We can’t deny how we’re wrapped up in a fast-paced world. With so much on our plates and little time, we often forget that there’s beauty in the little things. Reading a good novel, dancing around, or playing our favourite music, are the little things we should look out for because there’s much more to life than just paychecks and job rankings.
Today’s guest will surely move your hearts with his words. Singer/songwriter John Brewster is on the show today to talk to us all about how he’s been able to make his passion his lifestyle. Tag along with us, and let’s hear more from John.
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Music and All Things that Make Us Human With John Brewster
Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. One thing I’ve been thinking about quite a bit for at least several years now is what makes all of us human, which is something that I feel is diminished in our modern society. When I talk about this, I talk about things like laughter, things like dancing, things like humor, and things like music — things that don’t necessarily have a specific material value in most corporate settings but provide a lot of value to our lives, a lot of value to our wellbeing.
My guest today, John Brewster, is a Boulder resident and a singer/songwriter who has managed to make a lifestyle out of music, which I’m sure a lot of people would love the possibility of doing if they only knew how.
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John, welcome to the program.
Thanks so much for having me today, Stephen. I’m really excited to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, definitely. You’re relatively new to Colorado, right?
Yes. I just moved here in August of 2021, and now, we’re in March 2022 for the future nerds out there that listen to this. I’ve been here for a few months, just getting grounded into the mountain energy and just been loving it so far.
Where do you come from most recently?
South Carolina. I was in Charleston last. That’s where I got my start in music as far as original music goes.
You do exclusively original music?
I do my own original music. It’s my priority. To right now sustain my living, I play cover songs as well — private events, weddings, knickknack things here and there, bar gigs, whatever has gotten me to this point. I’ve been open to those opportunities, which has helped to sustain and keep furthering my original music as well.
That’s really neat. You said, you got your start in South Carolina, and then, you moved here to Colorado. If I recall correctly, you live on the outskirts of Boulder. What did you have to do to transfer that start, whatever you had going for you, word of mouth in South Carolina, and bring it to a new place?
Yeah. I started planting seeds pretty early. I played music all growing up in South Carolina. I had a pretty good network of connections and was doing it full-time. To give a little miniature backstory, I was in a band for several years in South Carolina. We played all the cover gigs and had a lot of good momentum, singing harmonies and stuff. We ended up touring all over the place in the East Coast, doing our own music. After that chapter came to a close, I decided to do my own music.
About a year ago, I visited Colorado. For the first time, before I released my first album, I was feeling this calling to go somewhere new, to get some fresh perspective. It was almost literally a coin toss between going to Austin or Denver. I was looking at Airbnbs. I was just going to drive — just leave South Carolina, just go for an experience with myself, and see if I want to move somewhere new. It ended up being Denver. I found a spot to hang out for a couple of weeks. I just immediately knew I had to come back to Colorado.
Fast forward a few months later, my partner, Sarah, and I officially moved out here. That’s when we started planting seeds of asking around — who do you know who is in the scene doing this? Started looking at open mic nights. That’s been a huge resource, just meeting people in real-time and also lead-generating websites that I feel like even my friends to this day, that are other musicians, might not be totally taking advantage of. That’s 80% of my income. There’s multiple websites you can sign up and have a profile for as a musician and generate leads just like any other business would. There’s all kinds of things that come through for that.
Even before I got out here, I was planting those seeds with setting up my Colorado profile, so people could reach out to me for stuff.
That’s another wonderful thing that the internet has provided for us. Rather than having to physically be here, you can already start generating leads for a place based on this lead-generation website. I think a lot of people aren’t even aware that those exist. I think a lot of people are aware of a lot of lead-generation business networking groups. What I’m wondering is, do these more standard lead-generation groups work for musicians because a lot of them tend to be a little bit more about business, or do you need the music-specific ones?
The ones that I’ve worked with, there’s been a few — three or four main ones. They’re geared towards entertainment things. One of them specifically for weddings — there’s one called WeddingWire. There’s another one called GigSalad, which has a whole host of things. You could get just crazy stuff like impersonators, comedians, and skits, all kinds of stuff, and then also singer/songwriter. There’s categories for different types of things that could complement an event or some kind of gathering.
Yeah. Usually, it’s a type of fee you would pay, or a small percentage would go back to the website for connecting the two artists. Other than that, just the word of mouth of getting that opportunity to have a gig versus not having a gig, and keep the ball rolling, meeting more people. That’s huge.
At the risk of sounding like a businessy, office interview type of thing, I want to say take me through your average day. I guess the average day is probably a poor determinant here. On an average month, how many gigs do you perform, and how much time do you spend writing your own original music?
Great question. I’d say, on average, I play between 10-17 gigs a month at most. It’s been a little slower since getting out here to Colorado. Right now, I’m really grateful to get 10 gigs a month. That’s aside from free stuff, paid stuff. Playing open mic nights and networking — that’s not necessarily paid.
Yeah, my day-to-day starts off with my morning routine, which is something I’m very, very, very big about. In recent months, it’s been a little bit slower. To be completely honest, my motivation around my dream has been in resting mode. I love your podcast, and was so excited to come on here with the idea of action, action being an antidote. That’s a big one for me. I love the phrase “Action unlocks.” I just released my debut album about three months ago. This is my first time post a big creative project that I took on myself. Last year, my day-to-day was crazy, on fire motivation, working on this album, because I produced it and mixed it, and wrote and did the whole thing on my own right here on this laptop. I went on fire for months and months. Now, after it’s out there into the world, I’m shifting gears to networking and playing the shows and getting my foot in the door in Colorado.
My day-to-day feels a little bit more slower from a 12-month perspective. I see a momentum starting to pick up now that I’ve been in Colorado for a few months now. I’m already booking stuff in September months from now, which is awesome — that’s fantastic. I think that will just continue to build.
How much do I write original music? Honestly, I’m always thinking about my music. It’s crazy how obsessive I am. Yesterday, I felt as though I needed a break. I’m not sure if you’re like this. For anyone out there that might listen, I just go, go, go, because I love what I’m doing. I built my own website and did all the networking. I wear all the hats for what I’m doing, and I love that. I forget to take breaks or literally a half day or full day where I’m just not working on my dream, just check out completely. Yesterday was one of those days for me where I sensed it, about four or five days ago, that I was writing, starting to work on my next album maybe, not sure, preparing for some other things. I’m doing a tour in South Carolina next month. I just felt like it was hard to show up.
Usually, I can push through that, but when it happens day after day, that’s when I know I just need to take a break. It’s not because I’m on the wrong path. It’s like, “Bro, you just need to take some time away from this to let it marinate.” Yesterday was a day for that for me. I woke up and had a great workout. Around this time yesterday, at 9:30 AM, I was like, “You know what? I’m going to stay off my phone for the most part today. Not going to touch the guitar, ” I did but, “I’m going to watch movies, ice cream in bed.” I just did nothing yesterday. Now, I woke up this morning wanting to clean the house and do all the crazy stuff.
That’s interesting. I think it’s a natural part of the cycle in anyone taking on endeavors. If they’re really passionate about that, you’re going to have some really busy high motivation time, and then you’re going to have a time where you need a little bit of rest.
One of the things I’m wondering — if you can walk us through this for my audience — is, what do you see is the difference between someone experiencing burnout, in which case they need to pretty much stop doing what they’re doing or find a way to transition to something else, versus if someone’s just experiencing what you experienced yesterday? It’s like, “Okay. This is still my passion. I love it, but I overdid it for a little while. I need a couple days, even sometimes a week, or a couple of weeks, or a month, to rest. It’s not burnout; I just need a rest.”
Right. It’s hard to tell. Literally, when I feel like I approach that feeling every month or two, I’ve erred on the side of over-working or over being passionate about my dream. When you’re really trying to force it, it’s like you’re just not in the right headspace, because you’re exerting so much energy when you’re trying. It might be hard to tell. I don’t know if I have a good answer of how to decipher the two, but just try stepping away I think is a good experiment. Going for a long walk, being off your phone for half a day, or a day, or a week, like you said.
Those are things I’ve played with over the last few years being on my own journey of sharing my own music. It’s crazy. It feels like, “Oh my gosh,” the business is going to come to a halt, and nothing’s going to happen, but the universe works in such mysterious ways. I feel like when you actually surrender to that, things happen. That just happens over and over again. It just floods back in when you just let yourself be. I don’t know if I have a good answer to tell the difference between burnout or not.
Part of it sounds like what happens when you’re done resting, do you come back? I think I’ve had some corporate experiences, and some other people may have had that, where you go on vacation, and you feel so refreshed, but by your second day back in the office, you’re no longer refreshed. You’re right back into that same state of mind that you were before, because you’re in the wrong job, you’re in the wrong role, you’re in the wrong organization, whatever you want to call it.
It is common for passionate people to go too hard for too long. When you care about something, I’ve had this covered on other episodes, it’s not 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM anymore. It’s not something you really put down. It keeps popping in your mind, because it’s your passion.
Yeah. That’s a good point. I feel like in relationships in my past or the contrast of going on vacation and doing something completely out of your ordinary, maybe what you’re saying, when you come back, if it just highlights even more of how much you don’t enjoy the path you’re on versus if you come back and you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I’m reinvigorated. I want to dive deeper into this.” In recent years, I’ve been really, really blessed to feel that when I do allow myself to take breaks. Waking up today thinking, “We’re doing a podcast today. I want to clean,” and I’m not much of a person to tidy up things. I keep things average tidy, but I like to be creative for a couple of days and then tidy everything up. It’s just funny waking up this morning after doing nothing yesterday as best I could. I just wanted to clean was my first instinct — improve, get dive into the day, and that’s a good thing.
What does a day of rest look like for you? I think a lot of people have different ideas of what it means — to quote one of my earlier podcasts — to rest effectively.
For me, I would say, step 1) not being on your phone, step 2) nature. That’s it.
Recently, about half a year ago, I came upon a blog post that mentioned the seven types of rest. There were these different types of risks. There’s physical rest, here’s sensory rest, there’s social rest, there’s mental rest, all these types of things. One of the things that I’ve experienced doing both backpacking and long-distance cycling trips is that those are definitely not physical rest. On all those trips, the phrase most commonly used is that, your phone pretty much just becomes a camera. You’re only using it to take pictures every once in a while, and you’re mostly not using it. I noticed that, because on an average day, my screen time is maybe around two hours on my phone, which is still way too much. On days like that, it’s just 40 minutes of mostly looking at just the camera app and the Maps app, and that’s about it.
Does that factor into what you’re saying, getting in nature, that you may be going for a hike that day, which is something that there’s plenty of opportunity to do in Colorado and getting that sensory, that mental, that emotional rest in nature?
Yeah. I think it’s a miniature sad tragedy that, for whatever reason, the world that I have been culturally brought up in, it feels wrong to rest.
Sometimes, you might not maybe have a very booked-up day, and you have things that you do need to attend to. I think just making it a point to know that there’s an extreme value and necessity in that time away from your passion even if you love it.
I just released my debut album, and I’m starting to work on my second album. I have a bunch of songs that I’m really pumped about. I’ve been showing up the last week or two working on the songs, and I just don’t have that extra gear, that natural high energy gear of like, “I need to get into the studio and get this recorded today.” It’s been very much trying, trying, trying, and then it led up to yesterday being like, “You know what? I have to back away completely from everything for a little bit and just let that recharge.”
We talked about how we’ve all been cultured in our society to view rest as a four-letter word in some cases. What happens when you have a big motivation toward an event — and I know this personally from doing Ride the Rockies, training for it last summer — and then having the event be done, the album came out, the ride is over, and you’re just suddenly like, “Well, what next?” Of course, you’ll come up with something.
What do you think is the best way that someone can adopt the right mindset around rest, around these natural cycles that we see in motivation and in drive, to avoid the trap? What you would call it is trying to just go harder and harder until you find that thing when what you really need is to step back, get nature, meditate, go for a swim, whatever it is, and almost let the idea come to you based on being truly present, and observing what’s around you.
Right.
Action being an antidote -- there is such power in taking action. Share on X
I feel like for a lot of people, that is the antidote and is the answer to take massive action, and test stuff, and see what other opportunities blossom out of that action through learning. It’s funny that there is a flip side to that, a shadow side of resting and allowing for that. So many people in this world work tremendously hard and still are struggling to get by. It has nothing to do with their effort or their worth as a person.
What if there was a two-hour window you could carve for yourself to sit outside with a picnic blanket, even in your crazy, hectic schedule right now where you feel like you don’t have time, that you can’t keep up with your job? What if that two-hour window, you have that just little inside of a picnic? “You know what? What if I call Stephanie today? That leads to a different conversation, because you’re out of that routine. I think those moments of reflection are super crucial. I’ve definitely erred on the side of overworking — grind, grind grind. As I’m saying, there are so many people in the world that working hard is not the missing piece. It might be working less, and figuring out what really matters to me in my career, and how can I leverage those few things more effectively.
You quickly brought up, “I’m going to call my friend Stephanie,” or “I’m going to call one of my friends.” What role does doing things such as having a conversation with a friend, or any of the other human things — listening to music, dancing, laughing with people, play, compared to the role of giving your brain some space in practices such as meditation or a solo hike-in-nature play?
Yeah. They’re definitely very different and serve different roles. I think people find it easier overall to want to reach out to someone or the flip side of that of just maybe watching Netflix for hours, and hours, and hours where your brain actually isn’t turning off, because it can be uncomfortable for people to really just be in their presence, to be in a silence, to go outside without your phone for hours or days for a hike or something, and just really soak in the silence. You’ll be surprised what comes up to the surface.
That’s where so many of the answers are for me. I went on a walk yesterday, and was just like, “Here are the three things that I need to do. Here are the next things.” When I’m in the day-to-day grind, if I get off this podcast, and just all of a sudden go back to email or set up a phone call, I might be mistaking busyness for effectiveness.
It’s interesting that you mentioned these walks in nature. One of the events that inspired me to actually start this podcast — it’s an idea that I’d had a little while back. It was an August 2020 three-day backpacking trip where there was no cell reception and the people I was with, we ran out of things to talk about, which is definitely not a knock on the company I had. August 2020, right in the middle of when everyone was staying home most of the time because of the pandemic, and you’re out there for three whole days. It would actually be annoying if we were talking for the whole three-day time period and just finding whatever it is, just to keep the noise happening. That level of silence in the wilderness was part of what made me say, “Okay. I’m actually going to do this thing.”
Wow. Even marinating out for so long — I feel like so many people, myself included, have those insights for years sometimes and don’t take action on it. For whatever reason — there’s a whole bunch of reasons — I’m sure we could speculate. It’s funny how people know. You know within yourself there’s a couple of things that you could just do, because you know that’s what you should do.
This is a random side note, but I watched this show called Life After Death with someone named Tyler Henry, who is a medium. He had a big primetime show called The Hollywood Medium where he would essentially help connect celebrities and people with their loved ones who had passed away.
Not everything we think matters, matters. When it comes to people passing away in our family — when I hear these cases and these readings, people trying to communicate with their loved ones, they just want to know one little thing. Do you support the life I’m doing? Do you still love me? Do you forgive me? It’s basic things that mean the world to people. I’m busy wondering did I get paid from that gig last week? It’s all good, it’s all good.
That’s another conditioning thing that I’ve observed. We focus so much energy on things that are just very much around the edges. When it comes to the deep, meaningful things, such as who am I, what do I want to be doing with most of my time – I’m of the opinion that what really matters with life in the end is what you spend most of your time doing. You obviously spend most of your time networking, performing gigs, and writing music. We can get into your story that you alluded to earlier. What made you decide that music was your path in life?
That’s a great question. I stumbled upon it thankfully. It wasn’t something I grew up with. I grew up as a sports guy. My dad’s a teacher. My mom is a stay-at-home mom. My grandparents were around. In the summertime, I would play travel baseball. I was on the path of being a college baseball player. That was my aim. My grandma handed me a guitar one summer. It would have been my sophomore year. I was staying at her house, because my family went on a road trip. I stayed behind to play summer baseball leagues and stuff. She handed me a guitar one night and said, “This is your grandfather’s.” It was a classical guitar. She’s like, “You should learn how to play it.”
At the time, I had never played guitar. I’ve never sung before anything, and I started writing a few songs right away. I showed it to my grandma and she’d say, “Wow. This is amazing.” A part of me that’s very self-deprecating was like, “No, it’s not, but thank you, grandma. I appreciate the love.” It’s funny, because when I started getting more into music, it became interesting to me. I found it as an outlet to process my emotions. I didn’t feel as though I felt very safe, whether it be my friend group, or my school, or my family, just in general, and the culture at large. To be vulnerable wasn’t something really that I saw in my surroundings. Music, all of a sudden, became this door that cracked open like, “Oh, I can process things with this.”
That is so valuable that it’s there to listen, it’s there to create something and get something out of us. It works for all kinds of creativity: music, painting, creating conversation. This, I think, is a form of creating. It’s fun, and we’re learning. Yeah. I got into music more deeply in high school and started writing songs. That led to joining a band. I started to learn how to sing for real. Depending on how far deep you want to go into, maybe if there’s any question you have so far.
Yes. First of all, one of the things that I’m wondering just from a natural curiosity, and also a music fan is, are there certain musicians, musical acts, that really inspired you, that you listened to quite a bit when you first got that guitar and were saying, “Oh, this is cool. I can process my emotions here. I want to dive deeper into this”?
Some of my early influences were Jason Mraz, Coldplay, Ed Sheeran, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder. It really took it to a next level where that same year, when I came back to school — it would have been my junior year of high school — I joined choir.
Wow.
I thought I would mix it up. “You know what? I’ll go for it. I’ll join the choir.” It’s my last elective or something, and it was between that and something else random. “Yeah, try it out.” I slid into this choir class. One of the first weeks into school, the class wanted to go see this artist called Ed Sheeran play in South Carolina or North Carolina. This would have been in 2011 or 2012.
When he was first coming up.
Yeah. He had probably just released his first single and was starting to tour the States for the first time. I didn’t know who he was. One person in the class knew his single, The A Team, and was like, “We got to go guys.” We didn’t even know who we’re going to see, but like, “Field trip, let’s go.” We go to this thing on a school night. We drove there with our choir teacher. I’m falling asleep in the car. There’s literally pictures of me falling asleep, because at the time, I was just going along for the field trip, not interested in music, didn’t know the music, didn’t know who we were going to see.
We see this show, Passenger, who has the song Let Her Go. He was the opener for Ed Sheeran. Definitely nobody knew him at the time, and then Ed Sheeran played. I don’t have any recollection of any of the songs that were played, because I didn’t know any of them, but I just remember leaving that concert and that experience, going back to school the next day, and just feeling like I was in a daydream of like, “I have to go to baseball practice? I have to go to math class? I have to go to science class? What am I doing?” Something just shifted in me like, “What the heck just happened? I want to do something like that.” That was a huge turning point.
It suddenly became like this is what I want to be spending my mental energy on. One weird question I need to ask, given that you also played baseball and you have this experience, having gone to a 2011 Ed Sheeran show, was that the musical equivalent of owning a rookie baseball card?
I feel so. If it was the NFT, I’d be worth millions.
Ticket stub right there.
Yeah. I wish I kept it. I probably just threw it right away. Really changed my life for sure. That would have been my junior in high school. I started playing with people around town. After that junior year, at the end of the year, I started playing gigs in the summertime, and that was my summer job. Beforehand, my summer job was working at a smoothie shop, just random jobs in the summertime for a high schooler. That junior-year summer, I started playing three or four nights a week and getting paid $50-$100 a gig, maybe even a little more than $150. I was like, “Holy crap. This is a summer job. How fun is this? Let’s go.”
You said that writing music, performing music helps you process your emotions. Do you ever process your emotions while listening to other people’s music? Do you believe that other people could be processing their emotions while at your shows listening to your music?
Totally. I think it goes both ways for sure.
Yeah, music is such an interesting space that I can't quite put my finger on. There's something really spiritual and deep about really listening to music. Share on X
If you’ve ever closed your eyes and put on headphones, and maybe even a blanket and lie down and listen to music, that is a super cathartic experience. You might start even seeing things or getting ideas. It becomes almost like a meditation in and of itself.
One thing that I have an intention with with my music is to share empowering music with a conscious message — almost like conscious pop songs in a way.
Interesting.
Not super pop. Pop is such a vague word these days. The songs come from my life. I try not to give too much specifics. Just the other day, I wrote a new song, and I showed it to someone. The song I wrote was inspired by my car that I just sold, and I got a 4WD Subaru now.
You’re a true Coloradan now.
Yeah, for real. I wrote this song about my car, which I could play live.
Yeah, go ahead.
I wasn’t planning to play this, but this is a new one — maybe on the next album. “Deliver me to my destination. Deliver me safely back home. Where we decide to celebrate the memory if you just deliver me safely back home. Where the winds blow I went miles for smiles along. My fingertips know when you got to go. Remember me as I was.”
Yeah. That’s a new one I’m working on.
Nice. It seems like that’s pure emotion. I think about some other people — Mike Posner is the first one that comes to mind when I think of someone that combines pop music with an actual interpersonal, introspective, deep message behind the songs. It’s interesting, because I think in the past, a lot of people have considered those things to be a little bit mutually exclusive. If you want to be a deep artist, you need to pick a different genre.
Yeah. That is crazy you brought that up. Mike Posner was a huge influence for me throughout the pandemic. I got more into his journey and his work. If you know him, you probably saw he walked across America, did some big hikes –Mount Everest. Through the pandemic, one thing that it taught me was, I was really closely tied to the label of being a musician or a songwriter. It actually prohibited me from doing podcasts, because I didn’t see other people doing things outside of this musician label. I thought you play shows, you write songs, and that’s it.
That was really limiting, and it was tearing at me especially being inside where I couldn’t play shows and was like, “What am I doing?” I felt called to want to create different ways, like make vlogs, make podcasts, do things that might not be what I see other musicians are doing. Somebody like Mike Posner was very much and still is going against that mainstream grain of, “I’ll take a year off and walk across America,” and now actually be not only what’s best for my music ironically, or my exposure, my career, but for my soul, and for what I need to do for myself — and that’s just magnetic.
Yeah. I still wish more people had the mindset and the freedom to do that, because I see so many stories that people don’t. One of the things I want to cover before we finish up is how you manage to set up your life where you can make your living off of musical performances and music writing. I think a lot of people, especially when you think about the world of people in Silicon Valley that can’t even afford to live there on $150,000 a year tech salaries, there’s got to be a way that you make that work.
Yeah. Like I said earlier, about 80% of my income all comes from these lead-generating websites that have been such a blessing to get my foot in the door, and then from there, it’s been word of mouth. Most of my income that I’ve been able to do what I’m doing right now is through playing live shows from bars, private events, birthday parties, telegrams, weddings, corporate events, whatever pops up and comes through.
I also have to mention — because it’s just close to my heart, and it’s actually a good learning lesson. I said my dad was a teacher and my mom was a stay-at-home mom. Recently, she’s gotten into real estate and is now doing super, super well. In the last year or two, there have been pinches, moving out here and stuff, where they’ve actually sent me a few $100 here and there to help supplement some of these gaps where I’m just continually investing in what I’m doing. Although I’m mostly above float, there have been a couple pinches, where I was really crying in bed just thinking how am I going to pay rent.
My girlfriend told my parents, “John’s really struggling. He’s working every day to make this happen,” then I find out $500 hits my bank account or something. It’s like, “Holy crap.” There are moments of grace, and privilege, and opportunity where if that wasn’t my mom, who has a little bit of extra on her paycheck right now, could help supplement me in little ways. I say that to be fully transparent, because I think a lot of people might get help here and there. Predominantly, I’d say about 80% for sure of my income.
There’s little passive things and knickknack things I do. Spotify streams add up every once in a while. This band I was in beforehand, we’ve just received $300 or $400 of extra royalties just from stuff we put out years ago. All those little seeds we plant really do come back around. I feel like being at my own solo career, I’m in the stage of just investing, investing, investing — getting better peers, making sure everything’s working.
I’m 26 now. Now is the time to take the chances, take the risks, go for it, and have it now versus if I actually waited to save up to buy this $600 microphone, which I actually did buy a while ago.
In moments of certainty, yeah, I believe in my dream. Yeah, this is what I’m going to be doing, so why not commit to it in a way where I make it real? Get the camera you want. Make sure your laptop works.
If you truly believe in yourself, then you will think longer term, plant those seeds, and be willing to invest that money even if it means being a little bit worried about how you’re going to be able to afford it, having to forego some other random luxuries that a lot of people need to do. I think this applies to the musical experience as well as to the general entrepreneurial experience. If someone has a business idea, or someone has another idea for the thing that they really want to bring into the world, you’ll put in that money knowing that eventually it’ll come back to you, because you believe in yourself.
Right, yeah. In the short term right now, it’s very month-to-month for me, especially with this move to Colorado, but looking ahead to this spring, I feel super confident. There’s so many beautiful opportunities that are popping up now as we transition into spring. I don’t worry as much about money anymore. I used to a lot. Now, I feel like I’ve gotten over this hump where, “It’s okay. You’re going to make it. It’s all good.” What’s the worst that could happen? You go into a little bit of debt, a few $1,000 here. That’s the worst case, but in three years, it wouldn’t matter. One of my dreams — it’s random — is to have a Tesla one day.
It seems consistent with what you were saying before about these little more minor things that we spend so much time worrying about and so much time stressed about. When you’re talking about the mediums and channeling the people who have passed, saying what are the things that really matter. You think about it, it’s like, “How did I spend my time? What impact did I have on people? How were my relationships with other human beings? I’m sure I’m missing a whole bunch of really important things, but everyone’s always worried like, “Oh my God, did you cross the street? You were in the crosswalk,” all these just random little things. When you reach that point, you just want to say, “I don’t want to spend another second thinking about this.”
As an example, I always use – as you try a new restaurant, and it was bad, and then you just move on. You just don’t go back. It was just one bad meal – move on. It happened. It’s done. Get on with your life kind of thing.
Yeah. That’s so good, Stephen. I actually think of that analogy from time to time, literally the same thing. I feel like people forget that you have a choice of which restaurant you go to. I don’t eat out very much right now for the reason we talked about, but if you were to go somewhere and eat out, and you don’t like it, you don’t have to go back there, which some people think you have to go back there enjoying the meal. There are other meals, I promise. There’s great meals out there.
So many other meals and recipe books that you can make some great meals.
It’s disheartening though. You’re like, “Dang. I didn’t like what I paid for. It’s like, “Well then, don’t keep paying for it.”
Amazing. It sounds like an amazing journey and amazing experience. One last thing I want to cover before we wrap up now that anyone listening out there has gotten a chance to hear about your story, even hear a little bit of our latest track. If anyone wants to get a hold of you to talk about music, talk about paths, talk about gigs, what would be the best way that someone could reach you?
I would say my website is johnbrewstermusic.com. It’s the hub for everything which links to my Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, the whole shebang. All my music is on all the streaming platforms right now. You can also purchase it. I feel like so many people are not using CDs and such anymore, but it’s almost out of good karma. If you wanted to buy the album digitally, you certainly can.
John, thank you so much for joining us today on Action’s Antidotes, for telling your story to everybody, and inspiring people to not only believe in themselves, get off their phones a little bit — a huge thing as well — and enjoy the things that really make us human — the laughter, the dancing, the music, the things that society doesn’t necessarily always value in a lot of places, but has a really important spiritual and humanistic value to it.
Thank you so much. There’s so much beautiful things to go into. I’m sure we could go for so long. Thank you for the time and for inspiring others in creating the space for people to maybe connect some few different dots and make some few different decisions, go for a walk and discover some new plan. It’s beautiful.
Definitely. I’d also like to thank all those listeners out there for listening. For those continuing to listen, I hope that you’re inspired by these stories were telling of all these different people with different types of ideas, different practices, different struggles, but with a similar mindset challenge of getting into the place where — to quote what we have here — to believe in yourself enough to throw that extra couple $1,000 on your equipment, or on podcast editing in my case, or anything else like that.
It’s worth it. If you believe in yourself, you know you’ll figure it out. “Action’s Antidotes”
Thank you very much and everybody have an excellent day.
Thanks so much, Stephen.
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About John Brewster
John Brewster is a singer-songwriter who recently moved to Colorado after living in South Carolina where he first started pursuing his passion for music. In South Carolina, John started an original band, SondorBlue, with his best friends. Together, they thrived touring the east coast playing hundreds of shows. On the outside John was soaring, but on the inside, he was merely surviving. By the end of 2018, Brewster hit a personal rock bottom that led to a journey of deep healing and sustainable growth away from music, and to rediscover his dreams. Starting anew, in 2020, John released his first song. With the intention to share empowering music with a conscious message, Brewster released his debut album at the end of 2021 with the help of his friends. He can’t wait to share more of his story with you today.