Episode 572 - Post Grammys Episode

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and I am so glad that you are here with me again this week on what I know will be a fairly brief episode here from my car. Um, but today I'm not heading to work like I usually am. I actually have a little more time. I just don't think it's going to be a very long podcast. I just thought it might be interesting to some of you to hear kind of quickly my experience at the Grammy Awards, and if not, that's okay. You don't have to listen, but I just wanted to share some experiences I had and maybe a couple reflections about it. I had some, some kind of complicated feelings about being there, honestly. So I'm just gonna start and kind of talk off the top of my head about some things that I saw and experienced. First of all, it was a very quick trip to Los Angeles. I think it was my first time ever in Los Angeles. I know I I was in California a few years back for a writer's retreat, but it was at Mount Hermon, and I don't think I flew into Los Angeles for that part. This was more in the Redwoods, but it was a beautiful flight in. It was, thank God, both ways actually. The flights were very smooth because they're very long flights, and at least they're long for me. It's not like when I went to Nairobi, but still pretty long. Domestic flights. Feels like from one side of the United States to the other because it basically is. But getting there in the evening, getting a Lyft car back to the hotel, experiencing LA traffic, I thought, oh, this is not great. Just because of all the traffic that was there and 3 hours time difference was kind of weird to get used to. So I got in, you know, Saturday evening. It was late for me, it was earlier there. But then they had so many fires and things and it was kinda hard to tell, even though the fires were not burning, I couldn't tell what was LA smog versus what was just, you know, smoke from fires that had been blazing. But I was surprised by downtown LA where I stayed. It was not the nicest area I've ever been in, to be honest. It was kind of heartbreaking in some ways. A lot of homeless people, a lot of poverty, it seemed like, and kind of juxtaposed— juxtaposed, I'm not saying that right— but kind of against the backdrop of just extreme opulence, you know, all these buildings that there's so much money and so much wealth. And that was kind of why I felt so complicated about it in so many ways. Going actually to the Grammy ceremony by myself was an interesting experience. Most people were there with other people or bands, and of course I met some people who were associated with the album that I played on, but I didn't get to meet a ton of people, so it was a lot of time by myself and a lot of time to reflect. Going in, I discovered, you know, what I didn't realize, I always kind of thought that the Grammy Awards was what you saw on television and maybe there was a little preliminary to that. What I actually discovered was the Grammy Awards itself happens before what you see on television. There was nearly 5 hours of awards that took place in the afternoon, and most of the awards had already been given out by the time that the show came. And if I'm not mistaken, I think some of them that they actually show on the show were given out during that ceremony too, during the day. I can't quite remember because there was, I think, something like 88 awards that I sat through. I got up one time for a bathroom break and then came back in. Had excellent seats. I was able to sit up front. A couple of my musical heroes played live at this show. Joe Bonamassa, who our album was in the same category with for Best Contemporary Blues Album. I thought, sure, if anybody was gonna win, it was gonna be him over Antonio's album that I played on. And neither of the albums won, it turns out. I thought, man, when Joe Bonamassa Masa played, it just brought the house down. I mean, he's just an incredible player. So it just tells you the kind of caliber of people that play and are there, because even people who I consider like the best in the world, those categories, people that I wasn't even familiar with ended up being somebody who won, which is no fault of theirs for sure. It's probably just mine. I just haven't broadened myself enough to hear them. But all that is to say, I got to hear Béla Fleck live. I think that's the first time I've ever got to hear him live. He played that day. There was just several really great artists. I was sitting in front of and talking to, without realizing it, the son of John Lennon, Sean. That would be John and Yoko's son. And he got up to accept an award because the Beatles won, I think it was Album of the Year this year, for a new version of some songs that they did. I guess some some unreleased material. And the Rolling Stones won Rock Album of the Year. For a second I thought, uh, how weird is this? What year are we in? Um, but talking to people like them and then not realizing they were like associated with the famous people that what they were, that was kind of the neat part of the experience for me. When you're there, for the most part, because everybody is a member or some way affiliated with the albums that are made or the Recording Academy there was no like special royalty treatment except in the actual televised part where you had like the mega celebrities, you know, like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and different ones. The actual Grammy show, there was kind of this camaraderie and family feel, and you could talk to anybody, and you know, you'd see John Legend over there and, you know, independent artists over here and Christian artists getting up on stage, a few who who I was familiar with, and it was just an interesting experience. I didn't have time to talk to very many people because we were so busy. In some ways it felt like a business meeting that was very busy, but there was a lot of passion, a lot of heart for not only music, but there was some people that really, you could tell that their heart for people who were affected by the fires in LA, it really shone through, and they were talking about friends of theirs who had lost everything and yet were still trying their best to give to others, not just through music of course, but they were actually out like helping people kind of rebuild their lives and get back what they could out of their homes. So that was a community that was affected a lot by what was going on. And so that's where some of the complicated feelings were going on. All this money, all this wealth, all this opulence going on against the backdrop of of tragedy and poverty. But I had a good experience, I would say. It's probably not one I'll ever be a part of again, probably because I'll never be on an album that's nominated again. I don't know, maybe I will. But I don't necessarily need to go back again. It wasn't like something life-changing. I kind of felt like, you know what, I miss my chaplaincy job. I kind of want to be back at the hospital today. I kind of missed worshiping with my church on Sunday morning. But all that being said, it was a good experience. It was, it was a surreal experience. I'm still having thoughts about it. But I am grateful for the experience of being there. I was glad to see that CeCe Winans won a couple times during that show. She wasn't actually present as far as I know, but a couple of her songs that she was associated with And there was just one thing that really stood out in my mind. There was one person who won an award. Again, this wasn't on the televised section. There was, there was some people who sincerely were very grateful to God for the experience. I wish I could remember this gentleman's name. He got up and there was such a childlike excitement about him. Like he just could not believe he was standing on the stage receiving a Grammy, there was such gratitude. There was a moment of, it felt like heartfelt worship and thanks to God. And then when they played him off because he went a little long with his thank-yous, it was almost this childlike scream, like somebody he knew had come up to the stage to see him. And he almost sounded like a kid, like he screamed and he was like, "I can't believe it, we won, we won!" You know? It was just really a beautiful moment. I was tearful at a couple places because you could tell people had worked really hard to get there and they really honed their craft well. And, uh, it was just a really interesting experience. The downside of it was you could also see there was some resentment there from people who have made this their entire life and their entire identity. And you could hear, you know, sometimes conversations talking negatively about other people, and, you know, can't believe this person won and they didn't you know, work near as hard as I did. And I don't know if that was true or if it wasn't, but for the most part, it was a real gracious experience. So, well, that's it for now. I gotta go. I'll maybe talk to you more about it in the future, but for now I just want to sign off. Sorry for the abrupt ending, but I got to pick up my son from school. So thanks for listening to Voices in My Head, and I will be back another time with some more. So God bless and Thank you for listening. Talk to you soon.