← Just A Moment
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- [00:01]
Brant Menzwar
Hi, I'm Brant Menzwar and welcome to my show Just a Moment. As a former world touring musician turned keynote speaker and author, I've experienced my.
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Share of life altering moments that have both broken me and propelled me forward. How you leverage those moments or push through them will define your destiny. Each week on my show, I'll provide tools on how to maximize those moments as well as interview some of the.
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Most successful entrepreneurs, entertainers and athletes on how the power of a single moment changed their life.
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Join me to learn how to change what's possible for your life. It'll take just a moment.
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Brian Olson
What's up friends?
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Brant Menzwar
This week our guest is my old friend and former touring partner, Brian Olson. The 49 year old rocker who proved it's never too late to chase the spotlight. From a childhood marked by resilience to fronting his band Voda, touring with the Newsboys and weathering personal heartbreak, Brian's journey led to an unexpected stage. NBC's the Voice Hear how he turned a blind audition into a career defining moment. And why sharing the stage with his daughter made it unforgettable.
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Brian Olson
I'm Brian Olson and this is my moment. I was born in Hartford, Connecticut. My parents got pregnant with me as teenagers. 17 years old. My dad's off the scene for many years after that. So my mom was always trying to get a better place for us which was mainly apartments. All throughout my childhood. I feel like I've been to about nine to 11 schools growing up. Eventually in high school she was able to afford her first house with my stepdad. But I've lived all over Hartford, East Hartford, West Hartford, Enfield, Connecticut, up and then till college is when I left. My mom was a postal worker and then my dad thought that that's a good job too. So he became one. And my aunt was one, was like my brother was one. I thought, I think I even considered at one time in high school I was like, I guess my whole family's going postal. Maybe I should consider it. I would ride my Matchbox cars to the record player like I'm going to a concert and listen to my grandmother's Elvis records. And my mom had an extensive collection. I just remember just sitting there and like hearing Bohemian Rhapsody for the first time and just being blown away and just all because of music was there. Even though my mom, I think she kind of lost that spirit to listen to a lot of music, but she had so much music and I just started diving in, what's this treasure? And listening to all the stuff that she had so Definitely a huge imagination. But what happened with my mom having to work the post office she worked was called dog time, which was like starting at noon, going to midnight. So I would go to school and a taxi cab would be waiting for me at my apartment to take my brother and I to my grandmother's in Harvard, Hartford, where she worked at a restaurant. And we basically would spend every day with my grandmother, go to sleep, and my mom would pick us up at midnight every night in our pajamas and take us back home. So we get back up to go to school the next day. It was an odd childhood, but I really liked it because in the inner city of Hartford, when it wasn't a suburban neighborhood, so it was a lot of city kids, we'd play Miami Vice. These buildings were like roaches were crawling in the hallways, so it looked legit. And I had all the toy guns that we played with and. And so when my mom was able to buy that first house, I was actually depressed because it was like there was no kids my age. She was all happy, thinking she was doing the best for us. But I was like, I missed the city. You know, growing up as a city kid was, was fun. It was a little dangerous. I had my bike stolen from me twice while riding it in the city and one time while I wasn't riding it. But yeah, if you saw two kids riding a bike together like one on the back pegs, you're like, you knew that they were out to go steal someone's bag. And I got caught up in that a couple times. But overall I leaned in and I felt like I had a good childhood.
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Brant Menzwar
Unconventional upbringing aside, Brian made the best of the hand he was dealt and found himself fostering his creativity through the medium of music. However, a crisis of faith would stall the full on pursuit of his passions.
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Brian Olson
There was nothing until music came along that stood out as like, this is my thing. And what was weird about that is it was my thing. But then I got invited, like Baptist church youth group at 13, and rock and roll was a sin. So I turned in all my Van Halen CDs and tapes. Looking back, it was good because. And it did broaden my horizons for music. So I started listening to classical and really just searching for joy of music in different genres. But it was this weird thing during kind of high school, early college, wanting to be in a band, wanting to play electric guitar, that not really being something that was considered what God approved of. I went to Bible college in Wisconsin, in the middle of the woods somewhere, to be like a Youth path. It was in that third year. It's like, you know what? I. This doesn't seem right. Doesn't seem like something that is that important to God or that he's against. So it was kind of in my early 20s where I started to think that no, I think I can bring music and rock and roll and drums back into my life. And that's when I started writing more and joined my first band. I was actually the guitarist. I only had written a couple songs, I wasn't the lead singer. And I was in Lincoln, Nebraska. And the rest of the band members that I met were in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, which was about a six and a half, seven hour drive. I would drive there and we would practice and then try to get a gig here and there. And it was crazy. It was like, what are you doing? We were just doing originals. It wasn't even like we were a cover band where we can get hired for something. But eventually all those guys moved to Lincoln and the lead singer took like a really good full time job. Like, dude, you can't do the band with this job. And so then I stepped in as the lead singer and songwriter and that became the band name casting Pearls. And we just did as much as we could try to get our music out to labels and stuff like that. And it slowly escalated over time until the opportunity with Newsboys came because they owned a record label, label called N Pop and they were looking at signing us. So I was talking to them quite a bit, got to open a couple of their shows, they saw us at a festival and things like that and that. Then I got the call to actually join them on the road as their guitarists. And that was the first time that I felt like I was taken seriously with music. I still stayed in Nebraska, which was great. They would fly me out to shows. I had a young family at the time, I had two young kids and one on the way. And matter of fact, the day I got the Newsboys offer was the same day my wife found out she was pregnant with our third. Like it was a crazy day. And so they were very gracious in not trying to uproot our family and get us all to Nashville, which would have been great for me. I mean, I always wanted to be there, but I had a sense that my wife would have just would have been on an island by herself with nobody she knew, no support, no family to help. So it just became apparent to the band after. And I was with them for three years, but I was still pursuing my music in the Studio putting an album out. They eventually were like, we want someone who's not pursuing their own music, someone who's here in Nashville and we don't want to do that to you. We don't want to make you stop what you're doing and uproot you. And that was tough because at the time with Newsboys, they were flying in a private jet. All my stuff was getting set up for me. Every concert was always full. And then jumping back in the van and trying to figure out how we're going to do music is a wake up call for sure. I always felt like I gotta see what my music can do.
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Brant Menzwar
Brian's new reality was far from private jets and sold out concerts as he worked on forming a band that suited his vision for the future. But in order to realize that vision.
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He had to get creative.
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Brian Olson
Nothing came easy to us. We had a few breaks. John Rivers, who was like a morning host of Caleb at the time, was a big friend and fan of Newsboys and I was out in Texas with them. We both were in a van and John was like, I want to hear the new casting Pearls album. And he loved it and he started playing it on Caleb. And that was a nice boost for us. But really as a band, we never had some hit singles or record that's just catapulted us to another level. So we always had to think strategically and creatively. And one of the things that we did early right away, early on is started to do school assembly. We took on this girl, Crystal Miller, who survived Columbine. She was in the library where most of the violence took place. Place hiding under the only table where someone wasn't killed or injured. It was actually the table that they were loading their guns and stuff is pretty crazy. And so we came up with the 180 Tour where we would go into public high schools nationally and encourage students in their character and decision making and then just have an evening concert at night. Obviously in the school we wouldn't really get to share our faith side, but anybody that came out to the evening concert, we would. And so the strategy in that is churches would hire us because we had that capability. And but gosh, man, we worked hard. We would literally do sometimes three assemblies. We brought the full band so we had full sound set up and do an assembly by 8:39 in the morning Lights up in the gym Tear it down, go to another school, setup again, do another one around lunch Tear it down, go to another school, set up again, do another assembly tear it down, go to the Church set up the full sound and lights for the evening concerts. A lot of times we were doing three, four events per day. And it was great because we ended up doing like over 400 of these assemblies across the US over the time that we did that. And it helped us survive. And then one of the other strategies is we just got crazy and figured out like we bought a Tour bus with 12 bunks and high end sound and lights and we would just hire ourselves out to bigger bands, give them a, a rate that they couldn't get anywhere else. And basically part of the deal was hey, we're your opening act. So we would, we'd have 15, 20 minutes to win their audience. So usually these tours what would happen is as I would drive the entire night and usually a bus call, we'd leave by midnight. I Drive about 7:30 in the morning. Then I would go to sleep the entire day, wake up around 6, 6:30pm Wanting coffee and breakfast. Everybody's buzzing for the day and then our set's about to start in half hour, 45 minutes. So it was a really odd sort of thing, but it's how we were able to do it full time. Like we got paid to do that, but we really worked hard to make all that happen.
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Brant Menzwar
Life on the road took its toll. As Brian's band saw success, his personal life came to a crossroads.
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Brian Olson
Life was in a place at that moment that I had never expected or foreseen. You know, my marriage of 24 years had ended. There was always a deep desire in me to continue to do music when I was married. I know that wasn't a desire for my spouse and I was a worship pastor at the time and kind of had a predictable schedule. But now I find myself at, at 49 years old, completely free. I didn't want that freedom. It was hard to go home alone each night. It was the darkest season of my life for sure.
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I remember sitting my kids down on the couch when my wife at the time and I told them that we were divorcing and just a huge feeling of failure as a father and stuff like that. My kids needed to see me get back up. They needed to see that, hey, life's gonna, it's gonna throw stuff at us, it's coming. And even in a faith perspective, the idea is not showing. I'm a perfect Christian or human kids be like me. It's when the bad things happen. When and even if you have the courage enough to share your weaknesses even with your kids and your mistakes, to dare to do that. I think has been good. It's allowed them to share more with me. And they can see part of the legacy is, you know what? Dad kept swinging, he got back up.
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You can't just stay in that state of despair forever. I have the ability now. My kids are young adults. What do I want to lean into?
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Brant Menzwar
Brian soon got his answer, although not one he was expecting.
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Brian Olson
So then my drummer, my. My bandmate sends me this invitation to the Voice, which I've never ever tried out for any reality show singing competition ever. Never was on my radar that I could even maybe do that or be good at it. So I get that invite and I go, why not? Let's give it a shot. And I was almost like flippantly as a joke, I didn't tell my drummer I was going to do it because I wouldn't have done it had I had to go to some arena and wait in line for 14 hours with a bunch of teenagers for my turn to audition. I would have just been like, nah, I'm not doing that. But when he said, they do it online now. You can do schedule, like a zoom, supposed to give it a shot. And it just kept snowballing from there. I would do a 90 second cut and I got an email. Two hours later, this is happening.
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Brant Menzwar
Even though Brian was a seasoned pro, the reality TV audition process brought some insecurities to light. Insecurities that were quickly dispelled by his success on the show.
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Brian Olson
I did have those voices in my head. This isn't for you. This is for the youngsters. But you look at who's on shows like that, it's sometimes they're 14, 15 years old and they're insanely talented.
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I'm like, what am I doing?
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But I just at least overcame that and said, look, there's no harm in giving this a try. So they said, we love this 90 second version. Do a full version of that song and pick two other songs. And at that point I was like, oh, crap. They had very specific instructions for like, we want you to use your phone here, set it in landscape mode, do this. And this is exactly how we want to do it. No edits. You can do however you want, have instrumentalists help you and all that sort of thing. So what I decided to do is I then called my friend John. I'm like, all right, I took you up on your request and here's what happened. And so him and I got together and put three cover songs that we were used to doing together. And so he was on kind of keys and cajon I played guitar. We got those three songs and sent them, and they're like, great. We love these. You're moving to the. The next phase, which was an hour long, like, zoom interview with one of the casting agents. And at that moment, I think because of the season of my life and. And coming out of that really difficult time, my word for the year was authenticity. And I dared to, like, you know what? Just be you and let's see what happens. And kind of a, for me, of a dangerous thing, thinking about the voice, because I was thinking, okay, this is Hollywood, and what are they going to do and what are they going to. How they're going to exploit my story and stuff. But I was really candidly too open on everything that happened, details as to, like, how my marriage fell apart, all.
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This sort of stuff. I just.
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It was almost like I was talking to a counselor. I was just typing everything and just.
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You know, what, Whatever.
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And so I was really open and candid about what was going on in my life because of my divorce. The church that I had worked at as a. I was a worship pastor for 10 years. They let me go. So I lost that job for that reason. They sent a letter out to the congregation that I disqualified myself from ministry and stuff like that. So that went out to a thousand.
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People in my mind. I'm like, what are.
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What are people going to think and what's going to happen here? But those people weren't my true community. I'm thankful that when things really got rough, you find out who your friends are. But in. In a strange way, this kind of being, not alone, but being free from that. I didn't have to ask permission from anyone to be authentic and to be me. And for the first time, I was actually really trying to find out who I was. I was in Nashville working on our new album for Vota and got the call from the casting agent, and she said, congratulations, we're inviting you out to LA for the blind auditions. I heard like 30,000 people tried out, and they flew, like, 90 to LA. And I'm one of those. And so this is pretty amazing.
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Brant Menzwar
The day of Brian's blind audition came, and he knew from the second he stepped onto the soundstage, the weight of this moment had the capability to catapult him forward or end his career.
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Brian Olson
I've been a musician now 49 years old. I've been on stages with the newsboys in front of thousands, and I don't usually get nervous. This 90 second clip of the song, I have to say, it feels Like, I've been preparing for it for months, and so it's just, like, looming over you. They don't introduce you by name. It's like 10 seconds till our next contestant.
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Cameras are all around you.
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They open the big metal doors and there's no applause. There's a studio audience, but they're instructed to be completely silent. All I can hear is my boots as I'm walking toward the microphone. And so I just remember feeling if I mess up now, all this work in this 90 seconds can just totally go away. And obviously, it went really well.
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But I remember going back to my.
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Hotel room and just laying on the floor thanking God for such a great moment. I remembered how heavy life was not too long before that. And I think in a. In a strange way, that helped me on this journey with the voice because I just didn't. I didn't see such joyous moments coming, especially when I was deep in the valley.
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Had I not left the newsboys, had I not worked so hard to do my own thing and become a front man and keep singing and keep writing and develop my style in a voice, I wouldn't have been ready for that moment. And strangely enough, had I still been married and full time at a church, I wouldn't have been ready either because I think I would have been very guarded as to being my true self. But now I had this freedom. It's like, why not dare to be a little bit more authentic and real here and not worry about what some people are going to think? It's Perfect season at 49 for all this to come together. I think any other time in life, it just wouldn't have been right.
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Brant Menzwar
Brian, thank you so much for being on just a moment. What an incredible story. What an incredible moment you've had when you thought maybe this opportunity had passed you in your life. And then you get on the show and you have a moment that's actually facilitated by your daughter. How did that work in this particular case?
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Brian Olson
So I have three kids, but the way the voice work, you're able to have two people. So thinking through that, obviously, I don't love my daughter more than my boys, but boys, they don't like to be on camera. And my daughter's a singer. And I'm like, you know, I think the best option, rather than choosing which son I'm going to take is I think I feel like I'm just supposed to take my daughter for this moment. And that was huge because had I taken one other person, the moment that. That. That opened up for my daughter. And I wouldn't have happened, but somewhere in there, Dan and Shea was like, they saw my daughter. And they're like, who's here with you? That's my daughter. Like, well, bring her up here. So she comes up, and then Dan and Shea said something like this music run in the family. Because the edited version looks like I'm trying to push my daughter to sing, which wasn't happening at all. They're like, does music run in the family? And I'm like, yeah, my daughter sings, too. And they're like, what would you guys sing something together? And I'm like, seriously? And so I just hand the mic to my daughter. You can hear the band in the background. But that's not how it played out. They had no idea this was happening or what she was about to do. So I handed to her, and she starts singing that Corinne Bailey Ray song a cappella. And by the time she gets to the chorus, the band, they're so dope. They just jumped right in. And it was such an incredible moment that afterwards, my daughter and I, we just went out to celebrate because I couldn't believe what had just happened.
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I was like, what?
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I'm on Team John Legend and usang up there. And it was so awesome. That was one of the best moments of my life.
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Brant Menzwar
Is there a moment that you wish you could get back to, to either relive it or perhaps approach it differently or something that's gnawed at you for a long time? With what you know now and the success that you've had, you would approach it differently.
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Brian Olson
My mom passed suddenly at 60 years old several years back, and she suffered severe anxiety and depression, and she lived on her own. I tried to move her out to Nebraska, and I wish I tried harder. I wish I took a few more moments with her because I always assumed she was going to be around longer. I feel like all the worst moments, I feel that I would love to change now that I look at him.
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Goes, I don't know.
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Think it's all part of the story. It's all part of the journey. God wants our authentic heart, right? He wants us just to cry out in our anger, cry out in our frustration. And when my family fell apart, my divorce happened. There's things that I did during that time where I got angry at God and I made some mistakes when all that was going. And as much as I'd love to take that back, I wish I never got angry at God. We can't escape failure. We can't escape sometimes just making poor decisions. It's going to happen sometimes, especially under pressure. Those are the moments I was thinking of, do I really want to take that back? And now I'm like, I don't think I want to take those back. I think they need to stay in place.
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Brant Menzwar
I think you're right, man. And that's part of why we asked that question. Because ultimately there's not a lot you can do about these moments that have passed us. It's up to us to. To take advantage of that moment when it happens. Right? What are we going to do? Are we prepared for it when you finally get your shot? Are you going to be prepared to do what's necessary? And I think that's the opportunity that you have now, right? You've been able to experience something that very few people have had the opportunity to, but be able to share it in such a way that it has incredible impact on others and their dreams and what they hope for and belief of what's possible. No matter how long you've done something, what age you are, none of that that matters if you can hold on to hope hard enough to believe that it's possible. Listen, man, where should we point people to be able to stay in touch? I know you've got some exciting things happening in your life post Voice and so where's the best place for people to keep up with what's happening with you?
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Brian Olson
I'll have to tell you, I. I wasn't on socials much before this and before the Voice thing, and I've got help with that now. And so my name Brian Olson. You can find me on, on Instagram, Facebook and, and TikTok and such. But. And then my band is Vota V O T A band dot com.
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Brant Menzwar
Thank you for joining us on this episode of Just a Moment.
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Make sure to subscribe to our podcast and tell a friend or two about.
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It to help spread the word so.
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Everyone can find a moment that inspires them. Don't forget to leave us a review and don't check us out on the.
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Web@Justamomentpodcast.Com Just a Moment is produced by Natalie Von Rose and Brandt Menzoir. For more inspiring shows like this, visit surroundpodcasts.com.