The Spiritual Journey of Eddy Mann: From Secular Musician to Soul Songwriter

0:00 Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball, If you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today, I am joined by award-winning and prolific songwriter, Eddie Mann. Eddie is known as a smile for the soul. He has a tradition of culture, living in an ever-evolving neighborhood, so we're going to be talking to him about everything that he's up to, and he has an impressive catalog of 20 albums.

0:53 So, Eddie, thank you so much for joining me today. Joy to be here with you. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself? Sure, I grew up in Philadelphia, pennsylvania so I'm a Philly sports guy for better or worse and I grew up in a home that my father was like a bebop pianist that was his thing so there was a lot of jazz music played in the house growing up and my mother was really cognizant of culture and passing things down, and so I had a really diverse background growing up and it naturally fed into the creative side for me.

1:48 I was also in a home that was a spiritual home. My parents didn't push and force religion on me, but they were weekly churchgoers and so I would tag along and have a lot of seeds planted and at some point in my life when I needed to turn to something else, that's where I turned, because I knew it was there. And I think that as a professional musician which was the first leg of my adult life I was a secular musician out playing at a very young age in the worst environments that you could be in, all sorts of temptation for things to go wrong and opportunities to make wrong turns, and after a period of time when the next drink or the next drug or the next woman wasn't wasn't doing it anymore, I realized that there had to be something else.

3:01 There had to be something else more. There had to be something else more important, something bigger that was going to drive me through my life, and for me it ended up being the faith that was, I guess, where those seeds were planted started to blossom a little bit and I learned not to just I. I was just relying, I think, like a lot of people do, relying on what I thought was my own cleverness to get by in the world and and it wasn't sufficient. It wasn't sufficient. And as I've, as I've got older and grown into the person that I am, there's just the world leaves me dumbfounded often, and I'm fortunate, I feel fortunate that I have a place to go, I have a place to turn when nothing makes sense.

4:03 Does that make any sense? Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And you know, congratulations on turning things around. So how did you, oh, go ahead? No, no, no, no, you go ahead. Well, how did you originally get into singing in the first place? I was a painfully shy kid, and when I say painful, I think I would have rather gone to the dentist than read in front of the kids in school. I was just so painfully shy and I don't know why, because I was brought up in this secure home.

4:47 There was no reason for me to be that way. But I was until my, I guess, early teens, and I put a guitar around my neck and as soon as I did that, I found my voice. I couldn't play a lick, I wasn't any good, but I could talk a blue stream, I could talk forever. I. It's a really odd. It's an odd time when I look back on it. Because I was, I was, I played sports all my life up until I fell into this music thing.

5:27 And I was a good athlete, you know, I didn't. I didn't have to ride the bench. I was, you know, had quick reflexes and it got me out of a lot. It got me on into a lot of things that maybe I I wasn't wouldn't have been able to play otherwise. So I was active, I was only sports teams I was. But it's still there, wasn't, there was something there that just prohibited me from expressing myself, and the guitar enabled me to do that and I struggled with what it was going to mean as an adult, my father being a depression-aged kid.

6:13 Father being a depression-aged kid, his music, his jazz and playing and all was always secondary, and he also grew up in a time when there were less opportunities for him to make a living at it. Not that I mean as a jazz musician it might have been actually better back then, but as a pop musician or and secular musician, that kind of blew up for me as a kid. The business was just kind of on fire and there were all these opportunities to go out and play, you know, seven nights a week, and I fell into playing before I was even out of high school. I was playing in clubs, in places that I was underage. So I ended up taking a two years of.

6:54 I was two years into college, my first in in business school for com and I. I decided to take the summer of and just travel and play I to get the music out of my system. And a lifetime later, twenty-plus albums later, it's not out of my system. And a lifetime later, 20 plus albums later, it's not out of my system. It's who I am, and once I came to grips with that, who I was. I didn't want to be one of those. I never had any intention of being a starving musician. I wanted to work. Any intention of being a starving musician, I wanted to work. So I made sure that I I was playing music that people wanted to hear and this and once I in the beginning it was fine because I didn't realize that the driving force for me ended up being composition and it turned.

7:46 It turned into songwriting. And once that happened and I made the change over to writing my own material and going out and playing. That road was a little tougher because I didn't have the built-in income that I had earlier. But I've always been someone that I don't live in debt. I don't have any debt. I own. I own my homes, my vehicles. You know I'm fortunate enough to have a studio north and a studio south. So I'm at a point in my later years where I am completely self-contained. I do everything myself.

8:26 And technology the way it is today. If you're willing to put the time and the effort to learn how to use it, you can do that. You don't need to be a slave to some record company or someone else that's put out some money for you. So, as a musician, I've been pretty creative with making the landscape, finding a way to make the landscape work for me as it's changed, because I think we all understand with technology that the landscape of our world is changing daily and we've never really arrived as soon as we figure we've got control of everything that's in front of us.

9:07 They're creating new things and releasing it and we're playing catch-up again. So, yeah, I feel blessed that I've been able to do that okay. Well, if somebody was to ask you what type of music or what genre of music you do, what would you tell them? boy do? I dislike that question, but it's the natural question. Everybody asks it. I don't play a genre of music. I guess the only thing that's consistent through my music catalog is that it's all spiritually influenced. It's very optimistic influenced.

9:47 It's very optimistic. It's all focused on being able to love your brother, love your sister, live in a way that's compassionate. It has nothing to do with whether we agree on things or not. It has to do with respecting each other and just loving on each other. So that's the thing that's at the core of it. Some people will say, well, that's a Christian artist. Well, that's not just a Christian artist. Being compassionate and loving to other people is much more than that. It's much greater than that. And there are three or four over that catalog of 20-plus albums I'll say five or six that are true worship albums.

10:32 They're albums that are songs in them that are sung vertically to God, and the rest of them are songs about what it's like to live in this world, for me, to live in his kingdom, how I can survive each day, the things that I lean on when things aren't going well, that I lean on when, when, when things aren't going well, because I'm not foolish enough to think that you know, I live any special charmed life. I'm a blessed man, no doubt about that. But at the same time I have struggles like anything else. I I bought two girls into this world and they tried to save the world, one guy at a time, and drove me crazy for a number of years.

11:12 Um, but, uh. But from a genre standpoint, all those influences I had as a, as a child, have come out in my writing. Um, both when I'm in the writing in in in the writing stage, when I'm in the studio, and then the third case would be the live performance part of it. I want the song to go where it needs to go. I don't want to be holding it back, I don't want to be forcing it into a place. That's not natural. So I've got some stuff that's straight-ahead rock stuff today.

11:53 I've got stuff on country stations today and I don't really know how to define country music today. It's all over the place. But I'm glad that there's an audience there that can listen in and connect to some of these songs. I've had very good results in the UK with some number one songs on iTunes out there in the Americana music and Christian country music. But I'm a Philly. I'm a Philly boy at heart, so there's a lot of what for me is is Philly solar RMB that it that influences in there.

12:35 My first down was an album called yes indeed, and the first real review I got if it was blue high gospel and I knew that. I knew the reviewer was trying to find a way to connect the fact that I wasn't doing what everyone else was doing in contemporary Christian music. And as a creative, I've learned that I needed to find my voice. The world didn't need me to copy someone else. I needed to find my voice. I needed to find my voice. The world didn't need me to copy someone else. I needed to find my voice. I needed to use my voice and not everybody's going to like it they're not supposed to but it's there for those that it connects with and I'm blessed that it does.

13:27 And there's a platform for me to work. And all these years 20 plus albums I just released Turn Up the Divine in June, putting the finishing touches on what would be the next album that will probably hopefully be out either in October or November. And you know, to be able to make a living and to do what you have a passion for if you can discover what your passion is in life, you don't really feel like you're working. It's a pretty cool thing to get up each day and be able to do what you love and, like I said in the beginning, there were times when you know the money wasn't great, but we didn't spend money.

14:11 Then my wife has been an awesome support system for me. Not everybody has that either, so again, that's just yet another blessing in itself. Okay, well, tell us who are your biggest musical influences. Who influences you to do what you do? Who are your biggest musical influences? Who influences you? to do what you do. Yeah, when I was a kid, the first guitar player that jumped out at me was a guy named Jeff Beck, an English rocker, and I just loved the way he played Um and um from a, from an instrumentalist, because when I first wanted to play it was all about how can I be the best guitarist I can be?

15:00 So I was studying as much as I could. Um, I was listening to anybody and everybody I could. Jeff Beck was somebody again that that that played things that I didn't hear my father being, you know, coming from the jazz place. There was so much Oscar Peterson in the house and that just completely fried my brain trying to embrace what it was he was playing and how the harmonies were changing all the time. So that ended up being a much larger influence on me than I thought. Um, as far as uh, I went through a period when I realized that it was about the songs themselves.

15:47 I went through the the singer, songwriter phrase, looking into anybody and everybody that were popular um, lyricists and stuff. I went through the Bob Dylan phrase and I never really caught on to him from a melodic sense because that's not really what he was about as a folk singer. It was about the poetry in the words, so I could relate to that part of it I went through. Steely Dan has always been a recording gold mine for me, where in the beginning I probably wasted too much time wanting to be perfect, like their albums always sound crisp and perfect.

16:32 That wasn't who I was, that's who they were. I had to graduate, you know I, that wasn't who I was, that's who they were. I had to. I had to graduate to a different place where, for me, that, from a, from a spiritual point of view, I the performance was more, much more important for me than having everything perfect. Um and uh, I had. I had to learn. Learn that um, probably the hard way, by um, pushing people a little too hard to uh and in doing so, losing the spark and the energy of the song. Um, let me think who else has been um? There are any number of gospel and christian artists over the years that continue to, artists over the years that continue to inspire me.

17:21 I don't know what. I don't particularly like the state of contemporary Christian music right now because it's become very formula-based. A lot of it sounds the same. There's a lot of great songs. There are great melodies and great lyrics, but production seems to be the same, and that happens, I think, in all different styles of music. Whatever's popular, people tend to want to produce something else. The same way. It just stagnates, I think, the public. It stagnates us as listeners. Well, tell us about this upcoming project that you're working on, tell us what inspired it and what listeners can expect when they listen to it.

18:05 Yeah, it's a funny thing, I usually don't write on a topic. I don't set out to write on a specific subject. I write almost daily and over a period of time I've accumulated a number of songs that were written through the season I've been living in. So the theme that runs through them is whatever that season looks like and how I've emotionally been dealing with it, how I've emotionally been dealing with it. However, this particular album was a deeply religious one for me in the fact that I had decided to do a deep dive into the book of Revelation.

18:50 I had never done that before. I was always somebody that I never bought into. The fear preaching guy, you're going to go to hell, you know, shaking the Bible at me, that never worked for me and so it was never part of my ministry. I'm the guy that I will get quieter to make people listen in rather than screaming and yelling at them. I will get loud to get their attention at times, but that's, that's not my thing. So I so I knew the basics, but I did this deep dive and I did. I wrote chapter by chapter.

19:32 I was. I was writing songs and just writing prose, writing some poetry. I thought this year when I had released Turn Up the Divine back in June I had promoted it heavily for about 12 weeks through the Mid-Atlantic states more than anywhere else Came to my southern digs here in florida, um, in january and, uh, I decided I was going to revisit the project in my studio down here and start the recording. Um, and as I opened up the project I realized I had done a lot of recording of it and it wasn't a year ago that I thought I did it, it was actually two years.

20:16 Two years had passed and uh, so I started listening back to it, was really excited about a number of the songs. There were 25, 30 songs there and so I spent the month of January and February just weeding through these songs and revisiting them, resetting the template for some of them, and I've got it narrowed down now to about 10 or 12 songs that I believe will be on the album. It'll be called the Unveiling. It's not chapter by chapter through, but everything in this was influenced by that book and a lot of it has to do with the prize at the end, the reward at the end.

21:18 The need in the world right now is something that's going to be harsh. I feel like we all need stuff that's going to comfort us, that's going to bring us security, that's going to bring us hope, that's going to let us find strength, um, to deal with the things that we are, that we're living through personally, and things the situations we're seeing play out across our TVs. So that's my prayer and, as I said, most of it is mastered at this point. The artwork's done. It's just a matter now of crossing some T's and dotting some I's and it'll be finished and I can send it off and let management decide what's a good time to release it.

22:03 So, besides this new project, what are you working on? What else are you working on that listeners need to be aware of? I'll be heading out playing a 12-week tour again in June through August, up again primarily East Coast this particular tour is pretty much on the one coast A lot more solo venues than in the past. I don't know how I feel about it.

22:44 I miss when I don't play with my band. I really do. I really do miss them because we get to expand the music so much and I'm graced with just some beautifully professionally trained, faithful men that leave dates open for me every year to do this. But it just felt this year like I needed to be in some smaller venues which are much more conversational, because you're much closer to the audience, and it just felt that that's where I needed to be this year.

23:25 I will be. I'll close, I'll be closing out this tour with a week's residency in New Jersey, wildwood, new Jersey, at a at a at, actually a boardwalk chapel right in the marketplace, just a wonderful place. So I'm excited about ending it there. It would be a great way to finish it up and kind of put a period on the end of it, and I haven't figured out. I'm sure we'll be doing some things during the summer that'll be on this forthcoming album. Having quite decided that yet I'm still in the process of putting together what that, what that set, will look like for this tour.

24:09 Having done this, as long as I've done it, my catalog is too large. I have to pick and choose from different albums. I try to pick. There's always a group of songs I have to do all the time which are the favorites that people enjoy live events, and then there's always the deeper cuts that we don't do as often. Often, and some of them are just some of the songs aren't the most popular ones, but they're just a whole lot of fun live and people have gravitated and asked for them all the time. So that's an interesting. It's an interesting journey in itself, just trying to reach a point where you're happy about what it is that you're going to be presenting to the people, and sometimes I get it wrong.

25:03 Sometimes I pick something and we'll go out and play it for the first couple stops and it'll just lay there, no response at all. People won't get engaged to it and pull it out and replace it with something else. So it's not a perfect science. Well, how can listeners find you throughout your contact info? Yeah, uh, eddie, man, eddie, mancom is the first place. The websites E, d, d, y, m, a, n, n, Um I am on, uh, facebook, um, instagram X I guess we call it now Uh, youtube channels full of videos.

25:43 The music can be streamed, actually from my website, but also from Spotify and Apple and Amazon, and, the way it is today, the music's on sites that I don't even know exist, and that's a good thing. That's a good thing. That's that's the good thing. That's that's the landscape today. That's that's the how they have a business works, and I do encourage people always to be, to be engaged with me in whatever platform they like the best. I love being in conversation with people. I think that's kind of what one of the big our, our biggest purposes here on the planet, and I feel like we don't do it enough. We don't listen and talk with people from different oaks of life, understand them, because we don't take the time.

26:28 We don't take the time to step over something that may be uncomfortable for us. I'm not averse to somebody really having their buttons pushed by a song and being unhappy with it or not understanding it and wanting to reach out and say what were you doing here? Or this song really irks me for some reason. Let's talk about it. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that at all. Just be in conversation. Okay, we'll close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe, if that was something I forgot to talk about, that you would like to touch on any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

27:08 I don't know that there's specific. I guess if there's anything specific at this point is what I touched on earlier, is that, um, you know, I, I really have the mission of my life at this point. Um, time's the most valuable thing I have, because I'm not I'm a seasoned vet at this point and, um, I just really want to see this life, this earth, this place we live, a better place, um, a happier place, a more loving place, um, that's, we all need to be a part of that. No one person or no one thing is going to make that work. We have to find a way to. We have to find a way to knock down the or step over the barriers that separate us all.

27:54 It's really so silly. I, I believe in a god and I love a god that made this diverse place. It's unbelievably diverse and it's probably the most valuable thing that we have. If we were all the same, it would be one one hell of a boring life, um, but we have all this diverse stuff and we, you know, we want to categorize it and put it in a box and say, well, I don't like that, I don't, that's not for me. Um, my prayer would be that we would start chipping away at that. You know, each day, each one of us would chip away a little bit in our own little, our own little world and, um, gradually try to create a place that would be more loving for our children and our children's children as we, as we go forward.

28:36 And if you have a voice out there, be, let it be yours. Don't. Don't feel like you need to be anybody else, man, just be yourself. Speak what's on your heart all right. Ladies and gentlemen, eddie man, please be sure to check out his large catalog of 20 albums. Check out the new project when it Drops. If you're going to be on the East Coast this summer. Check him out live. Follow rate review. Share this episode to as many people as possible. Jump on your favorite podcast app. Check out the show. Leave us a review. Follow us on your favorite podcast app. Check out the show. Leave us a review. Follow us. Check out our new website wwwcurveball337.com.

29:17 Thank you for listening and supporting the show and, eddie, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining me. Thanks for the support. It was wonderful to be here. I'm glad to share. For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, visit wwwcurveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.