Heartland Journal Podcast

Heartland Journal Podcast EP238 Musical Artist Natasha Owens & More 8 13 24

Joining us is musical artist Natasha Owens. Natasha is known for her songs Trump Won, The Chosen One and many others. She also released her latest CD American Patriot where Owens is taking a new direction and offering up a bold, proud, powerful concept collection that bridges an unwavering love of country with the themes of faith and family that have always played a significant part in her artistry. You can find these songs and more on your favorite music platform. For more about Natasha Owens go to https://natashaowensmusic.comIf you like what you hear make sure to subscribe to the show and share it with your friends. You can find us at http://heartlandjournal.com

Duration:: 1h 5m
Broadcast on:: 13 Aug 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[Music] Welcome to the Heartland Journal's podcast. With your host, Steve Abramowitz, editor-in-chief, of partlandjournal.com. Howdy, all. Welcome back to this show. I'm Steve Abramowitz, and this is the Heartland Journal podcast. We are focusing on our nation today with always interesting person, making a positive change in our community. Welcome to our people in our news, where I interview people who are making an impact and are lovers of truth. [Music] Today we are talking with special guest Natasha Owens. One of the most celebrated and sought-after singer-songwriter worship leaders of her generation, Natasha is no stranger to Christian music fans, releasing a prolific string of pop inspirational and even jazzy recordings as she climbed the charts and toured the world. Her new album, American Patriot, bold, proud, powerful concept collection that bridges an unwavering love of country with the theme of faith and family that have always played a significant part in her art. For so long, it has been a taboo to really talk about God, she says, and the church is so faith-based that they just say, "Well, you don't have enough faith or you just need to pray more." There are circumstances that paralyze us so much that we are lucky to get between breath to breath. We are just in survival mode. Jesus is the way out. She is a survivor, so she has to say things in such a way that people can feel the empathy. Then I can show them my friend Jesus. She says, "Hello Mrs. Owens, how are you today?" I'm good. How are you? Thank you for having me. I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. You are in Colorado. You were just telling us at a music event. Tell us about that. Yeah, well, it's more of a political event. It's the Republican Governors Association, and this is our first time joining them, and it's in Colorado. The weather is great. I dread it when I go back to Texas tomorrow because it's significantly different than here in Colorado. Definitely hotter, but it's home, so you have to love it. Since 2016, I see you joined best-selling artists such as Michael W. Smith, Matthew West, Jason Krab, Jeremy Camp, Audio Adrenaline. One of my favorites, "Need to Breathe on Stage." What's life been like on the road, and how did you find your way to be so sought after as a worship leader? You know, it all stems back to 2010. I came from a very musical family, but I struggled with anxiety, never really wanting the spotlight, and I tell you, God has a sense of humor for sure. 2010, my dad's sitting at a table, cleaning his guns, a bullet came out and hit him in the heart, and he was gone, and I struggled with that so much that I guess I was just too strong. I didn't give it to God, and on the year mark, I down sprawled into a deep depression, and if it wasn't for God and music, I wouldn't be alive today. And so my pastor asked me to be a music minister six months into that depression, and I told him I didn't have anything to give, but I ended up taking it, and it was a way out. It was my lifesaver, and it took me years to day out. But that became a training ground for what I started doing in the professional world, and my story is unbelievable if I had the time to tell you how God has just illuminated a path. So I started walking in contemporary Christian, had an opportunity. My very first concert was with Michael W. Smith on a massive stage that I had said no to in the very beginning, but it ended up being on my dad's birthday, and I felt like that was a sign that God was with me. I still struggled with anxiety pretty bad at that point, and very first concert on my dad's birthday. So that's where it started, and I have six albums out, this last one being a patriotic album. I started veering in 2018, 2017, 2018, when I started seeing that the church was not standing up, was not pushing back, was not standing up for biblical principles, because they were just too afraid with the cancel culture these days. So my road started changing dramatically from that point on, and we can talk about it. It's just so many details, so many different routes. I don't know which way you want to go. Yeah, well, the show is about you, so I want to go up down to them all, as long as we can fit it all into our time together. Well, let's start here. So super producer Ian Eskelin is good to have on your team. Tell us about him, and how he found you, or how you found him. You know, I did the first album with a guy named Jacob Lowery. He played bass for Michael W. Smith. The second one was Ed Cash, who's done how great is our God, who shall we fear all of Chris Tomlin's songs. And I knew I wanted to do a little bit more upbeat and pop to the third one, and everyone kept saying you need to go to Ian. So we finally met with him, and it was just an immediate connection. He's still with me. And so from that third album on net, we're about to put out our seventh one. He has been the co-writer, producer, a lot of inspiration behind it. He's amazing. He's known for songs like "God is on the Move" and "Holy Spirit." He's in "All of Francesca" by the Stellies 9 albums. And he's just an incredible man. One that we've been walking this political path of, you know, trying to bring fighting for faith, family, and freedom. However that looks, whether it's political, patriotic, church, Christian, that's the theme. And so he's walking this path with me, which has been a lot of fun. Wow. Okay. And so not just singing and songwriting. You've been on Fox News, CNN, Sirius X on radio, Newsmax. What do you think they were most interested in hearing from you about? Well, one thing the media is still, I guess, surprised about is that my dad, you know, he made a mistake claiming his guns. It was his fault. It wasn't the gun's fault. But five years prior to that, my uncle was murdered with a gun. So my grandmother lost both children to gun violence or not violence, but to gun accidents. And they're amazed that I'm still so second amendment. Of course, I'm from Texas. I'm a different breed. But I realized that our freedoms are all being, they're being supported by the second amendment. We don't have freedom. We will not have a first amendment unless we have a second amendment. So that opened the door a little bit into the mainstream media with that topic. And since then we've come out with a song called the second for text the first. So they've been interested in that. And then I started walking the patriotic road. And so that got me into mainstream media. So it's been from different topics. I'm kind of complex. I have a lot in my background that I can talk to and became a regular on news. Max being able to be like a contributor in the fact of if they had topics that were headlines, they would ask me my opinion. So that's been great. Okay, and Fox and CNN are very different in their concept of, let's say, America first. How have you found the media treats you when it comes to going on shows and being a guest? Well, CNN was prior to the political walk. And I had to fight them some last year that not Taylor Swift out of first called Trump won. And of course, the liberal media went bananas. They hated it. And so needless to say, I probably won't be invited back to CNN anytime soon. And Fox didn't even embrace that topic very well. But they've they've embraced everything else. So it's just a matter of creating content, getting it out there. And whoever grabs on it grabs on it. Yeah, they've changed quite a bit on both sides. I think one was center left to far left. One was somewhat on the right to now, maybe right down the middle if that. So how about the music industry in general? What are your feelings about the business of making faith based? What I call heartland music. Yeah, so I was very surprised. We were asked to be a part of Trump's faith initiative team in his last three years in office. And that's what crossed my path with politics. I'd never really I'd voted, but that was about it. And they they asked the top 35 in contemporary Christian. And when I arrived, maybe only 5% was there and I was shocked by that. I didn't realize because I don't live in Nashville wasn't really a part of seeing the everyday industry. I knew that for those 11 years, I was a part of ministry. You had industry and ministry and those are two very different things. One is really about self promotion and one is about ministry and actually helping promote God, right? And that God can be give you a second chance at life. And so I was always not in the industry scene, I guess, and didn't realize how progressive and how liberal contemporary Christian had become. And the gatekeepers to radio were very, very liberal, very progressive. And so I felt the backlash of that when I did the patriotic album called American Patriot. I wanted to I want through COVID, our freedoms were taken away even in Texas. I had never seen such overreach and that and how people were begging the government for a false sense of security. And I thought, you know what, it's time to illuminate how great this country is even with all of its faults. It's the greatest country on earth. It's the lighthouse on the hill. And I wanted to give back to veterans who who had, you know, the mental health piece was very important to me. So we did the patriotic album, had no idea that Nashville would not like that, but they didn't, they had a fit. And that opened the door to more political media, Newsmax, America, One America's Boys. And as we started, my team started getting phone calls from radio promoters, from people in the industry saying she needs to shut her mouth, right? Because I made statements like Nashville's Two Woke for their audience. They've met, they're not lining up with what the core conservative biblical roots that the audience of their consumers of their music really, how they feel. And so I put a pro-life song on that pro-life is very dear to my heart. We had lots of issues having kids and I'm extra thankful for my two boys. And I will always fight for the unborn, biblically we're supposed to do that. And so I did a pro-life song and the industry in Nashville considered me two pro-life, which I was shocked about. Contemporary Christian music telling me I'm two pro-life and therefore I was too controversial. And so radio promoters were firing me off of the radio, regular music promoters were firing me off of events. My husband had said for two years, you need to do a Trump one song, you need to put a spotlight on election integrity, it's not fixed. And so I said, Nashville will hate me, I'll never be able to go back. But after what they did with the pro-life, I said, you know what, if I am not going to be a part of a genre of music that is not going to stand for the basic principles of life. And so I did the Trump one song and of course it blew it through a stick of dynamite in my career and the fact that, you know, I don't know if I can go back to contemporary Christian until some of that industry has got it out. But I really haven't looked back, it put me to a bigger platform, a bigger audience. And it's given me opportunities to be on these massive stages and bring Jesus to a secular market, which that's our whole goal is Christians right, to bring it outside of four walls. But the backlash has been real and the spiritual warfare and has been pretty intense with every song that's coming out. But I want to put a spotlight on things we're not allowed to talk about, on things that are too controversial, on biblical principles that we need to be fighting for. So I'm trying to give music is powerful, so I'm trying to give an anthem to different topics and get courage to others to stand up. It really is surprising how hard it is because you have a breakthrough artist like Jelly Roll, who's made the industry bazillions of dollars when it was about to die. And then you have a guy like John Rich with a legendary career also from Texas lives in Nashville, resident of Nashville, has to put out his stuff himself and actually becomes number one on iTunes by doing it. Without a label, just his own thing. So it really is shocking. It's a lot like Hollywood and Disney where they keep putting out the same garbage thinking that's what we want, but yet they come out with this rare gem that makes a lot of money like, well, I don't know, Jesus revolution and just, well, that's a fluke. We can't, we can't go there. But you've been at it a while, and you had this new genre inside you a long time. We've been through COVID now an assassination attempt and a clear communist versus American values election in under three months. Tell us how American patriot came together. You know, I wanted to do some of the great songs that we have in our history from the, you know, just a different version of the Star Spangled Banner to America, the beautiful to God bless America to of course God bless the USA. I wanted to put a female voice on that song. But we came out with about half and half, half covers and half originals. We put the pro life song. We put songs on there like prayer for America. I believe that that is going to be the key to winning this is it if we get at the end of the day, we need to vote. We need to get the Christians woken up. We need to realize that this is a battle between good and evil. We need to get Christians registered to vote. That's the biggest issue. There's 47 million that aren't registered. We would never be fighting this liberal agenda if Christians had done the part. And so, so, but I also know at the end of the day that God is going to have to just do the rest, the things that we can't possibly do on our own. So I have a song like prayer for America. We did a, we're doing a blessed blessed is the nations whose God is our Lord comes from Psalms. It's, it's a very well rounded album that, that just really talks about faith, freedom and family. And so some people listen to them and think these songs, some of them don't belong on the same album. And I'm like, they do. They're all anthem set that are in those three categories. And so that that's the platform that I'm on right now, just anything that's biblical values and fighting for freedom. Very cool. So Isaac Hayes's family is suing Trump for using his songs at his rally. And I keep thinking, well, why would you do that? Everyone has completely forgotten about Isaac Hayes. Why don't we let a new generation to hear the music as opposed to sue Donald Trump. Why don't you give your songs Donald Trump and he won't get sued. Yeah, well, you know, we have President Trump has supported my music on social media's many times. We have been approved from to sing live at his rallies. I just can't quite get on the schedule. It's just this Evan Flower that like the left hand doesn't know what the right hand's doing. We have written a letter this week to President Trump and it's going to get directly in his hands with, with a combination of two albums, both from the American Patriot to this new album that's coming out. They have quite a bit of music. And that's exactly what we did. We put in that letter. You know what? This is a very polarizing topic. He's a very polarizing topic. I mean, people hate him or love him. They hate Republicans or they love Republicans. It's I've never lived in a time like this. But he doesn't need to sing. He does not, he does not need to play artists that are liberal or that don't line up with biblical values. He from John Rich to Kid Rock to myself. You have enough people out there that can supply him with music. And I would love that. I would love for him to play anything that I have. Yeah, he had Kid Rock at the Republican National Convention, which I think blew away some of those older, greater women. But it's good. It's good. So how do you define a Patriot? Someone that loves God, loves their country, and that will fight for future generations, that will fight for what's right, that fights for integrity, for honesty, for truth, and fights against a satanic agenda. This is, we're not in a fight between left and right, between good and right. I mean, between good and it's a fight between good and evil. It's not Republican or Democrat. It's not left or right. This is a freedom, which is really the whole platform of Jesus, right? And God, he lives for free. He died on the cross for our freedom. And so when you see all the fear that comes out, that's not the spirit of Christ. And when you see all the confusion, that's not the spirit of Christ. And when you see someone trying to take away your freedom, that is not the right side of things. That is evil. And so I guess all in the nutshell, a Patriot is someone who loves their country, loves their family, loves future generations, and will stand on a platform of truth, no matter what, no matter what sacrifice it takes. That's what I said. You know, we just Nashville a little bit because of the music industry, but you're from Texas. You said the Redist of Red States. My whole political life, they've tried to take the Alamo spirit out of Texas. Some say it's purple already and on the way to blue, you know, but Heartland song singer George Strait just sold out Texas stadium with a record 110,000 in attendance. I wish I was there. Do you think the claims of Texas going blue, like a beta war, or fake news? Yeah, to some degree, especially what's happened in the last four years there. Now, now we are like California in every other state where all the cities are tremendously dark. Complete Democrat and that, but the outskirts of every city and the Heartland of Texas is completely conservative Republican. We were worried about all the transplants coming in from California. We've been invaded since COVID and you see stickers T shirts bumper stickers every day, every week saying don't California my taxes. That means you can flee here, but do not vote and calls our state to become like what your state has become. One thing that we saw in Texas in the last election in 2022 is that we had a million Democrats registered Democrats that changed over to Republican. We also had 80% of our transplants voting Republican. So we got redder since 2022, but it is a constant struggle. They know the opposition knows that if Texas falls and goes completely blue, then we've lost the Republicans have lost the entire United States so that we are a battleground state that they are coming for. And they pump more money into our Texas elections for the Democrat side than probably any other state. And so we cannot just assume that we will always have it read, we have to constantly work and every election that comes up, we get worried. We're the numbers, you know, in these big cities where there's a big population compared to the outskirts of Texas. They, there's a lot of cheating going on. And so we worry about that. If it was fair elections, paper ballots, hand counted, everything's on the up and up. There's no way Texas would ever go blue, in my opinion. But we have to, we have to be on guard for everything that they try. You talked about the California refugees, what about the influx of illegal? Are they being allowed to register or have Abbott and Paxton done a good job keeping voter integrity clean for citizens, at least. Paxton's done a fantastic job, both trying to protect us and trying to protect us against the Biden administration. We have more lawsuits in Texas. We have the biggest Attorney General's office for as the amount of staff than anybody else in the country. We are the only state that prosecutes for election integrity, although that's a big fight right now. We have a Texas House that is Republican, but we're in a fight with the Speaker of the House, allowing everything liberal to go through and everything conservative to be blocked. We have massive efforts in the primaries and did some very historical things by pushing out 15 out of the 17 incumbents that were the problem in the Paxton coming against Paxton last summer in that trial and his impeachment. Abbott, I think Abbott could do more. Abbott panders to both sides. We've got some questions. We're here at this event with him, and we've got some questions for him before the, before the end of the night. I know Dan Patrick has been working a little harder than actual Abbott's office in the election integrity, and we've made lots of progress, but we've got a lot of work still to do. And I don't know if we've got enough time to really complete it. Our borders have been completely open. We've been in the news over the past six months for fighting the federal government building our own border wall. And the federal government coming in just, you know, cutting all of our barbed wire and us reinforcing it, you know, triple in depth. But we are, we are flooded. The illegal situation is coming to every state. Every state's a border state now. Our crime is up. Little things that affect our everyday life that if you're not in a traditional border state, you would not realize this. And two thirds of the Mexico border to the United States is in Texas. So we had millions pouring in sex trafficking is out of control. Diseases are out of control. We've got kids from Honduras and El Salvador that are coming up that are so sick. And they're spreading things like tuberculosis, violent plague, things that we have eradicated so many years ago. So our kids in the schools have to be re vaccinated and triple vaccinated in order to go to school there. It's crazy. There's accidents every day on the on the interstate and they don't have driver's license. They don't have insurance. They don't show up to pay a ticket or to a court date. And our ER she can't even go to an ER. They use them as primary cares and you've got like a 12 to 14 hour wait, just going to the ER. So we're affected every single day and every state is going to become like this. And I'm really worried because the federal government is really pushing on the federal rolls to allow them to vote. They know that they're losing the American people and the Democrat side. The majority, we want freedom and we realize that this is a very important election. So I think they're just allowing the open borders to bring in new voters so that they can keep their power. I'm hoping governors like Abbott see that and do what they can to stop it at them. We've running out of time. We've got less than three months. You say you are thankful to be an American. What is it about the other side, the progressives, the Democrats, cultural Marxists, I call them. What don't they see about us that you see that if they had their way, they'd change. I think they're so blinded. You almost can't talk to them. I think at the end of the day, this is an attack on Christianity 100%. And you look at the war that we're fighting in the schools pornography should the battles that I never thought we would fight 10 years ago pornography being brought down to the kindergartners. They are trying to mess with the identity of our children because our identity is supposed to be in Christ. And so it is a war on the church. It is a war on our nuclear family. It's supposed to be we're supposed to be under the umbrella of God with a man and a woman each having different differences. We're different. We have streets and weaknesses that are different. I never thought I would see men allowed in women's sports. And when like what we saw in Paris when that boxer was beating up that woman, it was celebrated. I don't know where the feminist are where the women's rights. We're losing that. And that at the end of the day, every single situation is an attack on Christianity. And I think that that we could bring a lot over to our side by introducing them to Jesus. And that's a hard topic in today's world. It's one that they don't want to talk about. No, especially when the Olympics open their ceremony with a very satanic. They said it was Dionysus, but it was really just mocking of the Last Supper. We see that and the slippery slope of just letting males into female bathrooms at Nordstrom Starbucks and girls swim leagues. This is this is what happens. You get a boxer in a ring who pounds on a woman and we have to watch that or not. And how does that make us better, a more perfect union. If they were to take Christianity completely out of the public square, how would that make us a more perfect union. It wouldn't. It would make everything worse. In fact, the reason why this country has been so amazing. All of these hundreds of years is because we had a foundation of Christ, a foundation of freedom and that our rights are God-given rights, not given by government, and that man could oversee themselves. And we have a country like no other. But the attack on our country is the fabric. They want Christianity completely out of it. So once they once they take that, we will lose our freedom and people don't realize they don't realize how close we are to losing our complete. Yeah, well, the definition of anti Christ would be anything that doesn't have Christ in it. That's right. And so can you imagine it will be a world of lawlessness, of fear being completely unleashed on us. God is still here and God still has his hand on our country. I feel like God has his hand on President Trump. I wrote a song called The Chosen One that came out a couple months ago. And it's a very controversial topic, but I made it very clear in the words that an imperfect man can be used by a perfect God in the history of the Bible. There have been many examples from King Cyrus to King David and Ruth and Esther and JFK and Lincoln, anybody promoting actual freedom is the work of Christ. And I will defend President Trump all day long. I was behind the scenes seeing what he did for us. There has never been a president, probably in US history, never been a president in my lifetime. It was so pro-life, pro-Israel and pro-Christian than President Trump, and the attacks on him do not warrant actually the man or the actions. That's what tells you it's a spiritual warfare. But I do think that God has his hand of protection upon him. Nothing seems to be sticking, right? Everything literally dodged a bullet and let's hope that God has a bigger plan for him that benefits us along the way. So you must play a lot of college campuses or at least have the young people around to see what the young are up to all over America. Are you optimistic they'll grow up okay or do you think the ideology of the left is going to corrupt them? Here's the bad thing. The bad thing is that the left have had this in place for a long time at our college campuses and we have been on autopilot. We've been snoozing at the will. And I think COVID exposed a lot, especially in our high schools and elementary schools that the agenda went from college on down. They are completely indoctrinating our children. They have completely brainwashed them. You know, and I don't understand that mindset. Someone told me, he said, "How do you know two and two is bored?" And I said, "Well, I'll just know it." He said, "Yeah, you were taught it." That's how this goes. They really think that they're right. But one thing that we do have on our side is when they get out of college and into the real world and they're paying their bills and they're seeing the prices of groceries and the prices of gas. And how this country has really flourished under capitalism, they wake up. And that is usually when they turn and start looking and changing to the Republican side because it is very different than what the Democrats are, their platform, right? It's very different. So as Christians, we have to look at what the platform stands for. Just look at the first 10 principles of the Republican platform in the first 10 of the Democrat and line it up with Scripture. And there's problems on both sides. But if you look at the platform, there's only one that lines up more biblical than the other. Yeah. So your album that just came out has the Nashville Orchestra plus all star collaborators on there. Tell us about those folks and working with them. You know, the American Patriot album was amazing. The Nashville Orchestra was amazing. They were very, they believed different. They are very progressive, right? And so they actually had a problem with a few of the songs on there, but they did their job. They just made sure that we knew that they didn't like it. And I had, you know, my musicians, studio musicians, I've had for a long time and I will continue to have. But, you know, background singers, once the political songs started rolling out in the patriotic songs, I lost a lot of my team, because either they didn't like what I was when I was doing and standing and illuminating a life because country's great, or they, they thought that I was a little bit of Kryptonite because I was, I was bumping up against the industry, right? And I get that everybody's going to do what they got to do. I've got a lot of friends in Nashville that support what I'm doing, but very silently and behind the scenes would never do it publicly. But, but, you know, when you, when you walk a road that you're trying to be courageous and try to lead others and be a warrior, it sometimes gets a little lonely. And that's okay. That's okay. I'm on the right side of this thing and I'm fighting the right thing. But we had, we had some great musicians, we had some great background vocalists that can continue to be on this new album. And then Ian, Ian just played such a huge part of all of these albums, and we've all paid a little bit of a price, but it has been so worth it to, to really illuminate a lot of truth. So there's this guy out there, David, David Owen, they say behind every great man is a great woman. Well, how about behind a great woman, a great man, right? Tell us how David helps you keep it all together as a family. He is amazing. We've been married 29 years. He is like nobody I've ever met. He's very mischievous. He's very shocking all. He's hilarious. And people gravitate to him. He just is the center of everything when he walks, but he's such a good man, honorable and integrity and loves God, loves his family, loves his country. And I'm so I think God every day for him. And he, you know, he, when we started out with music, he had a tough time trying to figure out where he fit in because he couldn't sing. He's tone death. He doesn't play an instrument. And he was trying to find this place those first six months on the road and God started giving him dreams. And he would write him down and I would say, Oh, my God, that's exactly how I felt in this depression. Write that down. That's a song. And so he, from that point on, God just made a path to where he's not only in the songwriting, but he's in the production of it too. And he hears different sounds. And he says, I want that layered in. I want this and I want that. And he has become one of the rocks and just the, he's my rock. He stabilizes me with his humor. And his fate. I've never seen someone have such fate. So I'm very fortunate to have him. And hopefully we will get to meet him one day. He's a hate. He definitely is. He gives me my courage. That's beautiful. Tony Wood is a ballad songwriter. How was working with him too? He was amazing. He helped us with prayer for America. Anytime I want a very deep moving emotional ballad, Tony Wood is the guy to call. He has a heart for ministry and a heart for God and a heart for this country. And he's all about it. Sometimes he kind of braces when I call him because I'm like, he just doesn't know what's going to come out of my mouth. Because I go in different directions and that he's always stood by me, always been a big supporter. And he's just, he's so talented that God really gives him an anointing on his music and his words that a lot of people don't have. You're surrounded by a great team. Your first track is called America First. Pretty much going to tell just about anybody who picks it up. This is what it's about. But you know, I don't understand how the left has made that a bad thing. Make America great and America First are good things. If you like your home country, you know, we see immigrants making a mess of London and burning cars in Paris. Those are the, you know, the Shishwa cities of the world. I just read the EU is putting 270 immigrants into a 200 person village in Ireland. That's not sustainable. Maybe they want civil war to break out all over when people can't take it anymore. Do you think your title America First is any way controversial. It's a big time. I've been attacked big time with that one. You know, just really because it lines up with make America great again. It's what Trump wants to do. You're looking right now at a battle between the globalists that want one world government, no sovereignty, no borders. And what they did with the EU a decade ago was a trial run for this global takeover. One world government, one world religion. They want to make, you know, have a panel to make all the rules for everybody. And they're lining us up for that that you kind of saw. I've seen a lot of things since COVID where we're closer than we ever have been. That goes against any kind of message like what Orban from Hungary and Poland and El Salvador and all these other Trump like leaders that have surfaced and risen lately. And it goes against it. Because I think it's okay to have a heritage of being American. And when you open up the borders, when you can flow like in Europe from country to country without even showing your passport, they've got the same currency. It's coming and President Trump, that's one reason why they put a target on him. He went in front of the world economic form and the UN right before he got out of office. He threatened him. He said, as long as I'm in power, we will never bow to your one world government. And America is different than any other country. We're the only ones standing in the way of this total take and President Trump is the only one that is fighting against that. Do you know that 95% of the giving to the other countries from around the world to all the charities come from America comes from the Christian and the churches. In crisis is like earthquakes and famines. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's the Christians that are the giving ones. And so, I bought, me and my husband both bought into President Trump's message in 2016, just 100%. If we are giving most of the giving, how is the world a better place when we are bankrupt here and groceries and gas costs so much and we're all struggling, we have to be healthy here in order for us to be able to give around the world. So I don't see anything wrong and I'm shocked at the other side. You know, we've got homeless. We've got children that only eat, you know, when schools in session, they only lunch, you know, they don't get good meals or three meals a day. We've got veterans that are homeless. We have diseases and problems here that need to be fixed. I would rather my my hard earned money go to help fixing Americans than fighting a war or, you know, funding a government like Ukraine. We need it here. We were struggling and we're going to be struggling big time that President Trump doesn't get back in. People realize how much better they were in those four years. We'll see soon. And you certainly liked the hot buttons. Your song "Stand for Life" was written for the Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America group. Everything that has a heartbeat is alive, you said. The music industry, even country and Christian, they don't like songs like that for radio. Have you seen your album have a hard time commercially because of your willingness to take on subject matters like abortion? Oh, absolutely. No one would touch the American Patriot album with a 10 foot pole. And it was because the Pro Life song was on there. And I don't know how you can argue with the fact that we say that a person is dead when the heart stops. So why can't we say that they're alive when the heart starts? I don't understand that. They're not a clump of cells. Right now they do surgery in the uterus that they have to give at 15 weeks. They give the embryo, the baby, and the mom anesthesia because they feel pain at 15 weeks. And so it's the lie of the enemy. And I hope women start waking up to that. So they have banished me out of contemporary Christian for the American Patriot album. But what I found out when Trump won hit and went number one, everybody started buying all my other music. So American Patriot was probably the most successful album that I've ever had outside of the Christian genre. And that makes me excited. All of my songs are hitting in the top 100 these days on all of iTunes, not just one genre of music. So there's a craving for truth. People want truth. They want people to be courageous. When you see that with all the text suppression, a song can go number one like John Ridge or mine or Kid Rock or whoever, how Bud Light can come out and then the next week, they've lost billions of dollars. The American people, the majority of the American people are not buying into this liberal wokeism that's against the nuclear family. And you can see that I take the temperature of the country when I see stuff like that. I know that we're winning. And you can say money, you don't have to buy a nice dress for the Dove Awards or for the Grammy or whatever. So it's okay. And you don't have to hang out with those other people that are into that. You sang at a Heroes Honor Festival, I believe recently, I think for police. How do you like doing shows for soldiers and first responders compared to say, you know, Madison Square Garden or any of the other big, big venues that the artists like to do. You know, if I could sing to veterans and first responders for the rest of my life, I would feel fulfilled. I sang at a Toby Keith veterans thing at Daytona about a year and a half ago, had 53,000 vets. And I just wanted to give a smile on their face. I wanted to tell them how much I appreciate them and let them know that I know that freedom is not free and it's the most expensive thing that we own. And so I walked out there with that purpose and God dealt with me on that stage and I walked off a different person. I was able to connect with them on the fact, you know, I have, I went through depression and mental health. And instantly God showed me you have something in common with these soldiers because they come back from seeing horrific things and experiencing horrific things in battle and war. And they have to be strong and they have to put on the smile and shake their head and say that everything's okay. And the suicide rate is through the roof for veterans. And that's where I've been in the trenches trying to give people hope and let them know that God loves them and has never left them. And so I connected in such a way that day that I told my husband, if I could just bear and sing for veterans and give back and let them know how much I appreciate them, that that's kind of my mission. I want to, I raise money for them for different organizations from heroes honor to the green brazes have a charity that because in the green brazes 93% suicide rate. Is is unbelievable so much more than all the other branches. And so we're just trying to trying to save a life and trying to trying to bring back hope, whether that's in the Christian genre or, or the, you know, political world or with our veterans, they deserve so much more than we could ever give them. The sacrifice of them and their families. Absolutely. You are a survivor and your music gives hope. What do you hope your catalog of music and live performances will do for America going forward. I hope it brings hope and unity and show God's love and comfort. I, when I started out on this journey, I had no idea that God was directing my path in such a way. When I looked back on all my, my songs, all my albums, the first one was making it through a trial called I made it through. And then the next album was a different chapter of my recovery called we will rise rising above it, which is very different. We've got to turn and help somebody else along the life along this journey that we're walking. And then the third one was warrior. I felt a little stronger in that chapter of my recovery. And then the next album in Christian was called stand. And I felt like I was truly standing on a firm foundation and helping others along the way. And so God just continues to open doors and push down boundaries. I love where I'm at right now because I can bring God into a secular market. I can have a concert and do a couple political songs, do some patriotic songs and bring them a little bit of Jesus. I love that. I love that I'm not bound by the, you know, in certain genres, you can only use certain instruments or certain things you can't do or how you set up the song or how you, how you sing the words. I'm not held by any boundaries right now. And I love that. At the end of the day, I just want to show how great God is and how great his system of freedom is. And, you know, hopefully that will, hopefully that will bring a little bit more unity in the future. But I'm known as the Trump one girl now so that's very polarizing and anything comes out of our mouth. Sometimes the other side don't want to hear. So maybe they'll forget about that in the future and then I can, I can show them God. So you said your story started 12 years ago when your dad unfortunately was shot cleaning his guns. I'm sorry for that. And you spiraled into oppression. Well, 12 year old Nat came up to you and said, I want to be a singer like you. Would you tell her to go for it? I would tell her absolutely. But, but be on her knees, like God guide her, like God show her and just be true to herself. I mean, I hear that I heard that growing up from people didn't really understand what it meant. You get in these industries and they want to change who you are. A lot of times you will see someone break through in music and their first album is incredible. And then they get a record deal and then their career goes downhill from there. It's because they want to mold someone into something that they're not. And so you have to be very, a very strong personality to buck the system and say, no, I do not want to go in that route. Yes, I know the consequences of going this route, but this is where I feel like I need to go and not be afraid. Be unapologetic to. And so it's not for the faint of heart. You definitely have to have a strong backbone. And I'm thankful that I got into the music when I was older, because I think if I had, if I'd have done it when I was younger, I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be as strong and I probably wouldn't be the person I am today. If I would have been discovered at a 20 year old rather than 35. Right. Well, Natasha, thank you for your time. I'm really happy that you came on here and told us your story. I think it was a great show. Tell everyone where they can go to find out more about you, maybe where you're touring, how to get your records and albums, whatever. Tell us social media. Yeah, I'm on every social media out there. The landing page is Natasha Owens music.com. That's my website. It will show merch tours, how you can get physical copies of my music, but for as download streaming anywhere you normally get music today, you can find my music still. So, Natasha Owens music.com and connect with me on social media. I love to help people, especially just giving them a little bit of hope sometime. We live in a world that is full of fear and I want to be a common voice in that. So, thank you for allowing me to have the time to come and talk about my journey. You're welcome. And thanks for coming on. Thank you. All right, see what you think of our guests Natasha Owens. Yeah, very interesting. When she said about musical artists, I watched many a Christian artist in the 80s and early 90s because that's when I was big into that stuff and they come out with his bang up album. And then the next one, it's like, okay. And then you see them live or on their own and they say, you know, I'd really like just be sitting here with a acoustic guitar and sing to you this way. They don't really want to do a lot of these artists do not want to be the bells and whistles and the next. You know, the Christian genre, ice machine and the smoke machine. Well, not only that, the Christian era Christian music scene finds a style that they want to push out and everybody has to fit in that mold. I don't even listen to, I can't even hardly send to modern day Christian music because it all, most of it is like, Oh God, help me. I'm gonna, I can't make it another day. And it's like, I remember Striper and good stuff that was like pumping you up and getting you going sweet comfort. And it's like, today so much of it is just so depressing. It does not lift me up. And I think it's because the industry is saying this is what we want you to do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, moving on plan parenthood was founded a century ago to promote birth control. Today in nearly 600 clinics nationwide makes it the largest single provider of abortion contraception reproductive care and sex education in the United States. It is also in less than a decade become the country's leading provider of gender transition hormones for young adults according to insurance claim data. In 2015 from around two dozen of their clinics began offering this service. Now it's available at nearly 450 locations insurance claim information provided to the free press by the Manhattan Institute shows that at least 40,000 patients went to plan parenthood for this purpose last year alone, not just abortions anymore. A number that has risen 10 fold since 2017 the largest proportion about 40% were 18 to 22 year olds. Today, Christina Hyman is a plaintiff in the first the transitional lawsuit against Planned Parenthood's Federation of America. In the medical malpractice suit filed in April, she's seeking unspecified damages for negligence and failure to obtain informed consent from all the health providers, including those at Planned Parenthood who facilitated her medical transition from therapists who encouraged her desire to change genders to the plastic surgeon who removed her breasts after a superficial consult when she turned 19 to the nurse practitioner at Planned Parenthood who wrote Hyman at the prescription for testosterone. She joins more than a dozen young people who in separate lawsuits across the country are alleging medical malpractice by institutions such as Kaiser Permanente, as well as individual practitioners and are seeking compensation for the harm they claim has been done to them. Her suit comes as the US is increasingly alone in championing hormonal and surgical interventions to swiftly transition gender distress young people, a growing list of European countries, including Sweden, Finland and the UK are restricting these sometimes irreversible treatments for young people and favoring an approach that encourages therapy to address all the causes of a patient's distress. We'll keep an eye on Christina's journey through the courts and detransitioning here in America. Last thing on that, Hyman now regrets that she put off college to transition and spent her life savings about $9,000 on a mastectomy. She has gone public because she wants young people like herself, their parents and their providers who are pushing ideology over good care to know that there are safe and humane ways to address the kind of distress she suffered. "The answers are not just transition or suicide. There are ways to work through these feelings without altering your body," she says. As for Planned Parenthood, she says, "Honestly, I want them to focus on women's health. That's what they exist for." Nope, that's not what they exist for. They exist to kill babies. Joe Rogan with Gavin McGinnis. Remember Gavin, Steve? Yes. This is your own theory. No, no, no. Look at someone else's own theory. I've never heard this before. Especially with immigrants in Britain, like the Pakistanis in London, they'll have all kinds of serious inbreeding problems because that's an even smaller sample size you're dealing with. You can trap yourself in for this. 70% of all Pakistanis are inbred, and in Turkey, the amount is between 25 to 30%. More stillbirths among immigrants and rough estimate reveals that close to half of everybody living in the Arab world is inbred. A large percentage of the parents said, "This is blowing my mind." So listen to the BBC investigation in Britain several years ago revealed that at least 55% of the Pakistani community in Britain was married to a first cousin. Shit. BBC's research also discovered that while British Pakistanis account for just 3.4% of all births in Britain, they accounted for 30% of all British children with recessive disorders and a higher rate of infant mortality. What in the fuck? Labor Party MP has called for a ban on first cousin marriage. Medical evidence shows that one of the negative consequences of inbreeding is a 100% increase in the risk of stillbirths. Wow. That is insane. So Steve, that's also in the Mormons, but they won't tell you that either. It's in the statistics, but I just thought they were finding something out that I didn't know. So Christina Heinemann regrets the $9,000, maybe more than she lost of her boobs, but we get to pay the interest. 76% of your income taxes are now going toward interest on the national debt. The most recent treasury data shows that as the federal government surpasses a record $35TTT trillion national debt, $1.1 trillion will be spent on interest payments alone this fiscal year. According to reports, this means that for every dollar, Americans pay an income tax, about 76 cents go towards paying interest on the national debt. Who owns the debt? At the turn of the 21st century, the national government debt was $5.77 trillion, and by 2010, it had more than doubled to $12.77 trillion. The debt reached $23.22 trillion at the beginning of 2020, and only a few years later on Biden's watch, it now surpasses $35 trillion. At this rate, we'll eventually reach a point where we don't even bring in enough income tax to cover the interest payments on the debt, also known as bankruptcy. In the last fiscal year of the Trump presidency, annual interest on the debt was a $521 billion, which was $44 billion or 15% higher than the $454 billion the government was spending the year before he took office. By contrast, the government's annual interest expense under Biden increased by a whopping $619 billion from what he inherited, a 114% increase, phrased differently. Biden screwed up America's finances so badly that the federal government's annual interest expense under Trump was closer to zero than it is to Biden's. Who owns that debt I asked you? Japan and China hold significant shares of US public debt. Together, as of December, 2023, they accounted for nearly $2 trillion, or only about 7%. 79% held by public, which includes foreign and domestic investors, something called Social Security Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund owns 38%. Good luck with that. We have about a third of our national debt rolling over this year into higher rates. This is not sustainable. Okay, a team of researchers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium has published a study on paper straws in the journal Food Additives and Containments. I got to copy right here. Never miss an issue. And it's not good news. After analyzing 39 brands of straws made of various materials such as plastic, paper, glass, stainless steel, and bamboo, the team found that paper straws contain the most per floral, alkylated, and polyfluoro, lacala and substances, also known as PFAS, these synthetic substances are considered harmful to humans, animals, and the environment. That sucks, literally. But this one made me mad. I love dark chocolate, was just at Bucky's and went for the overbite, which is chocolate and peanut butter in like a hockey puck shape, delicious, but had to pass on my favorite and go with milk chocolate because of this. Consumer Reports finds one-third of chocolate is high in heavy metals. Despite its reputation for healthfulness, dark chocolate can be contaminated with lead and cadmium, two heavy metals linked to severe health problems as confirmed by Consumer Reports as testing last year. In its latest round of testing, CR tested 48 other kinds of chocolate products and foods made with it from name brands in seven categories cocoa powder chocolate chips chocolate milk dark chocolate brownie mixes chocolate cake and hot chocolate for lead and cadmium. One-third of the products tested 16 out of 48 had worrisome levels of at least one of these heavy metals, in some cases the levels were more than twice as high as the limit CR used. CR has launched a petition calling on Hershey's to step up its efforts to reduce the level of toxic heavy metals in its chocolate products after its testing found the company's cocoa powder had concerning levels of lead. Hershey's milk chocolate also had the highest levels of lead in CR's test. There goes buckies altogether. Some of Hershey's dark chocolate bars had some of the highest levels of lead and cadmium in CR's previous test. Darn it, we're running out of good things to eat, aren't we? I buy the Trader Joe's dark chocolate and my sons buying buying the lint or whatever that is. Oh man, I'm going to have to find out if they get tested. Yeah, they're going to have to get some heavy metal detox and I don't mean rock and roll. One of the greatest scams of the century, we were told the plastic bag were bad and had to be eliminated. So we did. What was the result? After California became the first date in 2016 to ban single use plastic grocery bags, the thicker convenient totes that took their place as a reusable and recyclable alternative weren't reused and actually aren't recyclable. In fact, the study finds the total amount of trash from plastic bags that California sends to landfills has never been higher. In February though LA Times reported on the study which looked at the impact of the plastic bag ban implemented 10 years ago as an effort to reduce the amount of plastic waste to encourage the public to use reusable bags. The loophole allowed businesses to offer thicker reusable plastic bags that check out for a small fee, but many customers threw those out after a single use as well. This was not about plastic or the environment. It was about how far government could go to control the actions and decisions of the public. They won and we lost. After this they gave us an even bigger scam, social distancing, masks and dangerous vaccines that killed off our economy. It will take a generation to recover from that fraud. Time to bag these scams. Stay tuned for my thoughts of the day. I'm living lately a woman to your thing and I'll do mine. I'm a lover not a fighter unless you go and cross the line. There are all times we may find everything just goes from one of the worst. I hope to never lose that little something I'm in my place. But to say again great takes me away. Sing a song about the heartland. The only place I feel at home. Sing about the way you're good man. It works until the day life's gone. Sing a ring. Time for my quotes of the day. Before I share a reminder to subscribe to heartlandjournal.com. Email and zip code is all we need and we'll deliver news right to your inbox for free. I really hope you like it. In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution reading in part. Freedom of information is a fundamental human right and a touchstone of all the freedoms to which the United Nations is consecrated. This is our touchstone as well. This is the code of the voice of America. We welcome the views of others. We seek a free flow of information across national boundaries and oceans, across iron curtains and stone walls. We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the 35th President of the United States, 1961 to 1963. The youngest man elected to the office on November 22, 1963. When he was hardly passed his first thousand days in office, JFK was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, becoming also the youngest president to die. He was 46. That is it for this episode. Thank you, Natasha Owens for making some fun, patriotic America first and always maga music as we get ready for this nasty campaign season ahead of us. I'm sorry to say this is goodbye for now. I'm your host, Steve Abramowitz, editor-in-chief of heartlandjournal.com. See you tomorrow. Peace in our time and definitely glory to God. And let's go out with a little bit of Natasha's music and if you listen to the show on iTunes or Spotify, you can hear a couple of the other songs. Sorry, rumble. No way to get it in here, but enjoy it. See you all tomorrow. [Music] Deep state, gonna deep state, can I get a rebate on my vote? You better listen, you may be kissing, dirty politician in your turncoat. You say you're in it for the country, but you're in it for the money. Party people in my house, put your hands up high. I can tell the difference from a left to the right. Everything's in house, you don't know, but from evil. Hey, my kind of, party people, party people, we're taken back from USA. I don't like the rhinos, even I know it's called a life. You're the way to buy trees there. Where the river runs deep and the bird calls in. Any views or opinions represented on the podcast are personal and belongs solely to the creator and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that the creator may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity unless it's quickly stated. I say I'll never get this far from the heartland. [music]