Hey, folks, this is Kevin. We have a very special treat today, a little something extra, and it features yours truly. This is an episode of an entirely different podcast called Songwriter. And in this brand new episode of Songwriter, I tell a true story.
And then a songwriter shares a song they wrote that was inspired by my story. But it's not just any songwriter. It's the wonderful Carolyn Kendrick who you can find at carolinkendrick.com. And Carolyn doesn't just compose and perform absolutely gorgeously soulful songs.
But she produces two of my very favorite podcasts out there in the world. She produces your wrong about with Sarah Marshall. And she produces you are good, also with Sarah, and also with the lovely Alex Steed. Alex has been on risk and I have been on You Are Good.
And now Carolyn and I are both on this episode. You're about to hear of the podcast Songwriter that is so beautifully produced and hosted by Ben Arthur. You can learn more about Ben and the songwriter podcast at songwriterpodcast.com. I would be so excited if risk fans and fans of You're Wrong About and fans of You Are Good and Songwriter all became fan friends.
And I just felt so honored and moved with how this episode of Songwriter turned out that I wanted to share it like this. It's vulnerable. It's real. And the song that Carolyn wrote for me has made me cry multiple times.
So enjoy it and share it and help spread the word about Carolyn's music, about You're Wrong About and You Are Good. And of course about the podcast you're just about to hear Songwriter. This is Songwriter, the podcast that turns stories into songs. My name is Ben Arthur.
Today we have a brand new song from Carolyn Kendrick, a musician and songwriter and podcast producer. But first the story that inspires the song by a different star in the podcast world. I'm Kevin Allison. I've thought of myself mostly as a storyteller and someone who helps other people tell their stories.
There's really kind of a therapeutic element to it in that I'm constantly unpacking who I am, but in the process also helping other people do that. I think so. I think of myself as a little bit of a wounded healer. In college I was a part of a sketch comedy group that I was absolutely thrilled with and in love with.
We got on MTV within a year of graduating from college. The state was this amazing sketch comedy way of discovering all these aspects of our personalities and playing them so much larger than life. But when the state broke up in 1996, I was really kind of at a loss. I was very hurt.
You know, I felt a little like left out of the loop with the group and I thought I could do maybe solo sketch comedies. So I was doing all these crazy kooky character monologues up on stage alone and I just wasn't getting anywhere with it. It was at this point that an old friend of Kevin stepped in with some key advice. Michael Lee and Black who had been a member of the state came to see that show and he was like, Man, you know, because it didn't hit that well.
It hadn't gone over that well that night. And he said, I wish you would just drop the act. You know, I felt like the audience would have responded much better if you would just come out as yourself just sharing your own stories. And I said, yeah, I feel like there's been a voice in my head for years saying that, but it just feels too risky because I was so worried about how to be.
What does the industry want me to be? You know, I knew that a friend of mine had her own storytelling show. So I reached out to her and I said, I could tell this story. And she was like, perfect, perfect.
Tell the story of how you tried prostituting yourself. And I called her the day of the show and said, I can't do this. And she said, what, what, why? I said, I'm just so sorry.
It just feels too risky. And she said, Oh, every time I do this show, someone calls a couple days before the day of and says, I don't know if I can do this. It feels too risky. And if I can convince that person to go through with it anyway, that's going to be the one that knocks it out of the park in that show.
So she convinced me. And it was fascinating because I kept having these very typical low self esteem thoughts that I always struggle with. You know, I would get to a part of the story where I think, Oh my God, do I sound too gay at this part of the story? I noticed I kept coming to those points in the story and the audience was only leaning in more.
And so it was electric because I was so used to getting on stage and playing these crazy cookie characters. But that night, I was feeling this real connection with an audience, just conversing with them directly and allowing them to see these various sides of myself that I was kind of worried might not play very well in Hollywood or wherever. I literally walked away from the UCB theater in Chelsea that night walking down Eighth Avenue and the whole idea of the risk podcast came to me. I was like, Oh, this is what I should do.
I should create a show called risk where people tell true stories that maybe they never thought they'd share in public and feel like they're really going outside the comfort zone to be sharing. So everyone's kind of comment out about something, whether it's funny or kinky or terrifying or beautiful. And I said, another thing is I'll try to be doing it as often as possible so I can finally get over my stage fright and social anxiety that had built up over the years since the state broke up. Here's Kevin Allison with a story that he wrote for risk when you're smiling.
I remember it was a beautiful day in New York. I was in my mid 20s. I was watching the gay pride parade on Fifth Avenue with a bunch of my friends. And at one point, I looked to my right and then just happened to look about 12, 15 feet in the air.
And there in the sky was the most dazzling smile, beautiful smile from a beautiful guy. He looked like he must be like a dancer or athlete of some sort because he had climbed up a telephone pole to watch the parade from up on a perch. And the lucky thing was, I didn't have time to think. I was just so struck by that charming smile.
I couldn't help but just smile right back. But then I had time to think, I thought, Oh, no, God, what do I do now? He can't really be smiling at me, right? You know, I'm looking behind myself.
I thought, no, Kevin, it's too awkward to say hello to someone when they're up in the air, right? That is the way that my brain had worked every time a situation like this had happened to me before. Just nervous, hedging, second guessing, anything to keep from saying hello. Then my friend Tim grabbed me and said, Hey, let's go.
We got to get to that house party before my ecstasy kicks in. And before I knew what I was just floating away in the crowd, just watching that smile get further away like the fading smile on the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland. Now five years later, I was sitting on a couch looking at my very first therapist. Her name was Agatha.
And she was a dark and gloomy and smoky kind of woman. I don't mean smoky, like she smoked cigarettes. I mean smoky, like, you know, I kind of imagined every time I exited the room, she'd just like count Dracula, you know, transform into a mist. She was so goth behind her was this painting from, I don't know, the 1800s, it was this desolate rural road in the winter time strewn with what appeared to be dead children.
I mean, they put a very brother's grim feeling on every session. Anyway, the first day of the therapy, Agatha said, Kevin, why are you here? I said, well, Agatha, I'm 31 years old. And I've never had a boyfriend.
I said, you don't understand. I've known I was gay. I've known I wanted a boyfriend from like the beginning of consciousness. I was in love with the boy next door when we were still in diapers.
But when I was five years old, I was playing kick the can with this kid named Rick in the neighborhood. And he said, Hey, Kevin, you know how people use those words gay and fag? What those words really mean is a boy who likes boys the way boys are supposed to like girls. That's why those words mean disgusting.
So it really weighed on me that if anyone ever found out that I was a boy like boys, everyone would hate me. And I'd see stories like beauty in the beast or phantom of the opera. And I'd always identify with the monster every boy I developed a crush on. I thought he was a beauty and I was a beast.
So when I finally escaped Ohio, when I was 18 years old, I went to NYU and I was finally in a town where it was okay to be gay. But those old feelings that I'm too monstrous to talk to beautiful guys. But then it just felt like they were hardwired in me. And Agatha said, but you've been an adult in New York for well over a decade now.
Surely you've come close to having a relationship. I said, well, there was Brandon. See, one night when I was 28 years old, I was at this gay bar in the East Village. And I met a guy with pretty brown eyes named Brandon.
I was very drunken. He was very drunk. So we had that in common while we slept together that first night. And in the morning, he said, we should do that again.
So every three or four days I'd come over. And we'd do that again. I kept trying to plan things like trips to museums or visits to Coney Island. But Brandon seemed like a really introverted guy.
So one morning about a month in, we woke up and we're laying there in bed. And I said, hey, Brandon, you know, I want to get a feeling for like, where you think this might be going? Like, do you think you're more of a monogamy kind of guy or more of an open relationship kind of guy? He looked at me like he'd just bitten into a lemon.
He said, we don't have to talk about that. You talk so much. So I went right on being nervous about how to talk to guys. And after sleeping with Brandon for another two and a half months, one day we were walking on Christopher Street.
And I just couldn't help it. I had to ask him that question again, monogamy or not. And he said, look, Kevin, I have a boyfriend. You've been my back burner boy this whole time.
So Mr. Fans, I guess that's not monogamy or an open relationship. That's just bullshit. Agatha said, Kevin, how did you react?
And that was the worst part. I reacted like a guy who thinks he's a monster talking to a beauty. I said to Brandon, Oh, I'm so sorry. I mean, I'm sorry if this is awkward for you to be telling me.
And again, he looked like he'd bitten into a lemon. He said, I just told you I've been cheating on you and you're apologizing. And he walked away. I said to Agatha, so at the age of 31, that's the closest I've come to having a relationship.
She said, Oh, no, Kevin, there's so much more for us to impact from that story. But we're out of time. In the meantime, just relax and trust that, you know, when you're ready and when someone who's compatible with you is ready to something will click. And that sounded almost meaningless.
However, a few weeks later, something happened. It really did put everything in perspective. I was 12 blocks away. The morning that the two planes flew into the World Trade Center.
Honestly, I've yet to tell the full story of what I went through that day. But in the weeks that followed that day, when I would wake up in the morning, I was often surprised by the sense of gratitude that I would feel for just being alive. I remember there was this graffiti artist who was going all around Manhattan in the couple of days after 9-11, and he was spray painting on buildings, the message, you're alive. And in that, I began to feel on some level, you know, like in some deeper dimension, perhaps everything is somehow okay.
And a lot of New Yorkers seem to be feeling that. People seem to be speaking to each other more presently, more honestly, more compassionately. Everyone seemed to have let go just a little bit of the standard pointless worrying and, you know, focusing on bullshit, was as if in the midst of all that destruction, we were remembering the importance of just being. So I was, I guess kind of mulling over that one day, about a month after 9-11, when I was walking down Park Avenue.
I remember I was listening to big band music from the 40s on my headphones as I was crossing the street. And I glanced up and saw this beautiful smile passing by. And I just didn't have time to think, I guess. I just smiled right back.
We passed each other. But then I looked behind me and saw that he was looking back too. And we were both smiling still. And somehow in my state of calm, it didn't occur to me to do anything except walk right up to him and say hello.
He said, I'm Ariel. We've never met each other, but you know, we have smiled at each other before. It was five years ago, I think, on gay pride day, I climbed up on a telephone pole. I said, oh my gosh, that was you.
He said, it sure was. And this time, I'm going to get your phone number. So we exchanged phone numbers. And as I walked away, that's when something happened that I'll never forget.
I did not worry. I was not thinking, oh my God, am I going to call him first? Or is he going to call me first? How many days is the right amount of days to wait before calling?
And oh my God, what do I say when we do talk? What's the right thing to talk? No, no, no, no. I just somehow wasn't in that headspace anymore.
I trusted that we were going to feel it out and whatever happened. Everything was okay. And our first date was lovely. And our second date was two.
And on our third, I remember we were standing in the subway station at West Forest Street. And Ariel said to me, Kev, I should let you know, I'm feeling like an open relationship kind of guy at this point in my life. So I want to know how you feel about that? He said, I'd love it if the two of us could be proactive about checking in on a regular basis and communicating with each other about the evolving boundaries we could create for a relationship like that.
And I thought to myself, holy shit, I found a man with a gorgeous smile who isn't afraid to talk. I'm learning how to really talk to someone I'm attracted to. And that's why I make that man my husband. Now, I have to be honest with you and tell you he is now my ex-husband.
But we are still very dear friends. In fact, we talked when I was first thinking of sharing this story. And I said, Ariel, I don't want to stop telling that story about how we met. And he said, well, why should you?
I mean, both of us look back on our relationship with mixed feelings, but there's good ones in there. And let other people think that relationships are worthless unless they last forever. We can be grateful for what was good and what we learned from the relationship we had. No, we agreed about that.
And that's why I told this story. And now for the song written in response. Hello, my name is Carolyn Kendrick. I generally tell people that I am a songwriter, a fiddle player, and a podcast producer.
The two main podcasts that I work for right now, the most well-known one, is called Yo Wrong About, which is hosted by Sarah Marshall. And then I also work on a show called You Are Good, Doing Similar Work. And that's also hosted by Sarah Marshall. And also by my husband, Alex Deed, who is wonderful.
Basically, as a producer, it's kind of a catch-all phrase, because I'm doing kind of everything. I'm editing, I'm framing sort of the narrative and how things flow and deciding direction. And then I'm also doing mixing and stuff like that. I was in band called The Page Turners for a long time.
That was like a, you know, original music, but like out of the bluegrass acoustic full-time scene. Kevin is the greatest. I've been a fan of his for a long time. I knew him previously through The Risk Show, because I listened to it.
And I was like, I just, you know, it was one of those things where I was like, well, there's no world where we'll ever meet. He ended up getting involved in the You Are Good universe. And Alex actually performed a story at a live event for Risk. Kevin was at the You Wrong About Live tour show in New York.
Carolyn told me that she was thrilled and flattered when Kevin asked her to write a song in response to his story. I asked about her first reaction to the story. Oh, I cried a fair amount actually. It was like so sweet.
And my second reaction is I've really been thinking about structure quite a bit, not just in, not just in stories, but like in songs. And I was kind of blown away about like how beautifully structured the story was. You know, the first thing that really stuck with me about the story is this idea that it doesn't have to be like a forever love story for it to be like deeply impactful and deeply emotional, which I really resonated with because like there's, you know, so many relationships in my life that are like very important, but like would not necessarily be the right thing to be like a very long term thing. Kevin doesn't really go into detail, but like there is like 9-11 is a turning point in the story because that's where he's able to kind of recontextualize what's important in life and like the meaning of connection.
I remember waking up and my uncles who were like on a, like they were on Central Time, so they knew before us, they woke up and called us and told me not to go to school, you know, and that was really scary. And then we watched the TV all day. And I remember when you're in second grade, like you're very tooth focused because like everybody's losing teeth. I remember seeing, you know, the two pictures where the skyline before and then the skyline after.
And I remember being a little kid and being like, it looks like somebody knocked their tooth out, you know. That day just put everything into perspective. I mean, it really was so disruptive and so jarring and so traumatizing, but it was really palpable. It was really striking how the behavior of people, there was just this really nice moment afterwards for, I don't know, a month or two where you could just really probably feel amongst New Yorkers, kind of, I guess, a survivor's sort of solidarity.
And I really do think that that is what made it so possible for me to, in that moment of meeting Ariel a second time on the street, made it so possible for me to be like, oh, yeah, fuck all my nervousness. Let's just say hello to this person. Where Kevin felt that he was a late bloomer, Carolyn told me that she felt if anything, she was too early. I do feel like I was always a little bit early to like, I started dating very early, probably like too early.
And I was dating people who are much older than me. And so therefore, I was just thrown into situations where I was like, not ready for what was going on necessarily. My first boyfriend, I was a freshman in high school, and he was a senior in high school. And you just have totally different worlds when you're, that's a big gap, you know, between 14 and 18.
And I didn't necessarily have like the emotional skills to be able to articulate what I wanted, what I needed distance. Like, it's just some, you know, those things that you learn as you, as you, as your brain literally forms. So I just ended up getting into like very dangerous situations with that person specifically. And then also just, because I'd be like, well, you know, I've been treated like an adult my whole life.
I'm an oldest daughter. So like, and I also have a brother who's 11 years younger than me who I love dearly, but who I was, you know, like, not like, I was pretty responsible for him because my parents were, you know, they had stuff going on. So I felt very responsible. And I felt like I, like, I knew how to be an adult.
And so, and everybody treated me like an adult. And so I kind of thought that that's what that meant and that you're big or not, you know. And so actually, in that sense, you know, I do relate to Kevin because I was an adult before I was in a mature enough relationship with Alex, where we were able to actually like communicate effectively, I would say. I really identified with Kevin, you know, the looking up and like having this instant connection with like a stranger, because I remember seeing Alex for the first time.
And I was like in another relationship at that point. And I just was like, this guy is my future. Like, this is it. And I totally dropped everything in my life.
I just, for lack of a better term, just like made it happen. I was just like, I'm interested in you. I think there's something here. And then we just, it just happened.
I have to pursue this because like, there's just some sort of like magic happening. As it turned out, this was an opportune moment for Alex as well. He went on this like very like spiritually opening raft ride right before he and I met where basically like the rapids were super high and it was really dangerous. And after that, and it was a full man.
And like, after that, he was like, okay, if I make it through this, like some, some things happening. And then literally, you know, like 15 minutes after he like made it after after that raft ride, he and I like met each other. So it definitely just felt like this, yeah, larger than life thing, you know, at the point of my life where I'm like, oh, what I want is actually what I need. And so I can just like listen to that and do that instead of having to be like, well, you know, I have self-sacrificing or deny yourself in some way.
It wasn't until like a year ago that I started really investing myself emotionally in a serious relationship with someone again. And that broke up in March. And that breakup hit me harder than it's the weirdest thing to say. But I think it hit me harder than almost anything has ever hit me before, which considering some of the things I've lived through is crazy.
When I heard the song, I cried when I heard the first lyrics about, you know, this idea of a lighthouse out there sending out these signals and kind of this beacon of who might be out there. The image of the lighthouse is also feels a little bit lonely, you know, it feels a little bit like, you know, who knows when you might actually make that connection. The thing is that we never have reassurances about any of that, you know, that's part of what makes love so beautiful is that you have to learn to love yourself enough to be okay if you never do find that person again. If you have a broken heart, then you have an open heart.
If you are really feeling that much pain, then you can feel that much love. This is Carolyn Kendrick with her song, What If. Is a snake in the canyon, came and flashed against the earth? I move on and stitched, I move like glass, uh-huh, till I get hurt, while the angel knew, is on a seven, three, seven red, I want me to fight, you sip your cocktail, you're like a way it burns, down below the canyon looks like fangs, in the desert night, and all you're up in the clouds, I'm down on the ground.
But what if what I want, is what I need, what if I want, do we need me? New millennium, there's a gap to skyline, and we're raging against the machine, there's air in my lungs, there's blood in my veins, oh I'm driving from Brooklyn to Queens, cause I gotta see you with your halo dust, and that she tired when it won't be forever, nothing is but I think you like the animal in me, and all you're up in the clouds, I'm down on the ground. What if what I want, is what I need, what if I want you to talk to me, what if what I want, is what I need, oh what if what I want, is what I need, what if I want you baby, what if what I want, is what I need, what if you want me? That was Carolyn Kendrick with her song What If?
I did not write a song in response to this episode, but one that I recently wrote is such a perfect fit that I decided to release it alongside, it's called Show a Little Skin, and it features Byron Isaac's of the Lumineers on bass and banjo master Tony Trishka, and it's available wherever music The next episode features an excerpt from Sally Rooney's Beautiful World Where Are You, and a song written in response by Sam himself. Songwriter is 100% independently produced by Hook and Crook, if you want to support the artist and the producer who make it, please consider a premium subscription from Apple Podcasts. Five star reviews and kind words online or in person are always appreciated too. You can always get early access to Songwriter at Paste, just go to pastemagazine.com and search for Ben Arthur, and while you're there, check out the Paste podcast or get it wherever you get yours.
Finally, thanks as always to Rob Reinhart and acoustic cafe.