Rich Chambers keeps rocking

‘Getting back to being more me’. That’s how Rich Chambers describes just one of the wider benefits he has experienced from taking the decision to ramp up his musical pursuits in midlife.
As a teenager, Rich played guitar and wrote music, and was going to be a rock star. He let his school studies slip, barely passing his graduation year, and set out to become the next ‘big thing’.
Unfortunately, he quickly realized that being a professional musician was not as easy as he had anticipated. After a year of playing in ‘cheesy dives’ and getting ‘you ain’t got it kid’ comments, Rich decided to go back to school. Fifteen years later the boy who nearly didn’t pass high school had a Bachelors and Masters degree, worked full-time in post-secondary education, and was contemplating studying for a PhD.
Rich is now a great advocate of the opportunities that education brings, but he has also returned to his music, writing, recording, producing and releasing his own songs and building an impressively sized following. And he loves it!

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Researched, edited and produced by Claire Waite Brown
Music: Day Trips by Ketsa Undercover / Ketsa Creative Commons License Free Music Archive - Ketsa - Day Trips
Artworks: Emily Portnoi emilyportnoi.co.uk
Photo: Ella Pallet

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Chapters

• 3:16 where Rich Chamber's interest in music came from
• 8:18 Why education is important
• 25:56 Challenges are part of the journey
• 32:47 What are your hopes for the future?

Transcript

Claire Waite Brown: 1:35

Hi, I'm Claire, founder of creativity found a community for creative learners and educators, connecting adults who want to find a creative outlet with the artists and crafters who can help you do so with workshops, courses, online events and kits. For this podcast, I chat with people who have found or refound their creativity as adults will explore their childhood experiences of the arts, discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love. And consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two. We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their newfound artistic pursuits, and how their creative lives in which their practical, necessary, everyday lives. In this episode, I'm chatting with rich chambers, who passionately believes that education brings self empowerment and confidence and can open doors. Rich works full time in post secondary education, but he uses any spare time he can find to work on his creative projects. Hi, rich, how you,

Unknown: 3:03

Claire, how you doing?

Claire Waite Brown: 3:04

I'm very well thank you. Good. Can you start by telling me about the creative activity you have chosen to pursue at this time in your life.

Unknown: 3:17

At this time in my life? Well, I'm calling myself as a middle aged rocker. So my creative pursuits right now are all music, and primarily music writing and music production. And I've always fancied myself, a musician and a music writer particularly. And throughout the years I've worked at getting my musicians to better and better and better to hopefully one day be able to actually make my songs sound exactly the way I've heard them in my head for so many years. So at this point in my life now it's I'm committed to writing, recording and producing and releasing my own music.

Claire Waite Brown: 3:53

How exciting. Can you now tell me where you musical as a child or genuinely creative within the home or the school environment,

Unknown: 4:04

I was a pretty creative kid, I always kind of thought a little bit outside the box. And sometimes like most creative people, they'll often say, I thought I was a little different, like I didn't quite fit in in some ways. And because I think my mind was always just a little bit outside the box. But as a creative person, I also think that my biggest strength is actually that I have one foot in the box, one foot outside the box. As for my child is concerned, it was I picked up music from my dad as a small boy, I remember him playing his guitar and I'd sit next to him. And I'd be fascinated staring. I had my little Mickey Mouse guitar out and I strung along thinking I was playing with him. And I used to think it was a coolest thing when he brought the guitar out at Christmas time and family functions and sang songs. And it was a lot of fun. But I also remember more than anything of a vivid memory when I was about five years old, and he would sit at the record player and he dropped the needle on the record. And with his guitar, he'd figured out the chords for popular songs of the time. And he'd write down the lyrics. And I sat down next with my jaw drop. And I just stare at him. I thought this was so fascinating what he was doing. And in hindsight is obvious now because I have such a passion for songwriting, that this was my first introduction to creating music or discovering what music was all about. And that's what I absolutely love more than anything. So I picked up from my dad and my mom wasn't a music musical, but she was a huge listener and fan of so many different forms of music. So between the two of them, they really sort of helped inspire and grow that love of music within me Being a kid I was always kind of doing things a little bit differently. I gravitated towards music, I started doing things a little bit differently with music.

Claire Waite Brown: 5:37

Okay, so when you mean you gravitated towards music, what form did that take?

Unknown: 5:42

At first all it was was watching old monkeys and Partridge Family reruns. Which I still have an affinity for those bands and that type of music. It was 10 years old, I first started playing guitar. And because I wanted to be like that, and I didn't really stick with it that much sort of haphazardly went at it. It wasn't until I was started at Georgia school music and school band. A couple years later, that I started to really gotta have a passion for it. And then at 14, I wrote my first song, and that literally was it. I was so hooked. To me, music was so much fun, I enjoyed it. But I wrote a song a whole new world open to me, like this massive world of being able to do anything with music, it felt like anything was possible. Now that I could write a song, it still is adrenaline rush all these years later, I still get so fired up when I come up with an idea and write a song. No feeling beats at it. I feel like I'm just on top of the world when I'm making that creation of writing a song.

Claire Waite Brown: 6:35

Yeah. And what were your plans, with your education? And what was going to happen after school?

Unknown: 6:44

As such, it's such an interesting question, because there's a couple parts to this question. The first part is, as a teen, when I started writing songs, and start playing in bands as a teenager, I was going to be the next big thing the naivety of of a kid. And in some ways, it's beautiful, in some ways is not. I was going to be a rock and roll star. And I played in high school bands. I was writing song after song in my teens. And when I got out of high school, I hated school, I figured I would never ever need grade school I don't need I'm going to be a rock star. So I barely passed grade 12 barely passed my graduation year. And then I got out and started working as a musician. Oh, my took one year of playing cheesy dives of terrible places have you ain't got a kid comments and get basically going nowhere the reality and most musicians face when they first start in the industry. And I thought I can't do this full time, I gotta get something else going. And I went back to school, jump ahead 15 to 20 years later, and ended up getting a bachelor's degrees and my master's degree then on the point I was about 10 years ago, I almost started going towards the PhD. So what's interesting is, here's a kid who barely passed High School was on the verge of contemplating doctorate studies. So I got a bachelor's and a master's degree behind me. And I'm a massive, massive advocate of education. To me, I work my day job is in education, I work in posek, and education. And to me, it absolutely rocks open so many doors, no matter what your passion is. Education opens doors, no question.

Claire Waite Brown: 8:15

So why do you think that thinking changed for you? Not just because the rock and roll lifestyle wasn't quite as easily coming to you, as you might have hoped? Why did you think you went from someone who really couldn't care less about the education to to, you know, find it's so important to you now,

Unknown: 8:35

maturity is part of it, keeping an open mind realising that anything's possible, you can tap anything, you can do anything. And there's a couple big things that education gives to a person one, it's self empowerment. I mean, simply here's a, here's a huge task in front of you, and you can do it. And wow, you know, it gives that you have that confidence. And I've heard a lot of people over the years because my degrees are I have a Bachelor of Arts and have a master's in humanities and my master's thesis was on Beethoven. So I've had I've heard over the years that those types of degrees don't get you anything. That's a bunch of hogwash, every education gets you something. With my education, I'm a massively better communicator, I'm a massively better writer, my knowledge set as a whole is better. The way I approach things is more mature, it's more sophisticated, it's more advanced. And all of those skills come from POSTECH. His gaze comes from opening my head and opening my mind and meeting people reading and reading and reading, I make a point of reading at least 30 minutes every single day, sometimes more. And no matter what you read, it increases that brain power, everything keeps going. So education does so much for for so many reasons, any form of education. And for many years, I was actually a career advisor for students that come in into university. And they'd often say things like, exactly like, why would I want to pursue drama, there's no jobs and drum Come on. You pursue your passions, and you'd be amazed. I always used to say, students, you'd be amazed how many jobs are actually in every single field of study that is out there. Granted, if you're going into computer engineering, you're gonna have more job opportunities if you're going to drama, but there's still lots of opportunities in any field of study, and what education does, it opens your doors and it opened the doors to me on what possibly is out there and music. And now as as somebody who's pursuing a music career heavily. I have research skills that university gave me I have the writing and communication skills at University of gaming, and the list goes on and on all the skills that I'm practically applying to my music endeavours. So I'm a massive, massive advocate of education.

Claire Waite Brown: 10:34

Yeah. So give me a bit of a rundown then of the time. The grown up time when, after, you know, I'm not going to be a rock and roll star, what did you do for work? How did you fit the education that you've been telling us about? How did you fit that in? How did you work around, obviously, you're going to need to be making money while doing this. Survive. So tell me about that time,

Unknown: 11:01

Claire. It's interesting. Like we all we all choose certain paths in our life, Robert Frost, the path less taken, you know, that sort of thing. I mean, we all have wives in the road, we're always trying to choose which way to go. And that's what life's all about. So along the way, though, I finished my degree, and I met a woman and we got married. And a, we settled down and we raised two kids together. And all along, I started working my way up through post SEC education, doing various jobs, stepping up the ladder, like most people do, and mortgages, and all the rest of them have a lot of the standard stereotypical stuff. And at the same time, I never, ever let go my passions, and I always continue to music, I'd play in a regular band for years, I was always writing music, that sort of thing. So as life goes on, you start taking these paths, one of the most advantageous things I did was being able to self reflect and look back, as I'm going through the path. And I realise that I've never ever let go of the music, it was always there. It's always a huge passion of mine. And I firmly believe that passions and pursuits can exist on multiple levels, it doesn't have to be one or the other and anything, at some point, you got to put more into something to make it happen and less than something else. But you don't have to go all in and be a poster education educator or administrator, you don't have to go all in and be musician, you don't have to go all in and be a husband and not a father, all these sorts of things. So throughout the years, multiple paths were always moving for me. And I also had the stuff that all I wrote a fictional novel, which is something that was on my bucket list. I always wanted to do that. And I've worked on my second novel, and I'm about 40,000 words in and summer writer at heart, but music happens to be the thing I love to write the most. But I'm firm believer, you can take multiple paths along your along your journey in this thing called life.

Claire Waite Brown: 12:44

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. So you've mentioned then that the music was always there. Yes. But what is different about it in your life now? What's the change? And why the change that's made music, perhaps come more to the forefront?

Unknown: 13:06

Well, that's a great question. I mean, you know, I laughed at the beginning of our podcast, and I talked about being me being a middle aged rocker, you know, that stereotypical idea when a man hits a midlife crisis, and they get a young girlfriend a convertible? Well, I bought a new guitar and started writing songs. That was my midlife crisis. But in all seriousness, though, Claire, you know, I think we all look in that into that metaphorical mirror all the time, where you're looking, say, What am I doing with my life? Where am I going? What's happening? And I had literally had somewhat of Epiphany, or as one day doing that, I'm looking at myself, and I'm saying, Okay, I'm now at a point in my life where I'm not young, but I'm also not old. But the same time I've got, you know, there's more road behind me, there's a road in front of me. And I said to myself, looked at me, I said, rich, you have this massive passion you've had since you were 14 and start even earlier, why are you not doing this? Other than I mean, I'm always doing it, but why are you not really, really doing it? I looked in the mirror, and I basically did not have an answer for that question. And that in itself was my answer. So I made a commitment right there. And then I am now going to put everything into this within reason. I mean, I didn't, I didn't throw the entire kitchen sink. I didn't throw everything, you know, I still have to stay pragmatic and irrational, but throw all of my time and passion into this and really, really try and pursue it. It's the best thing I've ever done. It's the best thing I've ever done. I feel 30 years younger, I feel rejuvenated in all aspects of my life. I feel like anything's possible. And I'm just so so excited every day, as opposed to where and I'm at a point in my life where most people are gearing up for retirement. And I think I'm just getting started. And it's a wonderful feeling. And I firmly believe you're never too old to dream are never too young for that matter as well. So the idea that dreams never have to leave you at any point in your life. They change as your life progresses. I mean, they lead up to no change, but they don't ever have to go away.

Claire Waite Brown: 15:34

Yeah, that is a very good lesson and something that we do hear a lot of from guests that that you can change that you can try something that you're you're never too old, which is fabulous. Creativity found.co.uk is the place to go to find workshops, courses, supplies, kits and books to help you get creative So if you're looking for your own creativity found experience, go have a browse to see what's on offer so far. And if you can help adults to find their new creative passion, please get in touch on social media, or through the contact details on the website. What does that actually look like when you said to yourself, Oh, you have to take this seriously. Now, what does that actually mean?

Unknown: 16:25

It's one thing, being committed to something, it's another thing to actually making it happen. So you have to, you still have to live in the real world. I mean, you can have a dream. But to apply that dream, as a whole lot of hard work. It's a lot of commitment. It's a lot of research and connections. And so for me, it meant sort of first as as a producer, a writer, musician, and producer, and meant having to produce the songs. I've been in my head for so many years, and making them into a feasible marketable product. So in my case, I mean, I'm a dreamer, but also to be you have to be a pragmatist at the same time. So I had to become a business person. And the first step was create the product, which in my case was music. So I've always had the songs. And my musicianship was always good, but never really that good. So it took me years and years to develop the musicianship to make the songs reality and it got there. But the last step was producing so how did okay I can I can write the songs, I could play the songs, how do I get the songs into our recording? So then I worked my butt off, I was on website after website, talking to people, I was experimenting, I was trying out things. And eventually I got myself into, and I think I'm getting better and better all the time. And eventually, I got myself in the role where I could produce well, so now I can write the song. Now I can produce a song, how would I help my product? Well, the Kevin costume revision Lee's Field of Dreams. I don't know if you ever saw that one. Yeah, that one St. If you build it, the heat will come. I love this thing, except you got it for in the real world, you have put a caveat into it. If you build it and market it, they will come. So I learned very quickly that if you write a song, record a song, no matter how good the song is, you put it up on Spotify and Apple and YouTube, Hey, there we go. I just built it, they will come No, they don't go to two weeks later, and two people have liked your song or listened to your song. So then I had to learn how to become a business and learn how to market. So that's been a learning endeavour, too, and it's a continual movement and growth. But I've loved every minute of it. I mean, I found I actually have a bit of a panache for marketing. And it's shown I mean, in two and a half years, I've got a Facebook following up around 85,000 followers, Instagram is a bit tougher, and about 5000 Tick Tock 30,000, youtube 5000. I've got 2.5 million streams on Spotify. I've got like 1.4 million views on YouTube. And, and it's growing. And I'm super, super excited about it. As I learn more and more and get myself out there more and more. It's been an amazing ride. I mean, I wouldn't change it for anything.

Claire Waite Brown: 18:52

Is it easier than it was first time around with the technological wonders of the world?

Unknown: 19:02

Yes or no? It's an interesting, it's an interesting question. Interesting answer. Because the first off the top of the head, yes, for sure. No question whatsoever. If I'd done this 30 years ago, there's no way an independent, like myself could have got my music out and reach so many people, I would have had to go through record companies and record executives and things like that, and they're still out there. And that's where it's so much easier, where it's a bit tougher, is that now everybody can do it. So the space is so crowded. I mean, I forget the numbers with Spotify is putting up something like a million or a couple million news tracks every week and things like that. So somehow, you've got to find your niche. And that huge, you know, you're you dropped a needle into the haystack when you drop your music out there. So you got to somehow get people to find that needle. And that's a challenge to actually kind of love the challenge. But overall, yes. I mean, I said yes and no, but overall, yes. With technology, there's more chances and more opportunities.

Claire Waite Brown: 19:56

Yeah, and because there are more chances and more opportunities. There are more people doing it. Like you said, so yeah. Its own its own little enemy there. Yeah. Tell me more about the songwriting. Because you've already said about writing novel and that how much you love songwriting and writing? Do you write your songs for yourself? Do you have songs that you write that you think, I can't sing this? This isn't my kind of thing. And where does your Where did your inspiration and your ideas come from?

Unknown: 20:32

It's ideas come from everywhere in anywhere. Just to give you an idea, just a week and a half ago, I couldn't sleep and I picked up the guitar was 2am 20 minutes I banged out a song, a song that I'm so excited about. It might become my next single, I call those that that just happened moments or else and it comes to me in 20 minutes completely done and at 2am. Most of the time most of my songwriting comes from comes from an idea whether Be a melodic idea, a guitar riff, some sort of musical theme of some kind. And then I work at it aggressively work at it. So often people say to songs just come to you, they do sometimes like the 2am song, but that's only about maybe 10% of the time. I love those moments when they happen because it's so easy in those moments. The other time, it's 5% inspiration and 95% hard work. And that's what a lot of people forget, the creativity process isn't just spontaneous, it isn't just instantaneous crave, and it'll still have to work at it. And I've seen and it's unfortunate because I've come on my on my travels, I've come across an amazing creative people that don't have the discipline to make their ideas a reality, no matter what not just in music, but in anything, any passion, whether it be architecture, the computers that cooking, you know, fitness on and on it goals have great ideas, and they don't have the sort of commitment to make those ideas, realities. So creativity, as as much inspiration as it is hard work and commitment. So majority my songs majority, my solid catalogue is 5% inspiration. 95% hard work where I sit down. Okay, what chord progressions happen, okay, what kind of theme I got here, what kind of mood How should I? Why should I take the song? What's it going to do? How long should it be? How should I arrange it? All these are sort of pragmatic decisions that had to have to be made. And I have sometimes songs percolating within me for years before they become completed. And it's a commitment. And but I still I love it. I love the hard work songs just as much as I liked the songs that come to me in 20 minutes.

Claire Waite Brown: 22:27

Yeah, well, that's good. I wanted to touch on that a little bit more. Actually, you did mention how taking this decision to take your music more seriously. Bring it to the top of the pile has affected the rest of your life. Tell me a bit more about the benefits that you're gleaning from this in other aspects of your life.

Unknown: 22:50

The list goes on and on. Commitment, I've always been committed to fitness, but I found I ramped it up even more. There's a certain self empowerment and keeping oneself fit and keeps oneself active. I found I was getting back to being more me the sense that I was more social, I was more positive every day I'd be I'd have a positive sort of Outlook as opposed to when I was sort of bogged down with life. We all get bogged down for life, even though you know, you love your partner, you love your kids, you love your friends and family and all the rest. And you might even really enjoy your job. But it's the same old routine. And we get bogged down in that. And I stood up and said I'm not going to follow the same routine anymore. I'm not going to abandon I'm not going to completely forget about my responsibilities. But I'm going to now live my life a little differently. And I'm going to live it more directed and more focused, as opposed to just going through the steps I saw. So I empowered myself to live my life as opposed to just exist day to day. And it's tough because it's so easy to fall into that you just kind of go through your day to day and people look for I have a vacation. Wow, what a great, there's my look forward to my vacation, which is cool. But Why can't every day be a day where there's something to look forward to. And that's the biggest change that's happened for me, I look forward to every single day. And the neat thing is now that I'm getting so public on social media, with my musics out there and things like that, and I call myself the middle aged rocker and my my tag phrase is rock'n'roll reimagined. And it's obvious I'm not a 25 year old doing this, when people see pictures of me they know this is a middle aged guy. And the what surprised me is how many people got absolute strangers will say things like you've inspired me. I got a I got a note from a guy in India, about three or four weeks ago. He says rich, he said, I'm 35 years old, I gave up the guitar 10 years ago, I've picked it up again because of you. And I just thought wow, that's pretty darn cool. And that's just one example of another many other examples of people said I can't believe you're doing this i You've inspired me I can do things too. And, and I had no idea this was going to happen. And what an amazing feeling has been to know that I'm inspiring and creating passion within people to go after their goals and go after their dreams because everybody dreams we all have dreams. There's no question about it. That's the part of the human condition. And inadvertently, I've been in pursuit telling people to pursue those dreams now more now more open about it. And I will openly say in some of my blogs and things go after your dreams go after your dreams. You're never too old. So that's been a huge change. I don't become an inspirational person. I never saw myself as somebody that people could look up to, but that's something that's happened sort of just naturally by me saying I'm gonna go do this. And so it's probably coming out everybody says when I start talking, it comes out in my excitement when I talk so I hope it's coming out now. So my everyday is so much more impassioned, so much more exciting. It's so much fun getting up and what am I going to do today? At the same time? I mean, everything in life I haven't once were crap, I'm not getting anywhere. Oh God, geez, they turned me down again. I can't get my music in there and can't make good music there. These are just stumbling blocks. They're not complete, you know, stop, you'd have to turn around and go there just challenges that have to be overcome. And that's part of any endeavour, it you know, if you're not challenged at some point along the way, well, then if it was too easy, how much are you really getting out of it. And part of the self empowerment comes with having a challenge that you have to overcome.

Claire Waite Brown: 26:18

I'm glad you said that, because with the inspiration side of things, which is obviously something that I benefit from with this podcast, in that I'm able to share so many stories that I hope are inspiring listeners to sink, I could give it a go. But what I also want to be able to put across is the reality of it as well that it's not going to be easy peasy. No. And if you do do something, and it gets tough, most people just need to keep going through it. And here's my experience, I had a bit of a rubbish time, but I'm glad I carried on with it. And I really want to share the the load the lows, as well as the highs of you know, coming back to your creativity. So I'm glad you were honest about

Unknown: 27:09

Josh is a part of it, there's no question. And if you're a any any dream, where you're aiming for something, you know, greater than yourself or something that it's really worthwhile going after, it's you're going to have challenges, and it's part of the journey. And in some ways, it makes the journey that much more wonderful. Because it was too easy. Would you really appreciate it? I don't I'm not sure that that's a hard question to answer. But I know that when I overcome a challenge, I feel that much stronger, I feel much more empowered, I feel that much more like hey, I can do it, I just over took that challenge. And when the next challenge comes along, it's actually a bit easier to tackle. And it prepares you for the even larger challenge. I mean, I often here's an example that I often talk about all these you know, Britain's Got Talent, America's Got Talent, all these shows, I've addition, for a few of those, I got turned down for every single one of them. And I just keep going. So it doesn't bother me because I my music is I don't want to get into too much detail. But my music is isn't exactly what everybody listens to right now. It is. It's familiar, but it's also new. It's, I won't get to that detail. The point I want to make here is that often, you know, you see somebody like a 1920 year old and they audition for a Simon Cowell and he says you don't got it and they break down and they lose it. And I can remember water cooler talk at work. And when these shows first started going in Simon Cowell and they always the bad guy. People say He's so mean to these people. He's so and I said no, he's not. He's just being realistic. The problem is, is this 19 year old isn't ready to hear it. Because they haven't taken all the steps to get there. There's no such things as overnight success. People think well, they just you know, talk to you overnight success and find out how many years they were slogging it out before they got there. And along the way you learn. I always feel bad when somebody breaks down when the shows and they cry. And all I have is my dream. And it's my dream. And I'm saying okay, there's your first stumbling block, keep going. Like the rest of us. Don't let it stop you keep going.

Claire Waite Brown: 29:02

Exactly. And that's that's the hard work that you were talking about. If if you really want to do it, then you will learn from that and go and do some more hard work. And if you're not prepared to do the hard work, then maybe it's not the right dream for you in the first place. And also, there's gonna be lots of times like that. And you've already said, you know, you get rejections, there's gonna be rejections and you need to learn how to deal with them. So you gotta take that on the chin. And yeah, get on with it.

Unknown: 29:39

I'm still getting at this point. I can honestly say I'm a professional level musician, songwriter, singer, and I still get the all your sound like crap. But you also come to a point you realise that, you know, well, that person might like a different form of music and some people and I get frustrated. And this is where it gets really frustrating in, in the artistic world, whether it be acting music, visual arts, things like that. People often forget that their preference doesn't mean something's good or bad, just means they like it. And over the years, I've learned that I have one guy this is funny on Tik Tok the other day, I put up a song and I put a caption is rock and roll dad. And it goes through not a chance it's alive and well here with rich chambers, that basic commercial for my song of sorts. But the very first thing that flashed on the screen is rock and roll did a question. And I had no idea the sort of responses that would get an ad one person say yes, it is. Give it up. Go back to looking after your kids. So I had a couple of friends say why don't you take that down and say why? That's the guy's opinion. So I responded and said, Okay, I respect your opinion. But you don't have to start telling me to you know, you don't have to be disrespectful and tell me to go to see my kids. And this goofball response. He says, If you can't handle It don't put up the post. I responded. should anybody be asked to handle rudeness? What do you think? Question mark an hour later, he deleted schmuck into a corner and he couldn't get out of it. So what I find interesting clear this when I put up my post, even I've had family and friends here from pharmacy, why do you leave those posts up? I say because it's all part of the it's all part of the conversation. You won't be surprised how many people respond, saying, don't listen to that guy. He's an absolute jerk. Like, you know, it's it's all part of the conversation. It just shows what everybody's thinking. And when it comes to music, there's no right or wrong, there's no good or bad is Do you like it or don't like it? So what if somebody thinks it doesn't like you? Who cares? You're not gonna please everybody. And you have to learn to get past that too. And to to have a bit of a thick skin and just say, okay, that person didn't like me enough to get me an appointment, but and just keep moving forward. Yeah,

Claire Waite Brown: 31:58

that is an attitude that you need to have not everybody's gonna like it. And if they don't like, yeah, they don't like it. Absolutely.

Unknown: 32:05

But there's also a fine line to clear. Sometimes if you keep hearing over and over again, well, you can't sing, you can't sing, you can't sing. You also have to be realistic. Well, maybe I can, maybe I do have to work on singing, learning how to sing better. So it's a very fine line. And that's why I appreciate when criticism is constructive. I really like what you do and rich, but maybe you should think about trying this. Those are the sorts of things people should listen to. Because usually if somebody's presenting something to you in that way, they're trying to help you. You know, you can't take a person you realise they're trying to help you. And anytime I've actually stopped listen to those, those people more often than not have been right. And I've been able to learn from it advance and get better.

Claire Waite Brown: 32:46

Yeah, yeah. Brilliant. So what about the future? What are your hopes and dreams? We've talked a lot about dreams? What are your aspirations going forward?

Unknown: 32:58

Well, as I keep building and building, I have those moments every now and then where you play this, you know, devil, an angel, I need your shoulders. And moments where I think I'm not getting anywhere and other moms just say, Alright, you've got 85,000 followers on Facebook. That's a lot of fans. And so when I look back where I was two years ago, I've grown leaps and bounds from where I was two years ago. And so if I can paint a picture in Canada, who, hey, we got a lot of snow. I don't know how much snow you got in the UK, and you're part of the UK. But it's easy to make the analogy with snow. Everybody will get this when you're building a snowman Are you building a snowball at the very beginning takes a lot of work to start things happening, you got to really kind of pack the snow and start rolling it around, eventually the snowball gets so big like I do is push it down the hill and it'll go on its own. That's what I've been doing. I've been building a snowball, and the Snowball is getting pretty big. Pretty soon I'll be able to push that thing down the hill on its own. What that means the more practical sense is that I want to get to the point where my music can go out and hit commercial radio and it gets commercial radio and they start playing it. And I want to get to the point where I've started showing up on late night shows Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert and things like that, and where my releases have a following ready to jump on them right away. So what that means is I got to keep doing what I'm doing, because I've written a certain script for myself. And so far it's working. And I just got to keep building and building. The next big thing that I'm trying to tackle now is commercial radio. And any musician will tell you a commercial radio is an absolute beast to get onto. It's so hard. But contrary to what people think the internet and everything else. Yes is huge. But radio still is a huge maker or breaker of talent. Because what a lot of people forget my friend and I talked about the other day radio is one of the only things it's free. I mean, you if you buy a radio, that's the only expense you got, you turn it on, you tune in and there you go, everything's free. And so many people still listen to radios in their cars, they listen to it in the office, they have IT background at home on and on it goes commercial radio is still massive and it still makes or breaks artists. So that's the big one for me. I'm also at this point in next month or so I'm going to be looking for some real really good personal management. A lot of literally behind me now I'm at a point where I can start attracting a real manager who has those connections to the Capitol Records Office it has those connections to the commercial radio or the late night TV shows and on and on it goes I'm also packaging up a full album which will be up about four weeks while my previous singles and a couple of new songs. So all the while I'm doing all this promoting and marketing I'm still writing and recording and I'm still working at the university during the day. My schedule is nuts right now but I smile as I say that because I absolutely love it. I'm having the time of my life.

Claire Waite Brown: 35:38

Oh that is brilliant. We can tell I can tell you having the time of your life through in your voice. So this, Facebook, YouTube etc. Tell us how we can connect with you how we can find you in these places.

Unknown: 35:54

Rich chambers rock and roll. Tick tock Facebook, Instagram rich chambers rock'n'roll. Or if you just Google my name rich chambers, I've been working my butt off so that British chambers is at the top of the algorithm. And so they're one of those. This is a funny story because people going to Google rich chambers, a high school basketball coach will come up as well as me and other with the name rich chambers. And what's funny is him and I know each other, he was my high school's history teacher. And we've run into each other over the years we laugh at people that he always says rich people think I'm a musician. I say people just think I'm a basketball coach. It's one of the funniest things.

Claire Waite Brown: 36:37

Amazing that you know each other, though. That's been absolutely brilliant. Thanks so much for speaking with me today. Rich.

Unknown: 36:44

Thanks, Claire. It's been so much fun being on your show and keep doing what you're doing because you're providing the forum for other creative junkies like me to to get out there and talk about what we do. So thank you.

Claire Waite Brown: 36:54

You're welcome. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to creativity found. If your podcast app has the facility, please leave a rating and review to help other people find us on Instagram and Facebook. Follow us at creativity found podcast and on Pinterest look for at creativity found. And finally, don't forget to check out creativity found.co.uk The website connecting adults who wants to find a creative outlet with the artists and crafters who can help them tap into their creativity.