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This is Time Signatures with Jim Irvin, a podcast and radio program presented by the Capitol Area Blues Society in Lansing, Michigan. Most any contemporary musical style can trace its roots back to the blues. Time Signatures explores the blues and its musical connections with captivating interviews, lively discussions and news from the world of the blues. And now, here he is, your host, Jim Irvin.

Well, thank you so much, Parker, and welcome to Time Signatures. I'm your host, Jim Irvin, and we're excited to welcome today's guest. The great Muddy Waters once said that everyone takes the blues where you find it, but it's up to you to pick it up and move it further down the road. Now, that's not just words to our guest this evening. He takes this very seriously. But he's not just an accomplished touring blues musician. No, sir. This guy is also a studio musician. He's a scorer of movies and TV shows, a painter, an incredible artist with several adult coloring books to his credit, and a celebrity counselor at Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. Now, there's a lot more to lay out here. Let's just cut to the chase and welcome our guest, Michigan native and now Floridian transplant Rusty Wright and his lovely wife Lori. Thank you both for joining us on Time Signatures. How are you?

Great. Thanks for having us.

Rusty. I have to dig right in here because there's so much ground to cover. I want to have you talk about your start in music. What got you started and where did you go once you started rolling with it?

Oh, well, I actually was born into a very musical family on my mother's side. She was a really great singer, actually used to sing opera when she was in college. And her and all those ladies would be at the house around the piano working on those, you know, four part harmonies and all those, you know, classical pieces. And when I was a little infant, so I was hearing music and harmony and melody, you know, from the very day one. And then later on, she started a very successful Southern gospel group called temples in the 60s. She actually tried to dissuade me from being a musician. She was like, you're not going to be one of those. I deal with them. And she was against it. But finally she relented because, you know, she knew I had the. I had the spark and there was nothing going to stop me because, I mean, when I was a kid, she wouldn't buy me a guitar at first because she thought it was a phase. And so I cut grass and did, you know, odd jobs around the neighborhood until I had enough money to go buy this horrible piece of junk, garage sale. Because I didn't know. I just thought it looked cool.

Yeah, you thought it looked cool and.

Yeah. So I brought it home, and my mom was irritated at first. And she picked it up and played on it a little bit. She was like, no, you go ahead. She realized that the action was so high and so stiff on this guitar. She thought for sure I'd give up and never, you know. Well, I worked my fingers to the bone, to the point where they actually did bleed a couple of times. Just so hard to press those strings down. But I finally got three chords to come out of the thing and sound decent. And she finally looked at my dad and said, oh, he's not gonna quit. My first gig, my first official gig, was playing in her backup band. She said, if you're gonna be a musician, you're gonna be in the backup band, where I can keep my eye on you. You know, being a Michigander, I was surrounded by all the Motor City stuff and all the. Oh, yeah, the 70s rock guys. But my dad was a real lover of music. He couldn't play, but he loved music. Had a big record collection. So I had all the Chess record, the Southern, you know, soul and stuff that. That he had collected, you know, as he was growing up. And I would listen to all that stuff all the time. So I tell people I'm a creature of extremes, you know, from one side of the country to the other.

Well, I love that you've never forgotten your blues roots right here in the state of Michigan. And from what I gather, you guys work hard to get up here every year, don't you?

Yeah.

Yeah. Except for the COVID years. That put a big monkey wrench in everything for a while. But now we. We do our very best to go out every year and travel across the country and see everybody back, you know, in Michigan during the summer months.

I want to talk about your brand of the blues, Rusty, because you're not the cookie cutter blues guy, are you?

No, I mean, you know, blessing. Yeah, it's. It's a. It's.

I like her.

It's a harder row to hoe than when you want to try to do things and be a little experimental and a little innovative. Because, you know, not to be rude or anything. God bless people that love blues, you know, foundation. But sometimes they end up building a barrier to people who are just basically trying to take it farther down the road. Because they, you know, they're afraid that somehow something will be lost. And that's not really, you know, the case you can't stick the blues in a box. It'll just. It'll wither and die. You know, you gotta let people do what they wanna do with it because there's so much expression in it and there's so much music out there now that's. People are far more sophisticated listeners than they've been in the past. You know, before you only had your local radio station and whatever records you and your friends managed to find at the local record store. Now you go on the Internet. You can find music from anywhere in the world, any style, any genre, anything. So giving them interesting little twists and throwing in some cool little, you know, left turns in the music is just. It's fun. It's. And. And people get a K kick out of it.

They.

They like the, you know, the harmonies and that. Maybe there's a little bit of an edge here that's kind of on the rocky side. Maybe there's a little southern soul thing on this side. And some of the songs that I write, like Last Days of Whitey Malone is actually almost, you know, a little bit on the progressive rock side because of all the changes. Even though we're doing things that are very traditional, swing, jazz, blues, it's still because of all the time changes and the, you know, the, the key change modulations and stuff. Yeah, it's. It' almost progressive at, you know, at

the same time, there's no defining that one.

I, I like the fact that, you know, there's so many musicians out there that are like you that are saying, I'm going to play what I'm going to play. Joe Bonamassa being a good example. Even Buddy Guy is not a straight blues guy anymore. He mixes a little bit of everything in there. I think that it's. It's kind of indicative of, as you said, the listener becoming more educated and being a lot more savvy than they used to be. They demand a little bit more. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, definitely. I think that the. Giving people something cool and that's a surprise, you know, that they're not expecting. You look at a crowd at a place and they're all tuned out and they're looking at their phone. It's not because the band is bad. It's because the band is just playing it safe and doing stuff that they've heard a thousand times before. So they' not surprised and they're not engaged. But you give them a little shock value for a second. You know, throw something at them with all kinds of wild twists and Turns and cool, you know, playing and really, you know, extreme, exceptional, you know, style playing and stuff. And, you know, slowly but surely, I. When we play, I watch the eyes and I watch the head start to pop up. And it's like. It's almost like they wake up and go, hey, what the. What was that?

And it's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea. There's people who wanna eat ramen noodles every day or steak every day, and that's all they want.

And that's fine, that's them.

But we just like mixing it up a little more. And I think most people appreciate that.

Laurie, I have to tell you, I've got a very good friend. We argue about the blues all the time. And I joke with him. I call him a blues snob because he loves the blues. He loves the straight down the line, rough edge, muddy, gritty blues. And that's okay. And I. I've told him, we don't have to agree. You don't have to like my brand of the blues. I don't have to like yours. I happen to like yours because I like a little bit of everything. But I think that, you know, that it. It lends itself when you. When you start talking to blues aficionados these days, that they do enjoy the mix. And, I mean, I was looking at Bonamas followers on Facebook. It's like hundreds of thousands. So don't tell me that he doesn't have a following. There's at least almost a million followers of his on Facebook alone.

I used to come up to Flint and play at a little place called the Bauer Theater. He would play and there would be a dozen people. The first time, yeah. But the next time he came back, there'd be 20 or 30. The next time he came back, there'd be 50.

And he was renting out that theater. Every time he wasn't coming in for a paycheck, they were paying for the theater and just building the old school way, which is really hard these days. It's almost impossible to do now.

Finding the venues in the first place that can rent to you, that you can do the shows is getting harder because a lot of them are closing down. Then the prices that they want are exorbitant. Everything's gone up in price. But then on top of that, people, once again, because of the Internet, because of streaming and all the other services out there, it's getting harder to get folks motivated to want to invest the money in a ticket. When I was coming up, everybody was always searching for new Music all the time. Me and my friends. The first thing we did when we got, you know, got our allowance or our first paychecks was run down to the local mall and hit the record stores and see what had just come

out, you know, Columbia Record Club.

I. I gotta ask you a question, Rusty. When you guys came up to play at TC's place in Napoleon, when you guys were on your way up, you stopped at Sweetwater. Your wife made you do something, didn't she? Tell that story, man.

Well, we were. We were on the road, you know, we were coming up to Michigan and stuff, and. But we had a little time to kill and, you know, we'd never seen the main Sweetwater sound complex there, but we went to check it out. That's. I. You know, I was really just amazed at all the stuff they had there. So I'm wandering around, you know, looking at stuff and. And, you know, made my way through the recordings, gear and other stuff and then finally headed over to the guitars and some thinking, yeah, they got all the standard stuff, you know, no big thing. And when I got in there, I was looking around and. And lo and behold, my eye catches this Les Paul that's got that slightly different headstock. And I thought, oh, God, what is that? And I went over and looked, and it was a heritage.

It was funny because he walked through the door and he just looked around and then he went, me, me, me,

me, me, me, me, me.

And zeroed in on that, and to the wall he went. And I thought, oh, here we go.

Well, I don't buy a ton of guitars. I have a nice little collection, but they're all guitars that I have found that really are something sweet and special and click with me, you know, I don't just buy guitars to buy gu that. I want guitars that really feel good and really reach inside me when I play them. And I got that guitar out, and as soon as I picked it up, I mean, I've always loved that guitar, I started playing it and I was like, oh, expletive, which I'm trying not to say out loud, beep. And I plugged it into a nice amp, you know, and started noodling around and it was just, like, instantaneous.

His eyes just started to glow. And I pulled my credit card out of my back pocket. I went, oh, just go buy it. Just go get it. You know, it's coming home with us. I can tell by the look on your face.

And I have to tell you, you have to go to their website and you have to scroll down and look at the Blues Blast magazine article now. I was there that night. I shot pictures of the first time he played that guitar in a concert. And all I can say is the. The pure delight, the childlike wonder in your face. It was like Christmas morning. It really was.

And when I kick out of that, too, that night.

Yeah. And when I expressed that to Lori and I showed her the picture, she goes, oh, my God, look at his face. And I said, yeah. So it. It did my heart good because I was able to capture a moment that, to me, was. Was just something that you don't see all the time. And it's wonderful to see that kind of response in the face of a musician.

That's one of my favorite pictures of him ever.

Thank you.

Where he's just grinning in that denim shirt. Yeah.

Yep. Rusty, I. I want to flip the page here a little bit because you've got some great stories, man. And I wanted to get these stories preserved here. Talk about opening for Leonard Skynyrd. That was like a once in a lifetime thing for you, wasn't it?

That was very, very unique, unexpected. I decided I was fed up with all the metal and rock scene stuff.

And you and I have been playing just.

Yeah, we'd been playing together as a duo kind of thing and enjoying working on the harmonies and stuff. I'd always told myself that I was gonna play the blues. If I hit 40 and I was still alive and kicking, I was gonna play music that I loved.

And that was what I wanted to do, too, for many years and never had anybody to work with that liked that type of music.

But we had decided to do it work, start working on the blues band. Seriously. And we had just gotten our first. Very first lineup together, and we had been working on song, working on original when writing, you know, material for first album. And I decided, okay, we need to go out and play in front of a crowd and see what kind of reaction we get, See if people like what we're doing, we're on the right course. And so we played this little barbecue joint. It wasn't a lot of people. I mean. I mean, we had a good crowd, but it was a small place. Yeah. But we got a really good, you know, reception, really good vibe from it. We thought, okay, cool. This is a good start. So our very first gig, you know, as with the new blues, Rusty, right band, is at a little barbecue joint in front of about 50 people. They had a nice night. Everything went well.

Nobody threw anything. It was a good day in showbiz.

So I decided, okay, I guess I'll start contacting, you know, my friends and other people I know in the industry and let them know that I've got a new thing, you know, and that I'm looking to get some stuff rolling. I hadn't even started to dial the phone yet when I get this phone call from an agent friend of mine who had heard that I had a new band and she had just had a cancellation. She says, I just had a cancellation by the opener for Leonard Skynyrd. I heard you had up a new act. Can you do it? And it's like a week away, you know, I'm like, what's the date? And it turned out it was June 9th, which is our anniversary.

It was our third anniversary.

Yeah. And Lori had made me promise that year. In fact, she said, we're always working on our anniversary. We're always working on all our holidays. This year, when you promised me don't book anything on our anniversary.

I didn't think it was going to be a tough thing because it was a Wednesday night.

So I actually told the agent, I said, okay, you got to give me two minutes. I got to call somebody. I got to make sure that everyone's okay. And she's like, are you kidding? I said, no, no, please bear with me. I gotta do this now, but I'll be right back. She said, okay, don't wait. Don't make me wait long. Okay, I'll be right back. So then I call Lori and say I start off with a hey, I know I promised that I wouldn't book anything. And she's like, you know, she's already instantly chewing my ear and I'm, no, no, no, listen to me. This is totally up to you. It's your decision. We can go out and have a fantastic, marvelous anniversary dinner with all the trimmings and spend a beautif. And just relax and enjoy ourselves and have a nice time. Or we could open for Leonard Skinnered in front of a sold out audience at the Cloud Amphitheater. And I held the phone back as the squealing started. And I'm like, in between her screaming, I'm like, that's a yes, right?

Gotta call you back.

Yeah. And I called the agent bag and said, yeah, we're on. Good to go. And she's like, oh, thank God. All right, great.

Day of the show.

It's tornado season. So the weather is crap and everything is like touch and go. They might cancel the show if there's a tornado touchdown.

They spent the whole day down Underneath the facility.

Finally, like, I don't know, half hour, hour before showtime, they get the all clear to go for it.

And so it's still pouring rain. Yeah, it's still storming. But they decided to go ahead with the show because 4,000 people were sitting there and nobody was leaving.

Yeah, they all came. They're all covered in bisque rain gear, but they're not moving. They are there to see a show. Wow. So at the last second, you know, the skies start to clear up. Everything is cool. They fly the trusses. They hadn't even flown the lighting trusses because they weren't sure if they were going to be able to until the last second. So big chain motors, crank everything up. The big light top goes up. You know, everything's ready to go. And we go up there and hit the stage, do our thing. Now we've got 30 minutes, and I'm playing in front of Leonard Skynyrd, who have three of the. Some of the best guitar players there are. I'm thinking, okay, we gotta go for broke. I gotta hit him with everything I got, or this audience is gonna just, you know, eat us alive. And so we threw down with an instrumental that I had just written called Hell on My Heels. That's, you know, real guitar driven, crazy stuff. And it worked out great. Audience loved it, started cheering. Next thing you know, they're digging it. They're having it. We're getting a real good response. Really good response. The Skinner guys were downstairs in their dressing rooms, and they said they heard all that roaring and. And applause and stuff and decided they needed to go find out what the hell's happening upstairs. And I look over to my right as I'm standing on stage playing. And there on stage, right behind the big curtains, is all three guitar players with their arms crossed.

I saw him first, and I look at Rusty and I'm like, yeah, yeah.

She walks over and stops her head, and I look over and it's like, oh, my God. I'm thinking to myself, this is either really good or really, really bad.

And.

And it ended up being great.

But I swear, I was so nervous about that. We finished the show. Thank you, good night. Got a standing ovation. I ran off the other direction to the other side of the stage.

He was afraid they were gonna drag.

I'd set up in the wrong place or done something. Yeah. Oh, wow. Just trying to pack my guitar up and, you know, the road crew's grabbing the gear and stuff. And I look and there's all three guitar players walking down the causeway behind the stage that. Where nobody can see.

They pretty irritated at that point because they had to go all the way back around through the building, all the way around.

But they did. They came over there to that side of the. Of the thing, and Ricky Medlock himself walked right up to me and grabbed my hand and pumped it and said, dude, where the hell did you come from? And we were pals after that. I mean, it was. We spent. They said, stick around. They invited us back to the dressing room and all that good stuff. We got to hang out and see the show and hang out with Lynyrd Skynyrd. And it was just one of those unbelievably perfect days.

Yeah, it was all right.

I usually ask my. My musician friends to give me their best story and their worst story, and you had both of them on your website. So I'm going to ask you about this. I would like you to detail the Armed Forces tour in South Korea. Would you share that story that.

That came about again through that song, Hell on My Heels? There was a podcaster out of California named Mike Yousse, and he had a lot of listeners that were over in Iraq and Afghanistan, all through there, and they were downloading his podcast.

He was a supporter of ours. He liked the music a lot, so

he played us constantly. And so he told us that the guys had written to him and said they had downloaded that song and they were using it when they would go out on patrol outside of the Green Zone. They were blasting that as they went through the gates.

Yeah, the gates fly open. They come out really fast because they never know if their insurgents would be on the other side with a rocket launcher or whatever. So they would pick a song that was really scary and aggressive, and they would pump it loud as hell through the sound systems that they had mounted on the jeeps and the vehicles. And they'd come tearing out of there with this, and they would. They started off with that song of ours, Hell on My Heels, because it's got this crazy, wild, guitar screaming guitar intro thing.

Once we heard that, we said, we've got to go play for him.

Let's go. Yeah, we looked into it and bombed the Armed Forces entertainment.

Yeah, we went over there and we did what, nine shows? I think we only had one day off.

The schedule was really.

Oh, travel that. It was travel that was included in that. There were flights and things like that.

The schedule was incredible. It was brutal. You know, it's basically. They run it like a military operation. So they've got you. You Know, your day is worked out down to the minute, and if you're

over 25, oh my gosh, we were exhausted. But it was great. It was a fabulous experience.

Yeah, I love playing for the guys over there, you know, and it was really amazing and, and seeing, you know, South Korea and Seoul is bigger than New York City, you know, and it's just imme.

Yeah.

And seeing all the different cultures and stuff in Japan, of course, you know, seeing all the marvelous things and meeting all the people was definitely, definitely fantastic.

That's amazing. One more question for you before we wrap up here. I mean, this. This interview has just been an incredible amount of fun. I have to ask you about your 2022 concept album, hanging at the Deville Lounge. Now, having lived in Flint in the early 80s, I'm eager to hear more about the backstory on this.

Well, the Deville was a real place. It was a shop bar, but it was in there for ages. You know, there'd been entire decades of people who had lived and died and had come through that bar. And, you know, every town has them. Yeah. And the thing about it that I always liked was that they were always. They had a great sense of humor. I remember, you know, there was a shop on one corner, the Deville across the street, and a little church on the opposing corner. And the church pastor, the Deville, was, you know, they were noted for partying quite excessively. In fact, a lot of times after 2 o', clock, when they were supposed to be closed, they just locked the doors and people would keep on drinking.

We can say that now it's closed.

Yeah, people would keep on drinking in there till dawn and then they'd wander out, you know, on Sunday morning. They had a takeout license, so they would leave with lots of beer cans and other stuff. The pastor got irritated finally because he kept finding, you know, empty beer cans and cigarette butts all over the lawn, the front lawn of the church, you know, because they'd be roaming around all across the, you know, the intersection there. So he finally got himself, you know, one of those little lighted signs. You wheel out to the front, start putting their little slogans on. And, you know, he. He put on his. And faced it right at the deville and said, come to church, sinners. Well, sinners welcome. He thought he was being cool and clever and facing it right at the Deville and all those people that went there. So the guy at the Deville bought one of those signs and put it up on his roof with all the lights and flashing stuff on There. And he puts on his sign, sitters welcome here too. And we have beer

in our minds. It was all kind of a mixture of places that we've been to over the years. There are places that just leave an impression.

It's basically the album pays homage to all those marvelous little places like that, the incubator for all of the music that happens all through the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s. You know, it was guys plying their trade in these little tiny places like that that held 50 people or so.

And it just feels like it permeates the walls.

Yeah.

You know, that music, that vibe, the spirit that's in there and the people who are true music lovers, ones who follow it, that it's like a religion to them. They're always going to the next show and looking for the next show. They feel it instantly when they walk through the doors of those places. Places like Bradfordville Blues Club in Tallahassee.

Oh, yeah, same thing. Yeah. I mean, well, so basically the hanging at the Deville Lounge is just my paying homage to that, to that beautiful little incubator of all those clubs across the United States that were the place where all the music came from.

You know, and there's drama and, you know, people live their lives in those environments and. Yeah, so there's. There's drama and sadness and love and

all kinds of everything you could think of. Life passes those walls.

Life in general.

Well, as we come to a close, I want to ask you, where can listeners and viewers go to find out more about the Rusty Wright Band? Where can we find the music, the coloring books? Where can they go for this?

Well, the main website is rustyrightband.com and, you know, that's W R I G H t. Right. So rustyrightband.com is the main site where you can find our music, find, see more videos, see all our press stuff. You can buy the coloring books there. You can buy T shirts and our, you know, albums, whatever you like.

Well, Rusty and Lori, it has been a pleasure to talk to you and have you on the program. Of course, you know, if you guys put something out in the future, reach out. We would love to have you back and thank you again for. For being here with us. We appreciate it and to our listeners, but we want to thank you all for being here. Jim Irvin reminding you, keeping the blues alive, well, that's our goal. But preserving the history of the blues one story at a time, that's my mission.

This has been Time Signatures with Jim Irvin, presented by the Capital Area Blues society in Lansing, Michigan. For more information on CABS, visit capitalareablues.org you can find this episode and past episodes@lccconnect.org the time signature theme song Michigan Roads is used by permission and was written by Root Doctor featuring Freddie Cunningham. Until next time, keep on keeping the

blues alive sharing the Voices of Lansing Community College. Visit us@lccconnect.org LCC Connect Voices vibes Vision. K12 operations at Lansing Community College has been a proud collaborator of the Lansing

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So much waiter on me.

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it's time

for Stars on Sports, a podcast radio show dedicated to sharing stories about our athletic program at Lansing Community College.

LCC athletics has a strong tradition. 24 national championship wins over 170 all

Americans 19 MCC AA aka all sports trophies.

Stardon Sports will introduce you to individuals that have contributed to our program's success and give you the backstory on what it takes to develop it.

We'll also dive into and break down the topics and issues facing athletic departments across the nation. And right here at lcc, this is Stardon Sports.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Stars on Sports. I'm joined today by our assistant athletic director, Steven Cutter and our producer, Dadalion Lowry. And gentlemen, today we're going to be talking about the light blood of an athletic administrator's job and that coaching our coaching staff. And you know, I got into this business because I had great coaches growing up that had a significant impact on me and were very influential. And being a leader of coaches, they inspire me every day. And you know, when I have a coaches meeting, I always put the quote by Billy Graham on the bottom of it. A coach impacts more people in a year than most people do in a lifetime. And you know, coaches always surpr when I think I get to know them, they might go a different direction, but for the most part, they are who they are and their strengths are what make them be successful. So I wanted to kind of talk about that because I listened to a lot of leadership podcasts and obviously some of the same characteristics that a successful CEO or a successful president of a bank has are the same characteristics that. That successful coaches have. And the other neat thing about leadership and especially in coaching staffs is there's different ways of doing things. It just, you know, every coach is different and you know, it just what works for them and they can be successful by being who they are instead of everyone has to be a model or of the, of the same mode. And you know, I'd hire a lot of coaches over my career and, and I revamped my list of what I'm looking for and we'll talk about that through this podcast.

The list, yeah, I gotta find it

in my pile here. I might have forgot it actually, but it's here nor there. I know it. Old school paper. I am that post its we've been joking about post its in my office or last week how many I hey, I do that. So yeah, so you know, but it's evolved. But some of them have stayed true. You know, in my previous job at a lower level of athletic competition, one of the main premises was if a coach could communicate and was organized, they could be successful because of the audience they were dealing with. But I truly believe that's kind of true for every leadership, especially communication, because I learned a long time ago communication is at the root of all problems, and it solves all problems. So my previous level two, I looked for English teachers because they had a background in communication. So I thought English teachers made great coaches. But in that same sense, teachers made great coaches. Coaches are teachers. That's what it boiled down to. I saw an article a couple years ago that really stuck with me. I loved it. Is when you look back at the word coach, in the old days, it was a carriage that took people from one place to the next, and that's what coaches do. Taking student athletes from one place to the next. I think it's a very fitting word. So, coach, Any initial thoughts on coaching? Coaching characteristics? I'd like to talk about head coaching, assistant coaching and that, but again, I just like some general things, and that was kind of the direction we head in leadership.

Yeah. I think I certainly am excited to dive into this a little bit and trying to completely understand the direction you want to go with it. But I believe there are strong parallels between athletics and the business world and CEOs and presidents and everything else. There are very strong characteristics. I like the. The initial understanding that a coach was taking people from one place to another. There's also the piece of it that sometimes there's just not enough room on that carriage to get everybody to where they need to go. And so there's. There's that whole world there as well.

Well, yeah, and I. And I think the. Dalian, I'll get to you in a second. I think most coaches do a great job of getting as many people on that carriage to. To that next place. What about you, Dalian? Even in, you know, I think of you in music all the time for some reason, but in the music world, you know, what are your thoughts?

I mean, it comes down to leadership, really, is what you're talking about. And I. To me, it just seems like there's been quite a bit of shift over the last. I don't know how many years, but where empathy has become a little bit more prevalent and significant in being in a leadership role, as well as emotional intelligence.

Excellent.

It's incredible emotional toughness as well. The intelligence and the toughness. And I do believe that the empathy is greater. I know one thing that I kind of stand by is state the facts and speak the truth with in that. And that is the communication style that I use with. With student athletes and with people that I coach. But there's also lines, you know, some things that I won't touch is belief systems. If Somebody has a higher belief system than maybe what they are. I really don't touch that piece of it because those are really hard to build. You can start working on building the skills, but not necessarily touch the belief system because if they have something higher where they're believing in themselves, that's an extremely positive thing. They think they're better than what they are. That's a very positive thing. Versus the 180 of it where they just don't believe that they can lead or do or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

And back to Dadalion's point. I think even in coaching in athletics, that's been a significant shift of going from authoritarian dictator, coach in charge to empathy and being more player emphasis. And just again, I think empathy is, even in the athletic world has been a more emphasis and shift and for the good. I mean, you also talk about emotional intelligence, which is a real hot topic in leadership nowadays. And I listened to a great podcast and talking to the coach about this with the CEO of Whole Food. The previous one he talked about about emotional intelligence for those who know is self awareness and empathy. Those are the two things that he used and how important that is in building a team. And he even talked about emotional intelligence and hiring people, which is a good segue for his characteristics. Where he wanted intelligent people, he wanted people with drive, he wanted people that he could trust. And his number one characteristic was integrity. People of integrity and then caring. And to me, that last one is one of my biggest ones is someone that cares because I think they'll do that extra mile. And my favorite quote that I also use on a coach's agenda is people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And knowledge is overrated to me in hiring for some reason. Just I think because the applicant pool I get, that's one that's usually usually pretty equal.

I mean, also are a Ted Lasso fan.

Yes, I am. Which I think there's, excuse me, a lot of certain characteristics there that apply to hiring good people or being around good people. So caring is a big one. But you know, I just listening to one of our previous podcasts about kindness and kindness versus competitiveness and that same thing goes true because I want a competitive, competitive person too. I want a person that has high expectations. You know, another person said championship expectations. And, and that's what we want because we do compete at this level. And I think that best balance of caring and being competitive is something I. It's hard to maybe go through in an interview process Depending on the length of that interview process. But those are, you know, besides, you know, in addition to communication ones that I look for.

Yeah. And I think there is. Is a balance piece of it because even with the empathy piece, you can put your other people's situations or shoes or whatever it might be and somewhat understand that. But with the coaching piece of it, you're trying to take them to a different level as well. And so you've got to, you know, not only understand where they're at to be able to get them to the next spot.

And I think that's huge as a leader of coaches is understanding your coaches. Because I think that's one of my main jobs is to develop coaches, help them get better, to challenge them, to work with them. Because in our world, in every world, you get some coaches that are inexperienced and some that are very experienced and knowing which way you want to go and keeping them improving. Because as we talk about moving forward, be better than yesterday is our main goal. So yes, I definitely think what you're looking for and even the difference between a head coach and assistant coach, I look for assistant coaches that balance a staff that it's kind of like a puzz you put together. I don't want all yes. People as assistant coaches. I want one that complement the skills of the head coach so that they are a puzzle that fits well together. And they're very important at our level, in all levels because of the individual they deal with, how much they deal with student athletes on a given day. But the other big attribute that I think big at our level, that we don't maybe emphasize the programs that are really good. Emphasize it. But is recruiting at this level. Coaches have to be good recruiters, Excellent recruiters, excellent. It's the lifeblood. And I talked to D1 coach about six months ago and he said the three. I asked him what made their staff so successful and he said recruiting. Surrounding yourself with a good staff and teaching leadership. And talking to one of the best D2 athletic directors in history. He would do a recruiting shop every, every year with his coaching staff. A two day recruiting shot, making sure they're all on the same page of how they recruit. And because back to our brand too, that you know, you got to recruit your brand or. And we both talked about how winning can help with recruiting or successful at this level. It wouldn't have been in my other job because you couldn't recruit, although you did have to go out and recruit the hallways. But recruiting is an integral part of at least the coaching leadership. Side scale?

Yeah, for sure. The W with all the things that you're talking about. It's, it's whether it's with intelligence, competitiveness, whatever it might be that you're looking for in, in people to grow, all those things can be built. They just take time. And it's much like putting 50 people in a weight room and having them all do the same exercise for 30 days. You're going to see significant growth in certain people and you'll see less growth in others. And so you never really. When you're recruiting, most of this stuff is really hard to measure. Really hard to measure. You might be seeing people when it's sunny and 75 and on their best day and you might also show up to another place and you're seeing somebody on their worst day and you can get some measurements from that kind of stuff like how they're reacting or you know how. Whether they're selfish or selfless and some of their actions, actions. But it's pretty difficult because a lot of this you just can't really measure.

And I think that's another nice pathway in the sense of hiring the gamble. I mean, I always joke that when people complain about a coach, be careful what you wish for. The grass isn't always greener on the other side. And just because a coach has a bad year doesn't mean they're a bad coach. I mean it could just have been a bad fit. It could have been injuries, it could been have have been something. And we can define the definition of bad because I see you over there smirking. But that's the other thing too, and it's hard is finding the best fit because just like I have my favorite college is and there's been certain hires in the past that they were the best coach available, but they weren't the best fit for that institution. So to your point of some things aren't measurable and you're taking a risk anytime you hire that you're hoping is it's a good fit for that program. So you got to know what you're looking for. And that's not always easy. I mean usually when you hire there's two reasons when you usually hire. One, you probably fired someone and the situation needs correcting or it's really good and that person moved on and you want someone to come in and try and build on that. So great point. But the other thing I think a struggle now too when you talk about non measurable this patience. I don't think there is much patience nowadays with leadership that there was back then we talked about on this podcast before. John Wooden didn't win his first national championship until like between the 13th and 16th year. And nowadays with social media, I mean, you gotta win now.

It's the world we live in. You know, we're not waiting to get messages from the mailbox anymore more, you know, we're getting him instantaneously. And so it's just the world we live in. So there's going to be less patience. And, and it definitely applies in the sporting world. And people, you know, will be on people for one bad season, you know, and they don't have the necessarily the patience that people had for John Wooden and for him to. And basically try to figure it out. I do believe one of the biggest things that, that I look for is intrinsic motivation. And that's an internal motivation where they are trying to become better people, better athletes, better in their community and things like that. And they're intrinsically motivated. Not for the materialistic things, whether it's the fame or the fortune or whatever it might be. They're focused on the things that maybe I would say matter the most. You will find the most motivation anybody can have is intrinsically. And if you can develop and get people who are intrinsically motivated, you will go a lot farther, whether it's in the weight room or the boardroom.

First of all, I do like mail and I do wait for mail in my mail. I check it every night. And I'm gonna really, the way we. With the timing of this podcast, I get a lot of political mail. I'm gonna miss that.

I could build a house with the.

I know you get your mail every day.

I, I do not. I, I tend to do it maybe once a week now.

Me as well.

Really?

As well.

About once a week I get like,

if I come home and my daughter or wife hadn't checked the mail, I go out to the mail, there might be nothing, but he's laughing at me.

You're an old soul.

I could probably check it once a week, but now with all the political mail, I don't know, I just like checking the mail. So I didn't mean to digress, but intrinsic motivation is, Is a great one because ties into me and I'd like you to tell me if I disagree. Is passion, you know, if that person had that pat and you need it

in this job, back to internal satisfaction is where that comes from. So, yeah, for sure. Passion is huge.

And it's huge in this business because of, I guess, you know, as you move up the leadership hierarchy, the hours you put in, the stress you deal with dealing with other people's kids, that there's a lot, you know, as I've always said, everyone's responsible for themselves. A leader is responsible for others and in coaching that those others are kids or young adults.

So.

And how you can, you know, we've seen coaches decisions that sent kids down different path whether they stayed with that sport or whether they were, you know, had success. So back to that impact quote. It could be a negative thing for some that having that passion carries you through because of you know what? Like some people, if you have a 9 to 5 job, you go home and you come back the next day. When you're dealing with kids and boarding events that go to 10 o' clock at night, it never ends. You're always thinking, did they make it home safely on the bus? Did they make it home from the bus to their house? Did they get hurt at the game? So you're just constantly dealing with the stress of what could happen with young adults that we're responsible for.

Yeah. To play off that a little bit, it's kind of like Gladwell's book that he wrote about outliers and everything affects everything. So it's just not the season that you have or the four years that you have with the people or the 10 years in your company. Everything affects everything. And where they've come from, their experiences that they've had, the modeling that they've had, the prior coaches, all that stuff affects everything. And it's, you know, I think I remember in that book you talked about how important it was for if you're going to be in an airplane crash, it wasn't just your pilot's training, but where they came from mattered because if

they could felt comfortable communicating during stress. Man, that book's been popular on our podcast Outlier. So that's interesting one but. But yeah, same with the butterfly effect. Everything does affect everything, especially when you're a leadership because it usually comes to you. Most people solve the easy ones. It's a difficult one that that make it to you.

But it's also, it's also a piece of. As long as you understand that, then you might maybe have a practice at 11am or 4 o' clock or you need to show up for work at 8am understanding that everything's affecting everything that people are coming in with what we've talked about before with backpacks and understanding through empathy and everything else like how do you motivate through that and how do you Grow through everything that's already there.

And I think that the other thing that's changed in society and in our world, and I know you and your team do an excellent job is teaching leadership. We used to use leadership as popularity or that you couldn't teach it. It was you were born with it. But how much we've learned. Back to what I said, that one coach, they taught leadership to their student athletes and a majority of our teams do now because we understand the importance of it and because how important is it to have leaders among our team that you know, coach fed, player led. Your motto that you use that if a leader is the only one talking or teaching or learning back to it. I think of having a strong assistant coaching staff. It gets old, it gets tuned out where if you have players that are helping you spread that message and teach it. So I think that's another big change in society and business is what we've learned about leadership and how we teach leadership. And I think the successful teams do teach leadership on a frequent basis. And we have three or four teams that do leadership training at least once a week. Journaling is another part of that that

it still comes down to respect. And I think it's most challenging at our level. It, it's not much different than being at a business and you've been there for 10 years and they bring somebody in that's been there for 10 weeks to be your new leader of your division or whatever. There's, there's a. Always a lack of respect that happens because of the seniority or the timeframe there. And the same thing happens at our level where if, if you're at a four year it's a little bit different because you do have ju juniors and seniors that have put some time into a program, whatever that program might be. And so when they're providing leadership there's a little more respect there because they've been a part of some type of journey and they understand at our level we really don't have that being that it's a two year thing. So it's very often that the respect ends up being the biggest thing. Can this person respect this other person who's trying to lead? And it really starts with modeling.

Yeah. And again a lot of attribute there. And one to go back to what you talked about earlier is trust and even telling the truth. Because in the end leadership about I think relationships, developing relationships, it's about influence. It's about believing in your team to get them from one place to the next. So because in the End. We don't like the word potential in our world, but our goal is from where we start. It's where we start, but where we finish and getting them to a better place and being the best that we can in that time. Because in our world we deal with a lot of external factors and it's a very public job. So we can probably make this a three or four part podcast. But some of the things that I try and tell remind our coaches is believe in your student athlete. Back to Ted Lasso, back to you. Your earlier comment about people's beliefs that you got to believe you can win, you got to believe you can do it, represent. Well, that's huge. I think as coaches you're a very public figure that you have to represent our institution well. Sportsmanship starts with them. If you're demonstrative or angry, I think that feeds off to the kids and then feeds off to the crowd. And then the communication part of it's not what you say, it's what they hear year and talking to every kid every day. Those are like some things that I try and emphasize with our coaching staff that help lead their team. So we'll end with that. I think we could probably dig more deeply into characteristics in the future. This went a lot of different ways than I thought. So for those that are still listening, I have a couple questions that a food one and my scenario one. So. So my favorite food is a hamburger. All right. And I could eat them every day of the week, probably three days a week, but I know it's not good for my heart, so I don't do that. But I do like. So what We've talked about pizza toppings before. So if you are having a burger, whether it's a vegetarian burger, burger, Angus burger, what are you putting on it?

Well, I think there's gotta be some kind of cheese like pepper jack back and the normal condiments with ketchup and, and lettuce and tomatoes and, you know, things like that. Burgers, the. Some of the best burgers I've had, I've had some bacon on it, maybe some blue cheese, you know, some different things making me hungry. Yeah, definitely. There are places to get burgers and then there are places that you just do not get burgers from.

Oh. See, I'm a simple guy guy. But I would argue the nice thing about my appetite is there's a burger and a chicken tender on every menu. So I'm pretty safe to know that I can get one of those at chicken Tenders. Any restaurant that I'm at. What do you.

All right. You and your chicken nuggets.

Yeah, and I'm not. They are tasty chicken. The nervous bird, too. So I don't eat it often, but. Because I think it makes you nervous, like Harbaugh said. But go take the dallian. What are you putting on your burger?

I mean, you know, as far as favorite burger goes, there's a lot of great burgers out there. And I'm still always gonna be a fan of the olive burger no matter what I do.

Wow. Which is a big Michigan dancing thing, isn't it?

But. But if I was to make one at home, what it is, usually is cheese. It could be Pepper Jack. Always gotta have cheese, though. You always gotta have bacon. And I love me some jalapeno on there. Some lettuce, some tomato. And then actually, there's this. There's this stuff called helluva. And so in place of, like, say, mayonnaise, they've got this jalapeno cheese one that is just awesome on a burger. And it's not something you'd normally put on a burger.

It's a chip dip. But I put it on. I put it on burgers. I put it on my eggs all the time, too. That's a great question. Because just like salad, they've evolved with burgers. What you can put on them or not put them eggs or cheese tea. I'm a soho guy. I forget. I took for granted cheese. It's gotta have cheese on it. I forget that. But simple. I just want ketchup and pickles on it to go extra. I would prefer bacon on it, but the new one is like these rodeo burgers that have an onion ring with bacon on it. That's kind of been my favorite barbecue. Yeah, barbecue sauce. My wife got me hooked on having maybe mayonnaise on your burger, but simply for latig. It's ketchup, pickles and cheese, and then maybe some bacon or an onion ring on the side.

See?

Simple. I'd go just the deluxe mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato.

Okay. And that. You know, the number one with every combo meal. Probably. Pretty much. So we're gonna skip my other question because we are where I want to be. So until next time, go stars. Stars on Sports is recorded live at the WLNZ Studios. Engineering and production assistance are provided by the Dallian Lowry and Jeremy Robinson. You can listen to this episode and other episodes of Stars on Sports on demand@lccconnect.org to find more. For more information about our athletic program, visit lccstars.com thanks for listening. Go Stars.

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