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#5- Keyboard player Adam Ahuja on How He Strives to Create a Positive Impact on the World Through Music, Meditation, a Vegetarian Diet and his Overall Mindset
9 Plays7 years ago
My guest this week is keyboard player Adam Ahuja. Adam is a creative and virtuosic musician with a commitment to his craft and deep awareness of the positive affect music can have on people and culture.
In this conversation:
- Strategies and ideas to stay focused and 'in the moment' on stage
- The importance of creating blocks of time in life to to help to find your path and discover what truly fulfills you.
- The balance between being committed to your vision and maintaining flexibility in the process
- What caused Adam to make the shift to eating a plant-based diet and how compassion for animals was the motivating factor in that decision
- The affect a focused meditation practice had on Adam's life and his music specifically
- Creating positive change in the world through music and how that is a central concept to Adam's mindset
Please take a moment to rate and review the podcast in iTunes and visit www.tourganic.com for more info on this episode and living healthy on the road
Tourganic Podcast Theme song 'The Path' written by David Bailis and this episode's musical interludes by Adam Ahuja and The Flowdown
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Transcript
Introduction and Purpose of the Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the tour gaining goals. In terms of their spiritual layer, how is that sense of service, the utmost service that I can possibly give while in the earth, going to happen through this mode that I feel so positive about? And that mode is music.
00:00:25
Speaker
I am David Bayless, host of the Torganic Podcast. I'm releasing this episode today from Spain, where I'm currently out touring. Spain is a great example of a place that can be tough to eat vegan, but I'm here to report that it is indeed possible.
Guest Introduction: Adam Ahuja
00:00:38
Speaker
In the podcast, I speak with touring musicians about how they live a healthy lifestyle on the road.
00:00:43
Speaker
While many of the episodes are about how and why my guests live a plant-based vegan diet on the road, the content of these conversations has a diverse and holistic approach to focus on health of mind, body, and spirit. My goal is that this podcast will give you a window into their life and offer you some insight that will inspire you. Please let me know what you think by commenting and rating the show in iTunes.
00:01:07
Speaker
My guest this week is keyboard player Adam Ahuja. Adam is a creative and virtuosic musician with a commitment to his craft and a deep awareness of the positive effect music can have on people and culture.
00:01:19
Speaker
Adam leads his own band The Flowdown and has also toured and performed with many great artists. I saw him perform with the unbelievable Robert Randolph, who Rolling Stone magazine listed as one of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. And for the past year, Adam has been on the road with Blues guitarist Anna Popovich. There are many lessons to be learned from hearing about Adam's approach to music and life as a whole. His steady dedication to being a thoughtful, aware person is paralleled with his experience on stage as a musician.
00:01:47
Speaker
In the podcast, he illustrates his consistent dedication and discipline to being a better person and how that directly relates to his musicianship. Whether through meditation, his vegetarian diet on the road, or honing his skills as a songwriter and keyboard player, Adam's steady focus on having a positive impact in the world is evident throughout this podcast. I've had the honor of performing and working with Adam many times and have always appreciated his approach to playing.
The Art of Live Performance
00:02:12
Speaker
We begin this episode discussing elements and dynamics of performing on stage.
00:02:19
Speaker
When I go and I play live, I take things very personally. Whatever reason it means a lot to me, like how the performance is, whether it's my stuff or someone else's stuff.
00:02:32
Speaker
I used to go through this process of just feeling a certain way with whatever the feeling was that I left on the gig and having to just cope just generally with that feeling until, if let's say I didn't think it went well or something was off, until the point where I actually go back and listen to something and realize I get a much different perspective, a much more informed, more objective, less emotional.
00:02:55
Speaker
let's say maybe half of the time it was actually fine but I just didn't know or I wasn't sure so now like if something is different doesn't go well even though I had that experience or something was was challenging me I go back and I'll listen I'll make sure I'll just wait and say okay well I need to listen to it and that's like half of now that's like the other half of the internal battle one half is saying just relax you're gonna listen to what it was and the other half is like well you knew this is what happened and you got to address that yeah then I go back and listen and it tells me what's going on
00:03:25
Speaker
And like musicians is like our world. So I know musicians, but I think artists in general, like we're like, we can be sensitive, especially when it comes to like our art, like we're naturally like super just open, like when we're performing and sensitive to what's happening around us, whether it's crowd or like band vibes or something going wrong in the song or, you know, what you perceive as going wrong. And then when you can step away and actually be like, oh,
00:03:54
Speaker
that accident was awesome. Actually, that was the best thing that happened in the song. Like that's going to become a thing. Those left turns actually can create awesome moments. But it's funny how sometimes in the moment we're just focused on how we think it should be, that sometimes we don't have the ability to have the presence and the awareness of what it actually is. Right.
00:04:18
Speaker
I mean, I think there's a lot of things that impact that too, other than just kind of mental state and expectations. It's also, can you hear everybody? Can you hear everything? Sometimes if you're in a great rehearsal room and everything is so balanced, you can't help but react to each other because you're all...
00:04:30
Speaker
you just see the circles just right there. It's a constant journey for musicians. I think we're always working on our awareness on stage. I don't think that ever ends. Trying to just be super aware and soaking in the positivity of everything that's happening and not letting yourself be distracted by
00:04:50
Speaker
elements whether it is as I said before things in the song or the crowd that aren't going right or like the elements that you mentioned which are really important when we're on tour we're doing festivals you don't get a soundcheck you're lucky if you have your gear set up properly sometimes in time for the downbeat of the first song it can be so rushed these changeovers and then boom you're in front of five thousand ten thousand people whatever great crowds and these people are stoked they're ready for you there's
00:05:17
Speaker
They're not like, oh, I hope they get warmed up. And I hope their sound man has this figured out or their monitor guys patched everything. They expect you downbeat to be perfect and as you should. That's our job, is to fight through that. My in-ear monitors are completely messed up. I can't hear the lead singer. My mix is total. But those are these external elements that you just need to learn to kind of fight through and just be at peace with at a certain point. Exactly.
00:05:45
Speaker
I find myself in shows like that. I might struggle for a little bit at first and be like, more of this, more of that with a monitor than a certain point. I need to just accept this is what this show is going to be and just try to make it the best. Exactly. You know? And when I was younger and I went to concerts, I had this impression that, well, you saw a band live, you saw them once, you see them a second time, they're playing the same songs.
00:06:06
Speaker
It's kind of like I had a product mentality around it, like as if I was going to the store and buying something. You don't think about how these are human beings and there are so many different factors, not only the technical, but life. Did you arrive? Did you have a long night? How did you get there? Did you come in on a flight or are you jet lagged? Do you know what's going on right now? Did you have a good meal?
00:06:32
Speaker
before you got there. All these regular human things that allow you to perform at your best. It's not like the same thing as waking up every morning and having a very specific, very, very regulated lifestyle. You have to sort of make things work when you're going from place to place. And there's a lot of things that can impact how well that performance works out. So much has to do with the sounds. It has to do with your feeling that way. And for example, was at the place
00:06:59
Speaker
in Kentucky and it was an old church, the revival, I think it was called. And when I first got in there and we were sound checking, there was so much reverb. And was this with Robert Randolph or was this? This was with Anna Popovich this summer or this fall or the end of the summer. Okay. And we got in there and
00:07:21
Speaker
there was so much reverb in the room, and it was the first show of the tour because when you go out for a tour, sometimes you're just coming from wherever you're coming from. You haven't rehearsed, you haven't played for a while. People don't know, am I going to the first show on tour? They don't look at the tour schedule and say, oh, this is their first show. Oh, that's their last one. That might be better. But even so, that's not always the case, right? Totally. And so we show up there on the first show, and with the reverb, there was a pedal that I had that
00:07:47
Speaker
broke it wasn't working for some reason all of a sudden actually it broke on our gig you remember that before we played I had that organ it simulates a Leslie amp for the for the organ and it just stopped working I didn't have time to figure out what the problem was but I thought maybe it would start working again or maybe it was a fluke it turns out ultimately that there was a problem with the somewhere it was it was an actual problem with the gear so I just sent it back and they sent me a new one
00:08:16
Speaker
Anyway, there was a lot of problems going on for this show, and sometimes when there's a lot of reverb in the room where I was getting to is that it changes the sound, you know? And you don't know if it's gonna make things crazy or not, but it turned out by the time everybody got in that room, it was a great, great show. It sounded great, even with the wrong gear, everyone was feeling good, the place was cool, everyone played great. The reverb kind of added this vibe.
00:08:45
Speaker
that was really cool and I just really couldn't predict it and I expected it to be a bad show just coming off a flight actually it wasn't a flight I had we had driven from Connecticut to Kentucky with a stop we had like a stop in between and it was just
00:09:04
Speaker
There was a reason for it. I don't know. It was what it was. But we had been on the road for a while and it turned out to be a great show. Sometimes when you are tired, you have all this extra energy, something else happens. There really is no direct predictor of how things are going to turn out. But ultimately, you want to be in the best optimal condition you can be to perform what that might be.
00:09:37
Speaker
you
Meditation and Self-Awareness in Music
00:10:14
Speaker
We're capable of so much more than we can give our self credit for sometimes. Of, oh, I'm done. I have no more in the tank. I experience that with my fitness, trying to push myself to higher levels of being like, oh, there's no way I can go longer, whether it's a run that I'm doing, or I feel like I've hit the wall. And then being like, no, I'm going to battle past this.
00:10:35
Speaker
and finding once I get over that hump of the hill, oh, I'm sailing again. I'm good. And who even knew I had this reserve tank? Yeah. And if I had just been like, oh, OK, I'm done. I feel like I'm tired. I'm done. OK. But realizing that you have those reserve tanks, it was just so important on tour, too. Yeah. And you know that it's not only on tour. It's in the studio. That happened to me this whole week, exactly what you described. Because I had 10 AM to 6 PM booked.
00:11:04
Speaker
every single day this last week to do my record, except for Wednesday, which I originally had booked and I said, you know what, let's call that day off. In the middle, just a day to kind of listen, absorb, refresh on what was happening in the week. So Monday and Tuesday with the Wednesday and Thursday and Friday,
00:11:24
Speaker
Now it sounds like a regular nine to five job, which I'm not used to, right? So I'm like, do I have this extra reserve to get up the next day and record and the amount of intense work that's going on recording, making sure that you're making best use of the time you're paying for this stuff. So making sure that.
00:11:40
Speaker
You get everything done and that you're being as efficient as possible. I had a video crew there videoing the whole album Visual album. So all this stuff going on. I want to make sure that I'm not getting takes that they're not gonna I'm getting stuff Recorded that's gonna be used for the album that also is visually important as well prioritizing So a lot of elements that's an added element of pressure. Yeah, but what I was realizing is I
00:12:04
Speaker
Okay, it's not just a regular schedule of nine to five because A, it's more intense than usual and B, when I'm going back home, I have to listen to what happened to make notes for the next day. I have to work when I go home so I can be prepared for the next day. So it was pretty much working the whole week except for that Wednesday. But what I realized was when I would wake up in the morning and realize I was exhausted,
00:12:31
Speaker
that I did have an extra reserve tank.
00:12:35
Speaker
to make this thing happen. And I had a lot more, I'd say I would have 25% more energy that was just not tapped, but I did tap it because I needed to do this. And not only that, but even just setting this whole project up forced me to write little parts and spend, instead of spending that hour doing something that would feel more productive usually for getting a gig or doing what I needed to do in life,
00:13:01
Speaker
Maybe I'm spending it just figuring out one little chord that needed to fit somewhere and not feeling like I was wasting my time. Because when I was younger, I used to spend forever just sitting there trying to figure out music. And as you get older, life gets in, quote unquote, gets in the way or challenges you more. You have to be more responsible for yourself. Yeah. But when you create these times, when you create these blocks to go and do and create something, you realize that it's really just about committing and it's really it's really just about
00:13:32
Speaker
learning what is important in your life and just going with it instead of feeling like you have no ability to actually create the right thing or the thing that's the path that you need to be going down. What do you use as a gauge to help you kind of center on what's important? Man, yeah, I would say gauging what's important
00:14:01
Speaker
is for me, sometimes I used to do a lot of meditation. So meditation during a certain point in my life was extremely impactful for that. That set me up to be more naturally in a space I needed to be. Because it allowed a lot of the tension that I think results from feeling
00:14:31
Speaker
pressured in everyday life to be resolved. Little moments build on each other in life and sometimes if someone hits you on the subway and then you feel uncomfortable and you have to find a way to release that. So I think
00:14:47
Speaker
you can mentally block it out. I think as a species, we were very cognitive, very intelligence driven. So we can psych ourselves out as if that doesn't exist, but our body remembers it. And we were holding on sometimes to this stuff. That's why people get a massage and feel like, Oh my God, so much is coming up my shoulders or whatever. So
00:15:07
Speaker
I think that it does take a balance of different kind of activities. So I mentioned meditation, but the gauge is not just that, it's also physical activity. When I was in high school, I used to play tennis all the time. And when I was in college, I didn't play as much. Got into college, joined a fraternity, had fun, whatever. But I would play in the summer again with my brother and I realized I'd be playing tennis
00:15:30
Speaker
for 15 minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, whatever. And all of a sudden I was extremely angry. And I would just scream and throw my racket against the fence. And my brother's like, what's wrong with you? I can bring that out. Who regularly goes to the gym and is saying, what's wrong with you?
00:15:48
Speaker
And I didn't know it at the time, but the problem was I hadn't been physically exerting myself enough. And so there was certain emotions that just weren't being shed out. So there's different ways to do it. And I think it takes a balance. It takes some physical, it takes meditational, which is really a mental, so you could say spiritual kind of experience. Those are two balances, I think. Yeah, I think like,
00:16:13
Speaker
Fitness and meditation are two things that in a sense can almost take you out of your comfort zone a little bit a little bit out of your pattern of your daily life and By getting out of your comfort zone that can actually help you achieve clarity Exactly of parts of yourself. I think the clarity is already there their stuff is just in the way I
00:16:35
Speaker
I can't say it with 100% because there is a discovery process. You're kind of un-shelling something. But there are certain things you just already know. And what you know is you can recognize when something feels good or something isn't right. And there's various levels of that. Sometimes something feels good, but it's not necessarily right.
00:16:54
Speaker
And some people call it the conscience, right? But there are things that are right. And you know that this is totally right. I think a good example of where that happens is when people are dating. You might say, oh, this feels good. Or this is right. I don't know. But then you know something. You say, no, no, no, this is right. And you know that.
00:17:13
Speaker
And I think that's a good example of something that you know, but you might not admit to yourself. We play games with ourselves all the time. So I think there's a lot of things we know what we have to do. Sometimes things aren't going to be easy, especially in music, making a living, doing music, going out there, running around, making things happen. It's not always a piece of cake. But you're doing it. You know that you're doing it for a reason. You know that it's important. You know that there's something special about what's going on in music. So you go with it.
00:17:42
Speaker
And these things can kind of shut off those layers to really get in and figure out what that is. At least for me, that's part of it. Another thing is helping to tap into an emotional space. Sometimes life is planning, running things down, calendars.
00:17:59
Speaker
Even the musical turns into some mechanical thing. You're enjoying it while you're doing it. But you're preparing, you're thinking about what needs to be done for the gig. It's still a lot of left brain stuff. A lot of logistics go into being a musician. If you could just totally say, you know what? I'm going to get rid of all this. I'm going to go. And I'm going to just start creating. I'm just going to start writing. It doesn't matter what I write. Sometimes, if I'm writing lyrics or something, I'll start and I'm saying, I can't write. What's going on? But then I just write whatever.
00:18:29
Speaker
And before I know it, I'm just writing pages of whatever and just letting that flow take place. It's like starting an engine. It's not going to go right away. But once it goes, it just starts going. And creativity is like you have to get in that space sometimes.
00:18:44
Speaker
If I watch a movie or something, or I hear a song that's really emotional or something that can crack me into that emotional space, because sometimes that does the same thing as what I was saying earlier with the meditation and with the physical, there's also the emotional and sometimes a display of humanity or display of something about the importance of life or something a little bit deeper, you're not know my thinking of maybe it's a
00:19:06
Speaker
YouTube video for two minutes, but something can get to you. You allow something to get to you and open you up. Sometimes it's a conversation like this, just getting really deep and allowing that conversation to be real, be authentic and just go back and forth. And it just gets you into the moment. It gets you into what's going on and you start discovering and realizing what's important and just go from there.
00:19:26
Speaker
without so many preconceptions about how it needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and all these things that make us feel like we're in a paradigm of success or failure based on our expectations and whether we can actually meet whatever we set for ourselves. We're setting ourselves up for emotional failure if you attach yourself to a set of plans that you must
00:19:47
Speaker
make or if otherwise, what? What is that question mark? Are you going to learn or just be okay with it? It makes it very easy to put our whole self-worth into these blocks. Did you do something that sounded aesthetically pleasing at a certain moment? It's like, okay, you want to achieve something, but what's the bigger picture? The bigger picture is you want to
00:20:09
Speaker
express something real at every single moment. That's the ultimate thing. True. And you know, there's all these societal elements that are kind of pushing us in different directions and whether it's like social media or just our conversations with our family and daily life, like people just have these pressures and things that are pushing them in different directions. So it's not an easy thing to kind of free yourself of that and try to just be super clear in the moment.
Spiritual Journey and Teachings
00:21:15
Speaker
I see you as someone that's on a spiritual path and I wonder how you came up into this way of being. Is this something since you were a child and your family nurtured this as you were a kid, as a teenager, is this something kind of you got into?
00:21:35
Speaker
at a certain point was there sort of like a revelation at like a boom moment or it's just kind of been a long winding path. Yeah. Well, it was a little bit of both. Part of it was a path and part of it was some booms. And I think that's sort of normal because those are the plateau moments, the ahas that bring you onto the path and then the path goes and maybe another one happens for whatever is going on in life.
00:22:00
Speaker
I definitely grew up in an environment that was nurturing and I'm thankful for that because I think that authentic relationships are pretty much the most important thing. People try to do a lot about causes and make a lot of differences in the world, but if you feel cared for and thus can care for someone else and something else, you're much more likely to be much more conscientious about how you interact with the world and respond to things in a positive way when you learn whether or not you're doing something right or wrong.
00:22:29
Speaker
with the environment, with your body, with someone else and awareness of people and what's going on, whatever it is. So I think those relationships are important. So if you have good relationships, I know a lot of people don't get those in life and it's much more challenging. Yeah, being cared for makes you a more caring person. Right.
00:22:46
Speaker
And my life was not perfect, and no one really is. So you also have to learn and be clear with who you are. You have to really take responsibility, I guess you could say, on a spiritual level for your existence and the fact that you're here. And even if things don't go well, you are here. And if you desire to stay here and survive, what are you going to do? So it comes down to that. The background was good. My family.
00:23:12
Speaker
We were raised in a Catholic family and a lot of people have a bad experience with Catholicism from our generation, but I happen to grow up in a situation where it was more accepting about what truth is.
00:23:28
Speaker
We were introduced to a number of different kinds of truth, historical truth, moral truth, religious truth, absolute truth. I believe there was one more in there. And this gave a perspective on dogma. So dogma no longer seemed like this thing that was being shoved down your throat, that you had to answer the right questions on a test. It was more of a platform that you could
00:23:57
Speaker
interpret across these forms of truth. My dad's from India so there was the Indian side that I never really knew much about in terms of the spiritual history of what was going on there so I started reading about yoga and about what was going on and it was really nice information and it helped meld together what I already knew and at that time in my life I was
00:24:26
Speaker
I never really had any reason to try to make the two sides fight because I grew up in a household where there were people from two parts of the planet that were now American and I was there. And so my best thing in order to stay sane was how can we, how does this whole thing work? So I got into it and I got into the meditation side and. Just let me jump in. Like when you say you got into it, you got into kind of a more spiritual mentality and a sort of inquisitive
00:24:54
Speaker
nature and is that is that accurate to say and then like where are we talking about at what age? This was early 20s into mid 20s is when I looked into when I say it I mean the Eastern side of spiritual teachings and before that it was all Western so there's a friend of mine who puts it in a really good perspective he says
00:25:24
Speaker
It feels, it can feel uncomfortable if someone that's part of a religion is trying to sell you, the religion is trying to force you to do something a certain way or is proclaiming going around trying to get you to sign up for things and be really intense like that.
00:25:44
Speaker
But for that person, for that person, taking everything and doing everything, every single step and believing everything, sometimes is the full on experience they need to then later kind of breathe out and see the bigger picture. Because sometimes if you're so outside of some kind of positive system, you just need to go completely in it. So my version of that was,
00:26:08
Speaker
I went all the way in on the Eastern side for a couple of years. It just really went deep. Not to that extent. I was never the type of person personally that was trying to proclaim to other people and trying to advertise. That's not me. It was a personal thing. But for myself, I really dove in. And how did you do that? Well, I tried to meditate by myself.
00:26:35
Speaker
Was there a teacher or a book? Ultimately, there was. At first, you just kind of... First, I saw all the different ways of Buddhist meditation, and if you master any one of them, then you're supposed to master them all kind of thing.
00:26:48
Speaker
And was that through a person that was feeding you this information? Or was there a specific book or a text that you were finding inspiration here? Those are, I believe, 121, I could be wrong with the number, different Buddhist techniques I found myself on the internet. And I tried to have my whole body balanced into one point, center point, going all the way down to the ground. That was the technique. And I only did this a little bit, but it set
00:27:16
Speaker
the precedent for something more, which was I got into more of a yoga meditation path. There are various lineages and so forth, and I started focusing on certain energy centers in the body, and I started noticing that these energy centers had a very real and very tangible experience.
00:27:39
Speaker
I actually began to have a number of different kind of experiences that I never had before that were real and sober. And without delving too much into your personal experience, could you walk me through a little bit what that experience or those revelations? Yeah, it definitely shows you that the physical construction of yourself and of
00:28:07
Speaker
the environment is not so strict to what we think it is. There are other places for consciousness. And what that does is test you to whether or not your purpose in life is only about responding to sensual fascination or using life's experience to deepen
00:28:35
Speaker
your appreciation and connection for all things. That's what it comes down to. Because I noticed a huge fork in the road when that stuff started happening. Is it about magic and being fascinated? That's not what spiritual living is. It's not. Or is it about having more
00:28:59
Speaker
giving space, coming from a space of giving, coming from a space of love, and using these kind of experiences as an opportunity to gain wisdom to do so. And that's what they do. That's what they're good for. That's what life is good for. And it's just another parallel. It's another level. I don't want to say level, but I want to just, it's another area of consciousness. It's another domain of consciousness.
00:30:14
Speaker
Of course there should be the ability to take into information and I think that's one thing when you mentioned about spiritual earlier and going from these different stages. So having sort of one religious platform then learning a new one, seeing how they integrate and then sort of going into the world and appreciating whatever it is and going forward and using
00:30:36
Speaker
using a fair sense of logic and science in the whole process. I mean, there's no reason just to hold on to something because you don't want to face the reality of the fact that the drawer opens and closes like this. I mean, that's what it does. Yes, maybe you can understand that maybe it's really not closing. And maybe there's another universe where it's closed. And who knows? There's all kinds of stuff out there. But at the same time, I'm going to just phase in my life right now where
00:31:06
Speaker
I have, I will take things for the best sense of the reality as it's presented. I don't care about the, uh, the label that it's associated with the Ist or the ism that might come along with it. I just want to know what it is and go with that. Right. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's, that's flexibility and flexibility is such a key element in
00:31:37
Speaker
in making your way through this world if you want to have a positive impact and be the best you can. You have to be flexible because flexibility is in a sense what enables us to have an open mind to learn.
00:31:53
Speaker
So you're kind of taking this path, you get into meditation, you said you get into it heavily and then you got a teacher? I did. There was a teacher that came and went, you know, and sometimes that's important, especially there was a moment where I was meditating by myself and I
00:32:13
Speaker
I really went somewhere that I did not, I just didn't know what was going on. And I said, okay, wow, this is really, I need some guidance here. And a family friend was part of the meditative tradition and it was certain lineage in India and we started working together and that gave me a lot of inspiration.
00:32:41
Speaker
I'm no longer connected with that particular teacher, but at the time, it was somebody who I could see, was seeing through, for me, the way I saw it, was seeing through the miniature elements of this and saying, look, this is a practice to get you centered, do the right things. That's ultimately the message I took from it.
00:33:07
Speaker
a lot of people that were in New York City who were interested in that, people would talk about wanting to heal other people and almost a sense, I don't know, it's good to be in power, but sometimes it can be sort of a misplaced empowerment, sort of as if you're this special person. You have to be very careful about that and doing things for the sake of service and really being humble about whatever you do.
00:33:34
Speaker
And that teacher helped bring that out in you? Well, he said, don't worry about that. Don't worry about healing or anything like that. You know, he was kind of like saying, look, you do the practice. When you say healing, healing other people or healing yourself. Yeah. Healing, healing other people. Healing other people. He was saying, look, he was basically saying, yeah, heal yourself ultimately. And I think that's, that was the right message. Which totally comes back to the points we were saying earlier about, you know, like you saying with your family of
00:34:04
Speaker
them showing you love and giving you the ability to show the world love as is an important thing as
00:34:14
Speaker
standing up there and shouting on a soapbox for a cause necessarily like, oh, I've chosen to save the rainforest. That is such a great thing to do. But I like what you're saying that just just making relationships with people is just as important in this world to create positive change. Totally. And another thing when you early when you mentioned about flexibility, I think it's also important to
00:34:38
Speaker
be aware of the existence of paradox. We're saying, on one hand, we're saying it's important to be flexible. We both agree. On the other hand, we're saying, you've got to know what your vision is. And in the beginning of the conversation, we're talking about finding that clarity, what we know, and going with it, what you believe, and these kind of things. And it can seem like they're in paradox. And one time when that really was a crisis for me was,
00:35:05
Speaker
I think around the time I was 25 up until then I was trying to figure out what instrument I should focus on because I had been playing piano since I was a kid.
Balancing Flexibility and Commitment in Music
00:35:17
Speaker
I played guitar and did a lot more of that when I was in high school and or it was kind of split in high school college I did definitely more guitar. After college I went to a jam session realized every musician was just at a higher level than I was on their respective instrument. I could play all the instruments
00:35:32
Speaker
I could play them all, and maybe they couldn't play them all, but I didn't excel enough at one of them that I felt I could really sit in and really work with these guys. So it was really, really hard to figure that out, and I felt like I had to make a choice.
00:35:48
Speaker
And in a way, it wasn't really who I was, but it was because I wanted to be better at one. And it was really a struggle. But then one day, this phrase came to my mind. I always remembered it. And it's so simple. But it's not necessarily the words, but it's how it felt and what it meant and how it really revealed itself. And it was focused but open. And I realized, OK, the paradox is not really. Yeah, it's a paradox in some sense.
00:36:15
Speaker
You can do, you kind of have to do both. And there's a really good story about a man who's traveling around to get enlightenment. So he goes on the mountain to the guru or whoever it is and tells him, asks him, how do I?
00:36:31
Speaker
become enlightened. And he says, OK, you have to take this jug of water and you have to put it on your head. And you have to walk around my kingdom and come back to me up this mountain and not spill a drop of water. You have to have the water bowl in your head and do that. So he's like, oh my gosh, this is crazy. So he does it. He puts the water bowl in his head. He's walking around. And I can elaborate this story, but ultimately he does it. He goes to the kingdom, comes back, has the water bowl in his head.
00:36:59
Speaker
And the person says, oh, you did it. Did you see all my beautiful palaces? Did you see all of the nice mountains and the rivers and all the gold and glass and all these really cool things? Did you see the animals? Did you see the birds? Did you see the people? What did you think of this place? And he said, I don't know. I didn't really see any of that. I was just focused on trying to keep this bone in my head. And he's like, well, you didn't.
00:37:29
Speaker
And so he didn't make it happen. He didn't do it. And that's the same idea, this focus but open. It's this idea that you can be totally in the zone, but at the same time, you're totally not in the zone. And you're totally letting in and going with the flow and seeing what's happening. Yeah, because I think there's a really important distinction in what you're saying. Flexibility does not mean a lack of commitment. Right.
00:37:56
Speaker
That's what it is. Yeah. And that's, yeah, that's really kind of the heart of, it's like, you gotta be flexible, but you also must be committed. Right. To your path and what you believe in. Right. Or else what else is there? Yeah. That happened a lot when I first started doing music in New York and
00:38:22
Speaker
There were opportunities that I felt very insecure about pursuing because I didn't have a strong enough clarity on what my vision was and I felt like I was just being whipped around in all these different projects, all these different things. I said, I don't know.
00:38:38
Speaker
I somehow needed to feel the commitment. I knew I was committed, but I didn't quite see it or know how it was going to work out. So for the first year or two, I really needed to build a band or something I felt like I was really all about so that I could always go back to that. There was something I always felt like I could go back to and be building and feel
00:38:59
Speaker
like it was the right thing and when that thing wasn't going right again it can't be your self-worth because if it's your self-worth then then you lose then you're then you're you're out of sorts you're not present anymore but if it's if you understand that it's part of your commitment to the work that you're doing while you're here and you have that to go back to and to keep working on and keep
00:39:20
Speaker
making it solid even if there's a kink in it you say okay we're gonna work that kink out i gotta believe it's gonna work out because sometimes it seems like tough you know yeah so that's the challenge is not getting derailed by that feeling of that tough when there's a kink in the thing that you care about the most
00:39:35
Speaker
So anyway working that stuff out and having that that solid ice almost seemed like a bowl It's like you're holding it. It's you're working. It's like a clay pot that you're building you're kind of going back to Have that there and have that pot that you're working on so that way you can go and you can
00:39:53
Speaker
play with Robert Randolph in the family band. I remember my friend was a guitarist in the band for many years and the first couple years he got the gig and it was cool and we would hang out in between and sometimes I'd jam with them. And it got to a point where I really started opening up more and more and I said, and I just said to him, I said, hey, if they need someone on keys, let me know. And he said, just kind of looked at me and said, okay.
00:40:21
Speaker
I said, all right. Because I saw that there was a few different guys going in there. And I said, I don't know. Like, wait a minute. Maybe I can do this. So part of it was getting to a sense where I felt comfortable. I had that pot I was working on. I wanted to do more work. I wanted to get out there. I was excited.
Health and Routine on Tour
00:40:37
Speaker
I'd been in the city for a couple of years. And then that happened. And that was a big change. That was a big shift. I hadn't done something on that level. Yeah, you manifested it.
00:40:49
Speaker
And just while you bring that up, like how did you find, because now you're touring on a different level with Robert Randolph, like in the tour bus, like they're, you know, they're, they're doing at a, at a great level. Robert Randolph is obviously just insane, incredible. I love Robert Randolph. It's the first time I saw him to every single time I see him blows me away. I'm such a fan. And, um, how did you find touring?
00:41:19
Speaker
in terms of staying grounded and keeping your spiritual practice, whatever it is at the moment that you were touring and your health and fitness. How did you find you were able to navigate touring and balancing those worlds? That's a great question. I know in a lot of ways it's central to what these conversations are about here. There's a lot of things that come to mind.
00:41:50
Speaker
I'll just touch on a few different areas. One is sometimes, and this is a nuance, but sometimes when you're on tour, you don't have such good self service. But when that cell phone goes off, you don't have access to that cell phone.
00:42:02
Speaker
you sometimes can feel a lot healthier because you're not looking for every answer. You may be trying things out. You're maybe being a little more intuitive. You're connecting with who's around you. And it feels like how life used to be. And that can be a really good thing just as an offshoot of some of the inconvenience that happens when you're traveling a lot.
00:42:24
Speaker
Sometimes actually staying healthy and in shape as opposed to being difficult because the schedule is shifting around so much. Sometimes it's better because you're walking into a hotel room that's clean and there's a gym right upstairs and
00:42:42
Speaker
there's not a million different things in your house or your room that you can run to all these books. I've got this stack of papers. I've got these bills. I've got this computer. I've got that computer project. I've maybe your eyes. I don't, but maybe someone has a family or kids and there's all these different things. Yeah. You're saying sometimes the lack of distraction, um, of our home and New York city and everything we have going on here, that lack of distraction when you're on the road actually can help you be a little bit more focused on these things.
00:43:10
Speaker
Right, you walk into a room and say, oh, tell them there's nothing there. There's nothing there that you can even do with that stuff. So you do things, you say, okay, well, maybe I'll send an email or two from the Wi-Fi or whatever, and then, well, I guess I'll go to the gym and take a shower and have like a nice meal. You do the things you can do, and you feel good when you do them, and you don't feel
00:43:30
Speaker
not present or you don't feel like you're missing out or lacking on doing something else, because that's what the option is. That's what you're doing. And you're in a different environment. It's actually exciting. It's inspiring to say, I'm walking outside. I'm in some part of Texas. I'm going to walk across this highway and go to that burrito thing over there and see what that's like. And actually, sometimes the options aren't great for the diet and stuff like that. But you try to make it work. You try to work with what's there.
00:44:23
Speaker
For me, mornings on tour are really important. Really important thing for my well-being, mentally, physically, my whole vibe throughout the day. My mornings are crucial. I'm a morning guy. I'm a morning person. I'm a morning workout. I'm like the early bird gets the worm guy, for sure. So what do your mornings look like on tour?
00:44:49
Speaker
I definitely make sure I get a nice breakfast. I'm big into having a good breakfast and I'll go with the local breakfast. Sometimes at a hotel, there will be a continental breakfast and I'll try to make the healthiest thing that I can out of what's available. So in that sense, I'll be more pragmatic about it. But I've been vegetarian for almost eight years and sort of on the line between vegetarian and vegan.
00:45:11
Speaker
So let me ask you this, are you kind of waking up and having breakfast right away? Is that the first thing you do in the morning? Yeah, usually I'll wake up, have breakfast, and then go on the road. If I'm going to the gym or something like that, it's usually in downtime and somewhere in between. After soundcheck, before soundcheck. Exactly. Or maybe at night, maybe coming back from a show, or most likely it would be between soundcheck and the show, if there's enough time. Sometimes there's not.
00:45:40
Speaker
And I love doing that. I find when I'm exhausted and I've been on the road all day, we get there and we do load in and then there's the crew setting up the stage for an hour and a half.
00:45:52
Speaker
And everybody just goes and lies down on the couch and is like, ugh, I'm done. And I want to lie down too. Trust me, I'm like, oh, I'm beat. I could just lie down and chill and listen to a record right now or just practice for a minute. But then I'm like, you know what? The best thing for me to do right now is go run, go play tennis, just maybe go hit the gym, whatever, and get that blood flowing in my veins. And then I come back for sound check and I feel so much better. Totally.
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's great to do that and that's something that over the years, my brother for example has always been much more disciplined about his gym going and so I've been getting better and better at it and I definitely feel those gym visits in between Soundcheck and the show help and also I see sometimes the show I'm not against having a cup of tea, a cup of coffee, I see that as going to work.
00:46:45
Speaker
Going to a show that's when I have to perform it to be in my optimal, right? So if I feel a little tired, I Might just push it just a little bit. Yeah, you know to get over that edge. Maybe it's a long night or whatever just
00:46:58
Speaker
I don't, I like to watch the caffeine sort of thing. I don't like to overdo it because then you become addicted to that sort of alert, that kind of alertness. And I'm much more a type of a personality. I like to find the ways to do things that don't have so many side effects. I'm not going to run to the antibiotic counter unless I really feel like, okay, I need this or whatever. I'd rather figure out
00:47:24
Speaker
whether taking enough doses of olive oil pills is gonna help, and sometimes it does. You brought up the diet thing real quick. How did you get into being a vegetarian? You said eight years, so that's been a while. You were pretty young. What propelled you into that world? Honestly, there's a lot of good reasons or good things, but the ultimate reason that I just I could not really agree with is I see
00:47:51
Speaker
the animals, especially the animals that we eat most prominently as very intelligent species that have a sense of an emotional identity, they have the ability to connect with you and see you as another being, they experience
00:48:11
Speaker
life in a lot of ways that we do. There's less sort of abstract thinking and that sort of thing, but there's definitely our extended brothers and sisters. I mean, that's not even some sort of far out phrase. It's a legitimate reality. It's what it is. They are. And do you think that your meditation practice and your diving into Eastern philosophy
00:48:42
Speaker
Did that help you come to that realization, that conclusion about not eating animals and seeing the cruelty that was involved? Yeah, for sure. That was one of the things that all happened at once. In a way, there were a lot of changes, definitive changes that happened at once.
00:48:58
Speaker
at the point when I was a kid I saw an animal abuse video in my biology class the teacher showed us and it always something I look back on and I think it had something to do you could say it's traumatizing but that stuck with you but it stuck with me and it was it was just clear that okay this happens and then it wasn't very much different than what really does happen on a mass scale so rationally it was not maybe some of that stuff was the extreme versions but yeah this this is what's happening there's a lot of they're completely there's a complete lack of
00:49:27
Speaker
recognition that these are beings, you know, they're not they're not products, they're actually they're beings, life, being similar in a lot of ways to us, and they're not treated that way. So it was that it was really a voice against it. But I saw that and then, and I being Indian, I always enjoyed Indian food and vegetarian food. So the transition didn't feel like the stuff I enjoyed the most was available.
00:49:50
Speaker
later in the curries and I like this stuff the most anyway so it wasn't that hard. My dad has some heart problems because Indians in a lot of ways they have thinner blood vessels and certain enzymes that don't break down beef. Nobody eats beef there. So I stopped eating beef a little less and then gradually it just started moving in that direction and then when I got
00:50:12
Speaker
There was the beginning of 2009, I really started meditating a lot. Those few years there where things were getting really intense with that. And I just made a lot of changes all at once. I was having these new experiences. I just stopped eating meat. I stopped cursing. I was celibate for a period of time. I think there was a few more things I did that were really zoning in. I was basically living that kind of lifestyle. But I was here in the city. I was pursuing music for those years.
00:50:42
Speaker
But then I sort of evened out and now I've cursed. No, but I don't eat meat. I still don't eat meat. And was there any particular books or documentaries that helped you along your way of kind of learning A, how to eat vegetarian or reinforcing reasons and inspiring you to continue to live that lifestyle?
00:51:12
Speaker
Funny enough, it was one of those things for me that just was so convincing. I never really needed the external... I need those on other things that inspire you in a lot of areas of life. But for being vegetarian, it just seems so obvious at a certain point for me. I said, that's it. I'm just not going to do it. I don't need to...
00:51:33
Speaker
Definitely the things that are most inspiring are just eating great vegan foods. Go to a restaurant that specializes in vegan food and sit down and eat that food and you realize this is great, this is the best. Eat live, raw vegetables, you know, and get that experience and you're gonna feel great. Yeah. And that's gonna tell you right there you're doing something good.
00:52:29
Speaker
You're going through this pretty... I don't want to say radical because that almost has...
00:52:35
Speaker
a stigma and connotations, but you're going through a pretty intense life experience. You say you're like going celibate, you're meditating. Stop drinking and drugs. Stop drinking. Like you're going through a pretty intense transitional period of learning and experiential period. You're still playing all the time. And I'm wondering if that affected your playing and if you saw changes in your playing. Yeah.
00:53:01
Speaker
Well, one particular book that helped meld together some of that stuff with the music stuff for me was Kenny Werner's book, Effortless Master Animal. You're familiar with it. A lot of people are familiar with it. It came up in the last podcast and I pulled it back out yesterday. Actually, my little one, she's just somehow worked her way to the bookshelf and pulled it out and I was like, oh, wow.
00:53:23
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. That's maybe a sign. And I went for a lesson with him. Nice. And that was really interesting because he's very intuitive. And I only went for one because it was more of an assessment of myself to be better as a human being.
00:53:44
Speaker
Yeah. Also a musician. It wasn't really the kind of lesson and the kind of wisdom that you need to have every week, for example. It was more about how you can be the person that can learn what you need to learn and pay attention to the things that are going on and where you want to go with that and learning how to focus on small things and be OK with focusing on things.
Intuitive Music Learning and Expression
00:54:09
Speaker
that are big smaller parts of a bigger picture that ultimately you can do but like the flexibility coming in sometimes it's not okay I see this big picture so I need to paint each line like this horizontally moving up nobody paints like that so it's almost like that you say well you want me to paint this picture this this beautiful horse well
00:54:32
Speaker
how do I do that with this one brush with this one color but then you just make the outline of the horse and you just learn that one color and you say oh actually that that got a lot done and that that looks a lot like the big thing so music sometimes
00:54:49
Speaker
you say I don't want to learn other licks and stuff but you study maybe maybe learn like one little lick that somebody that you hear a lot of guys do and you say I don't want to do that because everybody's doing that lick but then you learn the lick you say oh that's actually what the lick is once you do it you understand something about it why it's that way
00:55:07
Speaker
what notes it goes to, maybe what bigger scale it's part of, how it maybe outlines a chord or doesn't, in what way, and in what relationship to other chords, and sort of how that lick might show up under different colored chords or different keys imposed, or
00:55:26
Speaker
All these different ways you can look at one single lick, how you can transpose the lick, and maybe how that starts accidentally showing up when you're playing. But you're not going to play it exactly like that all the time. But it starts interacting with other licks and other things. And you realize, OK, that's what learning is. In a lot of ways, you can learn what comes from the outside. We can learn, I think this is where the meditation and music kind of come together. We can learn things because we hear them.
00:55:53
Speaker
and we copy them, or even unconsciously we copy them on some level, or we can try to be as theoretically intuitive as possible and sit there with our instrument and just allow stuff to happen.
00:56:09
Speaker
and allow ourselves to play things that maybe we don't like what it's going to sound like or what's going to happen but we just put our fingers or whatever we play our hands in places or our voices whatever it is and let things happen and
00:56:26
Speaker
that's whether that's coming from things we've heard or whether that's some something deep within us already it almost doesn't matter at that point because it's just that we're coming from that place that's free and we're expressing something in that way that
00:56:45
Speaker
Maybe is actually detached from in a lot of ways whether we like it or not because there's two ways to do that you do that and you can kind of Allow your opinion to kind of judge where to go next and we spend 95% of the time playing that way if not 99% of the time and if not all the time but the other way to and that's fine, but the other way to do that is to do that free expression and And feel how uncomfortable certain parts are until
00:57:14
Speaker
you're okay with it, maybe sit with it, maybe just keep doing uncomfortable or let it keep flowing and just learn to be with that uncomfort and maybe it doesn't feel uncomfortable anymore or maybe it feels, maybe you hear something in there or maybe you start understanding why you don't like it.
00:57:29
Speaker
Is it, what is it about that dissonance that's quote unquote too much for you? You're touching on like opinions and stripping those away and I think that's tied up in fear. There's an element of fear and opinions. Absolutely. I can see the picture you're painting of going through the experiences that you're going through with meditation and just connecting that with the intuitive aspect of playing and really freeing yourself of the fear
00:57:56
Speaker
to judge yourself and being open to just sort of jump off that cliff. And being like totally cool with whatever happens. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. And I think there's definitely a line between doing that in a safe space. Maybe it's you in your room or a jam session, that whatever.
00:58:18
Speaker
or doing it when there's 1,000 people on stage, and how do you do it there? And that's where we come into those so-called paradoxes and say, OK, I can be free, but maybe I'll set certain boundaries that fit with what the expectations are. And there's healthy expectations of the other musicians or of the audience. And that's, I think, where the musician normally navigates. How much are you poking those lines of those expectations?
00:58:46
Speaker
If people are really responsive, and the crowd is really responsive, and everyone is in that kind of space, who knows where this thing can go? And that can be, you can be completely. I mean, that's, there's a lot of projects and a lot of history with that those things happening. Right? Yeah. But that's Coltrane and Myles Band, like you can exactly what I think. Totally.
00:59:22
Speaker
I just want to talk about if you have goals that you're working towards, whether it's on your spiritual path or maybe that's antithetical to even your spiritual path to even think about goals, but are musically
00:59:40
Speaker
If you have that mentality where you think about big goals or incremental goals, or is it more about discovering the process and working your way? I definitely have goals and yes, there is a daily process and reacting things, but similarly what I, uh, the way I was looking at the clay pot, the goals are, are important personally for me. Those goals are,
01:00:09
Speaker
in terms of their spiritual layer, it is how is that sense of service, the optimal service, the utmost service that I can possibly give while in the earth going to happen through this mode that I feel so positive about. And that mode is music.
01:00:34
Speaker
And specifically, the music that I'm going to create, that I want to make on my own, is the thing that's so natural. And that's the way I can naturally be at my best. So I know that that's the space that I can cultivate the most pure stuff that I can share.
01:00:54
Speaker
And when I have created and put my energy and I share it, I know that I'm giving somebody something I really care about. And if I care about it, I think that someone, maybe not everybody, of course not everybody. But to some people, they're going to feel what that is in their way. And sometimes it's tough with music because it's so particular to each person. And you don't always know how someone is receiving it.
01:01:23
Speaker
It's not like making a piece of bread and giving it to somebody. It's just so that's so tangible. Music is a language. It's a communication. It creates a certain kind of experience for people, for yourself and for others. So I want to create all those authentic experiences. And the way I can create those most is with the music that I have the inspiration to create.
01:01:46
Speaker
I love freelancing and playing with different artists for sure and you learn that way and it's a communal experience. But the goal for me is to keep creating the music that I'm inspired to create and share that with people in the highest, best level that can possibly be done. And that's the path that keeps me inspired.
01:02:06
Speaker
I saw a movie not too long ago about Nelson Mandela, seeing every phrase he would say and how he would respond to challenges, where most of us would see it as, oh, well, that's not going to work, or just move on from there, ignore that, or just work with that difficulty, and transform the perspective in the way this movie presented it, makes you ask yourself,
01:02:28
Speaker
Wow, look at what this person is doing and being able to bring that positivity to so many people in such a big way, that's inspiring. You want to do that. Does that mean I have to be a politician or something? I did a lot of work in that field. Do I have to go there again? I don't know, maybe later when I'm older, but I don't know. But the point is I realize that that's about creating a
01:02:58
Speaker
A voice that you know is true and feeling the fluency to express it and that happens amazingly through music.
Music as a Medium for Service and Positive Change
01:03:24
Speaker
talking about goals and you basically were saying that music is your medium to create positive change and we are blessed that you know music is our world because we have a very powerful medium but I like that you you connected it with the with that story because I think at the end of the day it's about everyone trying to find their medium right Nelson Mandela he didn't need music to effectively
01:03:53
Speaker
communicate and create positive change. All he needed was his voice and his ideas. And who knows what people are going to find as their canvas to create positive change.
01:04:06
Speaker
Having that be a goal would really benefit the world if a lot of people could really start becoming aware of, how can I find my way of expressing myself to create positive change? Not everyone's going to be a musician. Not everyone's most effective way is going to be music.
01:04:27
Speaker
It's a goal that is specific to you, but also can be inspirational to anyone. I think so. And I think it's a litmus test is how and or when do I feel positive? It's that simple. When I do this thing, do I feel positive? When I do that thing, do I feel positive? So it might be a.
01:04:47
Speaker
a conglomeration of this activity you really like and having this kind of diet and having this sort of friendships that you're cultivating or partner and you have all these things and all of a sudden it feels like a holistic, positive life. So you might say, well, I feel positive when I have a beer, but it's also over time. Well, do I feel positive when I have 15 beers every day? No, I don't.
01:05:13
Speaker
It's not only when do I feel positive, but how do I live a life? How do I balance that? It's all about balance, finding the balance of all of these things. And I think that's what really creates positivity. That's what creates health. Not to judge anyone in the choices they've made, but if you're
01:05:31
Speaker
going hardcore weightlifting but ignoring other aspects of health, it might not be that balanced. If you're going super vegan guy but you're maybe avoiding other aspects of mental, spiritual fitness, there's still elements that might be out of balance that might not make you the quote unquote most healthy person and at the end of the day, you know,
01:05:53
Speaker
having the ability to live a healthy, happy life and create the most positive situation for yourself. Yeah, it's true. All right, brother. I'm really appreciative you took the time to come over here. And I think this was deep, Adam Ahuja on the Torganic podcast.
01:06:10
Speaker
David Billis, I'm really grateful that you had me here. And it reminds me of just sitting down. One time I sat down with a bunch of friends when I lived in Germany. And I remember we were in this coffee house in Berlin for, I think, seven hours, just chatting.
01:06:27
Speaker
and maybe more, maybe nine. It was crazy. And having these conversations, I have to thank you for setting this up because these are important in the rush of life to sit down and kind of delve into what's going on. Before we wrap up, just for the
01:06:43
Speaker
The people out there, can you just share some links where people can keep up with you, your music, whether it's Adam Ahuja, the flow down, all the ways that people want to stay up with you, whether it's social media, just tell us where to find you, man. For sure. So my website, adamahujja.com, the Facebook music page and my Facebook page, I'll post what's going on, shows coming up, stuff like that. Instagram, I have Huj Approach, H-U-J Approach.
01:07:12
Speaker
Those are the main avenues I use and I'm going to be releasing this visual album next year with a lot of music so I'm really excited about that. So that'll be on those channels. We did have the Flowdown record out this year with Ropodope in the spring. I've been spending a lot of years combining that record together with some really great friends in the city that we've had for quite a time.
01:07:33
Speaker
We're very happy with that album called World Speak. And there's a lot of other projects on the road now with Anna Popovich, Blue's guitar player. So on her website, there's all the North American stuff and non-European stuff I'm basically doing. There's a new record out with a group called Escaper out of Brooklyn that's coming out early next year. That's a very interesting, different kind of sound. Cool. That's the music thing. All right, thanks, brother. Playing with you here and there, playing with different people. So it's all good, yeah.
01:08:03
Speaker
Right on. Thank you, Adam. Peace, man. Take care, brother.
01:08:09
Speaker
Big thanks to Adam for coming through and sharing so much great insight. Be sure to check him out, and thanks to you guys, my listeners. Please subscribe and comment on the show in iTunes, and come visit me at the Torganic blog and my Instagram page where I give regular updates of how I live healthy on the road. Through my daily fitness where I'm training for three triathlons in the next month and a half, eating a plant-based vegan diet, and just staying positive out there. Until next time, peace.