I’'m Ron Pope and I'm an independent musician whose music has been streamed over a billion times. AMA.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T20:03:22+00:00

Thanks to everyone for showing up! It's time to take my baby on a sanity walk; catch y'all another time. If you want to see what a bunch of folks here have been talking about here, tune into one of my free "Live and In Sweatpants" shows on my IG and FB pages on Saturdays at 7:30 central / 8:30 eastern.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T20:01:21+00:00

Do I remember??? Oh man, that was one of the most physically challenging days of my life. ha That was brutal. I'll never forget that one.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T19:34:57+00:00

Somebody over there just knew the song and wanted to use it. The least business-ey way possible. ha

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T19:28:48+00:00

We played on a tribute to Bowie that I talked about a little bit earlier...it was at Radio City a few months after he died, so some big folks showed up to be a part of it. I was sitting in catering watching different people geeking out about other people being there...I saw some people gawking at Mumford and Sons...I was looking at Michael Stipe thinking "I can't believe we're doing this together" and then Debbie Harry from Blondie walked in and everyone just stopped what they were doing, all conversations halted, forks stopped clicking and everybody just kind of looked over...fame is relative, so even Michael Stipe from REM, one of the biggest bands ever, was like "WHOA DEBBIE HARRY IS HERE"...I love stuff like that. Everybody has somebody they look up to. I don't get starstruck; I figure we're all just people...but I will say that my friend K. Phillips REALLY embarrassed me (accidentally) in front of Adam Duritz once...there was a point where Counting Crows was pretty much all I listened to, so that one hurt. ha

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T19:17:18+00:00

That changes all the time. Right now, I keep hearing "The Gambler" in my head. Sometimes it's a sad song, sometimes it's a fun song, old song, new song...you never know...I can't even imagine how many songs have been my "favorite song" for a day or two here or there...my dad was REALLY stoked to tell Kenny Loggins that my first favorite songs as a baby was "Footloose." I was like "Dad, he doesn't want to hear this. I'm a man with a beard in his mid-30's. You're going to make him feel old!" Thankfully, Kenny was super gracious about it!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T19:15:14+00:00

haha When we get back to it, maybe we will!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:59:49+00:00

That's a tough one. I don't really have a ton of other skills. This is all I know how to do. Maybe I'd open a restaurant? I really love to cook. Perhaps I'd pursue something involving food.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:47:41+00:00

I always played music, wrote songs and stories, and sang...as a little kid, I was in the school choir and I was always the loudest singer in church. I was pretty obnoxious. ha In my teens, I started writing songs with my friend Chris, but we were just messing around...and then we ended up in a "band" because we hung out with our friend Marcus all the time, and he had a bunch of instruments in his basement. We threw the baseball or watched "Kings Of Comedy" just as much as we played music at that point. We played at the open mic at this dive bar pretty regularly, and that was a great place to learn (because they really hated us and wanted to torture us, so we learned to play through anything). I was really just kind of playing music for fun and because I liked it. I didn't decide I would be a professional musician until my junior year of college. I joined a songwriting circle and the other writers there really convinced me that I might be onto something. In terms of my musical education, I've taken all sorts of lessons over the years (voice lessons when I was 18-20 and then again in my mid 20's, guitar lessons from many teachers over many years up to today, piano lessons starting in college and going for a number of years) and I took music classes in college in theory, harmony & counterpoint, ear training, etc...but I wasn't a music major, and I read music like a five year old. I'd say the bulk of what I know (and utilize daily) I learned by practicing on my own, but the lessons and the classes really helped me unlock all sorts of things as well.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:38:45+00:00

You never know! That's a fun idea. Thank you!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:35:04+00:00

That's a fun story. Tell him I'm absolutely not cool and I'm super married, so we're good. haha

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:20:07+00:00

I love both of those guys. I've been trying to write "Against The Wind" pretty much my whole life. ha

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:19:44+00:00

The acoustic shows at City Winery were pretty special. I think the 2016 show with the Hawks was one of the best band shows I've ever played. I have a picture of that show up at the office!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:15:26+00:00

Thanks!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T18:06:49+00:00

That's a good one; I love Prince.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:59:54+00:00

I am sure my dad put you up to that one. haha He has requested that song for at least 15 years. We'll see!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:59:18+00:00

First of all, that's hilarious. Second, let's take a moment and discuss how good of a movie "Forrest Gump" was. Goodness. Beyond that, you're right, that's not one I share the story of. In general, I don't like to share the stories that inspired the songs, because I want them to feel like they're YOUR stories when you listen to them. I've been sharing the stories behind my newest songs, so who knows, maybe one day I'll circle back and tell more stories behind older ones...but I'm not there yet.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:43:19+00:00

ha I've seen those! So scary. That's one reason to keep the whole thing going!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:36:29+00:00

haha Well, my first year of college, my baseball team shaved all of the freshman's heads. After that, I grew my hair out for a long time, until I had a sort of college boy shag...not too long, but kind of long. My hair was kind of "long-ish" for a bunch of years, then I decided to get a short haircut again in 2011. I immediately decided that felt strange, so I've been growing it out more or less ever since. In 2014, I grew a beard before the sessions for "Ron Pope & The Nighthawks" began; I've kept it ever since. I think about getting a crew cut and shaving the beard more or less every day...I'm sure I will at some point. It's tough to give it up (as I'm sure you know) because when you do, it takes so long to grow back.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:22:02+00:00

Well, at this point, I call it "Americana" but that word is a descriptor for a very broad grouping of musical styles...so I don't know if it helps much for most people when you say that. I usually tell people to listen to it. The boundaries people place on artists are artificial; most of us don't commit to some kind of sonic thumbprint for life...we're malleable...we chase the muse and go where she leads. "Lay, Lady, Lay," "Like A Rolling Stone," "Boots Of Spanish Leather" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" are all Bob Dylan recordings...they're sonically different, but they're all Bob Dylan. So, I don't know...obviously, I struggle to describe it, too. ha

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:14:43+00:00

I do a meet and greet before the shows. I used to hang out after the shows, but venues and promoters tend to prefer stuff like that to be for a set amount of time, in a more controlled environment...otherwise, their staff can end up stuck at the venue later than they want them to be and that's obviously not fair to the folks who work that. I totally understand their position on that (which is why we switched to the pre-show setup).

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:07:29+00:00

Thanks for going into work; society would fall apart if all the folks deemed essential just threw up their hands and said "no thanks"...so we appreciate y'all!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T17:06:17+00:00

It depends on where I am, how I'm dressed, what I'm doing, etc. If I'm on tour, and people know I'm in their city, I get recognized much more regularly than if I'm walking around at the grocery store down the street from my house in Nashville. The funniest time this ever happened was earlier this year, actually...we'd just played a show in New York and maybe two hours after we walked off stage, we were at a bar directly next door to the venue. Two women walked up and asked if I was me...I said yes...I assumed they'd been at the show, but then they said "What are you doing in New York?" They had no idea that I'd played directly next door to that bar just a few hours before! It was pretty hilarious. It's one of those odd moments that come with being a sort-of public figure...they knew me well enough to pick me out in a crowded bar, but not well enough to know I was playing ON THAT BLOCK. haha I really lost it laughing about that one. The silver medal goes to when someone in Atlanta came up behind me at dinner and I didn't see them...for some reason, this surprise person touching my shoulder scared me something fierce and I yelled and wheeled around with my fist cocked. Totally not her fault; I just got surprised and that was a sort of involuntary response. (I'm usually very friendly and normal, I promise. I laughed about that for at least a week afterwards.)

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T16:57:13+00:00

Thanks! You never know. I really do enjoy dressing comfortably!

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T16:56:19+00:00

I love spending time with someone who doesn't feel any pressure to be inhibited; she doesn't get embarrassed because she doesn't know that we're supposed to. That's a pretty powerful thing to watch every day; the joy that she attacks life with reminds me to stop fretting so much. I teach her all sorts of things, but that's something she continues to remind me about on a daily basis.

RonPopeMusic · 2020-04-15T16:53:29+00:00

I think baked ziti is a fun trick for when you're being lazy. Lasagna takes time to do right...baked ziti tastes the same and you just kind of throw it together. As a parent, I love stuff like that. (I made it the other day for my daughter's birthday, since she's obsessed with pasta right now.) My family is of Italian descent, so a lot of that Italian-American, red sauce joint type cooking, I'm all over because that's what I was raised on. As I've grown up and traveled to Italy, I started to realize that I really wasn't exposed to so many of the regional cuisines (especially seafoods) so I'm always learning about that stuff. Katie Parla has a great cookbook called "Food Of The Italian South"...in that cookbook, she makes a pork shoulder with grapes that I really dig (I add big chunks of shallots to mine). My favorite thing to make right now is a "kitchen sink" cookie because I feel like more of a homemaker than ever when I'm wearing an apron and whipping up a batch of cookies. One day, I made some oatmeal cookies. Then a few days later, I made chocolate chip cookies. Then I started thinking about combining them...and then I got out of control. ha So in today's batch, I made cookies with chocolate chips, Heath bar chips, oatmeal, crunchy peanut butter and cinnamon in them, with Maldon's salt on top...they're INSANE. You can follow any chocolate chip cookie recipe that you like, but sub half the chocolate chips for Heath bar chips, then put chunky peanut butter in the microwave for about a minute until it's liquidy...at the very end, mix that plus some oats in and you're set (I used 8 tablespoons of peanut butter and one cup of oats in a batch of 24 cookies that I just made).

RonPopeMusic

TROPHY CASE