going very far. So I could only come as far as realistically as a spot in LA that weekend or up to the Bay. And I know the same audience was coming. I said, well, I gotta think of another show. So out of necessity, I'm going like, well, what about this 70s part of my life? What about this 80s part of my life? What about this 90s part of my life? And that allowed me to look at different chunks in like a memoir fashion of like, okay, this is about 16 to about 25. This is from birth to about the eighth grade. And I was driving back and forth every week and I would just.

Say and dictate into my phone and then I would transcribe it. But I wrote the shows driving up and back. But it came out of necessity. Like, I got to come up with another show and then it kept leading to another and another and another. And then when I had this format of my style down, of how I wanted to open, close and move the pieces around, and then certain things happen in life that stacked on top of that for another reason, to create another show.

This special episode with Don Reed is a two part episode. We are going to continue this episode next week.