This is an excerpt from the interview with Joell that took place earlier this year as I was just starting (literally received the recording equipment that day). The full podcast will be out before the end of Sep 2019…

Growing up, two brothers, a competitive household and confidence…

Joell: The thing that I remember, that really helped me in my career later on is that being a music student – not totally serious – but it did help all of us, including my brother, the middle child, who’s tends to be really shy – that having music lessons and having to memorize music and play in front of an audience twice a year really helped us build not only the discipline of doing, it but just getting over the fear. Or pushing through the fear. And when things didn’t go well being able to move forward despite the fact that…I remember we had to memorize music that we’re performing in our recitals and I remember one of the recitals I was in, I completely drew a blank.

And I couldn’t get past this one this one stanza in this I don’t know if it was Beethoven, it was one of the songs that I had memorized and just trying to move through it to get past it to get to a part that I could remember to get to the end of the song and not run off the stage and total humiliation was just a learning experience in itself. And doing that, really working through that, now in retrospect I realize, this was really important in my career as I move forward because in life and careers or whatever you’re always going to come across some kind of obstacle and how do you get through that – especially with the fear part – how do you move through that. Or the mistake part – how do you move through that.

And so now retrospect I think, what a great gift that my parents gave us. So I’m really happy about that I wish my son was as enthusiastic with music as I was growing up. But just that’s kind of like a natural how my how my childhood was like…

~ Joell Hanson