Ciaran Byrne has travelled a great distance from the Northern Ireland of his childhood to New York City, where he lives today, but that doesn’t mean the builder-turned-actor has forgotten his homeland, or dismissed the tanks and guns and bloodshed as a dreamlike series of unfortunate events, or chalked it all up to being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Troubles were at a fever pitch on January 30, 1972, when British paratroopers opened fire on peaceful protesters marching against a British internment policy. Thirteen innocent civilians died outright. A fourteenth would succumb to his injuries four months later. Byrne, born eleven months after what came to be known as the Bogside Massacre – or, more infamously, Bloody Sunday – spent his formative years being shaped by its aftermath.
“I was born into that,” Byrne says. “We lived in a terraced house in Newry, a border town between the North and the South. I remember men in camouflage fatigues walking the streets with rifles and guns. There were jeeps and tank-type vehicles everywhere. We were surrounded by British soldiers on our way to school and back again. It wasn’t normal. Even as children, we knew it wasn’t normal. But children are resilient. Children are masters at adapting to their circumstances.”
Bloody Sunday. About 15,000 people gathered in the Creggan area of Derry on the morning of 30 January 1972 to take part in a civil rights march.
If it’s true that actors piece together characters from what they’ve experienced in real life, then it’s hardly a stretch to see some of Byrne’s childhood in his riveting star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, the private investigator hired to track down a mysterious stalker in the 2020 thriller, DieRy. Angus’s straight-line intensity is felt in every scene, Byrne walking the fine line between restrained and untamed, the edginess of his performance something to behold. It’s more than a little disorienting to those who know him best, because Ciaran Byrne is, above all else, a warm and friendly soul.
“To be honest, I was quite intimidated by the role when I read it,” Byrne says. “I’d be lying if I said that I thought Angus was in my skillset. I’ve made a career out of nice guy characters, the loveable loafer types, the sort that deliver comedic relief. DieRy marked a diversion into another land entirely.”
Produced by Mailer Tuchman Media, DieRy stars Claudia Maree Mailer as Marie Clark, who is using her influencer status to pay for her Master’s Degree in Comparative Religion, while moving on from an abusive past. Marie’s life finally appears to be on the right track, but everything changes when an obsessive fan steals her diary. The unknown antagonist sends Marie a series of twisted love letters, promising to kill anyone who is a danger to her. Mailer sizzles and Byrne smoulders, a powerful one-two punch that director Jennifer Gelfer maximizes to great effect, the film hooking you from the opening scene and loosening its grip only after the final credits roll. To see Byrne, as easygoing as they come, transform into Angus, begs the question: How did he get there?
DieRy promotional poster Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
“It started to come together when I shaved my head,” he says quickly. “Angus isn’t the nicest guy in the world. I thought, ‘How am I going to do this?’ I was having a big crisis of confidence, and then I got out of the shower one night and I looked in the mirror, and that’s when I saw him. I immediately shaved my head. I had a big, bushy beard, and I shaved it to this [mustache and goatee]. It made sense to me in that moment. Actors often work from the inside out, which is more method-type stuff, but, in this case, I worked from the outside in. Once I saw my face and my head in the mirror, that started to inform the rest of the character.
“I was 45 years old when I made DieRy,” Byrne continues, “so there were scars that I didn’t have to play. I let all of that feed into Angus. When I put on his clothes and I slipped on that leather jacket, I became him. The validation came when my family watched DieRy in Northern Ireland. They’ve seen me in everything I’ve done, but they didn’t see me in Angus. I felt really good about that. I knew I’d done something right.”
The Troubles may have played a part in shaping Angus, but Byrne’s love affair with Newry burns bright. His parents still live in that same terraced house from his youth. There are plenty of fond memories from his time spent at St. Colman’s Abbey Primary School, and then, later, St. Joseph’s Boys Secondary School. He was obsessed with sports, dreamed of becoming a professional footballer, and is still a soccer fan today.
Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
“I had a happy childhood. We weren’t rich, at least not in terms of material things, but we had happiness. My parents worked hard their whole lives. My dad was a bread delivery man. He had a little truck filled with loaves of bread, and he would deliver all around the country. He would go into places where Catholics weren’t supposed to go, whatever it took to do the job. Later, he became a bus driver for young children with special physical and emotional needs. He would drive them to school, and there were times when I got to see firsthand how much they all loved him.
“My mom worked in a sewing factory. She also worked as the hostess at my uncle’s restaurant, The Boulevard, where everyone in town would pop in to see her. So, she also set a good example. She was faced with great adversity in her life the day that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, but she leaned into love during that time, and ultimately beat it. She is a very compassionate person, and deeply loved. I learned how to love from my mom.”
Byrne pauses. In many ways, he’s still that boy from the streets of Northern Ireland in the 1980’s.
“We were an occupied country,” he says at last. “There were shootings and bombings daily. There were over 3,500 people killed over a 25-year period. As an adolescent you struggle to comprehend it at times, but my mom had a way of keeping things in perspective. The Royal Ulster Constabulary were the Northern Irish police force – or, as we would call them, the anti-Catholic police force. People despised them, and the British Army, who patrolled our streets. My mom would say that all of those young boys in uniform were some mother’s son. ‘Have compassion,’ she would say. ‘They were recruited and promised to see the world, and the next thing you know, they’re stuck in a bog in Crossmaglen.’”
Ciaran Byrne is just getting started.
DieRy, in many ways, represents both the endpoint in his circuitous journey to becoming an actor, and the launching pad for things to come. He’s clearly found a home at Mailer Tuchman Media, where John Buffalo Mailer – the son of the legendary Norman Mailer – serves as the creative compass, leveraging MTM’s roster of artists, directors, screenwriters and producers to deliver thought-provoking content. It’s a formula that has quickly set Mailer Tuchman Media apart from other independent movie/television studios.
“Everyone at Mailer Tuchman Media is great to work with,” Byrne says. “They’re a family of artists that want to make movies with up-and-coming actors. They don’t want to raise huge chunks of money for big stars, and then not have any money left to tell the story. They work with up-and-comers, and they take wonderful care of us. Claudia and I have several movies in the works with Mailer Tuchman Media. I’m very grateful for them.”
Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
MTM has released a series of impressive films, including Blind, starring Alec Baldwin, Demi Moore, and Dylan McDermott. Keeping things in the family, the film was written by John Buffalo Mailer and directed by his brother, Michael Mailer.
“They’re really good people,” Byrne continues. “Martin Tuchman is the Executive Producer. He’s also a big fan and patron of the arts. Jennifer Gelfer – it really doesn’t get any better than Jennifer Gelfer. She’s the Executive Director at Mailer Tuchman Media, a brilliant director, and a trailblazing woman. John Buffalo is the kindest soul and an exemplary artist. It really makes it easy to be a part of the team.”
DieRy is a reflection of that teamwork. From Buffalo’s crisp screenwriting to Gelfer’s deft touch behind the camera, every aspect of this film is on point. Together, Claudia and Ciaran deliver breakout performances, feeding off of each other to ratchet up the tension. For Byrne, the moment was a lifetime in the making.
“Angus was the biggest role in my career, so it didn’t land lightly on my shoulders,” Byrne says. “My wife is a great acting coach. She teaches voice at Juilliard Drama, and has coached actors from all over the world. I remember her saying quite early in my career that there will come a day when I realize that I’m enough for the roles that I play. That happened with Angus. I really felt there was no other Angus – I had not seen an Angus on TV, in a movie, or in the theater. At that point of discovery, other people’s interpretations of a private investigator were completely irrelevant to me. I knew that I was enough.”
Ciaran Patrick Byrne may have been born to act, but his isn’t the story of a childhood prodigy who started life in front of the camera. Byrne came to his craft almost accidentally, and only years after working with his hands as a builder in Northern Ireland. As hard as it is to imagine – especially for a man who grew up during the Troubles – it was an act of terrorism on foreign soil that led him to the stage.
“I was plastering a house in Belfast on the day the planes crashed in the World Trade Center towers,” Byrne says. “I remember the foreman calling me in from the job site to see it on the television. All of my friends who lived in New York started to leave and come back home to Northern Ireland after 9/11, because no one felt safe anymore. Well, I’ve always been the kind of person who’s done the opposite of most everybody else. I’d tried many times to get my green card but had been unsuccessful. The rejection was always the same – I didn’t have a specific skill that was needed in the States. That didn’t stop me this time around. I moved to the U.S. in June, 2002.”
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
Byrne had a hometown friend on Nantucket who offered to put him up for a couple of weeks. Having a roof over his head provided a safety net, but he struggled to land a job.
“I made some friends who gave me money as money was running out. I spent my days going to the lumber yards on Nantucket to see if anybody coming in for supplies needed someone to give them a day’s labor. I would also go to construction sites, asking the foremen if they needed extra labor to do physical work of any kind. Nobody was biting. It was all dead ends.”
Nearly broke, Byrne’s persistence paid off.
“I eventually got a job as a plasterer,” Byrne says. “There was a foreman who wouldn’t answer my phone calls, so I decided to show up on the job site and introduce myself in person. We talked for 10 minutes and he hired me on the spot. I started the next day. I’m very thankful for that gentlemen. I worked for him the entire time that I lived on Nantucket. The work sustained me.”
Byrne made friends and established a name for himself in the community. He quickly grew to love his new island home, but the specter of deportation was always there, lurking in the back of his mind.
“I entered the country the right way,” he says. “I was documented. I just didn’t have a green card. I’d been in the States for six years, but I was actually only allowed to stay for 90 days. That was considered an unlawful stay, so there was always the chance that Homeland Security was going to swoop in and send me back to Northern Ireland. The hardest part was that I couldn’t travel back home to see my family. I missed spending six Christmases with them, along with the final years and funerals of all three of my remaining grandparents. That was hard. I loved my grandparents to pieces, and that was a hard one.”
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
Homesick and looking for something to fill his free time, Ciaran Byrne came across a poster for acting classes, which were being held at the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket. Intrigued, he jotted down the number and gave them a call.
“I hesitated, and almost didn’t call,” Byrne says. “The poster stated that the workshop was for experienced actors with resumés only. This wonderful woman by the name of Meredith Martin answered the phone. She wanted to know if I had any experience. I said that I loved movies, and that I was a really enthusiastic guy [laughs]. To this day I don’t know what possessed her to take a chance on me, but she told me to come on down to the workshop. It changed my life.”
The Theatre Workshop of Nantucket was located in the basement of the Methodist Church. Byrne showed up that first day and was immediately hooked, fascinated by Martin’s class on the Uta Hagen technique. He eventually started acting, taking small parts in plays before working his way up to meatier roles, eventually being cast as Bob Cratchit in A Christmas Carol.
“Growing up in Ireland, nobody shares their feelings. Nobody says, ‘I love you.’ Suddenly, I’m in a 30-person cast. Everybody is sharing their feelings. Everybody’s loving everybody. I’m still just this builder guy from Newry. When the production was over, I went to stay with a friend of mine in New York City. She was an usher in a Broadway theatre. She was asking me what I thought of acting in the play. I said, ‘I don’t think acting’s for me. There’s too much love. There’s too much sharing.’ She gave me a ticket to see a play at the Manhattan Theatre Club, and asked me to tell her what I thought about it when I came out.
“I’ll never forget it. The play was called Doubt: A Parable, and it changed my life on a dime. Philip Seymour Hoffman did the movie a few years later. John Patrick Shanley was the playwright, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for it. An Irish actor named Brían F. O’Byrne played Father Flynn. When it was over, I remember ejecting out of my seat, covered in tears, and applauding like a maniac. On that day – December 23, 2005, I knew that I wanted to be an actor, and I knew that I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.”
Once a month, Ciaran Byrne would finish his workweek and travel by boat from Nantucket to Hyannis on the Cape Cod peninsula, a two-hour crossing, where he’d take an eight-hour bus ride to Manhattan. He’d crash at a friend’s place, and then beat a path to HB Studios for the acting classes early on Saturday morning. This went on for a year, and then it became a twice-a-month journey, a serious commitment from a man working long hours making things with his hands. Little did he know that these trips would not only open doors for him as an actor, but that they would also lead him to his soulmate.
“I’d convinced the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket to put on a production of Doubt, and I was playing Father Flynn,” Byrne says. “I was in a video shop one day, looking for videos with characters who spoke with a Bronx dialect. The shop manager behind the counter recognized me. Her name was Wendy, and she explained that her sister was the Head of Voice and Dialects at Juilliard. Even more ironically, she said her sister was also coaching the dialect for the cast of Doubt on Broadway. She thought Kate would be happy to help me, so I gave her my number. The next day, Kate called.”
Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
Byrne nailed his performance. He was so grateful for the help that he offered to take Kate and her four-year-old daughter, Ella, to lunch on his next trip to Manhattan. There were no romantic notions. He simply wanted to thank her for helping him nail his performance as Father Flynn.
“It was Saturday, April 5th, 2008,” he says without missing a beat. “We were meeting at a restaurant in New York City called Vinyl. I’d gotten out of my taxi, it was two in the afternoon, and I kid you not, I knew that I was going to marry her as soon as I clapped eyes on her.”
The lunch date ran eight hours and included a trip to Central Park. Sparks flew. Their courtship continued over the phone and through the computer, and Byrne proposed two months later. They were married two months after that, on his mother’s birthday.
“Catherine Zeta-Jones helped me propose. Kate was working at Silvercup Studios, where Catherine Zeta-Jones was doing a movie called The Rebound. Kate was her dialect coach. I’d never been to a movie set in my life. I was a community theatre actor who worked in construction to pay the bills. I showed up in my builder clothes and explained that I wanted to propose to Kate Wilson. They looked at me like I was from outer space. Nobody does that. Nobody stops production on a feature film.
“Well, calls were made, and this woman takes me to Catherine Zeta-Jones’ dressing room. Catherine stops production for half a day. Director Bart Freundlich wasn’t one bit happy about it [laughs]. Catherine called Kate and told her that she needed her on the set right way. So, Kate came, and I’m standing there on the set when she arrived. They’d set the whole thing up with lighting and beautiful scenery, and I proposed right there. They even recorded it for us, too. It was incredibly generous, and like something out of a fairytale. It was a moment that neither of us will ever forget.”
Ciaran and Kate were married in August, 2008. By then he’d moved to Manhattan. There was Ella to support, a future to build, and a child on the way. Kate needed to take maternity leave, and Byrne needed a job. He tried Craigslist. He hit the lumberyards. He walked the streets of Manhattan, canvassing the West Side Highway for construction jobs. He was offered $11 an hour if he could do electrical, plumbing, and carpentry. It was a cold shot of reality for a lifelong master plasterer who knew how to do one thing really well.
“Times were tough,” Byrne says. “The financial crisis hit, and nobody was hiring. I eventually found a drywalling company where this young American guy was willing to pay me $25 bucks an hour. I had to learn to drywall. It worked out well in the beginning. Unfortunately, he’d made some bad business decisions and didn’t pay me all I was owed. I ended up about $6,000 short. Still, there were no hard feelings. That job sustained us until my wife could go back to work.”
Byrne started bartending in the Greek restaurant Kefi on the Upper West Side, a trade learned on the job in order to help provide for his family.
“I worked my way up from never having pulled a pint to becoming the head bartender. This was one of the busiest restaurants in the Upper West Side, so I was learning a brand-new trade in an extremely high-pressure environment.”
Ciaran Byrne as Angus McGlaughlin Photo Courtesy Mailer Tuchman Media
He worked there three years and made countless friends. The owner even threw a citizenship party for him. He also continued to act, landing a juicy part in The Freedom of the City at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Before long he’d developed a reputation as a respected journeyman actor who was not only nice to work with, but who could also be counted on.
“I was known as an actor who worked hard and who was dependable. Everyone knew me as a team player. I was very proud of that. When someone hired me, I used to joke that they weren’t getting Marlon Brando, but they weren’t getting the headaches, either.”
Byrne’s agents at New York City’s highly regarded Harden Curtis Kirsten Riley Agency then scored him an audition in an upcoming Ed Burns / Steven Spielberg series called Public Morals. He read for the part of a mid-50s, off-the-boat sergeant-type guy, catching the eye of casting directors Maribeth Fox and Laura Rosenthal. Even though he didn’t get the role, he stood out.
“It was 2012. I went off to Pittsburgh to do a play called Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, which was being put on by the Pittsburgh Irish and Classical Theatre. I’d heard through the grapevine that Public Morals was scheduled to film in New York City in the fall, so I reached out to Maribeth and Laura. They asked me to read for another role, and then sent the script to me in Pittsburgh. I found a professional videographer and taped my audition, and sent it back. Ed Burns loved it. They wanted me to come to New York to meet the producers, but I was doing the play in Pittsburgh six days a week. I thought I’d lost the job, and then my agent called. I’ll never forget that moment. Mary Harden said, ‘It’s official. Edward Burns has approved you. Steven Spielberg has watched your tape and personally approved you. And, TNT’s management have approved you.’ I hung up the phone, and you could have knocked me down with a pillow.”
Ciaran Byrne is on a roll.
Fresh off his star turn as Angus McGlaughlin, Byrne’s set to play District Attorney Ian Kerns in the upcoming Mailer Tuchman Media thriller The Madness Inside Me, currently in post-production. He’s also slated to play Jebediah in MTM’s The Best Friend, a film that’s in the early stages of development. The coronavirus pandemic has impacted timelines, but hasn’t dampened Byrne’s spirit.
“I’m very blessed to work with the fine folks at Mailer Tuchman. Funnily enough, Jen [Jennifer Gelfer] was my acting teacher from 2010 to 2013. I’d met her at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in New York. Then she formed her own company, Haymarket Annex, so I’ve always been a big fan of Jennifer’s. Every Monday night for three years, an eclectic group of people – some of whom are in DieRy, such as Nick Mathews, Chase Coleman, Samantha Strelitz, and Danielle Guldin – would come together and act in Jennifer’s class. In fact, that’s how she came to offer me the role of the bartender in the Mailer Tuchman film, The Second Sun. I attribute a large part of my success to her continued guidance and support.”
Actors Danielle Guldin and Ciaran Byrne at the premiere of The Second Sun Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
Byrne pauses.
“It hasn’t been an easy road, coming to acting so late in the game, but I think that my work ethic has served me well. Back in 2010, Jennifer asked me why she should take me on as a student, I told her that no one would work harder or come more prepared. Then, years later, Jen offers me the role of Joe in The Second Sun. I think that speaks to my work ethic, to my commitment, and to the reputation that I’ve developed along the way. I’m thankful to be an actor that people want to work with. I’m very proud of that.”
Above all else, Ciaran Byrne is a family man.
The massacre on the streets of Derry on January 30, 1972, still haunts many in Northern Ireland, and is never far from the collective consciousness of those who lived through the country’s darkest days. Byrne often thinks about his homeland, but not like you might expect; rather, his mind goes to the good times that he shared with his parents, his brother, his friends. He grew up in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, heard the stories of soldiers pursuing civilians into Glenfada Park, and still visibly hurts at the thought of the unarmed being shot in the back. Through violence, Byrne learned compassion. From hate bloomed love. Byrne has his parents and younger brother to thank for setting a good example, for showing him that he could rise above the most trying of times. They taught him to keep a level head, and to value the things that are truly important.
Kate, Mabel, Ciaran, and Ella Photo Courtesy Ciaran Byrne
“I love acting, but I have to tell you, my wife and my daughters will always come first,” Byrne says. “Since I was something of a late bloomer, I think I avoided a lot of stuff that can consume young actors. I was able to keep things in perspective. I appreciate the roles that I get and the work that I do, but the most important thing to me is my wife, Kate, my beautiful daughters, Ella and Mabel, and my family back home. All of the other stuff can come and go. Family, my friend, is everything.”
https://i0.wp.com/www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/the_ciaran_byrne_interview.png?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2021-02-24 21:16:162021-03-15 21:48:47Ciaran Byrne – Class Act
Fresh off the success of its 2020 psychological thriller DieRy, starring the resplendent Claudia Maree Mailer as social media influencer Marie Clark, MTM continues tapping into the post-Millennial zeitgeist with a series of projects that are at once timely and timeless. Case in point: In A Pickle, written by Martinko – aka Martin Tuchman – with illustrations by Maggie Mailer, brings to life the classic tale of schoolyard bullying, which is especially relevant today, given the invasive, cloud-connected world in which Gen Z live. Based on the author’s life, In A Pickleis beautifully told, its narrative complimented by the richness of Mailer’s watercolor illustrations. We immediately identify with the precocious little boy who finds himself in a worrisome schoolyard predicament – who among us hasn’t found ourselves in a pickle of our own at that age – and we celebrate when brains and creativity trump insults and intimidation. The book, available for pre-order at Hat & Beard Press, is a reflection of the creative genius behind Mailer Tuchman Media: Artists with a deep appreciation for the classic storytelling of yesteryear, yet who are equally fearless in their pursuit of the cutting edge.
“This book is good example of that,” Maggie Mailer says, in an exclusive interview with FifteenMinutesWith. “There’s a certain nostalgia to Marty’s story, but it’s really very modern when you consider the world in which we live today.”
In A Pickle also illustrates the collaborative, forward-thinking culture that permeates MTM. The book is at the center of its own universe, orbited by various entry points into this compelling intellectual property. John Buffalo Mailer, the Creative Director at Mailer Tuchman Media, has laid out a clear vision for this IP and its audience. While In A Pickle will be released on February 16, 2021, an animated short has already blazed the trail, winning two Independent Short Awards. Voiced by legendary actor Peter Coyote, and directed by MTM’s talented Jennifer Gelfer (TheSecond Sun, DieRy), In A Pickle casts a wide net when it comes to charming readers. For her part, Maggie Mailer was thrilled to be part of the team.
“It was an interesting journey,” she says. “John Buffalo handed me the text and said, ‘I’m thinking this might make a great children’s story. We’d love to know what you think.’ So, I did a couple of sketches. I had done one other children’s book, which was in black and white, so this was really brand new for me. And they came back and said, ‘We love it. Let’s do it.’ And then they really left it open to me. I think Marty just wanted to see what I would do with it, which was kind of incredible, and so much fun. So, it really was an adventure right from the start. Their approach was: ‘Here you go. Come up with something. We’re gonna leave it to you for the most part.’ I thought that was amazing of Marty to do that with a story from his childhood. I was really honored.”
John Buffalo Mailer Creative Director – Mailer Tuchman Media
The universal theme of bullying was also something that Mailer could appreciate.
“I imagine that everyone can relate to bullying on some level,” she says. “I didn’t even realize the degree to which I related to it until I was well into working on the book. That was when I actually started to remember the time when I was in school and I had to deal with bullying. It was quite powerful to relive that. It was also one of the things that pulled me into working on the book. I just thought it was such a compelling situation and such an unusual story, so much so that the storyline felt almost in the realm of mythology – part fairytale, part myth, as if it were imbued with a kind of mystical solution.”
The world in which we live today is much more complicated than the one which Martin Tuchman experienced, yet his story is easily relatable to children today. While bullying still takes place on the playgrounds, the new battlefield is the smartphone, where social media shaming causes anger and anxiety in equal doses. The ability to fight back in more sophisticated, intelligent ways has never been more important, making Tuchman’s story more relevant than ever.
“In this day and age, social media really places a premium on using your wits,” Mailer says. “I think that children today can read this book and immediately draw that parallel. They can relate.”
In A Pickle By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer
When the bully repeatedly takes the little boy’s lunch, it’s garden snakes that cleverly end the intimidation once and for all.
“Aside from the bully, the thing that grabbed me was his solution – that, and the image of the snakes,” Mailer says. “I just thought, ‘This is going to be a children’s book, can we pull this off?’ On the one hand, the story was so charming. On the other hand, it was really startling. Being an English major, I read and analyzed the text as an English major. I thought about the symbolism of the snake as the hero in nature. Looking at it through that lens, I felt like the book had this underlying message of responding to a human interaction that’s negative, and doing so with a really novel approach – by inserting nature into the situation to make everything okay.”
Martin Tuchman, aka Martinko Executive Producer – Mailer Tuchman Media
With a slithering solution at the heart of Martinko’s story, the key was balancing this imagery with illustrations that projected softness and warmth. Mailer, an artist who has been featured in Art New England, and with cover stories in The Boston Globe and The Los Angeles Times, proved to be a revelation.
“I was interested in how to take this story, which is startling, and soften it so that it’s palatable and can work as a children’s book,” she says. “Then, giving it enough of an edge so that the adults reading it will relate to it and find some deeper meaning in it as well.”
Maggie Mailer, the daughter of famed Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Norman Mailer, drew inspiration from a number of places.
“I’m really interested in the work of contemporary artists like Marcel Dzama, who is one of my favorite painters. Arthur Conan Doyle’s father was an illustrator, diarist, and watercolorist. I had a lot of his drawings that I lived with and looked at as a child, so I think that his style also wound up in the book. As a result, the illustrations have a Victorian, old school, vintage quality to them. I think it works.”
Indeed.
Mailer’s illustrations work in concert with Tuchman’s narrative, the sum greater than its parts. Together they lift the story above others in its genre, delivering a classic children’s book for children of all ages.
In A Pickle By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer
“Gauguin is a big one for me to go against color,” Mailer says, when asked to name some of her biggest influences for this book. “I did a show in like 2016 that was based on combining the palates of Gauguin and the Japanese artist Hiroshige, who’s one of my favorites, and who is known for his woodblock prints. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot is another big influence. Those are my core painters that I go to for inspiration.
“There’s something about the boldness of Gauguin’s color – there’s a wildness of it – and then you have Hiroshige’s softness and transitions. There’s a lot of that in the book with the backgrounds that are very soft and moving from one color to another. It doesn’t show up so much in the book, but I spent a lot of years making landscape paintings based off of Corot. I think that there are moments in the book where that feeling for me, when I look at it, comes through.”
With 47 pages of illustrations, what was Mailer’s approach to the creative process?
“Non-linear,” she says quickly. “I started and just went to town. That’s how I paint. I don’t have a beginning and a middle and an end, I just dive in. With this book, I didn’t start out at the beginning and go from there, I think I started on page 13. I was really happy that the production team was able to fly with that way of working, because I don’t think it’s a standard way of illustrating a book. There was really a lot intuition throughout the process.”
In A Pickle By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer
The year 2020 will forever be connected to the coronavirus pandemic, which changed, well…everything. For this project, that meant Mailer and Tuchman would need to find another way to collaborate.
“Our collaboration was virtual. My family and I moved into another house in a neighboring town around the same time the book became a reality, which was the fall of 2019, and then COVID happened. Marty and I worked together remotely through Zoom, which is also how we would check in with Jennifer Gelfer, who is Marty’s creative partner at Mailer Tuchman Media. In fact, most of my work was done with Jennifer. She would give me cues, or she would give me feedback about what was working, or provide me with some of the of literal facts about Marty’s life, like how his father looked and that sort of thing. They would also supply me with photographs of Marty as a child. Then, they would step back and allow me to work. For me, it was fun surprising them.”
With Gelfer’s keen eye serving as the compass, both the book and the animated short began to take shape.
Jennifer Gelfer Executive Director – Mailer Tuchman Media
“What was great working with Jennifer, was that she kept pushing the color. She encouraged me to make it as colorful as possible, which was something that I was really happy to do. It was such a joy, and really fun. Not only had I never made a fully illustrated children’s book before, but I’d also never worked on an animation project – and we did them at the same time.”
The animated short, winner of two Independent Shorts Awards (Best Animation Short and Best Children’s Short), added an extra layer of complexity to project.
“As I was working on a given illustration, I knew that it would be going to the animator, and it would also be going to the graphic designer. The animator needed everything in layers. So, because of that, it actually changed the way that I made the illustrations. I feel like the animated short became a hidden character in the book. There’s sort of a living quality to the way the book was made. I was getting to see it in motion – I would see the dailies as they were being made – and then I would go back to the still image. That was one of the most exciting and fun parts of working on it. It was super exciting to see my see my still images come to life like that. I had to do was put the illustrations into layers and then hand them over to the animator. But I did have to think a certain way. I had to change the way I thought about making the images.”
The presence of an accomplished actor like Peter Coyote brought an added dimension to the project. Known for his work in various films such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Patch Adams, and Erin Brockovich, Coyote certainly left an impression.
Peter Coyote
“I’m just so thrilled. Peter Coyote is one of my favorite actors and such a great person. I don’t know him personally, but I know about him. He’s done everything in his career – he’s an actor, author, screenwriter, director…he’s even a Zen Buddhist priest. To me, he’s just such a rock star. To have him as the narrator of this short film is so very exciting.”
With the release of In A Pickle on the horizon, it’s only fitting that Mailer Tuchman Media is partnering with Horizons National, an organization whose mission is to transform the way underserved students see themselves and their future. In A Pickle takes place in New York City, and with Horizons National expanding its programs there, MTM is donating a portion of the proceeds towards Horizon National’s goal: To grow capacity to provide at least 1,000 New York City public school students the Horizons experience.
“I was so glad when I realized that the book was going to be working with Horizons National in a way that would connect to underserved children,” Mailer says. “I started a project in in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, many years ago, where we set up artists working in storefront studios. The concept was to bring artists to an underserved community that doesn’t really have access to art. So, the fact that we’re working with Horizons National is really special. It’s something that’s near and dear to my heart.”
In A Pickle By Martinko | Illustrations by Maggie Mailer
The creative team at Mailer Tuchman Media has much to celebrate: The success of DieRy, with breakout performances by Claudia Maree Mailer and Ciaran Byrne; the release of Martinko’s timeless tale, beautifully imagined by Maggie Mailer; Jennifer Gelfer’s deft touch in producing the award-winning animated short; and a host of upcoming projects, including Mailer, a dramatic narrative series that brings to life the second half of the 20th Century as seen through the lens of the incomparable Norman Mailer.
“It’s an exciting time for Mailer Tuchman Media,” Maggie Mailer says, as the interview wraps. “I’m elated to be a part of such an interesting project as In A Pickle. To see it come alive is a success in itself.”
Mailer Tuchman Media
https://i0.wp.com/www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/the_maggie_mailer_interview.png?fit=600%2C400&ssl=1400600Michael McClellanhttps://www.fifteenminuteswith.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/FifteenMinutesWith_NewLogoPrototype.pngMichael McClellan2021-02-10 21:42:032021-02-25 18:00:17Maggie Mailer – In A Pickle
West Virginia’s sweetheart may have moved to Nashville way back in 1978, but her love of the Mountain State runs deep, her connection to it unbreakable, the memories of it fueling some of her most personal work. Her life leading up to that point was dotted with prescient moments suggesting a wildly successful career ahead, even if stardom seemed like a long shot at the time. Kathy Mattea knew that going in. Musicians crash and burn in Nashville every day. Some cling to their dreams by fronting mediocre honky-tonk bands, holding down day jobs while churning through weepy sets of country-music standards on the weekends. Others become studio musicians, a lucky few earning a living doing what they love, some occasionally going on tour, their careers spent in the shadow of stardom. Rarer still are the ones who break through to become stars themselves. Those that do are as scarce as hen’s teeth. Kathy Mattea knew all of that the day she pulled out of her parent’s driveway in Cross Lanes.
“My mom didn’t want me to go,” Mattea says. “She didn’t see a future in it. She wanted me to stay in school and get my degree.”
Mattea left home with her gut and her guitar and the knowledge that she might never sign with a major label, that she might never hear herself on the radio, that she might never score a hit song. That was the chance she was willing to take. She was never in it for the money, never driven by the fame. She simply had to know. Fast-forward: The back-to-back CMA Female Vocalist of the Year honors, the two Grammys, and four No. 1 hit singles are the byproduct of heeding the call, of treating her guitar like a divining rod and following the vibrations all the way to Music City, U.S.A. Accolades aren’t why she rolled the dice. Stardom and validation are two different things. Kathy Mattea was birthed into this world to perform, and while she instinctively knew her talent was real, she needed Nashville to prove herself right.
Kathy Mattea
“Nashville was my dream. It got to the point where it was now or never. If I didn’t go, then I’d spend the rest of my life wondering, ‘What if?’ I didn’t want to have that rolling around in the back of my mind.”
The West Virginia University dropout didn’t arrive with the luxury of built-in connections to country music’s elite – she hadn’t been discovered at a trade show when she was 11, the way that Barbara Mandrell had been discovered by Chet Adkins, nor was she related to a Nashville superstar, as was the case with Crystal Gale, whose sister was the legendary Loretta Lynn. Mattea simply showed up and took a job as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame.
“Like everybody else, I had to pay the bills,” she says. “It was all part of the journey.”
Mattea had always been allergic to bullshit, which meant that she’d never bullshit herself. She was ambitious, yes, but she also had common sense. There were no guarantees. She gave herself a year to make something happen. If she failed, then she would beat a path back to Morgantown.
“School was the fallback plan. I was going to pour everything into country music first, because I couldn’t imagine a career doing anything else.”
The West Virginia that Kathy Mattea grew up in was blue collar, pro-union, and heavily reliant on coal. There was an underdog mentality that permeated the state, one that went back generations. It’s a mentality that still exists today. I know because, like Kathy Mattea, I am a West Virginian. Since the 35th state was formed, we’ve largely let outsiders, folks who don’t know Charleston from Charles Town, define us. Their rube jokes and unrelenting focus on the state’s most impoverished and uneducated has somehow trumped its knee-buckling beauty, neighborly people, and singular history.
Kathy Mattea grew up the antithesis of West Virginia’s hillbilly stereotype – middle class, cultured, whip-smart – and yet she’s endured the slights her whole life. There’s a defensiveness that bounds West Virginians together, and Mattea is no exception to the rule. She’s proud of her state. That’s one reason she’s been a longtime supporter of Mountain Stage.
“It’s part of my DNA at this point,” Mattea says with the laugh. “It’s like a second home.”
Conceived by Larry Groce in 1983, Mountain Stage is a two-hour radio show produced by West Virginia Public Broadcasting and distributed worldwide by National Public Radio. In 1989, when R.E.M. was one of the biggest bands on the planet, it only gave three performances to promote its Out of Time LP, and one of those was on Mountain Stage. (Saturday Night Live and MTV Unplugged being the other two.) That’s right. Michael Stipe, Peter Buck & Co. rolled into Charleston and performed on Mountain Stage when it was refusing to play anywhere else.
Kathy Mattea performs live on Mountain Stage.
“Mountain Stage is a great advertisement for our state,” Mattea says. “Larry is such an ambassador. I’ve been connected to the show for a long time, and I’m very proud of that relationship.”
Mattea and Mountain Stage go hand-in-hand like coal mining and West Virginia, topics that are never far from her mind. She knows full well the labor strife and economic struggles of her home state, including some of its most infamous moments.
“Who can grow up in the southern part of the state and not know about Matewan?” she asks rhetorically. “What happened there was so sensational that they eventually made a movie about it. The Matewan Chief of Police was a man named Sid Hatfield, whose family was one-half of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. It was a pretty big deal.”
The Matewan Massacre, on May 19, 1920, had all the elements of a high-noon showdown: On one side, the heroes, a pro-union sheriff and mayor; on the other, the dastardly henchmen of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency. Within 15 minutes, ten people were dead – seven detectives, two miners and the mayor. Three months later, the conflict in the West Virginia coal town had escalated to the point where martial law was declared and federal troops had to intervene.
The granddaughter of two West Virginia miners, Mattea grew up hearing her family’s own stories; of strikes, of picket lines, of miners being paid in scrip that could only be exchanged in the company stores owned by the employers. Years later, horrified by the 2006 explosion and collapse at the Sago mine that left 12 miners dead, she produced one of her most ambitious albums, the 2008 masterpiece, Coal.
“That album really changed my life in a lot of ways,” Mattea says. “There was so much I didn’t know until I started asking questions. Trust me, I paid attention to the retelling of those family stories that I might not have listened to when I was younger.”
The reception for Coal was resounding, both critically and personally. It garnered Mattea a Grammy nomination for Best Traditional Folk Album.
“I had to get out of the way and let the songs tell the story. Once I did that, everything flowed.”
Kathy Mattea has always been smart.
From a young age, her mind operated on a different level than the other kids in her school. She comprehended words more quickly, and her mathematical problem solving was well ahead of others her age. In fact, she was double-promoted in an effort to keep her engaged. As she got older, Mattea found it harder to find things in common with the other kids. It wasn’t until she discovered music that she felt like she belonged.
“The music kids became my tribe,” Mattea says.
Her guitar became the great equalizer, the thing that stripped away all of the insecurities and bridged the gap between a young Kathy Mattea and everyone else. She also got into local theatre, another place that felt like home. Standing onstage, free from the pressure of having to hold a conversation about something she had no interest in, Mattea could let her guard down and simply be herself.
“It was liberating. I felt at home on a stage. I guess that’s one reason I was so driven to pursue music.”
Mattea enrolled at WVU as a physics, chemistry, and engineering major, but by then music was her world. She joined a bluegrass band, wrote some songs, recorded some demos, and dreamed of making it big in Nashville. When the co-writer in the band decided to make that leap, Mattea followed suit, dropping out of school against her parent’s wishes.
Kathy Mattea
“To them, I was giving up a sure thing,” Mattea says. “I was sacrificing my future to take a shot at something that, in their minds, wasn’t going to work out. There were more than a few conversations over that decision.”
Mattea made the move anyway. Got that job as a tour guide. Cut demos with her writing partner. Eventually, it was that partner, Mickey, who grew disenchanted with the whole Nashville scene and went back to school.
Mattea stuck it out.
“Mickey leaving meant that I was on my own in every way,” she says. “It forced me to commit on a whole other level.”
Mattea started having voice problems, so she quit giving tours and took a desk job with an insurance company. Eventually, a record producer named Bryon Hill discovered her, and Mercury Records signed her to a contract. On March 22, 1984, her self-titled debut album was released. Five years to the day after Mattea rolled into town with a mattress strapped to the top of her car, she released her first record.
“It was a huge deal,” Mattea says. Street Talk eventually reached No. 25 on the Hot Country Songs charts. “It was an unbelievable feeling to turn on the radio and hear my song being played.”
Her second album, From My Heart, was released in 1985. It produced the chart singles It’s Your Reputation Talkin’, He Won’t Give In, and Heart of the Country, which peaked at numbers 34, 22, and 46, respectively.
Kathy Mattea – Photo Courtesy James Minchin
“It was exciting and frustrating at the same time,” Mattea says. “I had a record deal, I was getting air play, but I didn’t have that hit song to get over the hump.”
That was about to change.
Mattea’s third album, 1986’s Walk the Way the Wind Blows, was a critical and commercial breakthrough. Four singles were released from the album, and all for reached the top 10 of the country music charts between 1986 and 1987: Love at the Five and Dime, Walk the Way the Wind Blows, You’re the Power, and Train of Memories. One of the songs – Walk the Way the Wind Blows – earned Mattea her first Grammy nomination, for Best Female Country Vocal Performance.
“The Grammy nomination was flattering, and a great, great honor,” she says. “More than anything, it helped to validate everything about my decision to pursue a music career in the first place. I felt like I belonged.”
On the heels of that Grammy nom came Mattea’s fourth album, Untasted Honey, and with it, her first No. 1 single, Goin’ Gone. The follow-up single, Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses, which is about a truck driver named Charlie who is retiring after thirty years to spend more time with his wife, also climbed to No. 1. Untold Stories and Life as We Knew It were also released from the album, with both reaching the No. 4 position on the country charts. Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses earned Mattea multiple awards, including the 1988 Academy of Country Music Awards’ Single of the Year and Song of the Year.
Kathy Mattea had not only gotten over the hump, she was suddenly a bona fide country music star.
“An overnight success years in the making,” she says with a laugh. “I was suddenly famous, and taking that big ride. You always imagine what that might be like, but then it happens and you’re trying to figure things out on the fly. It was a crazy time.”
Kathy Mattea
Something even more profound happened in Mattea’s life around this time: On February 14, 1988, she married songwriter Jon Vezner. The pair had met when Mattea was living upstairs at Wrensong, Vezner’s publisher at the time. He’d see her in the hallway on occasion. One morning Mattea’s car battery was dead, so Vezner played the role of good Samaritan and jumped her. The two have been together ever since.
In 1989, Mattea released her fifth album, Willow in the Wind. The first two singles, Come from the Heart and Burnin’ Old Memories, also topped the country charts, but it was Vezner’s incredibly personal, deeply poignant Where’ve You Been that earned Mattea her first Grammy Award, this for Best Female Country Performance. Where’ve You Been also took home the 1989 Academy of Country Music Awards’ Song of the Year honors. A red-hot Kathy Mattea also won the first of back-to-back CMA Female Vocalist of the Year awards. A year later, her compilation album, A Collection of Hits, was certified platinum. The brainy, ballsy girl from Cross Lanes had conquered the country music world.
“That period in my life was a whirlwind. Things happen so fast, and everything is so surreal. You know it’s not going to last forever. You try your best to enjoy the ride.”
Her 1991 album, Time Passes By, proved to be Mattea’s most-daring, least-commercial work, a collection of songs that celebrates her many musical influences, from bluegrass of West Virginia to folk music of Scotland, where she traveled to record with heralded Scottish singer/songwriter Dougie MacLean. Coming off the immense success of the previous two years, Mattea easily could have played it safe and stayed within Nashville’s accepted parameters. By cutting Time Passes By, she made a bold statement about refusing to stagnate, and proved she was willing to make the ultimate career gamble – that the same country establishment that embraced her might just as quickly discard her.
“I’m very proud of that album,” Mattea says, reflecting on the critical reception it received. “There was a real honesty about Dougie’s music that inspired me. I didn’t worry about making a commercial album, or trying to duplicate an album that I’d already made.”
Despite the lack of radio-ready songs, Time Passes By became her third gold album. Her next two albums, Lonesome Standard Time (1992), and Walking Away a Winner (1994) were also certified RIAA gold.
“It was a good run. Looking back now, I think I appreciate it more than when I was actually charting and winning awards. Time has a way of changing perspective.”
Kathy Mattea has battled through her share of adversity since that rocket ship ride to the pinnacle of her profession. In June, 1992, Mattea was required to undergo surgery on her vocal cords. She bounced back two years later with her first Christmas album, Good News, which won the Grammy Award for Best Southern, Country or Bluegrass Gospel Album. The joy was short-lived; Mattea frequently found herself at odds with her mother, who seemed inexplicably hellbent on making her life miserable. Little did realize the darkness slowly unfolding.
“My mom, at the height of my career, told me I’d changed, and basically did everything but disown me,” Mattea says. “It wasn’t a public thing. There was so much anger when I would come home to visit. It turns out that it was an early sign of Alzheimer’s. It cut me to my knees, but I just kept going. I was working harder than ever, and I wasn’t taking care of myself. My voice paid the price.”
Mattea’s majestic voice – a rich, husky alto/mezzo-soprano with great depth, range and shading – betrayed her. She continued to make records, but Nashville, much like her voice, had also started to change. As the ‘90s wound down, so did Mattea’s commercial clout.
“There was a time when I wondered what might have been, but I quickly let that go,” she says. “I’ve said that the circumstances of your life are just window dressing. It’s really what you do with them that matters. I think that’s how we really find ourselves.”
Kathy Mattea
Mattea’s albums continued to be critically acclaimed, including 2000’s The Innocent Years, made at a time she was facing the declining health of her father, a supervisor at Monsanto Company. His passing from cancer in 2003 was another blow.
“Life can be cruel,” she says. “I spent a lot of time thinking about what’s important to me, which in turn shaped that album.”
In 2008, Mattea released Coal, followed by 2012’s Calling Me Home, but by then her voice had started to change. Six years would pass before the release of 2018’s Pretty Bird. She was on the verge of 60, and at a crossroads. Still allergic to bullshit, Mattea kept things real with herself.
“I was out on the road playing, and I’d go up for a note that I know how to hit, but it wouldn’t come out. There were some ugly cry days in my living room, because I was so frustrated. I didn’t want to leave music – trust me, I wasn’t ready to leave – but I wasn’t going to do it halfway.”
With the support of her longtime guitarist, Bill Cooley, and the help of a vocal coach, Mattea was slowly able to climb out of the darkness. Tony Bennett even offered advice. On Pretty Bird, Mattea’s new range and maturity is on full display. She sings the Hazel Dickens title song a cappella, with a kind of deep richness only time can provide.
“My voice is different than it was before, but I’ve learned that that’s not necessarily a bad thing,” she says. “Being on the other side feels great.”
Turns out Kathy Mattea had it wrong all along.
Yes, she would still do it all over again, because she would still need to know. And no, she wouldn’t change a thing, not one iota, not with the way her career has played out. She’s an icon now, and a country music legend, all thanks to a whole lotta talent and a little bit of luck. She’s sold a boatload of records. She’s played countless shows. She has money in the bank and fans worldwide, both blessings in their own way, but those are simply the byproducts of her ambition. She was never in it for the fortune, never in it for the fame. That was true back then. It’s still true today. Sure, Kathy Mattea became a star, but she could’ve lived with her own crash-and-burn, the way it has for so many others who’ve rolled into Nashville with a guitar stashed in the trunk of a car and a mattress strapped to the roof. Had Kathy Mattea failed, so what? She would have gone back to school. She might have become an engineer, or a chemist, or a theoretical physicist, even. Maybe even gotten a job at Monsanto, following in her father’s footsteps. That would have been fine, too. A roll of the dice, this thing called life. Bottom line, she had to try. She needed to know.
How, exactly, did Kathy Mattea get it wrong?
Knowing is one thing. Realization is another. Prescient moments and gut instinct led her to Nashville, but the real joy is always in the journey, not the destination. It’s about the Bill Cooleys, the Larry Groces, the Tim O’Briens. It’s about failing and trying again, falling and getting back up. Kathy Mattea knows this now. The 19-year-old using her guitar as a divining rod? There was still so much in her life yet to unfurl. You have to experience life to fully appreciate the trick of time, to understand that you’re not going to live forever, and that life – whether you’re a country music superstar or a chemistry teacher at George Washington High School – is all about the little moments along the way, and the memories you make. There has been plenty of laughter in Kathy Mattea’s life, some tears and sadness, too.
She climbed the mountain because she needed to know.
She loves the mountains because they’re who she is.
For Kathy Mattea, West Virginia will always be home.
The year 2020 has been like no other. Take me back to the beginning of the COVID pandemic.
We live in uncertain times because of COVID, but the initial outbreak was surreal. In March and April, the numbers were still going up. Tennessee was trying to reopen, but most of the densely populated counties were still closed. It was very hard on everyone, and still is, like it has been everywhere. One of my dear friends runs the mall near where I live, and she had to work at the mall the next county over because she couldn’t open. Nashville comprises both the city and the county because they’re the same jurisdiction, and the mayor was on the television providing daily updates and reminding everyone to hunker down.
The pandemic has hit the economy hard, the arts especially so.
I don’t think it’s going to be ‘normal’ here in Nashville for a long time. We’re slowly getting back to performing again, with a few dates in Nashville in front a very small number of people, socially distanced, and we’ve booked dates in 2021 that we hope we can keep. We’ll see. When everything shut down in March, all of my guys would check in with each other. As the weather got warmer, we were able to sit outside, socially distanced, and have some rehearsals and jams sessions. We did do one “concert” early on, in an old house that a friend had converted into a business. It had been completely sterilized, and nobody had been in there for weeks. The four of us got together, six feet apart, and did a Facebook Live concert. That felt great.
Kathy Mattea
What else have you been into since the outbreak of COVID-19?
Interestingly, we moved a few days before this all started, after 30 years in our old house. So, there hasn’t been a lack of stuff to do. The house we moved from was an older, historic house located just outside of the historic overlay, so the gentrification of that neighborhood was heartbreaking, and part of why we moved. It was quite a journey – lots of moving and cleaning and talking to the neighbors and saying goodbye. It was a rollercoaster but thankfully we’ve gotten settled into our new home.
Coal mining is such an indelible part of West Virginia. What was your story with coal?
A lot of the mines had shut down and the chemical industry had moved into the Kanawha Valley by the time my dad got out of the mines, but coal was still a big part of our family’s history. My dad grew up in Smithers, and his dad mined at Cannelton Coal. My mom grew up in Bancroft in Putnam County, and her dad mined at Plymouth Hollow. So, both of them grew up in little coal mining towns. Their fathers both had their own houses, which was a source of great pride. I heard all of their stories growing up, my mom and my dad telling me what it was like. I will forever remember the little vignettes that they told me.
You grew up in Cross Lanes, West Virginia.
We had a great neighborhood. Everybody knew everybody, and there were kids everywhere. There was a subdivision up the hill behind us, and our house was halfway between the grade school and this subdivision, so everybody would walk through our yard on the way home from school. It got to the point that my dad and the guy behind us got together and built some steps up the side of the hill, so the kids could get home a little easier. There were so many good times. We had a garden in the backyard. We would play kickball in the evenings, and we would go out after school and run around the neighborhood playing games – cops and robbers during the day, and flashlight tag at night. It was small town America. We had a big family, and we would all get together and have cookouts in the summertime. It was a great way to grow up.
Kathy Mattea
What are some of your earliest childhood memories?
I was the surprise kid who came along nine years after the youngest of my two brothers, which meant that I wasn’t supposed to be around, so I changed all the plans for everybody [laughs]. When I was born it became very clear, very quick, that I was real smart. I learned the alphabet not in order, but as I saw the letters in front of me. In fact, the big family joke is that my first word was “Westinghouse” because I would sit in the high chair in our kitchen, where we had a Westinghouse stove, and I’d point and ask what the letters were. I just had this insatiable desire to know. To keep me out of their hair while they were doing homework, my brothers would give me problems to solve and words to study. By the time I got into first grade, I could read and I could do math. The teachers discovered this pretty quickly. After a month in the first grade, they did all this testing and decided to move me to second grade. Actually, I was the last person to be double-promoted in Kanawha County.
Could you sense that you were academically ahead of other kids your age?
I had this fire, really, from the time I was born, to just engage with the world. I was also kind of a misfit in school, because my brain was much quicker than all of the other kids the same age. Emotionally, I was probably a little bit behind for my age. The teachers loved me, but I could not fit in with the other kids. I couldn’t figure it out socially. It was like they all knew some secret code, or had the password, or knew the cool phrase required to be accepted, but I’d somehow been left out when that information was shared. I just couldn’t connect with the other kids.
Did you ever find your clique?
I went away to Girl Scout camp in Greenbrier County during the summer between fifth-and-sixth grade, and I discovered that if you had a guitar, then everybody gathered around and wanted to sing. You didn’t have to say anything, you didn’t have to know how to be cool, and you didn’t have to worry about fitting in. People just came to you. I became a person possessed. My parents got me a guitar that summer for my birthday – actually, they rented me a guitar from a music store because they weren’t convinced that I’d stick with it – and I started taking lessons. Once they saw how obsessed I was, they got me one for Christmas. Music was all that I cared about after that. I wound up joining the choir, as well as the junior high and high school bands. The music kids became my tribe.
Were you drawn to any other creative pursuits in high school?
I remember the year when all of the peeps in my class were turning 16, and everyone was rushing to get their driver’s licenses so that they could all get summer jobs. My mom was like, “Kathy’s going to be the only one in her circle of friends that doesn’t do this.” And while she never said it, I’m sure that she thought, “I’m going to have to be home with her all summer, so I’ve got to find something for her to do.” Somewhere around that time she saw an audition for a summer show at George Washington High School, and it was being put on by the guys who were very involved with the Charleston Light Opera Guild. I went and auditioned, and dang if I didn’t make it. It was a 10-person cast, and we did Godspell that summer. I became a theatre rat.
Kathy Mattea
Please tell me about your first-ever solo performance, for a local TV show in the 10th grade. You sang a version of John Denver’s Gospel Changes.
I had these friends in high school who were a couple of years ahead of me – John Thompson and Jim Snyder, who I still keep in touch with – and they had been playing music together for years. They were involved in this little variety show on cable television. This was back when cable TV was in its fledgling stage. It was almost what you might consider to be community access television now. Anyway, they were looking for content to perform and they asked me to appear. The idea was to play and sing, and so I went to this tiny studio and did it live on the air that afternoon. I’d be surprised if 20 people saw it, but when I got back to my house in Cross Lanes the phone rang. There was a woman on the other end. She wouldn’t tell me her name, but she said that she saw me and thought that I was really, really good. She explained that she had gone into the music business a long time ago, but that it had chewed her up and spit her out. She told me that I had something special. I was on the phone with her for about 45 minutes, and when I hung up, my mother and I just looked at each other and our jaws hit the floor. That kind of feedback became a theme: By the time I’d decided to quit college and move to Nashville, several things like that had happened to me, so I finally thought to myself, “Okay, you’ve got something that people are connecting with.” That’s when I made the decision to make the move.
You went to college at West Virginia University. Did you have a music career on your mind when you got there?
By the time I’d gotten into college, I had been playing guitar anywhere that I could. There was a folk group in my church and I did that. There was all of the community theater stuff, and I did that. There were the school plays and musicals at Nitro High School, and I did all of that stuff. Then I go to college and find these guys who were as eaten up about music as I was, and I started hanging out with them. We started writing songs and jamming. That’s when I realized that I could do the math and science with no problem – I was a physics and chemistry major – but I felt different when I did music. And I was just young enough that I thought, “What would happen if I built my life around music? What if I went that route, instead of doing this thing that I’m good at but don’t care about?” That’s what launched me. And then, when I had the chance to go to Nashville, I thought to myself, “I don’t care if you make it or not, I just want to know that you tried.” That way I could have that monkey off my back, and I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life wondering what might have been.
Dan Seals, left, and Kathy Mattea present the Vocal Group of the Year award during the 21st annual CMA Awards show at the Grand Ole Opry House on Oct. 12, 1987. P. Casey Daley / The Tennessean
What was college life like for Kathy Mattea?
We put together a band while I was at WVU. It was a mix of folk and bluegrass. We wrote some songs. We made some demos and sent them off to the record companies, ceremoniously dropping them into the mailbox on High Street in Morgantown. We received so many rejection letters, most of them impersonal, but we did get a couple that had handwritten notes on the bottom. The feedback was very encouraging. I thought, “Wow. I don’t know if we’re good enough, but someone thinks something. We’ve got somebody’s attention.”
Then came the end of my sophomore year. Mickey, my main co-writer in the group, was graduating. Like me, he was really serious about music, and he decided that he was going to move to Nashville. He went down there during spring break, so I went with him and helped him scope the place out. He moved after the summer. I got a little job selling cheese at the Hickory Farms in the Mountaineer Mall.
I just can’t picture Kathy Mattea, two-time Grammy Award winner, selling cheese at a mall.
It was the mid-1970s, and people just weren’t paying top dollar for designer cheese [laughs]. The manager was very into it, and was trying to make that store best store in the region – the most sales, that sort of thing – so there was a lot of pressure. Try as I could, I just could not make cheese the center point of my life. So, the manager called and asked me to come in. I thought she was going to give me another pep talk about selling cheese. Well, I walked in and she fired me. She said, “We don’t think you are Hickory Farms material.”
I went back to the house where I lived and I got really depressed. Part of me was fine with being fired because I didn’t care about the job, but I had never, ever had anybody say that they didn’t want me or that I didn’t measure up. My roommates would go to work every day and I would just sit around the house and feel sorry for myself. I didn’t want to be doing physics and chemistry for the rest of my life. Mickey was leaving. The band was breaking up. I had a steady boyfriend for the past year, but things weren’t going well and we were on the rocks. I was in a really dark place heading into that next semester.
Kathy Mattea is having fun as she plays for fans attending the PolyGram/Mercury Records show during Fan Fair at the Tennessee State Fairgrounds on June 9, 1987.
You dropped out of college and moved to Nashville.
I was just sitting there in despair, feeling like I was in a stuck place, when this voice came into my head that said, “If you look at this like a crisis, it will be a crisis. If you look at this like an opportunity, it will be an opportunity.” That’s when it occurred to me that I was a year younger than everybody in my class. That meant that I had a year to play with. I could go to Nashville for a year, and if it didn’t work out, then I could come back and I’d be the same age as everybody in all of my classes. More importantly, I’d have answered this nagging question about a music career, and then I could figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I suddenly got really excited. I picked up the phone and called home. I said, “Mom…Dad…school has been great, and thanks so much, but guess what? I’m going to quit, and I’m going to move to Nashville with a boy and become a songwriter.”
How did that go over with your parents?
We’re talking about Depression Era kids that grew up in coal towns, so they were not thrilled at all. The silence on the other end of the phone was deafening. I moved back to Cross Lanes before I moved to Nashville, and I spent about three weeks talking to them. They were all about the reasons they didn’t want me to do it, and I was full of answers as to why I should. They were like, “Just get your degree.” I was like, “If I stay here and get my degree, then I’ll never go because I won’t go by myself. Nashville’s too big.” Eventually, they accepted my decision, and I moved to Nashville. Mickey and I plunged right in. We played Writer’s Nights, took our tapes around, and got to know some people…but after less than a year my writing partner, said, “This isn’t for me. I want to go home. I want to go back to school.” He is now a dentist in Richmond, Virginia, and I’ve had this crazy life in Nashville.
Did you ever think that you might not succeed in Nashville?
When Mickey left, my first instinct was to go back to Cross Lanes and start getting ready for school, but then a terrible feeling came into the pit of my stomach. I thought, “If you leave because he left, then you only came because he came.” I’d wanted to do this for a very long time. Nashville was my dream. My whole life was made up of these little moments where people were like, “Kathy, you have something.”
Kathy Mattea
It sounds like an enormous internal conflict.
Very much so. On one hand, it was scary because he had kind of run the show. He had done all of the research and made all of the appointments, and I was kind of his sidekick. Yet, when we would take our tapes around and play them for publishers, people would say, “Who is singing this? Is that you?” That buoyed me. But Nashville was about 500,000 people at the time, which seemed too big for me to make it on my own. Those were the moments when I’d panic and think about heading back to West Virginia. Then I would think about driving home and pulling up into the driveway, where my parents would be waiting to say, “We knew you would be back.” Then I would panic about that. Nothing felt right. I somehow convinced myself not to make a snap decision. Instead of packing up and running back home, I’d give it a month and see how I felt about it then.
How did Nashville win out?
I had started losing my voice from giving tours at the Country Music Hall of Fame, so I quit that job and got a desk job with an insurance company. The office was about a mile from my house, which was about a 20-minute walk, so I decided that I was going to walk to work and back every day. That’s what I did. As I walked, I would imagine staying in Nashville, living here on my own, and trying to find my way. Then, when I couldn’t not bear those thoughts anymore, I would flip it around and imagine going home. I’d visualize going back to school. I’d see myself moving back to Morgantown, signing up for classes, and pursuing those degrees in physics and chemistry. I would do this back-and-forth, day after day, all the way to work and all the way back home.
Then, after about three weeks of this struggle, something happened. I stopped dead in my tracks one morning on the way to work, and I said, “Kathy, you can do anything for a year. But if you stay, give it all you’ve got.” That’s when it hit me – I hadn’t really laid it all on the line. I hadn’t tried with every fiber of my being. I realized in that moment that if I really gave it everything I had for a year and failed, then I could live with the results. My whole definition of success shifted in that moment. I was no longer scared of failure. I would have peace because I wouldn’t have to wonder for the rest of my life.
It turned out to be the right decision. In 1984, you released your first album. Please tell me about landing your first record deal.
I got a call from a record company who had heard my tapes and wanted to meet with me. By then I knew enough to know that this was a good thing. I had sessions scheduled that day and was going to be singing in the studio, so they asked me to come in before the sessions. The record company – Mercury Records – was a block away from the studio on Music Row, so I stopped on my way in. When I walked in the door, the receptionist said, “Jessie from Warner Brothers called, and she wants you to call her right away.” Warner Brothers happened to be another record label that had been talking to me, and they somehow knew about this appointment with Mercury – that’s how small of a town Nashville was at that time. So, I called the A&R person at Warner Brothers and she said, “Whatever you do, you need to listen to Warner Brothers before you make your decision.”
I went ahead and had the meeting with the head of Mercury, who said that they wanted to sign me. Then, at the end of the day, the A&R person from Warner Brothers picked me up and took me for an audience with Jimmy Bowen, who was the head of that label. He wanted to know what kind of deal Mercury offered. I told him that there was a producer on staff, that I could have independent production, and that I could choose what I wanted to produce. He said, “You should take the deal. We just merged with another label, and I have to drop a bunch of artists. If they are giving you outside production, that’s a good deal for you right now. You should take it.” Jimmy Bowen was looking out for me. He had been talking to me for a while, but he knew he couldn’t sign me. He wanted to make sure that I didn’t make a mistake.
Kathy Mattea
How did you celebrate?
I went and played a benefit that night and I got to say, “I got a record deal today!” That was truly a Cinderella day for me. I was going to get my shot.
Where were you the first time you heard yourself on the radio?
I knew that WFAM AM in Nashville was playing my first single. I was in my car on Music Row, a block from where I lived, and I had come to a stop at a stoplight. It was a one-way road, and there was a guy in a van on my right. My song came on the radio…and I rolled down all of the windows and cranked it up as loud as I could. The guy looked at me, and I looked at him, and then I pointed to the radio and screamed, “That’s me! That’s me on the radio!” The guy just looks at me, like, “Yeah, sure.” And then the light turned green and he just pulled out.
In late 1987 you had your first Number One hit. Where were you when you learned that Goin’ Gone was at the top of the charts?
I don’t remember where I was, but we did have a Number One party for the song. That was a thing you did back then. They still do it on Music Row today, but it’s become such a huge production. There are huge banners, big parties, and lots and lots of people. Back when Goin’ Gone reached Number One, you didn’t have all of that pomp and circumstance. We just had a little party in the studio where the song was recorded – a nondescript, old house on Music Row that my producer, Allen Reynolds, owned. Garth Brooks owns it today; ironically, Allen is probably most famous for producing Garth. Anyway, we got all the writers together, along with the people who played on that record, and we celebrated this great collaboration. There were like 10 people there. We ate cake, drank some beer, and went home.
That sounds pretty low-key for someone who just landed her first Number One hit.
I have two memories from that Number One party that are great. The first one is of the song playing in the studio control room. There’s a big outside gathering area just outside of the studio, and we had all congregated there to listen to the song. What I didn’t realize was that they had made a spoof of the song. They had added four tracks to the end of it, including a ukulele – they knew that I hated the ukulele [laughs]. I’d looked at Allen Reynolds when I started working there and I was like, “I love you pal, and I know you like the ukulele, but you’re not putting the ukulele on any of my records.” So, that was the joke – they had made this whole outro with the ukulele. At one point, it sounded like there was a big lighthouse in the harbor because there was a long and loud “honk, honk.” We all had a big laugh about it.
The other memory that I have of that day came at the end of the party. My soon-to-be husband [Jon Vezner] was there, and as everyone was trickling out, he said to Allen and me, “I want to play you something.” So, we went upstairs to Allen’s listening room, and Jon played a demo of a song he’d been working on. That song was, Where’ve You Been. I knew the story. I knew that his grandmother had said those words. It was stunning to hear it told like that. I just looked at him like, “Oh my God, you wrote this in a song.” It was such a powerful moment.
Kathy Mattea
Where’ve You Been won the Grammy Award for Best Country Song in 1990. Can you share the backstory?
Jon had told me that story while we were dating. There’s this moment in a relationship when you get a little more serious and you start to tell each other the really important things. This was one of those times. Jon’s grandmother had gotten sick, gone to the hospital, and had fallen and broken her hip, so she had been in there for a long time. She started forgetting people’s names, and finally she wouldn’t eat, and she wouldn’t talk…she was just waiting to die. Jon wheeled his grandfather into the room that day and pulled him around the bed beside her. She looked her husband and said – not in a fragile voice, but in a tone that was kind of pissed off [laughs] – “Where’ve you been?” It was the last thing she ever said. She died a couple of weeks later. She didn’t speak anymore. She had been in a kind of dementia fog, but on that day, in that moment, her husband pulled her back to reality. Jon told me that story one night, and he just burst into tears.
That must have been an incredibly hard song for Jon to write.
Jon was in a writing session with Don Henry, the co-writer on that song, and together they were able to bring it to life. Jon said that he probably wouldn’t have been able to write it without Don, that he couldn’t have gone there without another writer sort of holding that space with him. Otherwise, he would have gotten lost in all of the emotion of it.
My mom died of Alzheimer’s years later, so my relationship with that song has really evolved over time. It’s such a cruel disease. There they are…you know them so well…you know all of their mannerisms and their quirky little personality things…and yet, they are not there. It’s really hard to watch someone you love go through something like that.
Did you think it was going to be a huge hit?
When I heard it for the first time, I thought that it was too sad to be a hit song, but word quickly spread around Nashville about how great it was, which is why I love Nashville so much – and why I feel so grateful to have moved here when I was young. Every publisher in Nashville had a cassette copy of that song on their desk. We heard story-after-story of people walking in and them going, “You need to hear this song. I don’t want to have anything to do with this song, but you just need to hear this song.”
So, there was a showcase for writers at the Bluebird Café in Nashville. It was put on by a nonprofit company that no longer exists, and they would do a show once a month at the Bluebird. They would invite people to play, and Jon was one of the writers. I was in the audience that night, and he played that song, and when he was done, there were like 10 seconds of silence…and then the place erupted into applause. People were audibly sobbing all over the room. The whole room went to pieces all at once. I thought, “Oh my God, this song…” I suddenly saw that it didn’t matter if it was sad or not. It needed to be heard. So, I went to Allen and I said, “I’m sorry, I know that we both have to approve this song, and you think it’s too sad, but I have to do it.”
Kathy Mattea
Where You Been climbed into the Top Ten despite the heavy nature of the material.
We recorded it with such great musicians. Edgar Meyer, the great bass player who was a MacArthur Fellow, played on it. His dad was dying, and he came to me and said, “My dad isn’t going to live to hear this on the record. Can I have a copy to play for him, because I will never get to play on anything like this again.” Of course, we gave him a copy.
Another interesting story about that song: That night at the Bluebird, a writer got sick at the last minute and had to cancel, so they put another young writer in his place. That writer was Garth Brooks. Garth had been rejected by every record label in Nashville. There was a guy from Capitol Records in the audience that night, and he signed him on the spot. It was one of those crazy things.
Your third studio album, Walk the Way the Wind Blows, was released in 1986. It had four Top 10 hits and stamped you as a country music superstar.
I made my first record with some producers that didn’t have much experience, and we didn’t have a lot of success – a little bit, but not too much. My second album didn’t hardly do anything either, but I was fortunate to have worked on it with Allen Reynolds. That really helped point me in the right direction, even though I’d yet to make any real noise. Luckily my record company said, “Look, we don’t think you found your stride yet, but we believe in you.” So, they stuck with me, and Walk the Way the Wind Blows became the album that put me over the top.
Love at the Five and Dime became your first Top 10 record.
Mercury had decided that they were going to put out singles, and that they weren’t going to spend money on another album until we gained some traction. The original plan was to go cut two singles, a total of four songs, which meant two A-sides and two B-sides. We actually got five songs out of the session. There was a song that I really liked, but, as luck would have it, a new guy came in and took over the record company, and he really liked this other song. I looked at Allen and I was like, “What do we do? I don’t want to fight the new guy. I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot and get on his bad side.” Allen said, “Just let him put out what he wants to put out, and if it doesn’t hit, then you’ll be able to say, ‘I told you so.’” So, the new guy says that Love at the Five and Dime is my hit. We put it out, and it just floated up the charts like it had a balloon attached to it. It was amazing. I still sing that song every night.
It’s a great song.
I was doing an interview with the literary guy, and he said, “Kathy, that song is an epic story told in three-and-a-half minutes. You experience the entire lifetime of these two people. I had never really thought about it like that. It was written by Nanci Griffith, and told in a way that only Nanci could tell it. As an artist, that song was lighting in a bottle. I tell my audiences that when I sing that song, it’s like putting on your favorite old pair of blue jeans, the pair that’s worn in just the right way and that you know so well.
Kathy Mattea
On April 1, 2008, you released your thirteenth studio album, Coal.
When I went to make this album about coal, I went through all of the songs I could find that had been written about that life, and I listened to them for months. The process started lots of conversations with my family, and all of these little stories started stringing together into a bigger picture. Everything came into clearer focus. My cousin started telling me stories that I hadn’t heard about, like a grandfather who owned a Whipple Store. The Whipple Store was a company store, which was usually the only place in town that the miners could shop. That’s because the miners were paid in “scrip,” which was only redeemable at the company store. I wound up going up there and shooting some pictures for the album cover.
The more research I did, the more I found all of these amazing connections to coal, but the more I also felt that I’d somehow missed out on this part of our family legacy. Then, I was home shooting the album cover and driving around with my manager, and he said, “Kathy, you grew up in the shadow of coal.” And then he pointed to the stacks of the John Amos Power Plant, which is the biggest coal-fired electrical plant east of the Mississippi. That made me think about my brother, who was a dispatcher and who sent coal up and down the Ohio and Kanawha rivers to the plant. Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it like that or made that connection. Mike wasn’t a coal miner, but he was directly involved in the barges that were part of the same chain. I was so close to it that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
You’ve had a long musical relationship with a fellow West Virginian, Tim O’Brien.
I met Tim when I did Walk the Way the Wind Blows. His publisher had pitched me that song. We got to know each other and just hit it off, and then he came and played on Untold Stories, which became a big hit. Tim lived in Colorado at the time, and we would visit with him and his wife whenever we played out there. Then he moved to Nashville. He produced my most recent album, Pretty Bird, in 2018, and we’ve remained great friends over the years.
Tim is just a phenomenal musician. He’s such a great player, and so proficient on so many instruments. He’s also a great singer, and so soulful, and sings in so many different styles. He has all these different facets to him, any one of which, if you isolated them, you would say, “He’s one of the best.” I have been a champion of his for a long time. He just makes everybody sound better. That’s what I always say about Tim. I don’t think that there is anyone else that I know who is that good, and that deferential. He will meet anyone exactly where they are musically. He doesn’t have to prove anything to you, he doesn’t have to show you how good he is, he just wants to find a place where your collaboration fits. He meets you where you are. There’s not a lot of ego with Tim, especially relative to how good he is. That is just amazing to me.
Bill Cooley is another talented musician who you’ve played with for a very long time.
This past January marked 30 years that I’ve been playing with Bill. I had this guitar player named John Mock, who went on to play with the Dixie Chicks. John was leaving my band, so I was having auditions. Bill had been playing with Merle Haggard, he’d played with Reba McIntyre, and at the time he was playing with Alan Jackson. I already knew Bill because his wife made all of my clothes. She is this amazing artist, and she did all of this embroidery work and produced custom-designed clothes for me.
Well, Bill came in and auditioned, and he just blew everybody out of the water. Nobody else was even close. I never thought that he would stay this long – and neither did he. We just kept looking at each other over the years, and decided to stay together and keep going. I think I really dug in with him a little before the Coal record. We worked out all of those arrangements together – Bill is a brilliant arranger – and he has been sort of my musical guru. He’s one of my tent poles, I guess you could say. I bounce everything off of him.
As a native West Virginian, you’re very involved with Mountain Stage.
Prior to COVID, I’d been guest-hosting Mountain Stage once-a-month for the past year. In fact, I woke up at five this morning with the thought that I had to host Mountain Stage today and hadn’t done my homework. Let me tell you, there was a moment of true panic [laughs].
Mountain Stage has developed a national reputation. There’s no other show like it.
Mountain Stage is important for lots of reasons – it’s important for West Virginia, it’s important for the artists, and it’s important for the arts in general. I really want them to thrive. It’s such a great tradition. I have been involved with Larry Groce and Mountain Stage since it started, and what a privilege it has been. Stepping into Larry Groce’s shoes is a big job. It’s a lot of work, but he makes it look so easy. I performed on some of the early shows, and in 1986 I was actually a guest on the show they did at the Public Radio Programmers Conference in San Diego. That was a significant step, because that’s when they sort of made the play to go national.
Mountain Stage has been a great showcase for creativity in West Virginia.
I feel like my career arc parallels the same timespan as Mountain Stage, so it has been a real companion and a constant in my life since I started playing music. I have been on the show a bunch of times, and I love those guys. I’m constantly amazed by the vision that it took to come up with that concept and think, “People will drive to West Virginia to be on our show. We’ll show them just what it’s like to be from West Virginia, and we’ll give them that kind of hospitality. They will remember us and they will come back.” Without question, Mountain Stage accomplishes a lot. It’s not only our chance to share West Virginia culture on a national stage, but it’s also a chance to give a forum for a lot of artists who are not straight down the middle but who do very interesting and important work.
Kathy Mattea
Do you think the show helps dispel the West Virginia stereotypes that are out there?
I think that Mountain Stage is a really important showcase for West Virginia, because people who aren’t from there get a feel for the friendly, quirky, community atmosphere that is so much a part of West Virginia culture. It’s our counterbalance to so many of the stereotypes that people hold who have never been there. When people come to West Virginia and they do the show, they are like, “This is great! These people are great!” And then they go back into the world and tell everyone how great the people are, and what West Virginia is really like.
Mountain Stage wouldn’t be here without Larry Groce. The two of you are great friends – I’m sure you’ve shared plenty of laughs through the years.
At Mountain Stage, one of the quirky things they do backstage is that everyone has a tiki – a little good luck charm – at their stations. Paul Flaherty, the production and stage manager, has a little bobble head doll of John Hartford, who was a master of the fiddle and the banjo. There’s a little animal of some type that sits on top of the mixing console. Larry has a rocking chair, a “Fra-Gee-Lay” lamp, which is one of those leg lamps from A Christmas Story, a Dallas Cowboys full-sized, game-worn football helmet. So, I came walking in one day and I was like, “Look guys, I love ya and I love Larry, but can we do something about that Dallas Cowboys football helmet? I live in Nashville, and I’m a Titans fan, and my ch’i will be off if I have to look at that Cowboys helmet all of the time.” Fast forward to the last time we did a live show. Paul had gone somewhere and played one of those claw crane arcade games, the kind where you put the coin in and try to grab the little prize. Well, he saw a miniature Tennessee Titans football helmet, and somehow snagged it on the first try. He gives it to me, and guess what? Now there is a miniature Tennessee Titans football helmet sitting beside Larry’s “Fra-Gee-Lay” lamp, and everything is right with the world [laughs]. They keep telling me that I’ve got to bring in my tiki. I think that Titans helmet will do just fine.
In 2011, you were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Please take me back.
The cool thing about it is this: Tim O’Brien inducted me, and I inducted Tim. It’s such a sweet thing to get to put into words what you think is special about someone that you love. I got inducted first, so when he presented me you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was really stunned. And so, when it came his time and they ask me to be the presenter, I couldn’t wait to tell the world what was so special about him.
The thing that surprised me most is that I’d never really thought about Hall of Fame kinds-of-things, even though I’d worked as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. I’d always just gone about my business and did my deal. I was surprised by how completely overflowing I felt at the end of that night. It was a tremendous honor to be inducted. The first time I was there, I’d been asked to help induct Billy Edd Wheeler. It was 2007, and it was the same year that Hazel Dickens was inducted. I just remember thinking how lucky I was to be there to see these amazing artists recognized for their body of work. Just to see them brought into focus like that was very inspiring. If there had been something like that when I was a kid, then I might have turned towards music earlier or in a different way.
Kathy Mattea
Final Question: If you had one piece of advice for the next Kathy Mattea, what would that be?
Two things: First, don’t stop writing songs, no matter what, because I did. When I got to Nashville, I thought that I was far more advanced as a singer than I was as a songwriter. So I invested in my strengths. My manager at the time kept saying, “Kathy, go take voice lessons, invest in your voice, but don’t stop writing. You will never regret it if you don’t stop writing. You always be glad you did.” Looking back, I think that I could have been one of the great songwriters. I think that I gave up on it too soon. That is my one big regret.
The other thing would be to pursue your dream with total commitment. That doesn’t mean it will work out the way you hope. I didn’t know if I’d succeed when I moved to Nashville, or if I’d end up back in school studying physics and chemistry. I just knew that I could look back after giving it my all and be happy with the result. I’m very happy with the way my life has turned out.
Interventional cardiologists aren’t supposed to be this cool.
Dr. Samuel Kojoglanian joins the Zoom call from his office in Southern California, the USC grad overcoming all manner of obstacle to become one of the most respected specialists in his field, his journey from the war-torn Middle East to sunny SoCal a testament to faith, family, and fearlessness. He’s nothing like you might expect; while most doctors come to the game equipped with the requisite compassion needed to connect with patients and their families, Kojoglanian – Dr. Sam to those who know him best – is über high-relational, his charismatic personality infectious and easy to love, especially to those facing difficult conversations. Kojoglanian is an unscripted jazz riff in a medical world filled with concertos. He’s loquacious, spontaneous, generous, and authentic. His vibe reflects his upbringing; confident yet humble, driven yet down-to-earth. He’s a hugger, something that’s become harder to do during the coronavirus pandemic. He’s a giver – of his time, his energy, and his money. Above all else, Kojoglanian is a disciple of Christ and a man whose choices are driven by the Word of God.
“You can’t go wrong serving people,” he says, when asked about his mission in life. “You can’t go wrong loving people. God made it clear that I could rock this world if I put my priorities aside and focused on His will instead.”
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Today, Dr. Sam pours his heart and soul into his practice, the Santa Clarita-based Mender of Hearts, where he has been honored with the prestigious Patient’s Choice Award three years running. Of the 900,000 active physicians in America, only 6% receive the award. Even more telling: Less than 3% of all active physicians receive the Most Compassionate Award. Dr. Sam has three of those as well. Those qualities only scratch the surface of what he brings to the table. His Beacon of Hearts ministry brings together volunteer staff from Third World countries. By partnering with pastors, churches, and medical personnel, an army of volunteers is set in motion to serve those without access to adequate medical and dental care – all while also delivering the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
“The ministry that God has given me is special, because it’s not just preaching the gospel,” Dr. Sam says. “That part is obviously very important for the soul, and it’s our main priority, but we are also able to feed people who are indigent. We treat hypertension, diabetes, and high cholesterol. We educate people on the importance of making dietary changes. We evangelize the benefits of physical activity. It’s all part of fulfilling God’s will.”
The pandemic may have paused Dr. Sam’s mission overseas, but it hasn’t slowed him down. He continues to write, focusing his attention on the Book of Revelation. Rev It Up series sheds important light on one of the more complicated books in the Bible.
“Nobody really understands the Book of Revelation,” Kojoglanian says. “It has taken me four years to come up with this series, which is comprised of two books: Rev It Up – Verse by Verse – Vol. 1, which covers Chapters 1 through 11, and Rev It Up – Verse by Verse – Vol. 2, which covers Chapters 12 through 22. The two volumes together are almost 1,000 pages in total, but don’t let the size intimidate you. I made it very easy to understand. There are beautiful illustrations. There are little hearts throughout that clue the reader in to what is really cool. There are easy-to-understand medical references, where I discuss how medicine aligns to the Bible. There are also geopolitical references, where I draw parallels between the Book of Revelation and what’s going on in places like the United States, Israel, Russia, and China. These aren’t today’s headlines. They’re tomorrow’s headlines. All of it discussed verse-by-verse.”
The Rev It Up series also has a couple of other intriguing offerings.
“Rev It Up – Rhyme by Rhyme is something that nobody has ever done before. This is the Book of Revelation in poetry. Rev It Up – Image by Image brings the Book of Revelation to life in a tangible, more understandable, and relatable way. The front cover is insane. Most of the time, the pictures that you see depicting the Book of Revelation are kind of cheesy. These are not cheesy. These are the real deal.”
Kojoglanian has other books in the works, including Rev It Up for Kids. He has a thriving practice that continues to save lives. He continues to plan his next mission trip overseas. All of it while keeping Christ front and center.
“God has put me on this earth to do my part, and to make this world a better place,” he says. “I may be one person, but baby, I was put on earth to rock this whole planet in the name of Jesus Christ, and I’m going to do it.”
Take me all the way back.
It’s a fascinating story that starts in Jerusalem. You won’t believe this, but I was born in a hospital in Mount of Olives. The reason that we were in Jerusalem to begin with was an enormous massacre conducted by the Turkish people in 1915, during which approximately 1.5 million Armenians were killed. It’s known today as the Armenian Genocide. My grandparents had to flee, and they ended up in an Armenian diaspora, which is an Armenian community located outside of Armenia. Some fled to Lebanon, while others, including my grandparents, ended up in Jerusalem. So, lo and behold, I was born smack dab in the middle of the Holy City – the holiest city in the world – and I was brought up on the Via Dolorosa, the processional route in the Old City of Jerusalem. That’s the path that Jesus walked on the way to his crucifixion. That was my backyard. I have chills on my arms just thinking about it!
What childhood memories to you have of your time in Jerusalem?
We played marbles. We ran up and down the street and played soccer. My dad would take us to Bethlehem and say, “This is where Jesus was born,” but we were just kids at the time. We were like, “Seriously? Can’t we go somewhere else fun?” We learned a lot of languages while we were in Jerusalem, but I didn’t know English just yet. Little did I know that it would become my main language.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
How old were you when you realized you wanted to be a doctor?
Two great things happened in my life at the age of five, and one of them was in the tablet of my heart. It was like an awakening. I don’t know if that happens to all five-year-old children, but it did to me. I sensed that God was saying I’d be a heart doctor when I grew up. He said, “I’ve called you to touch the hearts of mankind.” That’s when the second great thing happened: I gave my life to Christ.
What church did you attend in Israel?
I grew up in a Nazarene church. I think my mama taught me Bible verses when I was in the womb [laughs]. I wasn’t a Christian when I was born, because you can’t be born Christian, but I went to church and Sunday school. My mama made it clear from an early age that you may have many friends in life, and they might say that they’ve got your back, but truly, truly, truly, there’s only one person that’s got your back, and that’s Jesus Christ. He is powerful. He is good. He is kind. If you want to serve others, and if you want to be a light to the world and a salt to this earth, then you put your faith in Jesus. It’s been nothing but sweet to follow Him.
The Middle East can be a dangerous place. Was it like that for you?
We had soldiers pointing guns at us when we went to school. That was the norm for us, so you don’t really think about it. Still, we wanted to get to school safely. It could be scary. There might be bombs falling, but that was the norm and you didn’t know otherwise. You didn’t think that you were supposed to be riding a school bus, and that the school bus is supposed to be yellow, and that it’s supposed to have a stop sign that folds out to alert oncoming traffic to the children crossing the street. You’re not growing up in that kind of environment, so you accept your reality at the time because that’s all you know.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Is that why your family moved to the United States?
I remember my dad saying, “One day you’re gonna thank me because we’re leaving this place. We’re going to go to a place called America. I didn’t understand this at the time, but my dad used to work long days, oftentimes 16 hours or more. He didn’t do it to get rich. He wanted his kids to taste America. He wanted us to go to the other milk and honey land. Why? Because Jerusalem was a warzone. He worked very hard for many years to get us to America.
Your family relocated to Tennessee. That had to be a culture shock.
My uncle was already living in Chattanooga, and he told my father that it was a lovely place to raise your children. He explained that the people there are nice. It’s the South. It’s the Bible Belt. The people in the South see you and they are like, “Hey, honey.” If you don’t say ‘hi’ then they’re like, “What’s wrong with you, baby?” They’re gonna hug you. We moved from a war-torn country to a place like that, so I loved it. And then later we moved to Cali [California] where people don’t speak. If you speak to them, they look at you like they’re gonna take you down [laughs].
You had your friends in Jerusalem. How did you fit in with the kids in your new hometown?
It was crazy. My last name is Kojoglanian, and I have dark hair and brown eyes. Everybody there was a Smith or a Jones, and most everyone had blonde hair and blue eyes. They’re wearing Nike shoes and Levi’s jeans. I’ve got on sandals and pantalones. They’re hip-hop cool. I’m just a foreigner boy. I didn’t make sense to people.
Was it hard adjusting to your new school in the United States?
I remember the first day of school very clearly. The teacher went one-by-one and was like, “Who’s got their lunch?” I started crying because I didn’t know what lunch was. Everybody was like, “Yes, I got my lunch. I got my lunch.” I didn’t know what lunch was, baby. It was a difficult transition as a fourth grader.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Bullying is a big thing today with social media. Were you every bullied for being different?
I was beat up in school, and not because I was a thug. I was just different. I didn’t know how to speak no English, and some people say that I still don’t know how [laughs]. I remember getting hit on the nose on the playground, and I ended up in the hospital ER because we couldn’t stop the bleeding. I told my mom and dad that I wanted to go back to Jerusalem.
How did you overcome this adversity?
My mama and daddy told me two things: One, you sit on your butt and you study hard, because that’s why we came to America. And two, if you want to fight with these people, if you want to knock them out, then you get on your knees and pray to the Lord. You pray that He gives you the grace and the strength to weather the storm. They promised me that things would change if I did that, and they did.
In what ways?
As a fourth-grader, I remember sitting in the school auditorium with 900 kids and watching the awards ceremony. One of those awards was for the best all-around student. Over the next two years I went hog wild. I started praying and I started studying. I learned the English language. I served my community. I played sports. I joined the choir. I sold the most candy bars in the history of my elementary school in the fifth and sixth grade. Then, at the end of my sixth-grade year, we were in the same auditorium having this huge graduation ceremony. They handed out award-after-award. I didn’t think I’d win anything, but, at the end of the ceremony, the school principal announced that Samuel Kojoglanian had been voted by the students and teachers as the best all-around student.
I stand here today and give God the glory for that. Two years’ worth of hard work by a boy who was not only beat up, but who had tasted bigotry and hatred. I was like, “No, no, no…on my knees, and on my butt. Pray and study. I’m gonna change this place. I’m not going to be a victim. With God’s help, I get to choose.” We weren’t rich. We weren’t privileged. We came to America with a purpose of serving and loving people. My mama and daddy were right. I listened, I gave myself fully to the Lord, and I turned my life around in a matter of two years. I give God the glory for that. When I speak today, I share the advice that my parents gave me. Today I hear people say, “I’m the wrong color, I’m the wrong creed, I’m the wrong sex.” Wait. You’re the wrong nothing. God made you just like you are for a specific reason. You are the light of the world, and you are the salt of the earth. You can rock this planet if you want, it’s all up to you. Sit down on your butt and study hard, and get on your knees and pray. Let’s change this world. That’s my whole attitude in life, man.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Today you’re a world-renowned doctor. What was your journey like?
We moved to Cali and I took my undergrad at the University of Southern California. Of all the schools in the world, USC was where I wanted to study. My whole life was geared towards becoming a doctor. I went to USC for three years, and I excelled in my classes. Then, when the time came, I took the MCAT, which is the Medical College Admissions Test. What a nightmare! I had studied like a mad boy. I thought I had done good on it. I was like, “Yeah! Praise God!” And then I got my scores. I went ahead and applied to nine colleges and universities that have medical schools in California. One-by-one, the schools wrote back and rejected my application. All I ever wanted to do was become a doctor, so that I could serve and love God by serving and loving people. My world started to crumble. It was a very disappointing and discouraging time in my life.
Did you hit the panic button?
I was a senior at USC. I had majored in psychology and biology, and all I could think of was, “What do I want to do with that? Am I going to sell pharmaceuticals? Medical equipment? Am I going to teach?” People were always coming at me like, “Did you get into medical school? We know you’re in, right?” It was so embarrassing. It was total humiliation.
I regrouped and studied like a mad boy again. I took the MCAT again. I applied to medical school again. This time around I decided to add a different wrinkle – I also applied to the Graduate School at USC, with the goal of pursuing a Master’s in Gross Anatomy and Microbiology. That would at least let me get my foot in the door. The problem was, they were picking three candidates for the program. I’m was Number 4. I prayed to God, “Lord, can you take out Number 3 because I can’t get into the program unless a spot opens up.” That is not good prayer. I had to ask for forgiveness. He didn’t take out anyone, and I didn’t get in.
How many medical schools did you apply to the second time around?
I applied to 18. My mindset was, “If you can’t get into nine, double it up and try 18.” And again, I decided to try something different, another wrinkle – I had learned about a limited status student program, which allowed individuals with a bachelor’s degree to take a limited number of courses at USC without formally applying for admission to the university. You get to enter the medical school, not as a master’s student, not as a medical student, but as someone who takes courses with them, just to get a feel for the program. I met with the admitting professor and said, “I will give you my heart and soul. I will serve your university, I will serve you, and I will serve the students.” He said that he’d never seen such passion. He let me into the program.
So, you’re in medical school at USC, but you’re technically not a medical school student.
This was my backup plan, because I was sure that one of the 18 medical schools that I had applied to would accept me. However, one-by-one, I started getting all of these reject letters – 17 of them to be exact. I was beginning to feel like a failure again and then, bam, I got an interview at Loma Linda University in Southern California. This was my chance. I met with the kindest lady, and she asked me, “What will you do if you don’t get into medical school?” I responded by saying, “I guess if I don’t get in, I’ll do psychology so that I can at least help people.” That was the wrong answer, baby. She didn’t want to hear that. I should have said, “If I don’t get in, I will learn from my mistakes. I will break down the walls and the iron gates that are before me, and then, if the door is locked, I’ll find another way to get into medical school. I’ll find a window. I’ll climb down the chimney. I’ll do whatever it takes.” She as looking for that kind of dedication. Instead, Loma Linda became my eighteenth rejection.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Did you experience doubt that you were meant to be a doctor?
At the time I had a poster on my door of an F-35 fighter jet that takes off vertically, and the slogan said, “Aim High.” That was my life. I had always aimed high. But my world was falling apart. People were telling me that maybe I’d missed the boat. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a doctor. Maybe I had heard God wrong. It was painful for me. I was hearing these things, my heart was crushed, and I felt like a loser. It didn’t feel like there was any way out. I tore the poster off my door and I hurled it under my bed. Then, in my darkest moment, I got on my knees. I said, “Lord God, what is happening? What’s going on?” I’ve never heard the Lord audibly, but at this moment I heard him in my heart. He said, “Don’t call me Lord. I’m not your Lord. I’m your Savior, but I’m not your Lord. Medicine is your Lord. You worship medicine.”
That day, I made the hardest decision in my life. I said, “I’m making you my Lord, and I will give you medicine. If you decide to take it away from me then you may take it. If you do take it away from me, part of my heart will die, but I would rather have you than medicine. I would rather worship you than medicine. I’d rather be on the right path than the wrong path. You are the way, the truth, and the light.”
In what ways did God answer your prayer?
I reapplied for the master’s program, and this time I got in. Then, seven days later, a dean in the medical school called me. My first thought was, “I’ve only been in the master’s program for seven days and I’m getting kicked out.” Instead, he said, “We’ve been watching you, and we want to know if you would like to teach our medical students.” He went on to explain that they were short a teacher, and that they wanted me to be a teaching assistant…to teach medical students at the University of Southern California! It was an insane phone call. Here I was, rejected by 27 medical schools, a year into the limited status student program, and a week into my master’s program…and they wanted me to teach students at one of the most prestigious colleges in the world. At that point I’m looking up to the Lord, and I’m like, “Baby, you’re good!”
How did you handle the opportunity?
I taught those students like crazy! It was an amazing time in my life – a medical school reject who had tasted bigotry and hatred was suddenly teaching medical students. I was different – I came in playing rap music, and they were like, “Who is this?” We’d go out to lunch and dinner, and we studied together like crazy. It energized them, and it reenergized me. I still wasn’t a medical student, but I was convinced that God’s grace would prevail and that my prayers would be answered.
There’s an old adage that the third time’s the charm. Was that true in your case?
I finished my master’s program, and I applied to one medical school. This was my third try. I’d taken the MCAT five times. This was it. A 12-person committee was going to decide my fate, and they knew all of this. They weren’t going to seriously consider me. They were going to reject me again, but God had other plans. He had touched the heart of an African-American lady on the committee named Althea.
Althea had been watching me work with those medical students. She saw me giving my love to them. She saw me helping them even though I wasn’t being paid for all of these extra hours I put in. Althea said, “I’m sorry, but hang on just one minute. I have watched this kid work like a dog for the past three years. He’s won the Teacher of the Year Award at the University of Southern California two years in a row. The medical students love him. He has excelled in pursuing his master’s degree. He has proven to you that he belongs in this place. If you don’t accept him, then perhaps I’m on the wrong committee.” On that day in 1991 I was unanimously voted into the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
That is a testament to the power of perseverance.
I remember when I was trying to get into medical school as an undergrad, there was one professor that said, “Son, you don’t have what it takes to be a medical doctor.” I’m telling you, I have memorized this man’s face, because there might come a time when he ends up on my table. I’m going to be like, “Remember me? Thank you, because I remember you.” And not out of vengeance, but because I had decided to rise above. I had decided to Jesus Christ my Savior and my Lord. God was with me even everyone else had given up.
Do you think that God moved Althea to speak up for you?
I’ll share another story, and then you can decide. Fast-forward a number of years. I’m working in interventional cardiology, and one day a code goes off in the ER. They call for Dr. Kojoglanian to come down. We’re saving this man’s life – he dies, he comes back, he dies again. We’re pouring our souls into getting him back. At one point I’ve got to go talk to the family in the ER, and I run into Althea, who I haven’t seen in 10 years. We share a moment and I tell her that I love her, and that I’ve got to go talk to the family of this patient. She grabs my arm, holds my hand, and says, “No, you’re not going anywhere. That man’s life you just saved, that’s my husband.”
I had tears in my eyes. She said that she knew there was some reason that she’d spoken up for me. It was an incredibly power moment. That was God’s hand at work. That was God’s plan. You tell me the odds of being in Los Angeles, with all of the hospitals we have, and the millions of people that live there…and then, 10 years after Althea helps me get into medical school, her husband ends up in my hospital, when I’m on call, and I’m leading the team that gets to save his life.
If you weren’t close friends before, I’m sure that you are now.
That day she called me Black Jesus [laughs]. That day I got the biggest promotion of my life – I went from a white, Armenian cardiologist, all the way straight up to Black Jesus!
You are in the minority in the medical world – you are a man of faith, and a man of science. Most in your profession feel that the two are mutually exclusive.
People think that science and faith are incompatible. I believe otherwise. Why? Because God created science. He is so far ahead of science. For instance, it took mankind a little while to figure out that the earth is round. In Isaiah, Chapter 40, Verse 22, it says, “The Lord sits enthroned upon the circle of the earth, and all its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.” The Lord proclaimed that the earth was round long before science figured it out.
God is always right. In the Book of Leviticus, Chapter 17, it says that the life of the creature is in its blood. God is telling you that blood makes life. George Washington, our first president, was bled to death. He was 67 at the time, and had been out in the cold weather and got wet. He ended up with a sore throat, which led to an infection. It could have been strep, who knows. The point is, the doctors who treated him decided that the best approach was to bleed him. They then bled him four more times over the next eight hours, with a total blood loss of 40 percent. At the time they thought that taking out his blood would save his life. It wasn’t that long ago that we said to ourselves, “Wait, maybe blood is important. Maybe we should perform blood transfusions rather than bleeding people.” Well, look at what God said to us 3,500 years ago! God put it in the book of Leviticus, that the life of the creature is in the blood!
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
What is your take on evolution?
People like to say that we evolved from monkeys, or that we came from an amoeba. Seriously? Our bodies are so complex, and yet we came from a one cell amoeba? I believe in micro-evolution if you will, where maybe the length of a bird’s beak changes, but a bird will never turn into a dog. There may be 300-plus species of dog – you’ve got our German Shephard, your beagle, and on-and-on – but a dog will never turn into a wolf.
There are a lot of atheists in your profession.
I love all people. I don’t go, “He’s an atheist. He’s this, he’s that.” I love all people. I truly believe that there was a time when everyone actually believed in God. Sin changed everything. You can think what you want to, that’s your choice, but God is going to love you anyway. At some point we decided to become kings of our own souls. We decided that there is no God. But those same people, you put them in a foxhole and there are bullets whizzing past their heads, the first thing they do is look for God to save them. How did God suddenly become real in a life-or-death situation? I thought you were an atheist.
Your warmth and magnetic personality set you apart from other doctors.
The Number 1 complaint from patients and their families is how the doctor treats them. They’ll say, “You didn’t even look at me. You looked at your computer the whole time. You didn’t listen to me.” I always go back to Jesus, and the compassion he showed. He didn’t say, “I’m God, I walk on water, you can’t touch me.” Jesus let the kids come and sit on his lap. That’s how I want to treat people. I want to treat them as I want to be treated. I treat people as if they’re my family. I always ask myself how I would want someone to treat my mom or my dad. When I enter a room, I don’t go, “Hello, Mr. Smith, how are you today?” I’m like, “What’s up, kids? How y’all doing today?” They’re like, “Oh my gosh, he just called us his kids, and we’re 95 years old.”
Do you ever have someone question your sincerity?
I’m real. This is who I am. It’s not an act. It doesn’t matter if I’m one-on-one with a patient, or I’m on a stage talking to 10,000 people. In fact, when I look out at an audience that size, I know that there are people out there hurting. It doesn’t matter if they have a blue-collar job or they’ve got Grammy Awards on their mantel, when the lights go down everyone is the same.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Sometimes the more fame you have, the easier it is to go down a dark path.
People today are lost, and it doesn’t matter how much money or fame they have. Why else would they be drowning themselves in alcohol and drugs? At the end of the day, what do all of the trophies and accolades mean? If those things solved everything, why would they still be angry, agitated, lonely and depressed? Whether they realize it or not, there’s something in our souls that seeks eternity, that seeks a God, that seeks a love that’s unconditional and unfailing and unmatched…a love that can only come from Jesus Christ.
Do you find yourself walking a fine line with your faith as a doctor?
There’s a time for everything. There’s a time to say, “Hey, you need the Lord Jesus Christ,” and then there are times when I need to shut up and save somebody’s life because they’re dying right in front of me.
I would imagine that not everyone is receptive to your message.
One day, I was working in a hospital and I saved a man’s life. By God’s grace, we were able to put a stent in his heart and save him from the widow maker. He ended up in the ICU, where he was barely making it. His wife was bawling and crying, there were nurses present, and suddenly the Lord spoke to me. He said, “Tell him about Jesus.” I’m like, “Lord Jesus, you’ve got the wrong man, you have the wrong time, and you got the wrong ICU!” Then it hit me: I tried to tell the Creator that He was wrong [laughs]. He spoke to my heart again and I’m like, “Jesus, look, there are four nurses here. This is not proper. This is not the right time to tell him about Jesus Christ.” And then, as I turned to exit the room, He said, “You need to turn around now, because this is your only chance to tell this man about me. He will never respond ever again.”
Now I’m sweating. I’m sure I’m going to get reported; somebody’s going to say something and the hospital administration is going to come down hard on me. In that moment, I decided that I didn’t care. It was more important for me to be obedient. I was doing anything illegal. I wasn’t doing anything immoral. I was just sharing the love of Jesus Christ. Imagine if I had discovered a cure for COVID-19 and I only shared it with myself and my family. Shame on me. Jesus Christ is love. He is goodness. He is great. He has mercy. Jesus Christ is the cure for the soul. Everyone born in sin is going to die one day, and we only have two places to go – heaven or hell. Jesus said, “I’m the way, the truth, and the light. Nobody comes to the Father except through me.”
On the way out the door I thought, “What gonna happen if he dies tonight?” So, I went back to him and explained that he had almost died. He thanked me for saving his life, and I explained that there was a moment when I actually watched him die on the table. I said, “Your coronary artery was blocked 100%, but now the flow is open and your heart’s happy because it’s receiving nutrition.” I explained that Jesus had done the same for us on Calvary. He died for you. He died for me. He died on the cross to save us. I said, “If you accept his blood and say, ‘Lord God, I’m a sinner,’ then the artery to your soul will be unblocked.”
I asked him if he would pray with me, and he did. Now, everybody’s looking at me. There are even more nurses in the room, and I just know for sure that I’m in trouble. I didn’t care. The patient had tears running down his cheeks. His wife was bawling. One of the nurses came up to me after I left the room and she said, “Dr. Kojoglanian, I’ve been in an ICU nurse for 25 years, and I’ve never, ever seen something so beautiful. The wife comes after me next. She goes, “We’ve been praying for my husband for 15 years – me, my family, the whole church – but he has not come to Christ. And finally, he comes to Christ because of what you did.” That is the beauty of Jesus Christ. He tells me to use the gifts that he’s given me. Jesus does the hard part. In this case, all I had to do was start the conversation.
Your ministry has taken you all over the world.
There’s a certain joy that comes from serving people. Whether we’re in the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong, Armenia, Argentina, or Africa, we are there for a very specific reason. If I go and tell people that Jesus loves them and they need to be saved, that is the ultimate reward, but that doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. We first honor the people by helping them medically. We work in some very crude conditions, because we’re talking about Third World countries in many cases. There’s barely any water. The people are indigent. They don’t have shoes or adequate clothing. They don’t have food. We treat them as patients first, and we do it dirt cheap. We recruit nurses and doctors through my ministry, Beacon of Hearts, and we provide them with medication for things like diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. And then, when we’ve addressed their medical needs, we preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s beautiful, because we get to touch the hearts of the patients that we serve. We get to touch the body, the mind, the heart, and the soul.
Photo Courtesy Dr. Sam Kojoglanian
Final Question: If you had one piece of advice for others, what would that be?
You have to put your faith in Jesus Christ. It’s important to stay low, stay humble, stay true, stay obedient, and serve mankind. I fail on a daily basis, but I am sold out on Jesus Christ, so my failures are transformed into opportunities. I’m His servant, and because of that I can serve others. Trust the Word of God. Believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sins. You will find yourself blessed in ways that were previously unimaginable.
