Can creativity help you know yourself better? - Ed Romanoff Interview

In this episode, Pat goes one-on-one with Ed Romanoff, an award-winning singer-songwriter, corporate storyteller, and the founder of PineRock, a global brand communications company based in New York City. Listen in as they discuss creative timetables, the risks creators face, and how sometimes our stories tell us things we didn’t even know about ourselves. https://www.edromanoff.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

An author, a psychotherapist, and an entrepreneur walked into a bar. What came out is Dead Frog in the Driveway, a podcast that celebrates our potential as creative beings. No matter who you are, no matter what you might believe, no matter what you've been told. If you've ever wrestled with a blank page, a stuck idea, or a shifting sense of purpose, we hope you'll find some company and maybe some inspiration from this podcast. Our show is co-hosted by author and teacher Joni B. Cole, therapist and writer Pat Williams, and me, Drew Rockwell, a writer and business entrepreneur who still believes my dead frog in the driveway story deserved a much better grade. But it's time to move on and get started with today's episode.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Hi everybody. In today's episode, we're talking with Eddie. I read what you said. Uh with Ed Romanoff, who is an award-winning singer, songwriter, CEO, whose life reads like a study in bold recruit creative reinvention, actually. So I'm gonna read a little bit about his background just so we have a sense of his really interesting history. He didn't start making music actually until his late 40s. Before that, he built a career leading a global creative agency working with companies like Disney and Microsoft. And then someday, one day, something shifted and a creative voice appeared and sort of demanded expression. He's been writing music that has taken him across 13 countries. His work has been recognized by Rolling Stone, Nashville Songwriters, Tellywright, Carible, names that matter in the world of music. He's played with artists like Josh Ritter and Mary Gauthier, and along the way, he's somehow found time to invent his own genre of trauma folk, which I want to ask you about. His journey is a reminder that creativity doesn't arrive on a timetable. Sometimes it appears just when we think it's too late to begin, and what he's made and what he keeps making seems to be proof of what happens when we say yes to the things that won't leave us alone. So, Ed, where should we begin? Wow. That was so nice. Thank you. You're welcome. I'm really happy to have you here with us. You know, I was thinking about where to dive in because there's so many different places, but I guess I want to start with your business, if that's okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:54

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Um, so you've led a pretty major creative agency while making music and writing, and among I'm sure other things too. How do those two things, like business and your art, or inform or challenge each other?

SPEAKER_02 3:16

I think I picked an industry where I could be near the spotlight, but not in it. And so I um it's more of a behind-the-scenes role, but still creative.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

And I think I kind of picked a creative world because I didn't want to work, you know, like I didn't want to um, you know, all the jobs I had done were really hard, you know, and I'd done all kinds of wacky jobs, like factory work, construction work, I worked on a ranch, like branding cattle, and then I worked for radio and television. So I was looking for something where it was so cool the first time when we were sitting in a room having a meeting, just dreaming things up. And I was like, wow, I can't believe you know, you get paid to just come up with something out of thin air. So I picked that field, which is uh it's like a theater, a theater-based world where just say a little more about that, about what you do, what you're comfortable with. Yeah, we we create experiences for audiences that companies uh care about and like their uh employees or their customers. And what we do is create a theatrical world for them to enter to help shape what they think about something, and hopefully that experience will lead them to come out on the other side with a different point of view. Early on, I worked on a project at the Smithsonian, and I was fascinated by how they controlled space. Like you walk from one area to another, and a lot of thought is given to what space you're in. And as you change and transition, it that again that's the start of it. And um and my mind goes to uh David Byrne of the Talking Heads wrote a book on how space shaped music, you know, and how like CBGBs in the 80s, because of the shape of it, demanded a certain kind of raucous music to be heard. And so um, so in any event, uh just like uh becoming aware of what kind of space and then where's where are people when they enter it and where do you want them to be when they come out the other side?

SPEAKER_01 5:44

That's so interesting. Wow. So how being in a leadership position in your business, how has your craft, your writing, both songwriting and I guess other writing, how has that changed the way you lead or has it?

SPEAKER_02 6:05

For me, like I just respect an audience, like one person, their time. Right. And so for me, I really think about what's happening or what might happen. So it all adds. Like, I think what I love about exploring creative outlets is that they all benefit from the exploration. I feel like writing music has helped me. I feel like writing prose has also helped in a lot of ways at work. Um, so it has kind of crossed up. It also gives you a mental break from what it is that you're quote focused on.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Interesting. So, how old were you? You want to say when you started your business? Because you said sounds like you had a good part of your life.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, you know, I was um in my mid-30s when I started. I did not feel like I was ready. Events sort of forced my hand. Our company is turning 30 this year.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Wow, amazing. And you just got cited, right? As you just got some kind of accolade recently, didn't you, about your company?

SPEAKER_02 7:17

We we have made a couple of top 100 lists. Uh Experiential Marketer, which is a big one in our world. We made the top 100. And uh and then in uh Chief Marketer listed us as uh top 100 in the world of marketing agencies, which was a real pleasant surprise.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Oh, that's amazing. Okay, so of course I can't um because we discussed that we have this in common. But you said that many of your your songs, and to some degree, I suppose, actually your memoirs also that discovering that your father wasn't your biological father. How do you think that impacted on your let's call it creative voice? Maybe even, you know, what did creativity allow you to understand about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 8:18

Well, that is one of the coolest things I think about songwriting is that often you go in with a question, and almost as often you get some kind of answer that might surprise you. And I also think it's like writing or music, um, you know, it's like that story you have to tell, and maybe that only you can tell, um, is critical. Uh for me, I'd seen so many crazy things all my life. Um, there was like a random uh shooting in my high school at like a Lover's Lane thing, and that had been kicking around in my head for years. Um and and I was working on this song with a guy up in Boston, a really great producer. His name is Crit Harmon, and he's worked with a lot of a lot of people like Laurie McKenna, a lot of folks Nashville-based, and uh just like an inspired guy. Like he walks around and all of a sudden he has those flashes, like this kind of a guy, and he's just so great. And we spent, I'm gonna say, a good month or two on this one song told from the perspective of uh from my perspective of that shooting, and we really crafted a really great song. And um, and I woke up in the morning when it was done, and I was like, I think we got it wrong. And I was like, I was like, I think, I think we have to tell it from the perspective of the guy that had the most to lose, which was the guy whose girlfriend got shot. And um, and my friend Crit got so mad. He was like, Are you kidding me? Like we just labored over this thing. It is shiny and awesome. And he got so mad, I I went out, I left the house, and there was a barber across the street. So I said, Well, I'll get a haircut, let him calm down. And I wasn't paying attention, I was on my phone, and they basically shaved my head. You know, like I got this like crazy short haircut, and I went back to my friend's house, and I was like, so and I oh and he opens the door and he sees like I've shaved my head, and he thinks I wanted to fight him over the direction we would go. And he goes, Okay, okay, if you want to tell it, we can start over. Um, and that song ended up also doing really well. It was one of the first ones that got recognition and like uh competition stuff. Um but so it it things that have happened that you just have in your mind that you're like, oh my god, I gotta I gotta find an outlet for this. And being in the musical side, it's easier to pick up a guitar probably. Um and so you know, you had asked about the father thing, and um interestingly, uh I started writing the song about my father before I knew that that song would apply to me. I was working with a uh Nashville songwriter who was writing about having been adopted, and so I became very curious and started reading up on adoption and what that might be like so I could help her write her songs, and and and we did. And while I was working on that, I was in Ireland and I heard a um a bartender read a limerick. You know, uh Every came in, they sing a song, you know, it's Ireland, it's Sunday, and um uh and he said, Pity the man who's pushing a pram, pushing a pram all alone. Pity the man who's pushing a pram and thinks that he's pushing his own.

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

And I remember writing that down and thinking, what would it be like to be the kid? Because I was working with my friend and I was helping her tell it from her perspective. Then she invited me to finish our the song we were working on to the orphanage where she was left on the day she was born. St. Vincent DePaul in New Orleans, and we went down and I was like, of course, you know, and I was doing my day job, so I ran from a pitch in Midtown to the airport, fly down there, change in the a Starbucks parking lot because nobody wants to, you know, songwriter can't show up in a suit. Uh and so at any event we go down to this orphanage, and then they still had the kids' pictures on the wall, you know, hoping someone would come and uh from when they were sitting on the steps hoping someone would come and adopt them. And um, and I was just really struck by that. So I uh I started writing a song. Well we I wrote a song with her called The Orphan King, which made it on her record. Um, but while I was down there, I started writing a song about a kid who didn't know who his father was, and I had the first two lines, and it was um, I got my face from a man that I have not met. I've been looking for him, but I ain't found him yet.

SPEAKER_01 13:13

Wow, and you did not know anything yet.

SPEAKER_02 13:16

No, it would be almost a year later when I took a DNA test and found out that you're related to myself.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

That's amazing. That's amazing. You know, I I have a similar, you know, that you and I sort of share that story, right, to some degree. And um I have I had a moment like that too, and it you know, I'm always so interested and fascinated about what we know but we don't know. Right? That what we what we can't know or we we're not allowed to know, or and how we end up knowing is that's just amazing. That's an amazing story. Huh.

SPEAKER_02 13:59

Yeah, on some level, I think it's true because a lot of people said to me, Come on, you must have known, you know, like both my parents were dark, Russian, and um and I was like very fair skinned with lighter hair. And ever all my life people would say, Oh, uh, Romanoff, and I'm like, Yeah, yeah. I'm like, Yeah, it's Russian. They're like, You look Irish, which turned out to be.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

That you are, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

So on some level though, I do think, yeah, it's uh things happen that make me think that on some level there's an awareness, but I I swear I had no inkling I wanted to be more like my dad than anyone.

SPEAKER_01 14:45

Do you think that um is there is there some truth to that maybe let's say you weren't ready to write it until then? Or even now writing your memoir? Like if you think you would have written the same story even 10, 15 years ago? If I had learned it or No, I'm saying if you Yeah, that even if you learned it, you know, that because you say you you wrote songs about it in one way, shape, or form, and now you're writing this your own memoir. So you found this out about your father how long ago?

SPEAKER_02 15:28

I was uh forty uh fifty.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:35

So fifteen years, sixteen years.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Yeah, so do you think I think it's probably obvious that it's a very different memoir that you're writing now that you would have written let's say 10 years ago, would you say?

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah, I think uh I think there's a uh a strong case to be made having enough emotional distance to tackle personal, yeah. Um which is where the music actually can be more immune immediate, you know. You can be like, you know, in the moment of just devastation and sing about that, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Right. Say a little more about that. Why why do you think that is?

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Um uh just because like the raw emotion is so uh universal, and if someone is able to voice it and someone is able to hear it and feel that same feeling, yeah. It's really connected.

unknown 16:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

So music is is such an integral part of your story, I think. When did that s become clearer to you, do you think? I mean, as a kid, were you interested in music? Did you think about music?

SPEAKER_02 16:46

Yeah, I was. Um, I drew pictures of instruments and stuff, and I begged my parents to for me to buy a guitar, but I was not allowed. Because I don't know. Like, I in my mind I have thoughts about it, but I don't know if it if any of them would stack up, but uh it wasn't till I was 18 till I was on my own where I was like, I'm I'm gonna buy a guitar. Although it was interesting because my brother was two years older and he had a drum set, and he would just make all the noise in the world, but for whatever reason, my parents uh would not allow me to get a guitar.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

Ah, and so you got one at 18.

SPEAKER_02 17:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

When uh when my father was sick and I was looking at music lessons, or did you just learn yourself?

SPEAKER_02 17:37

Or well, back in the day, mostly self-taught, like back in the day, though you know, you get a songbook, I would I and they had that little uh grid where showed you where you the dots with where you put your fingers. Right so you really could find your way through to make a song just from the just from the songbooks.

SPEAKER_01 17:56

You know, we just did a podcast on curiosity and it's it's integral uh relationship. I mean, that doesn't even you know to creativity. And I'm listening to everything you're saying, and I'm sure the listeners hear this too, that I mean you have such even as a kid like enormous curiosity. I mean, it even led you to taking a DNA test and eventually finding your father, right? But still, I mean, what do you what do you make of that? What do you think about that? About curiosity.

SPEAKER_02 18:37

As you're saying it, like when I think when I when I took the DNA test at first, it was because I wanted to know more about my father that I grew up with. So I think in some way curiosity might mean be a search for connection of sorts, maybe. Um, because certainly at each turn for me, you know, it's been like it has led to something that makes and I think that's what an art does is creates connection between whoever made it and whoever experiences it.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great point, actually. Because you said something a few minutes ago about, you know, when you were going to do this piece and down in New Orleans, I think it was, he said, and you were interested in the subject of adoption because it was this person's experience, right? And that that's curiosity, and that of course led you to other places, which we never know where it's gonna lead us. But I was struck by that, which leads me really to another question about risk, you know, about creative risk. Do you have a thought about that? About like what's the biggest? I mean, I I really sort of hate questions like this, but you know, what's like what do you think the biggest creative risk that you've taken?

SPEAKER_02 20:00

Oh, so so interesting. So, you know, bridging from curiosity, and I think I'm paraphrasing the the top the concept, but I think it that's it's often referred to as the unthought known is the thing that could that we may know, or I may on some level there was broadcasting an interest about a thing that I didn't even know, which does lead you into the land of risk. And I think what's at risk often is identity, like um how you think about yourself and how other people perceive you. I'm sure a lot of people who are curious about creativity have have heard about uh The Artist's Way, uh the Julie Cameron um book. And uh I experienced her thing live several times.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

And um fabulous experience. I I so many people I've talked to say that that has been the thing. The big price of entry is your identity of how you think about yourself, how other people perceive you. There's some friends I lost along the way who liked me being the best supporting actor less than taking up some limelight.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

That's interesting.

SPEAKER_02 21:14

So you had to be prepared to lose who you were.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

Yeah. So in other words, would you say that that that one of the big biggest risks, creators' risks, is is the willingness to stand in the spotlight?

SPEAKER_02 21:32

I um I I think so, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Um does that sound like too much of a shrink question?

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Um I I mean I'm curious about it too. You know, what is what is uh at stake, but I think the risk is not is is to like leave this world without having said what you meant to. And that feels like a risk.

SPEAKER_01 22:03

Yeah. Um Yeah. You know, some people have said to me, and I think it's true for me too, actually, is uh if I were gonna answer that question, which I think I'd have difficulty with, but I think it would probably be around the area of I want, you know, of saying it that out loud in metaphorically as well as actually, you know, that I want this. I mean, as far as creating something, you know, that I want, I desire this, I want this for myself. That um, and other people have said that to me too, that that you know, in terms of expressing themselves creatively.

SPEAKER_02 22:50

Yeah, I think in terms of um like art and nature, and like on an individual level, like it is a joyful thing to allow yourself to experience whatever that is. Um, but I kind of feel like it adds to the greater good, you know. Like I kind of feel like just as nature is just a forest of awesome things that you can experience, um art enables people to have their own interpretation and to hit them on their own frequency that they're on, yeah. Um, but it has a connective sort of thing to it, I I think. So I think it has like a higher calling for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I like that actually. So the long view. So, you know, I mean, I'm usually thinking about people who listen to this podcast and why they're here and what would be meaningful to them, what or a listener? I think about one listener probably, like why they're here and what's important to them. So if we think about this this person that's listening to us right now, like what given everything that you've learned and what we're talking about, like what what would you hope to that they would take away from this? What would be something you'd want somebody to know for themselves?

SPEAKER_02 24:25

Um, what an awesome question. Um I would I would I would want them to know that they can do it. I'd be like, you can do this. Um because I you know there are the Bob Dylans and the Picasso's and the you know the savant types, but I think the accessibility of creative really is to anyone who's willing to try. And I have a sign above my desk. Um uh I had seen a clip, uh Ray Bradbury, and he was given uh some talking to some students, and his advice to them was apart from the fact of populating your brain with as much as you can take in, like poetry and science. And um, but his one thing was when you sit down to do whatever your art, don't think.

SPEAKER_01 25:17

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

And so I have that sign, and I feel like there's time to think later, you know, when you become the editor, but when you're just capt going chasing that initial spark, don't think.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

I love that. I'm gonna do that, don't think. I'm gonna do that. So one more question, and then I want to ask you if you have anything you want to ask me. Um what do you understand about creativity now? Maybe it's what you just said that that you couldn't have known earlier in your life.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Wow. Um at this stage of the game, um, it's like accessing your subconscious or a deeper consciousness that's connective. You know, I keep coming back to that theme, but you know, like there's the David Lynch book, Catching the Big Fish. You know, he was a big meditator. And I do think that the subconscious is so powerful and to allow it to play a role in your creative process. I think um personally I'm a big fan of an iterative creative process, like coming at it and then getting away and coming at it and getting away, and allowing thoughts to occur to you in little flashes, but honoring them. Yeah, you know, like if you get a flash, you gotta write it down in your little notes thing on your phone, or else it's gonna be like, I'm gonna give that idea to somebody else, you know.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Um yeah, that's true. I I do that, but then I forget I did it. In all honesty. Oh god, this has been lovely. Um I've really enjoyed this, and uh, you have a remarkable life, Ed. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, I'm I was just so honored to be asked to be a part of the conversation. I I think of myself as more of a student than a teacher. So um I'm happy to share what happened for me, but I like learning new things.

SPEAKER_01 27:49

That's so clear. That's so clear.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

So I'd be so for how about for you? What's been the thing that uh has created uh a breakthrough for you on the in the process of creating things?

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Honestly, I think it's been a culmination of an internal process for me, which does have to do with risk. And I think probably the sort of visceral understanding of the combination of giving myself permission, you know, going back to what you said before about identity, you know, I grew up in such a intellectual family, not that they didn't appreciate art and all kinds of art, which they certainly did, which I'm very grateful for, but I'm not sure that the idea of being an artist was valued enough and that the thing to strive for was um was integrity but also you know intellectual prowess, so to speak, right? And so the idea of being an artist in a sense was lovely but secondary, and I think giving myself permission to see myself in that way.

SPEAKER_02 29:21

Can I say one thing on that?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Say anything you want.

SPEAKER_02 29:25

So when I was just learning to sing, because I thought I was tone-deaf, I went to see a voice coach in New York, uh, Dr. Bill Riley, and his clients are like Celine Dion, Pavarotti, Bruce Springsteen, like crazy, uh sitting in his lobby. I was like, you run, go, get out of here. And uh and he called, it was my turn, and it and he brings me over to his piano in this amazing warehouse, which looked like Indiana Jones music factory. It was just an insane, cool place. And people are coming and going, and the UPS guy's going through there, and uh, and he said, Okay, sing this note. I told him I was telling W, sing this note, sing this note, and I was kind of like very quietly just singing these notes. And as I was leaving, he was like, Ed, why are you singing so quiet? And I was like, Well, I'm afraid someone's gonna hear it. And then he said, You realize that's the point, you know, of singing. And then right as I was leaving, he said, you know, Ed, you have to give yourself permission to sing.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

Yeah, amen. So on that note, thank you, Ed.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Listeners, thanks for tuning in to Dead Frog in the Driveway with Pat Williams, Joni Cole, and myself, Drew Rockwell. We hope you join us for more stories and conversation that explore our creative intelligence and how we can all expand our thinking, ideas, and imagination. Plus, if you'd like a heads up about future episodes, make sure to subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway wherever you listen to podcasts. Go figure. Subscribe to Dead Frog in the Driveway.