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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, hey, thank you very much Parker, and welcome to Time Signatures. I'm your host, Jim Irvin. And today's guest is certainly not among the ordinary run of the mill musicians. In fact, armed with his personally handcrafted oil can guitar, he's amassed more than 2 million views on YouTube and, and more than 43,000 monthly listeners on Spotify alone. He also has 5,500 subscribers on his YouTube channel. Yeah, I've done my homework. His music is described as a blend of fiery blues rock licks with a gritty Texas style flare. And there's another musician with a Facebook ad with a free CD if you pay for shipping. Funny thing is, this is how I discovered the music of Anthony Gomes not too long ago. So once I got to hear some of his music, I was in and I think you might be too. Joe Flip. Welcome to Time Signatures. How you doing man?

Doing great. Thanks for having me.

Jim, I am pleased to have you here. But I have to ask you, what kind of a, of a program is this where you can go and sign up to give your CDs away for shipping? How does that work?

Yeah, it's a, it's a cool like, you know, I guess, marketing strategy that I learned from indiepreneurs. So it's, you know, as a musician, you know, you always want to, you know, find new fans and build new relationships with like minded people and fans and that kind of thing. So it's, it's a suggestion where you kind of want to give away a freebie. Like, you know, you think about like, you see that a lot of things with like Netflix or whatever, like hey, you get a free trial or free Amazon prime for a day or a week and then if you, you know, if you, if people like the product or service, they'll typically end up, you know, keep purchasing from you. So yeah, so basically we'll do like, we'll run ads on social media to people who might like that similar genre of music that you're in.

Sure.

It'll be like a little promo, like hey, you know, do you like this kind of music? I got a couple extra CDs in stock. I'll offer a free autograph CD just pay for shipping and I'll send it to your, to your door. And then a lot of people end up taking up on that offer. And then, and then the cool thing is that once they check it out, they listen to music, they watch some videos, and then they ended up kind of deep diving more into your music and then. Yeah, and then they kind of end up supporting you and you kind of build this relationship with new fans that way. So it's kind of a cool deal.

Well, and I think one of the other cool things, at least from my perspective, is I'm always looking for people to talk to and preserve their stories, you know, for the program. And as I said, I, I stumbled on to Anthony Gomes the same way. Never heard of the guy before that. Ended up getting his cd. Fell in love with it. Enjoyed his music so much. I actually went to see him when he was in Westland back in April at the Token Lounge and ended up buying the vinyl because I, I'm a vinyl collector here. You can see a little bit of the vinyl over here left to me. But yeah, I really enjoy the opportunity to hear new music and I don't just want to go on Spotify and hear it that way. I don't mind supporting the, the artist in some form or fashion. And you know, as I said, I. You've certainly earned my business going forward and I'm really excited about it. So we'll, we'll have to keep in touch as time goes on here, but I want to get rolling and ask you about your musical journey when you were younger. How did it all lead into the blues for you? What was your start?

I was probably like. Probably like 13 or something. And I think I had a guitar for like a year or so, but didn't. Wasn't really inspired, didn't really know what to do with it. And then my older cousin Mark was already a couple years into playing guitar and really into like blues and 60s and 70s stuff. And he, he gave me like a Jimi Hendrix CD and a Steve Ray Vaughan cd and that was the ultimate gateway for me. It just blew my mind. I was hooked. I was obsessed. So then after that I was just on this big rabbit hole searching for everything similar to that. And I had no idea who those musicians were. So then I instantly started thinking like, who were, who was the previous generation before them, which obviously became a lot of blues stuff. And then I think right around the same time, I think Napster was kind of around at that time. So then I was just like, I could just like pick and shoes and all these different, you know, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson. And then it's like, wow, this is a cool. This is cool. Led Zeppelin, Clapton. And then very nice. All kinds of stuff. So that. Yeah, I was. I was hooked after that and then I was just. I've been obsessed ever since.

Now, Joe, you said you started about 13, so how long have you been at this now?

Well, I'm 39 now.

Okay.

So, yeah, I was. I was really hooked from then on. Like pretty much all. All through. Up through high school. Just every day I would just get up and just. It was almost more air guitar. Trying to play along with the licks and, you know, having the.

I'm really good at air guitar, man.

Yeah, it's where we're like where you have like, listen to Hendrix or Steve Ravan and their music is super loud. My music is heavily distorted, kind of quieter. And then eventually, like, I turned mine up and there's down. Like, oh, man, I sound like crap. I gotta. I gotta go back to the drawing board a little bit more and. But yeah, it was just. To me, it was. It was so fun. It was like a video game. I just. I loved that stuff. I just loved everything about their music. And then. And then just idolized all those guys. And then, yeah, then I got played more and more every day, over and over. And then I didn't really have any close friends that liked this music, you know. So as like a young kid growing up in the 90s or the 2000s, like all my friends were into pop music, rap and top 40. So I always felt kind of like the. Kind of the black Sheep a little bit. But my older cousin Mark lived a couple hours north of me every time I'd go visit him. And then even my other cousins and aunts and uncles, they were into like all everything, 60s, 70s, 50s, like Motown, blues, Dean Martin. And so it was just always learning new stuff, hanging out with them. And then it wasn't until the last like five, ten years when I really started hanging out with like really good musicians, like in the bands and stuff. And then, then really learning that next level of like timing and. And dynamics and rhythms and that kind of stuff.

Very cool. Joe, I've got to ask you because I see some traditional guitars hanging behind you, but I do see one of your oil can guitars hanging back there. How many of the oil can guitars do you have in your arsenal? And do you have any favorites?

Oh, yeah, man. So my neighbor across the street, Mike Jensen, was over and we just started building Oil cans and gas cans into electric guitars. It was one of those things where we thought, like, oh, we could try to do it, and in a day or two and see what happens. And then days, weeks later, we'd finally, finally learn how to build this thing. And trial and error, labor of love. And so we finally made one. And then we're like, let's do it again. And then. Then we're like, let's just throw it on ebay for, like, 200 bucks. It probably took us 50 hours. You know, it probably cost us 300 just in parts. We're like, what the hell? Let's just throw it on ebay and see what happens. And then someone would buy one. So then we thought, let's make another one. And then every can, we would order random cans from, like, ebay. And every can was different. Like a gasoline can with a cool logo or a weird oil can or a weird. Just like, all these weird logos and everything was different. So that one's a Marvel mystery oil can that I've been using for a while. But, yeah, we probably made and sold like, 40, I think, all over the world. It was crazy. It's just this. It kept going and going, and for, like, two years straight, we kind of just ran through them, and then we kind of stopped. You know, we didn't have much time to work on them, like with Mike and his kids. And then I was working nights and gigs, and then he was, you know, working his day job and had had younger kids. And so two after this last one, I was like, okay, let's make one more for myself, and I'll keep this one. And so I've had this one now since, like, 2019. I think it's. It's kind of falling apart a little bit. I'm kind of worried that it's. I. I need to make a backup at some point here in case. In case this one falls apart.

Well, you know, and. And the thing is, people that play. I've seen cigar box guitars. I've seen driftwood guitars. We have a guy up in the Bay City area, and he makes all kinds of driftwood guitars. Very, very cool stuff. But I mean, the stuff that you're doing with this, it really there. You don't have many peers out there, do you?

I don't think so, because you see a lot more cigar box guitars. So. Yeah.

Yeah.

I have a buddy who makes these cigar box guitars, and not too far from me, so he does a really good job and makes these three string with a. With the pickups So I bought this one for him. So Stogie Joe Guitars is the name of his company. So. But yeah, you see a lot more cigar box guitars because I feel like they're just easier to work with because it's like softer wood. You can, you can get like a three string neck, you can make your own neck or you could just, just buy kind of like an easy little templated deal. But for us it's like I wanted to have a six string. You know, guitar. I wanted to, I wanted it to play just like a normal guitar because I was always like a normal kind of guy.

Yeah.

And I wanted, you know, thin strings, thin action, standard tuning. So that was the really hard part to like cut through all this metal and get the intonation down right, the action down right. That, that was really hard because you have to clean them. You have to cut with all these Dremel blades. We went through probably thousands of Dremel blades and then. And cleaning the can and. And then we'd spend two days just cleaning the cans out and then experimenting which cleaner to use because some of them would fade the cans and mess them up. Which Dremel blades to use and then how to solder all the, the wires together and how to get the pickup and the bridge in there. But we kind of figured it out after a while. So this is the one I've been using. This is a Marvel mystery oil can. And Ted Vig, he owns a music shop in town here. He makes his own custom hand wound pickups. So I got one of his pickups in there, a little bridge. I got these little skull knobs on ebay. So these are the volume and tone. Nice. And then this is a custom main neck. And so we call the, we call the guitars hay burner guitars. And yes, this is what I use. 95 of my time is just the oil can guitar with just one pickup. And that's it.

Very cool. More than half a million streams, 43, 000 monthly listeners on Spotify to boot. I'm sure you'll agree with me it's a pretty impressive number if you ask me. I mean I do know several musicians in the area here and they've been at it for quite a few years and they still don't have that kind of a following. So to what do you credit this success? Is it the, is it the guitars?

I don't know. I think for Spotify I started running ads on that one as well. So like I feel like the social media, whether it's YouTube, Spotify Facebook, you know, they're all algorithms and, and there's, there's so many small micro niche of everything, whether it's genres of music, whether it's businesses. So you want to find, you know, like minded people, whether it's, you know, social, you know, friends or, or music fans. So you want to find like minded people. So if you run ads to people who might like blues, rock music and send a video of your plane, and if they like it, they'll click on the streaming and they might listen to it, you know, more often and, but then also you're kind of training the algorithm too, like, hey, this person likes this music. So maybe you're kind of telling Spotify this is the genre of the music because otherwise you can wait a long, long time and hope that you get over thousands and thousands of people checking it out and streaming. So, so ads help a little bit. And then yeah, I think for YouTube I did a collaboration video with, with Indihara Sapphire. So she's an amazing harmonica player from Brazil.

Okay.

So she, she already had like millions and millions and millions of views on, on YouTube and all these amazing videos. It's a beautiful harmonica player. And a very pretty woman from Brazil. So a lot of times when I see harmonica videos, it's always like an older guy, you know.

Right, right.

So just that alone I think was kind of, kind of interesting. But anyway, so met her through a friend of a friend in Nashville and her and her husband were from Brazil and kind of hanging out in the United States for a couple of weeks and hitting different blues jams and stuff. So I invited them to come over, hang out at my place for a week and I took them to a bunch of gigs and stuff and hung out and we did a collaboration video of Amazing Grace and I think that one kind of went viral. I got like a million views. Which was kind of cool. It was just oil can guitar and harmonica. Just a very simple, you know, soulful, bluesy version of Amazing Grace. So I think that kind of helped a little bit, you know, and then, and I noticed a lot of, you know, her fans kind of would kind of watch and listen and everything. So that helped. But yeah, otherwise I think just, you know, you know, making a bunch of videos and sharing it and then know, try to sprinkle some ads on there, sprinkling some gas in the fire and then, yeah, you kind of, you want to. The way I guess I think of it is like when you play music, you know, you know, everyone would like to have, you know, a good Tone, a good amplifier, good speaker, a good amp, whatever pedals to kind of give your. Put your best foot forward. So then this generation with. With marketing and stuff, and that's why I like. That's why I love listening to, like, Joe Bonamasa's interviews over Guitar Man. They talk about, like, his. Their business model and their marketing in this generation of making, you know, a smaller niche genre become successful, where now you can. You can share your music with so much more people, but you can also create a blues label and have all these other amazing blues musicians and have a blues cruise. And so you can do so much more when you. When you can. When there's more meat in the bone, when you can grow the business. So I've been kind of learning from people like them and just. And learning other resources and sprinkling little ads here and there when it makes sense. And then you still have to wait for time to go to go by and then. And then hopefully, hopefully that snowball starts rolling. So, yeah, I guess a little bit of everything helps out.

Well, I tell you, I've been at this on YouTube now. This is my. One of my eight months in. Eight and a half months in. Because I launched the first of the year. I put this studio together and started doing video podcasts as well as my audio side. And I mean, it's taken me eight months to get 300 subscribers. I'm just shy of 300 right now. And, you know, I'm waiting, like you said, for that snowball to start rolling. It'd be great if I hit that 2 million views mark. That'd be nice. But, I mean, you've done it. You got 5, 500 subscribers on YouTube. Those are pretty impressive numbers. Now, would. Was the Amazing Grace video. Was that your first video that went viral for you?

Yeah, I think that was one of the first ones because before that I. I barely did anything on YouTube. Yeah, it kind of started with the good vision. I just, you know, she was. She was such an amazing player. And I had this oil can and I was like, God, like, how could we. I just thought, like, what if we did Amazing Grace is. I kind of had this vision, like a very soulful, elegant, simplified, bluesy version of it. And then so we just went to a recording studio, hired a guy to video record it, did two takes, went with the second take, mixed it, mastered it, edited it, and that was done, and threw it out there. And yeah, it kind of went viral, like, pretty quick. But I didn't really have anything else. I didn't really have any other music out there at the time I didn't really have any other videos, so kind of, it kind of just did its own thing. And a lot of fans are from people that weren't even speaking English. They're from other countries. And so there would be different really cool comments on there. So I'd use Google translator and like read the comment and comment back and be like, thanks guys. So, yeah, so then I did a collaboration album with Tony Kitchetti in like 2019, and we didn't really have any videos. And then I think, then I think right around 2021 is when I started, like, okay, I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do a new album with mainly music that I write. I'm gonna do some videos, I'm gonna learn kind of the business marketing stuff and maybe sprinkle some ads on Spotify stuff here and there and really kind of take it seriously and kind of go to the next level. So right around like 2020, 22, 21, I started doing the ads and then released my Home Sweet home album in 2023, which is a little over a year ago. And then, then I did a live album and ended up releasing that next month. And I, I, during the live album, I hired a video crew to record the whole show. Video wise. Yeah, and audio. So now I've got a live album and I got video of the whole entire show. And now I can chop that up in a bunch of videos and throw it out there and have a bunch of fun.

Very cool. Well, from the looks of things, you found your way into some pretty cool events, such as the Stevie Ray Vaughan Remembrance Ride, the Eli Blues Fest, the Bayfront Blues Fest and others. It sounds like you're keeping pretty busy these days. Would I be correct in that?

Yeah, same. Pretty busy, yeah. Just having lots of fun and, and just constantly making new goals, you know, for like myself in the music career. Whether it's writing, recording, making new albums, videos, different types of shows, maybe different themed shows, ticketed shows. So I think I just, you know, there's that saying, if you're not growing, you're dying. I think that's pretty much this, the motto I live by constantly. And I think as a guitar player that's, it's kind of always like that too because there's, you know, you always trying new things. And then I think as a, as a musician or even like performing for people, I feel like it's our job as an entertainer to always do something slightly different or new or better or different the next time. And then, and then by also doing that, I think it kind of gives, it kind of keeps me in my toes more because I always, my, my fear is like, when I, when I do my shows, I want the energy to go from like here and ramp it up, ramp it up every song. And there's dynamics to the songs and the set list. But eventually by the end of the show, I want, I want the energy be so high that it's, you know, amazing and I want every show to slightly be better. Now, I guess my, my fear is like, if I, if I get too stagnant in my head, mentally or physically in a show, if it's, if I'm not super passionate about the song or the set list or the show, that's going to, it's going to show in my face or my plane. So that's my biggest fear. So I'm always trying to like challenge it and make it bigger and better the next time.

Well, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, you know, and not allowing yourself to stagnate I think is probably the most important step. You know, just keep it fresh and, and, and keep trying new things. I mean, and you've seen it work for people like Joe Bonamassa, you know, and others out there, but it looks like you've opened for some pretty well known acts. I mean, so you're, you're definitely getting some recognition out there. The likes of Joanne Shaw, Taylor Quest, Chris Duarte, Rick Derringer, just to name a few. Who else has called or, you know, maybe you're planning to work with in the near future. Anything in the offing?

Let's see, we got cooking here. Not a whole lot. Let's see here. I, I recently. Went to the Joe Bonamassa Blues Cruise for my first time last year and it was so amazing. It was the coolest. I went as a fan, okay, as a vacation, and it was so amazing. I saw a bunch of musicians there that, that I knew and played with and it was so inspiring and fun to watch everything. So I think, I think it'd be fun to play, play one of those shows, you know, and I think all those musicians on that, on the, those builds are amazing. But yeah, I think I always love collaborating with different musicians. I have a couple of local shows coming up where I'm doing some collaborations where bringing on different guest musicians and then kind of doing some things where I'm kind of showcasing their band and then, and then kind of sitting in with them and then vice versa where I'M kind of bringing one of them onto our shows. So, you know, I think as any musician, it's like, well, it'd be, obviously it'd be amazing to collaborate with all the greats, but, but there's so many greats that are locals that not too many people know about also. So then, so then for me it's always like, well, what, what can I, what do I have that I can actually grab a hold of and make happen, you know, today or tomorrow? So then I've been doing a lot more of that, like collaborating with some local musicians that are great. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, it'd be fun to collaborate more with all the big legends too.

Well, and I think that, you know, I've seen other musicians like Ben Levin, who's a boogie woogie piano player out of Cincinnati and he's got quite a few people down in that part of the country that are legendary that he's worked with and it's led to other opportunities, you know, on the more national level. And of course he, he's actually been, if I'm not mistaken, on the Blues cruise. He's also done some pretty big events during the, the summer and fall. So I guess, you know, it's, it's keeping it fresh, it's trying new things and, and, and just seeing what works, you know, trying new things that, that build excitement. And I think that, you know, if it's, if it's something you're passionate about, you're definitely going to find a way to make it work, correct?

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, well, Joe, where can we find information on how to book you, how to purchase some CDs or merch or just learn more about Joe Flip.

Yeah, so my music website is joeflipmusic.com so, yeah, the website has all the information. There's a bunch of videos, pictures, obviously. The YouTube channel has a gazillion videos of me playing oil can guitars all over the place. Yeah, and there's, we have a, you know, there's a new album coming out recorded live that, that's coming out here soon, next month. I have a thing on the, on my website where you can watch, you can get like a sneak peek video of one of the videos from the concert before it's released. So a lot of people have been taking me up on that offer. Yeah, we had the old CDs, we got some new T shirts coming out here soon too. So lots of fun stuff.

Very cool. Well, listen, I want to appreciate, I want to say how much I appreciate your time and that wraps up this edition of Time Signatures with Jim Irvin. Many thanks again to our very special guest, Joe Flip. But even more importantly, we want to thank you for taking the time out to check us out and watch our program. Without you, none of this would be possible. Jim Irvin reminding you that keeping the blues alive is everyone's responsibility, but preserving the history of the blues one story at a time is my mission. Until next time, my friends. So long.

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's 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. Keep connected with LCC Connect at lccconnect.org.

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This is Amy Wagonar from the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan History moment. It was 1894 and passengers aboard the Great Lakes schooner George L. Wren were ready for an additional adventure. They were about to depart South Haven, Michigan on a three year around the world cruise. Dr. William C. Ransom, a 65 year old South Haven physician, had dreamed up the expedition. In 1894 he formed the Trip around the World company with prominent South Haven businessmen as company directors. For financing, the company sold $15,000 in stock. The schooner would sail through the Great Lakes, cross the Atlantic to Great Britain, cruise the Mediterranean, visit the Holy Land, sail around Africa, cross the Indian Ocean, visit Australia and New Zealand and explore Asia and the Pacific Islands. Dr. Ransom himself would lead the expedition. He had visited nearly all the destinations as a young man and had even served served as court physician in Hawaii. Participation was limited to approximately 24 people who would not be mere passengers. They had to pay at least $500, provide their own kit and work the ship. As Dr. Ransom declared, this is no kid glove expedition. The schooner George L. Wren sailed out of South Haven on July 4th, 1894 and put in at Ludington to pick up a cargo of 250 barrels of salt. The salt would be used to trade for goods during the voyage around the world. Dr. Ransom departed the ship to secure last minute supplies. He and the other company members from Ohio and Pennsylvania would meet the schooner in Detroit. The schooner continued up Lake Michigan, through the Straits of Mackinac and down Lake Huron to Detroit for her rendezvous with Dr. Ransom. It was then that people realized there was a problem. Dr. Ransom had traveled to Chicago to buy supplies and vanished. Then things turned from bad to worse. As days passed, the truth came out. Dr. Ransom had drawn out $500 from the bank and set off for Oklahoma territory with the widow of a former patient. His tales of traveling the world world and living in Hawaii were fabrications. And the $15,000 in stock it was only $5,300 and the ship and supplies had cost $30,000. The around the world adventurers abandoned the idea of a three year voyage and instead spent two months sailing the Great Lakes and selling the ship's goods. They returned home sadder But Wiser and Dr. Ransom he settled in Oregon where he lived out his years happily and without remorse. This Michigan history moment was brought to you by michiganhistorymagazine.org.

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Massage therapy can be an effective method to combat stress and anxiety. It can also be helpful for injury treatment and prevention. The Lansing Community College Massage Therapy Clinic is open to the public and provides the opportunity for students to learn. Visit LCC Edumassage for more information. I'm Steven Cutter and I host a show called Coach Cut's Corner here on LCC Connect. Coach Kutt's Corner is about Lansing stars, baseball program, mental performance and just getting better in everyday life. You can always find more about LCC Connect shows and listen on demand@lcc connect.org.

Recycle Michigan a place where there's no city limit, no boundaries and the population 9.9 million so where is Recycle Michigan? It's located in your home, next door, down the road in your very own community. In their continued effort to increase recycling awareness, the Michigan Recycling Coalition has launched the statewide Recycle Michigan campaign. Serving as a resource to both businesses and residents, the Michigan Recycling Coalition provides simple steps to reduce waste, create awareness of the benefits of recycling, and to discover options for recycling through your local communities. By recycling, you, your family, your neighbors and your community can help protect the things we love most about our state. Recycling junk mail, water bottles and other containers will help keep our Great Lakes State clean, but it also promotes job growth in Michigan. Discover how you can become a citizen of Recycle Michigan by exploring michiganrecycles.org Lansing.

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Hello there. This is Terry Denise, a Lansing Community College student and you host of Ripper, an LCC Connect podcast where I interview others and ask about their unique efforts and connections in, around and beyond the community of Michigan's capital city. Thank you for joining Ripper. I am Terry Denise and I hope you're having a great day or a great evening, great time in life. I want to start out by saying I am not a burden. And you can repeat that as well. I'll say it again, I am not a burden. You may repeat that. I am not a burden. It's something that came to my brain earlier today and it's a great mantra. It's a great release, It's a great thing to know and to keep telling yourself that I am not a burden. Sometimes you're stepping into life, you're stepping into the day and you feel the heaviness on your shoulders. You feel an impact that you cannot get rid of and it feels like it's encompassing all parts of your life. You can feel it in your head. It feels like there's an ache going on. It feels like there's. There's parts of your body that you're just shifting around with or shifting around at all. And it feels like it's just a struggle. It feels like there's a lot of weight on your shoulders, a lot of weight on your body, a lot of weight in your brain. And it just feels like you can't get rid of it. And what that is are these struggles that one can just hold on to and not realize. Until you talk to a dentist and hear back, the question, are you grinding your teeth? Have you noticed a pattern of you grinding your teeth? Is your jaw hurting? When you're waking up, you might have a lot of tension and stress going on. It is a typical question that some people get asked because you're holding a lot of burden and you don't realize it. So sometimes it's a good thing to take a step back and focus on something else entirely. I like to put on music, I like to play music, I like to read, write. I like to just go, walk, go down to any area that has gorgeous beauty to look at. Like flowers and little parts of construction or not construction, architecture. You know, you can find beauty in construction when there's not a bunch of dust flying at you. You can find beauty in those little parts of watching things being made. There is a beauty in that. Can you imagine just for one moment, just a couple of thousand, few thousand, maybe 6,000 years ago, there's structures just going up all over the place around the world that all have this kind of a. Shaped like pyramids. They are pyramids here. Over in our area, especially in the mid eastern part of the United States, over in Ohio and just the lakeside areas and whatnot, where you would find the pyramids over in the great river area or the basins and the valleys and whatnot, you would find pyramids. You'd find areas where civilization, great civilizations would come together because the water's there. That's where functioning was. That's where grasslands, woodlands, forest areas. There's where agriculture could be brought up and where domestication of animals and cultivation came from. It's because that's where the water is. People know this people. This is not some weird find that we figure out as we are 21st century beings. We come from people that all knew that to survive you needed to be by something that made other things grow. Essentially because knowing that you're near other things that grow that can feed you or that you could hunt and gather and whatnot. You knew that there's an essence of life to where these things grew. I mean, the functioning of realizing that grasslands and seeds and whatnot propagate, create other things that you can cultivate and grow and then have big old lands that you can, you know, plow and whatnot. And you're like, once you figure out, oh, this little thing, you put it in the ground and then it's like, well, what does it take? It takes the sun, it takes the water, it takes milling, a little bit of untolling of the soil and whatnot. It takes patience. It takes a comfort in knowing that sometimes things come about in a different way than you expect. Sometimes there's more, sometimes there's less, sometimes there's just everything's right on the level. And at times, those are the times when you can harvest, that you figure out harvesting, you figure out the reaping and sowing. That's one of those things that you can take within yourself. And knowing that all around the world we had. What are the mounds that we call here that were lakeside? So we're in the area of the Great Lakes up here in Michigan, Lansing, Lansing area adjacent. And we are surrounded. We are literally the Great Lake State in Michigan. And there are these things that had been kind of misidentified as being just large hills. And this was not very long ago that the areas were populated by people societies that were in existence before others came from across the pond. Many, many years ago, millennia ago, thousands and thousands of years ago, this land was already populated by great civilizations. In Canada, a great northern area, a lot have adopted the name of first nations and whatnot. And it's just wherever you're at and whoever you're with, people just call ourselves different things. So some we call ourselves first nations, the first peoples. Some call it just indigenous of the area of what we know as North America now and then, Native American is another one. But to know that these different creations of cultivations and economic processes, ecologic standards and centers of civilizations all had the same and similar kinds of structures that were being built world round at different points. There might have been more and more areas, more, less in some areas and whatnot. But we know for a fact that those rivers, the lakes and where the water was heavy in flow, there are these things that were called mounds that were essentially pyramids. That's straight up what they were called. They were pyramids. You can find them in Central America, as we know now, in South America, so Latin America, all pyramids structures all around the world. We've got these places, got them over in Africa, got them over here on this side of the world. And there are more that have been found in parts of Asia over in the more eastern part of Asia and southern eastern part of Asia especially. You have parts of China and whatnot or like Mongolia, you've got them everywhere. So what I'm getting to is that there are these areas of life where you can go to where people have been going to for as long as we've been, you know, a part of our civilizations and whatnot cultivated and people lay their burdens down. People go and they. Do you think people weren't just sitting in the sun and just going in the water all the time and swimming? We've been doing the same thing since. I mean this is what we do essentially in the womb too, kind of you are like floating around in water or liquid, not necessarily water, a lot of different kinds of liquid going on in there. But yeah, we are water babies, we're mammals, you know, we're creatures that can go in the water and we find a peace in that Cleansing ourselves. Bathing is such a ritual for many people that we have our little structures that we go and we light candles, we have different scents and different kinds of oils that you can put into with your baths and stuff. And it's an essential practice of cleansing ourselves because we know that that is a very, very unique way of letting things go or getting burdens off of us. Even just the dirt, grime and everything like that, that essentially becomes a harmful burden if it's inflicting and you know, being conflictive with day to day exercises and bacteria is not necessarily good to have a bunch of other people's bacteria and dirt on when it's creating your own ecosystem of sorts where it can cause sickness and harm and illness and whatnot to yourself and possibly to others. So that's a burden that we scrub off of ourselves at times and everything like that. These are, you know, go into our waters and everything like that. It's a great time to get out of your own echo chamber and just have a great release. So we are actually very blessed to be by some of the most like inhabited lands that served as a great device and structure throughout thousands and thousands of years. We are very, very, very fortunate to be at a plex of a center over here in this part of even our country. And I say please take advantage of it. Do as much as you can. Get those burdens off of you. Go swim, go just be on the beach side, get as close to the lakes as you can and take in what we're supposed to. I mean, we're coming from people. Even if you're, you know, not necessarily culturally identified as people that were here from many, many years ago, you do come from people that were set up around water. No matter where you were in the world. Everybody, everybody cultivated near these places that could release ourselves from many burdens. So. So say it again. I am not a burden. I am not a burden. I had to come to that mantra, I guess, within myself when I felt like I was being a great burden upon other people or even upon myself, and had to come to realize when I found my structural area of being able to release a lot of tension, a lot of just weight off of my shoulders and knowing that it wasn't me, had to come to that conclusion that there are things that I put upon myself, but a lot of it was coming because there was this idea that I was the one that was creating the burden. When I took myself out of whatever place it might have been that I felt like I was being a burden upon. If I was getting crazy looks from people or if people were talking to me in a way that I found very, very harmful or toxic and whatnot, I had to realize that it wasn't me that was bringing on the toxicity, that it was other people's burdens that they were carrying around that were providing a way for toxicity to actually be the burden around us for whatever reason. If one becomes that and you think that everywhere you're turning, because that's how it felt, it felt like, and it very was happening where no matter where I was at, something was coming to where I would be laden. I guess, with a lot of people sitting burdens and being a scapegoat is never fun. So what you gotta do is turn that around and say, I'm not a scapegoat for you. I'm not a burden. You need to take your toxicity and you need to figure out why you're bringing that to everybody else around you. Other people might be laughing along with you, but most times people are just afraid to not laugh with what you're saying because they're afraid of becoming what your toxicity is throwing its way into. They're afraid themselves. But a lot of times the people that get scapegoated are the ones that are like, no. I defiantly say no to your toxicity. And if you don't find that applicable in your life, then perhaps it's time for me to part ways with whatever this is. Because if there's others here that are too afraid to say anything and stand up for themselves, then perhaps this is not the place for me. And you gotta be accepting of that. You just need to accept that perhaps that is not the way. Because if you get yourself out of a pathway that's already on its line to destruction, that's full of toil and trouble, and wherever people just defiantly laugh at a person's struggles, then why would you want to add to your own burden by letting them call you out as a struggle, as a struggle bus? That's just saying, like, I accept that I'm a struggle. I accept that I'm a burden. And, and yes, please, ladle it on. Let me be your pit to throw things in. No, absolutely not. I am not a burden. I am not your pit to put your burdens into as well. You want to go on a volcano and throw your stuff into that? Please, we've got some active right now. In fact, go ahead, take the helicopter ride. Throw your burdens in there, there, hon. But I will not be the volcano for you to throw your stuff into. I am not a burden. I am taking and reclaiming my space. Thank you, Maxine Walters. Thank you, Congresswoman. I reclaim my not being a burden, especially to myself. First and foremost, I come in to my life and wake up coming into consciousness, needing to make sure that I am defeating anything that is trying to make and create my structure, my life, as being burdensome. That's already just rejecting it. You just, sometimes the sun doesn't come in as vividly as it can be. So sometimes it. You feel like you're already rejecting whatever it is that's trying to get in front of you and the sun between you and waking up and to connecting with you and yourself and wherever you need to get to, to get to where you need to to survive for the rest of the day or the rest of the week or just for two seconds to yourself. There is an energy and there is that sense of resiliency. Sometimes it's strong and sometimes you need to really, really buckle down and resonate with yourself so you can take on the projections that are full of burdens for the rest of the day. And the best way to do that is just to first of all reject the burdens. But then you need to clearly define what those burdens, burdens are. So maybe you are like being a burden yourself to others. So then you've got to really reflect and say, am I being a burden to somebody else today? You're like, no, no, no, we're not going to start the day off that way already. You got to just already go like, I'm not going to be a burden to anybody else because I don't obviously want to be anybody to be a burden to me or me be a burden to myself as well. So first of all, reject the stance that you're going to inflict anybody with your burdens. That's a great thing to already bring into your consciousness. If you're already having a difficult time waking up, you can go like, what is this? Why am I already feeling subjected. Or am I already feeling weighted down? Is it the weighted blanket? No, no, that's already off. Okay. No, you gotta just define then what are being the weights around you. And you've got to take the weights off. Like when we're in the weight room, like in our fine establishment llcc. Going down to the weight room, you got to make sure that you're not straining yourself out with weights that you're already. You can push yourself, but you don't want to over strain yourself because you're going to hurt yourself. It's going to hurt. It's not going to be the good kind of hurt where it's like, well, that was a good workout. But what I'm talking about is like literally going from 0 to 500 pounds or something like that. And you've never done that before. You're just used to doing, you know, your little 50 pound weights there. Why would you go to 500L. You don't want to do that. You don't want to put that extra weight on. So define that. Like, no, I'm going to do £20 at a time. You know, in a sense, metaphorically speaking, 20 pounds at a time. How about a couple of things that I'm thinking about right now that I don't want to bring in with me to work, to school, even into consciousness, even just defining those moments before you even reach, is this a burden right now? Am I going to be a burden to anybody else? And already just like choosing not to be. Why would you want to choose to be a burden to anybody else? You're already projecting out a sense of overweighting anything within your life. Because chances are those burdens, if you purposely are bringing and subjecting other people to your burdens and projecting that out, there is no way that that stuff is not going to come crashing down on you. There's no way that you're not really going to subject yourself to. Sticking with the metaphor of the gym that you're not going to be bear some tough circumstance, that the bar is not going to fall on you or something like that. You got to have your spotters. You know, if you're. If you're just throwing out things to other people, nobody's going to want to spot a person that's just like throwing their weight around all over the place and dumping your dumbbells all over the place and everything like that and just leaving it for somebody else to pick up behind you and everything like that. Nobody wants to spot a person like that. Nobody wants to even let you in the gym if you're acting like that. So why would you act like that if you know the circumstances? Are you bringing your weight to other people? If you're bringing all that weight and burden upon people, nobody's going to want to hang out with you. Nobody wants to be around you. And if people are laughing along with you, it just means that they're afraid of you. And nobody wants to be afraid of anybody. Why would anybody like, you know, nobody really wants to be that person? You lose yourself in that. You lose your definition within oneself, and then you just kind of float along with everybody else and it's not fun. Project your personal things that are not weighted, that are not burdensome, and I guarantee you will have a different view upon life and people will have a different view of you. Talking about the big fibs again or a little bit small fibs, those are burdens as well. If you have to keep fibbing all the time, you're putting weight on, you're encouraging a burden to bear. You don't want that bear. You don't want the maqua. You don't want that kind of maqua. I'll just say. You don't want that bear to come with its claws and salivating and to turn itself back upon you because it will happen. You will not be able to control that maqua, that bear. So just encouraging to lessen your strain upon yourself and upon others around you by just thinking about what. What burdens am I already carrying? I know that there's rent that's due, or I know that I need to get out of this shelter sometime soon. What can I do to keep my brain adjusted in focus to making sure that I can just not get swallowed by those burdens? What's any small step that I can take immediately? Can it be to just smile at myself today? Can it be just a smile at the sun today? Can it be just to compliment a person about, hey, I like your shoes. Those are cool. And that's it. Sometimes that's like one of those things that can lessen another person's burden. Like it takes their brain off of something for two seconds and they're like, what, these? Oh, these are things. And it's like, no, those are really cool. And they're like, okay. Immediately their brain is like on a different thing all of a sudden. And you've just helped them defocus possibly off of something that was bringing great, great and encouraging, great strain upon their life. So take that with you. I hope that you can say to yourself, I am not a burden and I will not be a burden to anybody else because there's only a few ways of relieving yourself of many burdens in this lifetime and it is definitely getting through it. But with not adding more to your bar, I guess you could say you don't want to keep encouraging and influencing more burdens upon yourself or upon anybody else. And if you can stick with it, believe me, it will encourage other people to lessen their their burdens and to create a better adjustment with their own defining of oneself. And you will help people without even trying to maintain that status of like, I'm the helper today, I'm doing this for everybody else, blah blah, blah. No, it just becomes a part of your life. Working with your civilization next to those mounds, next to the pyramids and everything like that. Cultivating being and encouraging others just like being a great driving force without even thinking about it, is one of those ways to stand without burden. I will leave you with that. I will leave you with a mantra of I am not a burden and hope you can access those parts of yourself that will definitely help you to not be such a strain and a burden upon your own life and help encourage others. So I leave you with that. My name is Terry Denise. This is Ripper and I hope you have a wonderful, less burdensome day. Also check out Queens of the Stone Age Alive at the Catacombs out of po. Thank you. Thanks for tuning in to Ripper. You can find more of about this and other LCC connect podcasts@lccconnect.com.

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Been a presentation of LCC Connect, a weekly program that features the voices, vibes and vision of Lansing Community College. All shows featured on LCC Connect are recorded at the WLNZ Studio located on LCC Connect Downtown campus. Each program is podcast based and can be heard anytime@lccconnect.org if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on one of our shows. Connect with us by emailing LCC ConnectCC.edu.