In this episode, James D. Newcomb shares his detailed journey from being surrounded by music from birth, influenced by a family of musicians and early school experiences, to becoming a skilled trumpet player.
He recounts pivotal moments in high school under a mentor, his time in military bands, and the significant impact of participating in the Drum and Bugle Corps.
James openly discusses the highs and lows of his musical career, his involvement in a strict church organization, and the shift in his priorities towards podcasting.
He concludes by reaffirming his renewed commitment to performance while balancing his successful podcasting career.
Episode highlights:
01:00 The Musical Roots: A Family Tradition
02:11 The Trumpet Resolution: A New Year's Promise
03:22 High School Years
06:24 Military Musician: Joining the Army Band
07:26 Drum Corps Experience: The Madison Scouts
11:41 Music Takes a Back Seat to Jesus
16:52 Still Got the Godos
18:40 Going Pro
22:50 Podcasting and Priorities: A New Focus
24:49 Future Plans: Embracing Performance Again
The devil doesn't want you to listen to this!
Napoleon Hill's Outwitting the Devil is now available in audiobook format, narrated by Yours Truly.
Visit my website, jamesdnewcomb.com to get instant access to the audios!
(upbeat music) Conscious Living in a Zunktout World. You're listening to Barvosh Don with James D. Newcomb. Brought to you by Grandma Petruo. - When did I become a musician? Honestly, I would say that the day that I was born is the day that I became a musician. My father was a musician in the military. All of my aunt and uncles are musicians. Not necessarily professional, but accomplished musicians in their own right. My grandparents sang in the choir until they were in their late 90s. So it's always been around me. It's always been something that I've been exposed to. And when I had an opportunity to perform music in the elementary school setting, I did really well with it. So I've always had a knack for it. And I'll get to this later in this recording, but honestly, the reason that I'm still a musician and I keep at it is because I'm good at it. I do believe that I've been given a gift to share with others when it comes to performing music. Be it on my trumpet or singing. It's just always something that's been good. I've done well with it. And that's why I continue to do it. I was eight years old in, this would have been the New Year of 1980, going into 1985. This would have been the New Year of '85. And my family did New Year's resolutions. My mom said to James, we're all gonna do New Year's resolutions. And what do you wanna do? What's your resolution for 1985? Told my mom, I'm gonna learn to play the trumpet like my dad who still played. And so that was my resolution in January of 1985. My dad taught me the basics of the trumpet. He taught me the scales, taught me how to take the valves out, how to oil the valves, how to do the spit valve. So by the time all the other kids in the school were starting band in the fifth grade, I had a leg up on them. I knew what I was doing. So they were all learning how to work their instruments. And I already knew what I was doing. I already knew the scales. I already had a bit of a leg up on my so-called competition. That was the fifth grade that I began in band. All throughout middle school, I did not really accomplish anything. I never challenged myself as a musician until I got into the ninth grade, and I went to the high school in the Eden Prairie, Minnesota. And that's when I met Mr. Olson, Steve Olson. And he was a trumpet player himself, very wonderful trumpet player. And he listened to me play, and I clearly remember him saying, "James, you have a gift. "You have a lot of raw talent. "And if you were to work hard, "then I think that you could really do something special "on the trumpet." I took him at his word. He knows good trumpet playing when he hears it. And so that was that. I decided I'm going to be a great trumpet player. I was not in the top band. I think I was in the second band, but I was the first chair. So I was given an opportunity to have a bit of a leadership role in the band. There in high school, I was in ninth grader, but there I was with a lot of potential, a lot of natural talent, undeveloped talent that needed to be chiseled, and I began to chisel. I worked hard. I practiced every day, just about every day. By the time I was a senior in high school, not only did I make the Allstate band in Minnesota, but I was first chair in the Allstate band. And this would have been going into my senior year in 1993. So, again, that shows that not only did I have the goods, the natural gift, but when I applied myself and put in the work, the results manifested. Now, remember walking into that first rehearsal in the Allstate band, and there was my name at first chair, and I thought there was a mistake of some sort. I thought, how in the world is this possible? But in that moment, I just had a better audition than the next guy, and that's important to remember. Just because you have a better audition, just because you have a better moment, or someone has a better moment than you, doesn't make anyone any better than anyone else. It just means that you had a better moment. I didn't realize that at the time, it went straight to my head, and all of a sudden, I had this massive ego to contend with, and I was probably a pain in the butt to a lot of my classmates, a lot of people in the band, but that is what I did. That was my identity. I was James, the trumpet player in the high school band. High school was coming to an end, and the question was looming, what am I gonna do? I knew that I did not want to go to college right after high school. The thought of going to a university to study trumpet just didn't appeal to me. The school setting did not appeal to me, and so when a military recruiter called my home, we spoke, and since I didn't want to go to college, I thought maybe I'll go into the military. That's what I ended up doing. The recruiter asked me, what are you good at? I said, I'm a musician. I played trumpet in the band. I was the star trumpeter, and so he said, we have bands in the army. Do you think you'd like to do that? Said, yeah, I'd love to do that. Of course, this is when you're in high school, and you don't know the realities of the army band lifestyle. I'm not talking about the army bands in Washington, DC. I'm talking about there's that scene, and then there's the other army bands where they actually do army stuff. So I had it in my mind that I was gonna be playing my trumpet all day, every day, and doing nothing else. Turned out to be not the case. I'll get to that in just a minute. But that's what I envisioned. Getting paid to play my instrument sounded pretty good to me. Right before the military, I participated in an activity that is called drum and bugle corps. I performed with a drum corps called the Madison Scouts based out of Madison, Wisconsin. This would have been the summer of 1994. And that was a life-defining moment, moment meaning the entire summer. This experience was my first exposure to truly high quality music. Absolute perfection was expected. It's one of those things where it's like perfection is expected. Excellence is tolerated. That type of mentality, that was my first exposure to that. And it was life-changing. I left home for the first time. I was away from family. I was on a bus every night. Every day we'd go to a different town, sleep on gym floors, we'd have a show just about every night. And it was great. One of the best summers of my life, 1994. But musically speaking, that was defining for me because I had that exposure to that type of expectation of you're going to be perfect. And we'll settle for you being really good. We were really good. We were one of the top groups. And consistently, we got just blew it out of the water. Every single time, we were the crowd favorites. And they were big crowds, DCI finals in Boston of '94. I remember walking onto the field. And there was this wall of people. It was in the stadium where the Patriots play. Former stadium where the Patriots play. And just the whole side of the field in the bleachers was just full. There's no sight like that. Really something. So that was my drum corps experience. Unfortunately, it lasted only one summer because, as I said, I went into the military, I went into basic training in September of '94 and went to the military school of music. And from there, I went to Fort Stewart, Georgia, which is 40 miles southwest of Savannah, Georgia. Nice part of the country. I remember the person at the processing station in Minneapolis when I joined the military. He said, you're going to like it, son. It's got a lot of trees. He was right. Fort Stewart has a lot of trees. It also has a lot of tanks and grenades and machine guns. It's a heavily fortified base. It's one of the most so-called army bases in the United States military. It was the mechanized infantry, they call it. Something like that. At any rate, there was a lot of army. But there, I was assigned-- I had an instrument assigned to me. And I'm not going to say that I quickly distinguished myself as a standout player. I had to earn the respect of my peers. But I will say that by the time I was finished in 1998, I had set myself apart from the pack, as far as being a musician is concerned. As far as being anything other than a musician, I was decidedly average. I did no more than was expected of me when it came to the administrative side of things or the military side of things. I just didn't have any interest in it. But that was my experience, and that is my attitude. My attitude was I joined to be a musician, and that's what I'm going to be. I will tolerate everything else, and I'll do what you ask of me. I came here to play music. And that was my attitude then. It was my attitude my second time in the military, and I'll get to that in a moment. I'm a musician, and the military hired me to do this, and I'm going to do this extremely well and everything else. You can take what you can get. That was my attitude. Why did I leave the military in 1998? In 1995, I got heavily involved in a church organization, heavily, to the point that I moved out of the barracks. There at Fort Stewart and moved into what's called a service home. It was owned by the church, and we were expected to participate in every activity that was put on by this church organization, and there was a lot of activities, just about every single day. There would be something going on. Of course, you had the Sunday morning services, and then you had Sunday evening. I think there was Saturday night. Every night, there was something going on, and we were expected. If you lived in that service home, and you're going to be part of the crowd, then you're going to be with us. It was very strict. It was very stringent. And when you're 19 and 20 years old, and you're away from home for the first time, it appeals to you. It is something that you feel like you want to gravitate towards it, especially when you're in the military and you're accustomed to being told what to do, told what to wear, how to have your hair, how to do this, how to do that, to the most minute detail of your appearance, you're told what to do, and you just comply. That is the type of mindset that's ripe for this type of environment that this pseudo-church put on. I'll get to the pseudo-church aspect later in the series when I talk about my journey to the Orthodox Church. But I will say that looking back, it was a very toxic environment. It was in some ways very positive because it taught me a good work ethic. It taught me to be on time for things, to follow through in your commitments. At the same time, it was toxic in that we were-- it was constantly beat into our heads that if we were to leave this particular organization, we would be, in essence, leaving God. And God would be disappointed in us if we did this. And God would judge us and bring upon us misery and the plagues that he brought upon Egypt back in the Old Testament days if we were to do something other than participate in these activities. So without actually imprisoning us, they imprisoned us in our minds thinking that we're going to suffer eternal damnation. If we don't do this, that's a pretty good motivator. Burning in a lake of fire, you're going to do what you're told to do if you're convinced, beyond a shadow of doubt, that's going to be your fate if you don't do what the man says, so you do what the man says. Hence my labeling this experience as toxic. I say this nearly three decades after the fact, having a lot of time to reflect on things and think on things and mature in my own mind, I didn't recognize this as that type of environment at the time. If I did, do you think I would stick around? Actually, I did, and guess what? I stuck around because of that mentality. I'm getting off track here a bit with my journey as a musician, but it is relevant because after I left the military, I went to Washington State, a Bible college, well, attend a Bible college that was owned and operated by this church organization. The lifestyle as a student at this school was to have a full-time job during the day, and then we had classes at night. And as you can imagine, music was not a high priority. It was something that I did, it was more of a hobby, but it was no longer the top of my list as far as my priorities go. My priority was being in Bible school, having a job, non-musical job, and then taking, doing my schooling at night, doing my homework, and getting everything done. So I was lucky to get, I would play a little bit here and there, but it wasn't like an intensive conservatory type of environment. I don't say this to be either positive or negative, I'm just saying, this is what happened. This was my life and my experience with music. So that ended in 2004. I graduated from the school in 2001 and just hung around Washington for a couple of years, doing nothing of any real value. I decided I'm going to do something with my life, and I don't see much of the future for myself here in this organization. So I finally gathered up the nerve and the courage to just resign from that organization. 26, 27 years old, 28, somewhere around there. Still, music was something that I did, but it just wasn't a huge priority for me. Let's see here, another positive thing that came about living in this part of the country was I lived close to Pacific Lutheran University. It was just on the road. It's right into coma, Washington, and I had an apartment just literally two, three miles away from the campus, and they had a band that they allowed, or they welcomed community musicians to play in the band. So I took them up on their offer. I was out of school at the time, so I had some time in my hands, and I participated, and I quickly, this time I quickly set myself apart from the rest of the pack. I had maintained my skills, albeit on a very limited basis, but I still had some abilities, and I still had some strength and endurance with my playing when it came to trumpet playing. And so when I sat in on one of these rehearsals, it was very apparent that this guy knows what he's doing, and I say in all humility that my work was recognized for the quality that it was. Still not at a professional level, and speaking on a strictly amateur level, I was very good. I was a very good amateur player. That experience ended around 2004. From there, I moved to Minnesota and didn't do anything with music. I worked for a political activist organization here in Minnesota for the year of 2005. In 2006, I moved to Hawaii to marry my first spouse. In 2007, I was "discovered" again, and this is very similar to my experience with my ninth grade band director. This person who had attended the Eastman School of Music in the late '70s and early '80s, one of the top conservatories in America, he just happened to hear me playing. We were at the Presbyterian Church in Kailua, Hawaii, and he was there as a visiting, I think he was getting a degree of some sort at the university, and he was attending the church there, and he listened, happened to hear me playing in the sanctuary of that Presbyterian Church, and he took me aside, and he said, "James, I happen to hear you play, and you play really well, and I know a thing or two about high-quality trumpet playing, and I think that you have the goods, and I think that if you were to work really hard, you could make something of yourself as a trumpet player." That was a bit of deja vu, 16 years later to be getting almost the exact same feedback, although this time, it wasn't to be a standout high school trumpeter, it was to be a professional trumpeter, and hearing that advice, I took it to heart, I took, you get that advice or that feedback from somebody who has been around the block and knows high-quality music when they hear it, that was the shot in the arm that I needed to really go for it. It gave me the moral courage to pursue it, I'll say that. I pursued it with gusto. That became my life from that time on, until about late 20, probably about seven years, I was consumed with being a trumpet player, and that's what I did every day, all day. I lived, I breathed it, and that was my reason for being put on this earth as far as I was concerned. Audition for a couple of symphony orchestras, and I was quickly humbled and quickly realized I've got a lot of work to do. If I'm going to play at this level where I can not only compete, but actually win one of these positions, I'm just not there, and I had to learn that the hard way. I am not there, how can I get there? I had experienced with the military before, and I thought it will put money in the bank account, it will put food on the table, and this is something that I can do, and I can do it for a few years, and see what happens for three years from now, see what happens, and that's what I did. I rejoined the military, this time it was in Hawaii, and I was sent from there to Fort Knox, Kentucky, and it was more of the same. Music was my priority, the military stuff, I tolerated, and I did really well with the music, I did really well. I was able to get some good experience, I got some good experience, I got to meet some of the great musicians there in Louisville, Kentucky, where we had a house, and by all accounts, it was successful, I did really well with it. I decided to re-enlist and take a position with what was called a major command band, and this was something that is kind of something that is highly desired among military musicians, is one of these major command bands, I took that, I was able to get that assignment because I had done well on my audition, we first went to Fort MacPherson, Georgia, which isn't in Atlanta, and then we went from there to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for two years, and then I re-enlisted again, and went to Korea. Since leaving the military in 2015, Trumpet has taken a back seat to my podcasting career. I made an important discovery while I was going through this purgatory of the military, and that is we work hard at something, not to be recognized as a great player, but we want to be able to make an impact on our community, the niche where we reside, that little pond where all those big fish are swimming around, we want to be a big fish in that small pond, and that little pond called Trumpet, as I call it, some people become big fish by being great trumpet players, some people do it by being great teachers. I realized that if I'm going to make an impact in this little pond, it's going to be through my podcast, and to a certain degree that has happened, to what degree it has happened, isn't really for me to say. I will say that I am much more known in the trumpet community because of my podcast than I am because of my trumpet playing. I will say that. If that helps you understand the level of priorities when it comes to being a musician, I think it does a pretty good job of that, but music has not been the top of my mind. It's not like the top priority for me. My top priority is making an impact, and if that happens through doing a podcast versus playing an instrument, then so be it, then I'll take it. If I can do it playing an instrument and having a podcast, even better, and honestly, I have made the decision that I'm going to take being a performer much more seriously than I have. And I'll share some announcements about that on the podcast in the near future, but I am going to be more of a performer. I've made that decision. I have the talent, I have the skills, I have the ability. I definitely have the work ethic. It's just a matter of channeling some of that energy that I put into my podcast and channeling it into being a performing artist. So that is where things stand with James D. Newcomb as the musician. I'm going to cut this off. If you have any questions, if you have any comments, want to talk about anything that I've discussed in this podcast, you know how to find me. Check out my website, JamesDNewcomb.com. It's got all my contact info on it, and it's also got some free gifts, some audiobooks that I have recorded. And all you have to do is just tell me where to send them via email, and you'll have access to them. I have the go getter, Obvious Adams, Success and Failure, very little-known book, but very powerful little book. And then I have Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill and As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. All of those are available for you. Visit my website, JamesDNewcomb.com, and they'll be delivered to you via email. Thank you for listening. And tomorrow, we will be talking about my journey as a podcaster. I've already brushed on it a little bit with this, but I'm gonna go into more detail that is coming tomorrow on this series called Meet the Maestro. Thank you for listening. - "Grammar Petrelow" is your go-to full service publishing and marketing firm, specializing in podcasts, copywriting, email marketing, website design, course creation, and much more. If it involves clicking a button that says publish, we're here to help. Let us handle the technical side of things while you focus on creating and delivering value for your audience. With "Grammar Petrelow", your vision becomes reality shared with grace, mercy, and peace in truth and love. Discover the "Grammar Petrelow" difference today. Visit GMPTL.org and receive a free gift just for checking us out. That's GM as in Mary, PTL.org.
