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- [00:01]
John Mark McMillan
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- [00:29]
Dr. Dan Koch
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John Mark McMillan
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Dr. Dan Koch
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John Mark McMillan
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Dr. Dan Koch
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John Mark McMillan
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- [00:58]
Dr. Dan Koch
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John Mark McMillan
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- [01:05]
Dr. Dan Koch
Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data.
- [01:09]
John Mark McMillan
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- [01:19]
Dr. Dan Koch
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- [01:24]
John Mark McMillan
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Dr. Dan Koch
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- [01:55]
John Mark McMillan
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- [01:58]
Dr. Dan Koch
By Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes Massachusetts. Welcome back everybody to Religion on the Mind, the show focusing on the intersection of psychology with religion and spirituality. I'm Dr. Dan Koch, licensed therapist and spiritual abuse researcher. And actually John since John Mark, that's what we that's what I call you. Yep, since our last since our last chat I did officially get my your degree has been conferred email. So the paperwork has been sorted out and I am officially Dr. Dan. Feels good your first time on with the new name Religion on the Mind. But you've been on you have permission the old name a couple times. We'll have links to those in the show Notes. I love having you on. Your career has been really interesting to me and is an interesting fit for this conversation and my own background. Because you started out squarely within the contemporary Christian music industry, you were never like fully comfortable fit in that world and a lot of the ways that you have Pushed the boundaries artistically and lyrically and thematically throughout your career, have been. Have sort of put you on my radar and made you a really fun conversation partner, a really rich conversation partner. And so I'm excited to continue that today. Except today we got a real different angle here, which is basically, John Mark McMillan is quitting. That's not totally correct. That's an overstatement. But it's kind of like that. You've made these announcements. You just wrapped up your final tour as a touring musician indefinitely. Right. So I asked you if you'd be willing to give me a Religion on the Mind exclusive interview and kind of talk through all of this stuff. I figured it might. Might even help you to have a place to process it. I know I'll be interested in all of this stuff because of my music background, along with any of the sort of psychological and religion spirituality themes that might come up here today. So thanks for agreeing to this. It's good to see you.
- [04:23]
John Mark McMillan
Well, thank you. It's also good to call you doctor. I saw the email and I was like, doctor. Dr. Dan.
- [04:28]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [04:29]
John Mark McMillan
Can we call you Dr. Dan? Do you like Dr. Dan?
- [04:31]
Dr. Dan Koch
I've got a lot of ambivalence about Dr. Dan. It is both. It feels both inevitable and disgusting to me. And, like, should I just embrace it? I go back and forth. So I. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I don't know where I'm at in the stages of change or acceptance around the moniker of Dr. Dan. So let's start a little bit, like. Just give us, like, a broad, real basic sweep here. So you've been. For how many years has John Mark McMillan, recording artist, been, let's just put it this way, been your primary source of income? Because that tells us sort of if it's been kind of your main gig, like, how many years has that been?
- [05:18]
John Mark McMillan
My wife and I quit our jobs in 2006, and we were working for a church, and the church brought us up on the stage when we quit our jobs. And they're very sweet. They prayed for us, and they took up an offering, and they took up a $4,000, $4,000 offering, which, that's still good money. But back then, that was huge money for us. I put that money in the bank, and I told my wife, I said, if I ever need to touch this money, then I'm gonna go look for a job. Because, you know, the four grand, especially at the time, could keep us going for a couple months. And I have a couple months to find a job. And so we came very close to touching that money, but I never did so since 2006 and I mean, we got real close sometimes. But yeah, in 2006 we left our jobs. I bought a conversion van and we went out on the road and did the thing. Very much like you would imagine, selling CDs literally out of the. I want to call it a trunk, but you know, conversion van doesn't really have a trunk. You just open those two back doors back. Yeah, literally sold CDs out of the back. I mean, it's like, it's the thing, I guess in the 90s we heard about all the time you quit your job and you bought a van, you went out on the road. That's what we did in 06. And that's been my primary source of income is from all the ways you make money in music. But touring, selling albums, downloads, a little bit from streaming concert tickets, of course, concert tickets, all of that stuff. So, yeah, so that's a. We're coming up on 2026, so that would make it right at 20 years.
- [06:58]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, I mean, this conversation is more about you than me, but 2004 is when we got in our 15 passenger van and started selling our self funded, self titled EP out of the van and in malls and outside at the line in the morning at Warped Tour, when everybody's captive, the true believers are there at 8:30am and that was the beginning of our career. I did that full time for about eight years, couple year break finishing college and then I found commercial composition for another 10 or so. So I also was a professional musician for most of 20 years. Although as may come up, as we do talk about sort of the financial side of this a little bit, like, it's hard to make a living as a recording artist. I found it. To say I found it easier to make a living as a commercial composer would be the overstatement of the year. It was sort of like trying to live on Top Ramen. Like in college, if you're in a season where all you can eat is Top Ramen. And then like the next week, for whatever reason, in some sort of social experiment, hello Fresh is dropped off to your door three times a day and somebody gives you a $150 Uber Eats gift certificate. That's the difference between how I experienced it in Sherwood and how I experienced it as a commercial composer. Because one of the factors here is that, and people who love music know this, we don't have to spend a ton of time on this. But you know, Spotify Streams. It's a meme now how little money you make from people simply listening to your music in the standard way that most people listen to music today. It's true that now anybody can theoretically listen to it. So you have a much further reach, which can be better, you know, especially if you're really a touring act. And like, you know, it's really. You're making your money on ticket sales. Well, you just kind of want to cast as wide of a net as possible so that people will come pay $40 to see you. And it doesn't really matter if you made 0.1 cent or, or 2 cents on that stream, really, you're living off the $40 concert ticket. But for people more our age, 40s, people in their 30s, even older people, have families, that becomes like, just not as ideal of a way to make a living. I've talked about this since I stopped touring, feeling for friends of mine who had been more successful and that that had meant that they spent less time with their kids. Like, ultimately I found a different job than can hang with my kids. So, like, that all that stuff is in there. Like, I don't want to spend a lot of time on the finances, but is there anything to add there? Like, before we kind of get into.
- [09:52]
John Mark McMillan
More of the meat with touring? There's two major problems with touring right now. Three. Three major problems. I'll lay it out real quick so it doesn't get too, too, too dense. Right. For the people who don't care about.
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Dr. Dan Koch
Give us a table.
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John Mark McMillan
I don't blame you if you don't.
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Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [10:07]
John Mark McMillan
But number one is that because there's not money in the recorded media anymore, really. You know, maybe in some little ways there are, but. And you know, and people find little niches that might work, but, you know, the, the money is to be made on the road for 99% of successful musicians. Right. And so that means they're all out there doing it. Right. So, like, I wanted to do a home. My last show was going to be in my hometown. I wanted to do it on a Friday night because Friday night, other things people don't think about. A Friday night show is better than a Tuesday night show. And so you want to play your big shows. I mean, you do what you can. Like if we're in a city and I can only play New York on Thursday, on Tuesday, that's great. It's fine. But, you know, but when you can, you want those big shows to be on the weekend. And it was the last show, hometown, I wanted On a Friday. We couldn't get a Friday because there were 16 holds on the room.
- [11:00]
Dr. Dan Koch
And in all my years toying, I've heard three holds. And that was for something, you know, a month or two out. And that's like. That's kind of tough. Or maybe you might have that more like five months out or something like that, where, you know, bigger artists are, like, trying to. But, like, 16 holds means there's no way.
- [11:20]
John Mark McMillan
16. Yeah. No way. It would take six weeks just to challenge all 16 holds. Like, yeah. And there's no way you would get through all of them. Someone would pull the trigger and take the show. 16 holds. So that's outrageous. That gives you an idea of how many bands are on the road. So, like, overall, there's technically more money on the road than there's ever been. Not because there's more money available. Excuse me. There's more money being made on the road than ever. But it's because all the bands are out there doing it. So your share of that, more than ever, is a lot smaller. And there's a lot more competition. So people have been trained to not see an urgency in shows. I mean, you do have your, you know, people always want to bring up, like, Taylor Swift or Oasis. And I'm like, that's really not the same. You're talking about the top of the top of the top, the.0001%. You're not talking about, you know, even the top 10% of artists. You're talking about the tip, tip top. But for most artists, even really, really successful ones, I don't want to call it competition, because it's not even necessarily competition, as much as people are just apathetic about it. Like, if I'm coming through town, they'll go see it, but if they miss me, it's not a big deal because someone awesome is coming through next week. It's, you know, and it's not nothing to be angry at. As a consumer, that's great. It just means there's great opportunities for you all the time. But for me, what it means is it's really, really hard to sell the same amount of tickets that I used to sell. We still can. It's just so much more work. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is that it's twice as expensive to tour now. So if our margins were at a certain level, right, like, the margin's really small. I mean, I can make a decent living off a small margin. If you're making. If you're bringing in 10, $15,000 a night. I don't have to make much of that personally to do well. But if the. If your cost is so close, it's like, yeah, like, I take home a few thousand dollars a night. That's incredible. But it doesn't take long for those few thousand dollars to get gobbled up by a $3,000 bus, you know, $3,000 bus bill. You know, I think we spent six or $7,000 on hotels, just mostly to shower and for the driver. It's just like, everything goes up. All the band guys, they live in a city that's more expensive to live in now, twice as more expensive than it was, you know, just four years ago. So I obviously need to pay them more. Everything is more expensive. And so what happens is the combination of you're selling a little bit fewer tickets, but it's twice as expensive to tour, and then it's twice as hard. That'd be the final thing, is that it's twice as hard to connect with people and let them know you're coming through town. It's almost a meme for me and the band guys. I'm like, I get this DM once a week, and literally it's like once a week. And it goes like this, hey, why do you never come to Chicago? And I'm like, I literally was just in Chicago. And you don't know, and it's not your fault.
- [14:17]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:17]
John Mark McMillan
You don't know it's not your fault. But it's just. What it means is it used to be I could post a couple of times and everyone would see it. Everyone who followed me, if they were online, would see it, and they would at least know that I'm coming. Now I have to work so hard to make sure that people see it, and they need to see it more than once. I don't think people always know how marketing works. Yeah. Your favorite band of all time, like, if Bob Marley was resurrected from the dead and I saw that he was playing a show, I would only have to see that one time to know that I wanted to go. But for most of us, you gotta see it four or five times before you talk to the wife and you get the babysitter and you're like, what's going on that night of the week? Do we have soccer practice? Does Jude have a jazz thing going on that night? Yeah, you know, before you actually pull the trigger, you know? And so to get that in front of people multiple times in the day of algorithmic content, it just becomes a unbelievable, unreasonable amount of Work just to step up to the plate, just to let people know you're actually playing. So the combination of those three things has made touring not impossible, because there are ways to do it. I'm not saying I couldn't make it. What I'm saying is it's a whole lot more work and a whole lot more stress for a lot less money. And so it's sort of like I'm weighing out, like, is it worth being gone a lot for a lot less money and a lot more stress? And I come home and I'm a shell of a human for my kids and my wife, and I'm like, is it worth it? Cause, you know, anything worth doing is hard. And music has never been easy. It's always hard. But anything worth doing is hard. But it's just been the balancing act of, like, how much money do I need to make in order to put up with all the stress? You know? And, I mean, I would tour for free if it was just like, if all I had to do was rehearse and climb on the bus and travel and set up and sound check and play, like, I would. I would just. I would do that, like, vacation. The problem is the. In order to do that, I got to spend 6 to 12 weeks marketing to make sure human bodies are going to be in the room. Otherwise, I'm paying that $3,000, you know, bus bill out of my pocket. And yeah, I know that sounds.
- [16:39]
Dr. Dan Koch
And there's only four. There's only 4,000 in the bank from the commission because. Because unfortunately, you just put it in a money market account. It didn't grow anything over those 19 years. Well, there's a psychological question here or angle here, because I remember being in a similar position. Some things are different. I was much younger, you know, newly married, no kids yet. But, you know, you've been sort of obliquely referencing the recent economic conditions since COVID the inflation which has. And then also inflationary and other costs from, like, Trump's tariffs and stuff like that. But I'm thinking the main thing is sort of like post Covid inflation and all this stuff. And we went through, with Sherwood, a very similar thing. We went through the financial crisis and the housing crisis and that kind of mini recession in 2008. 9. And what we found then was. And, you know, it's differences between the industries, but we were really reliant on T shirt sales because we were like a high schooler, college kid, emo band, and T shirt sales were, you know, especially if we weren't headlining if we're opening up, you know, so we opened up like at the very height of this pre recession. We're opening up for Reliant K at the Nokia Theater in Times Square. We're playing for, you know, depending on how full the room is, three, four thousand people, maybe up to five. And that night, I remember we sold $7,500 in T shirts in one night. You all of a sudden fast forward two years later to like the same type of tour in 2009. If we could get that big of a room because probably it's a smaller room because we're in a bit of a recession. So the headlining band has also taken a hit and what they can do now we're playing to a thousand people, two thousand people even if we're opening up like for Hanson or something. But those, the merch money has for the opening band, maybe the person has 25 bucks for their Hanson T shirt, but they're not going to get a Sherwood T shirt also. And so we found that, let's say the economy contracted by 10% or something. Our take home pay after all our expenses, manager, booking agent, paying for the T shirts, all the transportation costs, health insurance, cell phone, food, after all that stuff, our margin like our, our take home probably was like cut into a third in those early years of the recession. And we made it till the end of 2010. But the sort of writing was on the wall, the momentum was going the wrong direction. Okay, finally to the psychological element here. I remember feeling, you know, it really increased my pessimism, it increased my frustration with the things about touring and being in a band that I didn't love. You know, like if you have a, if you have a tough show, a show that's smaller, significantly smaller than you thought it was going to be. If something goes wrong technically these are things that when tour's going well, you know, you can, you could kind of skate over them because there's other stuff to fill in and make you feel good when things are getting harder and tighter. I mean, I'm thinking like you're, you're having to be basically a one man marketing team and the singer, songwriter and the front man for the show. And you're feeling pressure to talk to people at the merch table afterward because you know that that will increase sales but you also don't want to talk to them too long because that will keep people who are in line for. I mean I'm bringing in stuff from my own experience and assuming it's true here, just like that it just adds up. You know, I would just think that that would be. That it would be wearing down on you. Not to mention now you've got the videos coming in from your wife, of your kids and stuff like that, which I didn't have to deal with at that time and sort of missing them and all of that. I mean, am I in the ballpark here?
- [20:43]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, definitely, 100%. So when we talk about it being financial, it's not like, oh, John, Mark's not making enough money. I have other things going on. I'm able to do some other things to make money, but it's more like doing okay financially relieves a lot of stress because it's sort of like, you know, when you're out and you like, you take a lighting package out, someone dropped a light. I'm like, God, I'm like, someone throws a mic stand. I was like, a mic stand is $100. Do that 10 times and that's like $1,000. And like, that is the type of stuff when you're so tight that you're thinking about all the time. And I know every. And you know, it's not Woe is me. Everyone deals with this. But when you're. You're basically own a small business, you're an entrepreneur, right? As an independent, someone even not an independent artist, you basically operate as an entrepreneur. And so you're like, I hate being on the road. And one of my band guys does something dumb and breaks a microphone. I don't want to. That's just the road. Because stuff breaks, right? And you pay for it. But when things are tight, so all of those little things. And then the other thing is, like, I think really, okay, for me, the kicker was going into the tour, I had the whole summer with my family and I didn't enjoy any of it. I didn't enjoy the summer at all. By the end of the summer, normally I love the tour and I look forward to it for the most part. I mean, everyone gets a little bit tired of their job and they're like, ah, this is a lot of work. You're going back to work on Monday, whatever. There's a little bit of that. But for the most part, like, I love touring. I love playing with my band. They're my best friends. We have a blast. I love the people who show up. It's outrageously meaningful. We have this connection. It's beautiful. But this summer, like, I didn't enjoy any time with my family at all. Because my brain was like, you know, this one, these set of shows are selling really, really poorly right now and they're going to suck all the money out of the other shows and I'm not going to make any money. I'm going to leave for a whole month and I'm going to come home. I'm going to have to figure out how to make money another way when I get home or I'm going to have to figure out how to sell these shows. And like, you know, there's that thing where like I can DM pastors in every city and be like, hey, will you please talk about my show? And they'll probably all do it, but it's just like there's literally at every minute of every day there's something I could be doing to sell two more tickets. And it's hard to stop and be like, I'm trying to eat dinner with the family. But I'm also like, I really could be posting something. I could work this angle. And I was like, at a point you're like, okay, if I have to work this hard to make it work, then like at a point it's like, is it really worth it in the long run? You know, And I. And so like it really wasn't as bad as I'm making it out to be. But I think being 45 plays into it. Having three kids thinking about they're only a few years away from going to college.
- [23:30]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, yeah.
- [23:31]
John Mark McMillan
You know, and there is sort of this existential thing of like, I love these shows but I feel like I'm playing the same size clubs I've always played and there's. And that's fine. But I was for a while, like things need to bump up just a little bit just to make sure that I can continue to sustain what we're doing. I want to pay the guys that work so hard. Unbelievably, it's unreal how hard they work. I think most people have no idea how hard my band guys work. You know, they're loading out at 2 in the morning every night, then they go shower, you know, so people think we're riding around the bus and it's great. But you know, they're, they're working 12 hour days. They deserve more money than I can pay them.
- [24:13]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [24:13]
John Mark McMillan
And you know, there's all those kinds of things where you just like that.
- [24:16]
Dr. Dan Koch
Also is where the age really matters. Because yeah, when you're 25 and you're on tour, everyone else is fucking 25 too. You know, you're all, everybody there is in some sense a Lost Boy, whether they are a man or woman doing our Peter Pan thing, you know, for a while. And. And we sort of, you know, it's interesting. It would be interesting to be able to go back and really ask people, like, how many of them anticipated still doing this 10 years later. And I think most of us did not. I remember assuming that emo would just go the way of ska. And like, I was not anticipating when we were young and best friends forever fest, like selling out fairgrounds in Las Vegas year after year after year. And. And like evo cruises and all this shit that has now, there is in fact, a market for that as the audience there gets more expendable income and stuff. That's like nostalgia. It's like the bands that play. It's like the bands. It's like Fog hat playing the casinos, you know, like, there is gonna be that apparently now for millennials and whatever. So that's. That's interesting. I obviously didn't go that. I didn't go that route, but maybe to bring in faith a little bit, here I am assuming, and tell me what I need to know here, that this has been for you in part a response to a call to ministry, which is language that pastors and Christian songwriters and I've used this language, I believe. My initial podcasting career was in part a response to a call to ministry. I've had to rethink my feeling like I should do psychology and become a therapist. I actually have had to do work to reconceptualize. In what way might this still be a positive response to a call to ministry? There are some differences, man. I charge a hell of a lot more than pastors do. And so there are ways in which I really can't think about it as ministry and then ways that I can. And that's been an interesting and somewhat fraught personal psychological process. I'm just curious what's going on on those lines for you? Is that. Have you thought through that found language for that anything?
- [26:40]
John Mark McMillan
Yes, totally. And I do want to throw out there for listeners that I'm not throwing music out of my life completely. It's not like I'm just walking away. There's just certain. It's just moving to more of a side quest. You might see me out on the road doing a handful of shows with some friends. I actually have one buddy I was supposed to do two shows with, which he's great. I love him. We were just gonna do them well for fun. But also, I think they'll be beneficial. I think Fans would like it. But also, it's like, I'm not gonna not go out with my best friend and do some shows. His team got pumps. They wanna do like 12. I'm like, well, that sounds a little bit like a tour, but I'm probably not gonna turn it down. Cause hanging out with my buddy Josh on the road is going to be the most fun thing in the universe. So there's still some of that type of thing I'm doing, but. And I'll still write and record, but it's all. It's going to be a side quest, you know, at least for a while. You know, I can change my mind at some point if it's a dumb idea, but I felt so, you know, let me use some other language you don't probably don't hear a lot on your podcast is I felt like there was a moment, and I want to say that. I want to say God spoke to me. It wasn't like an audible voice of God or anything, but I don't know if you have those times in your life where something internally says something and you listen and you're like, you are so right. I don't know where that idea came from or where that thought came from, but it changes. And I would say that's from God. Right?
- [28:01]
Dr. Dan Koch
That's the way I say basically when I say when I feel like I have gotten some directionality from God or the particular language that I felt like, oh, that's what the call to ministry is. You know, it was a thought that I had. It wasn't a voice, but it was accompanied by what the mystics call consolation, spiritual consolation. What I would describe as a therapist as like a flooding of neurotransmitters throughout my body. More poetically, I've described it as like feeling like a reservoir, an underground reservoir of joy has burst into the present. And these are different ways of describing what is likely the same thing. And so I'm comfortable using either kind of psychological, medical language or spiritual language for it. How dare you assume that because I say fuck and shit that we don't talk about God here? John Mark. Fuck you for that. For that criticism and judgment. No, no. But, no, you're right. We don't get, as. It's definitely not sort of mainstream Christian language going on here very often.
- [29:13]
John Mark McMillan
Well, I guess what I'm coming from is I come from a background where people regularly said God told them to do things. And sometimes those things, we're a little skittish.
- [29:22]
Dr. Dan Koch
We're a little skittish. About that here at Religion on the Mind, myself and the listeners. But the way that you're describing it is kind of the way that I would describe my own experiences.
- [29:31]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, but I felt like I felt this voice ask me this question. You know, people go through midlife and we have these moments where, you know, like an identity, we call it an identity. Right. Ultimately an identity. I mean, this is from my perspective being like not at all a trained therapist or psychologist, but I think in general an identity is an illusion. We project about who we are in the world. Maybe illusion is not the right word, but it's. I would project.
- [30:03]
Dr. Dan Koch
I would push back on illusion. I think identities are extremely real. Yeah, yeah, I think that. And I'll just, I'll just briefly motivate that by saying, you know, if I've got a client who wants to do something different, let's say they are noticing they've been drinking too much and that they are doing it to self medicate because of, you know, whatever depression about their primary relationship and their work life or something like that. If the thing that they're wanting to do is like maybe go into treatment and they're not sure if they're ready to do that or if they. Whatever. And if there can be a question there about like, okay, John, I was trying to pick a random name and I picked your name. Whoops. Okay. It happens then. I wanted to say, Mark, what the fuck? Apparently I'm in some sort of inception cycle here. Okay, James, like if we can get to who are you? Are you the kind of man who in this instance goes and gets treatment or are you the kind of man who doesn't? And if James can come to see that that is related to his identity, sort of his core self concept, well, that's a pretty long way from an illusion, I would say, because that might be the fuel he needs to go into treatment. And so I do think identities like. I think there's something to the kind of eastern idea that all of our self concepts are illusory. That they are. That they are kind of created in our minds as well as in the sort of shared social mind that we all partake in, in. In some ways. And I also want to push back on too strong of claims about them being illusory or all of it being an illusion from which we simply need to detach because it has real effects in the world. So it's got to be real in some sense. But anyway, that's my take.
- [31:58]
John Mark McMillan
Sure. No, I think that's beautiful. It is probably an overstatement. That's an illusion. I guess my thought is that when I think about myself, I'm never 100% correct. Right. We have these ideas. So illusion maybe is a strong word, but an identity in a lot of ways is this thing we think about ourselves that is maybe not entirely real. And like you said, and this is what I was going to get to, if you can learn to think differently about yourself, you will act differently in the world. And sometimes that's hard.
- [32:28]
Dr. Dan Koch
But that's cbt to me, baby. You think differently, you feel and act differently.
- [32:33]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, it's true. And in midlife they're very real things. Like at 25, I can grind in the van at 25 and I can do it and I can love it. You can drive eight hours a day, show up and load in for two hours, do the hour long vip, do a two hour show, come out and do a half hour encore, go to the merch table afterwards, load out with the guys afterwards, £3 beers, right? Ride, not drive, but ride in the back of the van to the hotel, have a whiskey, go to sleep, get up at 8 in the morning and go do it again. And in your 20s, you could kind of do that. And you can do it five or six days a week for a couple weeks. You hit a wall at some point, but generally in your 40s, like you just can't, you really can't. And I think when you're young, it's hard to imagine that what you're, you can't just do with what you do all the time. Right. So I guess isn't there, by the.
- [33:31]
Dr. Dan Koch
Way, isn't there a parallel there that I think you might have something interesting to say about with any form of ministry and like age and also the kind of this claim that's sort of in the water for people of faith that like through, through God we can do all things that there is this like inexhaustible battery, that power source that we can tap into. And usually we'll call that the Holy Spirit and Christianity, but whatever. Like there is a kind of a, there's a kind of a counterintuitive set of claims about physical and other types of constraints that goes along with spirituality and religion and especially I think, ministry settings that, you know, I was just thinking, oh, that could apply to any number of pastors I know. Like, it can apply to like authors, speakers who are feeling like they're, they're going out on faith and trying something that they feel called to do that like the, the Bookkeeper would be like, hey, buddy, this is not going to pencil out. Like, there's just a larger thing there. Don't you think?
- [34:39]
John Mark McMillan
Yes, I definitely do. I also think it's interesting that how, like, in the Judeo Christian faith, like, rest is, like, in the Ten Commandments.
- [34:49]
Dr. Dan Koch
You know, and all over Jesus's ministry, too.
- [34:52]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, yeah. And so even Jesus, who had supernatural abilities, still valued rest because he knew he was dealing with some sort of economy. Right? There's some sort of economy of energy, economy of thought. You run up against the wall, like. So. Yes, I totally agree. You see it happen a lot with young pastors and young leaders, young CEOs, and oftentimes they make really bad decisions. When you get tired, you make really bad decisions. I mean, that's another thing you could talk about is, like, why people make bad decisions on the road. You're exhausted, you're in a weird part of town, and you're meeting strangers, and, you know, it's like, there's all sorts of. I've been very lucky that all the guys in my band are. Some of them are actual family. We look out for each other, but, you know, there's just. People crash. My daughter wants to call it crashing out. Right? People crash.
- [35:45]
Dr. Dan Koch
People crash out.
- [35:47]
John Mark McMillan
And I think it happens a lot in midlife when you try to do. It's like going to the gym and trying to lift what you used to lift when you were 25, in your 40s, and your brain just is like, you can do this. You always did this. But your body's like, nope, you can't do it. You can't do it. So there is a shift that happens in midlife. There's also some good things that happen, too. And I wonder if things are changing in culture a little bit. Definitely. Growing up, it felt like music was youth culture. You got too old on mtv, you weren't there anymore. Right. You'd age out very quickly. I remember Sheryl Crow talking about how weird it was that she got her record deal, like, in her late 20s, early 30s or something. Like, that was a big deal. I think that's changing somewhat.
- [36:33]
Dr. Dan Koch
She also has, like, the genetics of someone who is always looking 15 years.
- [36:37]
John Mark McMillan
Younger than they are.
- [36:38]
Dr. Dan Koch
So Sheryl Crow is not exactly the rest of us in that respect.
- [36:43]
John Mark McMillan
But I guess my point is, if your identity is in what you could physically accomplish in early life, then you're in really big trouble because you're imagining something that is not real, you know? And so, like, I meaning isn't real is like, I could imagine that I could continue to grind now the way I did in my 20s, but things would not go well. It would be a negative.
- [37:07]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, it's like. It's like being an athlete in that respect. Yeah, Athlete is maybe a stronger version where it's like, dude, you literally cannot be an athlete after 30 unless there are very special circumstances. It's not quite that, but it is true that, like, if you were to plot out the physical age of touring and full time performers, the older you get, the more of them are, like, quite established. The greater percentage of them are like, they can just show up and hang out in the green room for 45 minutes before the set because you get to where you just. Yeah, like, you can't afford to not do the VIP thing, because even though that's only 15% of the crowd, it might end up being 40% of your profit from the show because it's extra cash. And those are the real heads that really want to be there. And then you gotta give them the full set and the encore, and then you gotta talk at the merch table afterward. Now you don't have to pound three beers and a shot of whiskey with your friends. That part is technically an elective. But, like, I'll just speak for myself. I toured for eight years. Seven. Eight years. We played 800 shows. And you, you get habits, like, you get habits formed around it. If you kind of find normal ways to make the workday go just like any other job that you do every day. And then those, you know, some of those habits, like, you know, there aren't. It's not like if you have a job at Amazon, you could be like, hey, can I see the occupational therapist to make sure that my desk and my chair and all the ways I'm doing things are not making my life harder. Maybe they could recommend I use one of the nap pods a couple times a week. Like, there's none of that on tour. There's no OT to come in. You're just like, you're flying and figuring it out as you go. And that's also, you know, creatives are drawn to that, drawn to life with less structure and things like that. But also, speaking for myself as a, I do sort of think of myself as still creative, if not primarily secondarily, but some days I think primarily. And ADHD loves a schedule. Creatives actually do well with schedules.
- [39:25]
John Mark McMillan
I love it.
- [39:26]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, that's interesting.
- [39:27]
John Mark McMillan
I love the structure.
- [39:28]
Dr. Dan Koch
I've taken us a field.
- [39:29]
John Mark McMillan
No, no, I think people from the outside, you would think Tour is wild. It's not. It's the same thing every day. And it's on a piece of ground.
- [39:36]
Dr. Dan Koch
It is Groundhog Day. Yeah.
- [39:37]
John Mark McMillan
And it normally doesn't change much. You know, you might have a show that's like, a little earlier than another show. You know, you might have a little bit of a late load in one day. And even those days, everyone's like, ugh. You know. But it's funny, though, that you learn to really appreciate that structure.
- [39:54]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [39:54]
John Mark McMillan
You know, what happens at every moment.
- [39:56]
Dr. Dan Koch
I went to see the comedian Demetri Martin the other day with some buddies up here in Bellingham, and it was during a festival that we have here every fall. And so there was an evening concert at the theater. And so Dimitri's show was a 5:30pm comedy show. And he. One of his early bits was like. He's like, yeah, normally I like to do like a 3, 3:30pm show. But, you know, they told me Bellingham loves to party, so you're gonna have to. You're gonna have to stay up late tonight. But that threw him off. He was making comments about it because he's used to doing comedy at probably like 8 or 9pm every night. Probably 9, he goes on. That's like, kind of when a really established act will, like, want to take the stage. 9pm Something like that. And he's. And even him, like, having to do that three and a half hours early, it messed with his internal thing enough that he was making, I thought, very funny jokes about it. But I clocked it as someone who had spent a lot of time touring and performing as like, oh, yeah, that would be kind of weird. That is kind of. That was weird for me when I had to do that.
- [41:01]
John Mark McMillan
Well, as a musician, I mean, that's what you do. If you have to think about every chord you're playing, you're done.
- [41:06]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [41:07]
John Mark McMillan
You can't. You cannot be thinking about every chord you're playing. It has to be routine, and you have to do it without thinking. And your whole day becomes that way, and it feels really great. And then there are moments that are. That are different, but all the little touch points that matter. But I guess back to the Lord speaking to me the divine thundering voice the cosmic supreme the cosmic supreme it's probably about a year ago, year and a half ago, I woke up one day and I was. I was just struggling with trying to figure something out, how to make something work. And I felt this thing asked me this question. Why are you. Why are you trying. Why are you still trying to be Luke Skywalker? Like, why are you still trying to be the hero? It's like, you're not the hero anymore. You can only be the hero for about seven years, if ever, if at all. But you were maybe not created to be the hero. Maybe you were created to be the guide. Maybe you're Obi Wan, you know? And it hit me, and all of a sudden, I saw myself as a different person. I literally visualized myself different, and my entire life made sense in a way it hadn't made sense in a long time. I was like, oh, it took all this pressure off to, like, beat the bad guy and save the girl and be the. You know, people like, I'm not mad about it because I had my time, but people like the new thing. You can only be the new thing once. Right. And then after that, you have to be something different. You can still be good, but you can't be the new thing.
- [42:38]
Dr. Dan Koch
And after that, you have to do a comprehensive renaming and rebranding of your podcast. That's how you stay relevant and fresh.
- [42:45]
John Mark McMillan
Yep.
- [42:46]
Dr. Dan Koch
So I love this. We're transitioning into kind of the stuff you're planning to do. And one of those items was. This is, according to some Instagram posts of yours, like, mentoring or, you know, being in. You said pour into. But since this is not a Christian, this is not a. I rephrased it to mentorings. That's what I do here. You know, I don't need trigger warnings. I just translate it out of Christianese for my listeners before it ever hits their ears. But, like, yeah, I wanted to hear more about that. And so it sounds like that. That part of it, that sort of role shift also from the Divine Cosmic Supreme. That's an album. That's your last worship record that you did, which I want to maybe talk about that if it will make sense, because that also seemed to have been a powerful personal experience along these lines, where you kind of went back to that. Well, it had been a long time, so feel free to bring that in if it makes sense. But, yeah, so you thought of yourself through a different prism, a different lens, with a different primary role. You know, I like the Obi Wan versus Luke, you know, thing, like, as opposed to the protagonist in this story, to, like, a support figure in this story. And that also strikes me as interesting for a songwriter who's performed under your own name. It's not like you're hiding behind a band name with. For other guys, like, I was. It's like, yeah, dude, you are Luke Skywalker. Your name's on the concert ticket. Your name is on the front of an album artwork. You are the. You're supposed to be the protagonist. Like. Like, I just say more about that. I find that really interesting.
- [44:32]
John Mark McMillan
Well, it was a shift from, hey, all these people are here to support what I'm doing to realizing, like, oh, the. Luke Skywalker is the. The young dude, the young girl, the old lady, the person. Those people in the front row. Like, I realized, like, those are, like, the people who go out and they got to get up on Monday and go live their life. I get to go on to the next city and play for another group of people. And I realized, like, there was a meaning shift. Something happened to me where I got so much more excited about making their lives meaningful the best way I could. I'm still staying on the stage with the guitar, but it was. It was less about me trying to be fantastic and more about, like, wow, look at these people. Look at who's here and what can I do to make their life matter or make them, you know, give them some meaning to go out into their life and do something.
- [45:30]
Dr. Dan Koch
Am I understanding you correct? You're saying that before you. You're saying before you came to this, like, oh, maybe I'm Obi Wan, or was it. Or this is after that realization, but you're still on tour. You're trying to kind of try out that mental space of thinking as the audience members, as the Luke Skywalkers that maybe you are. You sort of. You reframed the purpose of your concert as, like, less about The John Mark McMillan show and more, can we make this something communal that will help all the people here? Where I am more of a cipher, I am something through which that happens. But that's maybe more the main goal than putting on the best John Mark McMillan show that then puts the glory back on my name. Am I understanding you right?
- [46:27]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, it's more of a mindset. It also plays into other factors, like the way you do social media. So I think an artist. I mean, in my opinion, I mean, who gets to say what is good art? But in my opinion, a good artist is an artist who shares their life in some way, shape or form. It may even be in fiction. Right. But they're still sharing part of their life in a way that enriches someone else's life. And so I'm still sharing my life. But even with social media, I realized there's a way to do it that brings dignity and value to other people, even though I'M talking about me, and so I'm not talking about. I mean, occasionally I just talk about things I like or whatever. That's fine. But to me, the real gold is when I can tell one of my own stories in a way that dignifies the life of someone in the audience. For instance, I did a post a while back on something that happened to me when I was seven. I had this, like, thing happened to me in worship when I was 7, and it blew my mind how many people commented on that. Like, it was unbelievable how many people commented. But I think it was because I actively tried to do it. In a way, I was telling my story. I wasn't being dishonest. In fact, I was probably being even more honest than normal. I was doing it in a way that I feel like this is gonna bring some validation to other people who've had similar experiences. And so I've started to reframe. It's not like a hard change outwardly. It's more like a reframing inwardly where it's like. And it's not even that. I was only serving myself for so many years. I feel like I served the audience, I served the band, but it was more of a reframing of how I think about myself and that, like, I can be, you know, like, my heroes all got famous when they were, like, 26, 27. And I remember them when I think about Springsteen or think about Bono, and I think about. And there's several who die. Jimi Hendrix or, you know, whatever you think about them in, quote, their prime, you know, which is like 26, shirtless, with a guitar, flowing hair, like, that's. You just sort of think, you know. But that's not reality. That's a moment in time. And there is something beyond that that still really matters. And so all of a sudden, I was like, oh, I could see myself doing this into my 60s and 70s, right? Because I don't have to impress anybody. I can just serve people, you know, and that may change. And so it was really more like changing how I think about myself. Like, I don't know. I don't want to get too deep even, like, thinking about, like, I'm getting too big for my stage clothes, Am I going to look frumpy? And that's like, you know, And I don't think I walk around in normal life thinking about that. But when you're on videos and in pictures and people are filming you all the time, it's hard not to be a little bit narcissistic, maybe narcissistic isn't the word, but it's hard not to think about yourself because you're like, other people are not. They don't have to see themselves on the Internet all the time. And when you see yourself, you start thinking about it. But all of a sudden, when I realized, like, okay, I don't have to be the hero, I was like, you know, it's actually. If I'm a little bit frumpy in my clothes, that's nice, because there's probably someone in the audience who doesn't feel comfortable in their skin. And all of a sudden, I, like, get to show them that, like, hey, you're valuable. You're not valued based on how you look. Like, maybe there's an older person in the audience who sees me as an older person on the stage. All of a sudden, it's like, there's a reason to be here beyond maybe the reason that I thought. And so I know I'm talking about concerts, even though I've said I'm not doing many of them anymore. But that's just the best example, the easiest example I can think of. But it's a mindset. It's like, actually, there's value in who I am now, and I can actually serve people better now in some ways than I could when I was younger.
- [50:20]
Dr. Dan Koch
It makes me think of a book that David brooks published in 2019 called the Second Mountain. And it's got a little. The sort of main argument has a little bit in common with Richard Rohr's second half of life, stuff from Falling Upward, which I would just guess more listeners are familiar with Roar than Brooks in terms of book ideas and reading. But the Second Mountain. He did a lot of interviews about this, and he got it pretty clear, and he's a good communicator. But he said, basically, it's this idea that there are two mountains that we climb in life. Most people do. And I forget where he got it from, but the first mountain is. Leads to things that he calls like resume items. So the first mountain is like, what can you accomplish? And that's your 20s and 30s, sometimes into your 40s, depending on kind of what career you're in. Like, I would say, for me, having pivoted to psychology, I'm still on that first mountain. I've sort of. I kind of. I, like, was heli. Dropped over to a slightly different mountain in the same range, you know, And I'm trying that mountain now, but then later in life, you get to the second mountain, and those are the types of things not for your resume, but for your obituary. This is like the type of person you were. This is how you made the people around you feel. Did you leave your community better than you found it? How did you sort of give back? What. What did you figure out on that first mountain and then on the second mountain is like helping other people utilize whatever that was. You know, it's this sort of like more generous, less egotistical whatever. Which is why I find it comforting to know that I'm still on the first mountain. Otherwise I'm really fucking up the second mountain right now. But it sounds a little bit like what you're saying is like it's a little bit of a second mountain moment. And perhaps, you know, being a recording artist in the sort of folk rock kind of world is the type of thing that like. Yeah, there's kind of an age cap for the most part on that first mountain. Stuff like, you know, Lauren Daigle, if she had debuted at 40, would not be Lauren Daigle, even if everything else were the same, because she wouldn't look like 25 year old Lauren Daigle looked or whatever. Even as a Christian artist, where supposedly that doesn't matter. It's still on tv, there's still videos being played, it's still media, it's pop culture. Yeah. So I was just kind of curious, like, have you heard that concept or something? Like it. Does that feel. How. How much does that feel like it kind of maps on to what you're saying?
- [53:13]
John Mark McMillan
Yep, 100%. I'm a huge fan of Arthur Brooks and so much fun.
- [53:17]
Dr. Dan Koch
But this is David Brooks.
- [53:19]
John Mark McMillan
Oh, David Brooks.
- [53:19]
Dr. Dan Koch
I like Arthur Brooks too. Writer for the Atlantic. Yeah. And they write about actually some similar stuff. Arthur Brooks is like a social psychologist, or maybe I don't know if he's a psychologist, but he sort of does like happiness and whatever. And then David Brooks does. He does some of that, but he's a political commentator. Columnist. Yeah.
- [53:40]
John Mark McMillan
Arthur. Yeah. Well, Arthur Brooks talks about these two types of intelligence and how you peak in the first half of life. You peak. I'm trying to remember what he calls it. It's a malleable intelligence. It's the ability to learn, ability to move on a dime. It's the ability to think fast, to think innovative. And you start to lose that in your late 30s. And a lot of times people don't want to admit it, but he says you peak with a different type of intelligence. Intelligence, which he calls a crystallized intelligence. So you aren't able to move as quickly and I think he's in the world where, like, it's a hyper intellectual world doing science equations and things, you know, like, you gotta. It's like a. It's like a high, you know, success driven, you know, but we do it towards your late 30s. That first type of intelligence starts to peak a little bit, but. Or starts to dip. And then he says you. But there's another. The crystallized intelligence starts to peak in your 40s and 50s and even into your 60s a little bit. And he calls. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to retain ideas, to turn them around and apply them in ways that matter. He says, you're actually way better at that in the second half of life than you are in the first half of life. But so many people try and hold on to that first half of life type of intelligence, and you end up working harder and harder and harder for smaller returns. Smaller returns. And that's what happens to a lot of people in midlife. I think that's where you get the classic midlife crisis for high. You know, what do you call high.
- [55:20]
Dr. Dan Koch
Production oriented, high functioning, highly production folks. Yeah.
- [55:24]
John Mark McMillan
And it's almost a joke, right? And I, you know, like. And people love it when someone famous or someone who's high functioning crashes out. But it's hard because you try and hang onto that thing. You don't realize that there's another thing. And I always wanted to be the type of person who could let something go even early on. I don't know why this was stupid, but I used to say, in my 20s, I'm gonna quit music. When day I turn 40, I'm never gonna do it again just because I don't want to be the type of person. I don't want to be Uncle Rico. I don't want to be the. The guy in the van who's in his midlife dreaming about his high school football days, you know, I don't want to be Uncle Rico.
- [56:04]
Dr. Dan Koch
I could throw that football over that fence if I needed to.
- [56:06]
John Mark McMillan
I could throw it a mile. Look at that mountain over there.
- [56:09]
Dr. Dan Koch
That's a. That's a. It's not Nacho libre, It's Napoleon Dynamite. Napoleon Dynamite reference. It's funny you should say 40, because I was looking this up while you were talking and I was not listening. So I'll really enjoy listening back later. No, I was half listening. But like, mathematics is a field where. This is pretty well documented. In fact, the Fields Medal, which is the kind of highest thing, only goes to people under 40. There are only a handful of Examples of major mathematical breakthroughs coming from people over 40 years old. A lot of the big ones are like late teens, early 20s. Einstein's stuff was up to his mid-30s, sort of his main work. So there does appear to be something. And then of course, music, right? You talk about Jimi Hendrix and, you know, it's like, how many great songs did Paul Simon write before he was 35? How many great songs did he write after he has written great songs after he turned 35?
- [57:09]
John Mark McMillan
40?
- [57:10]
Dr. Dan Koch
It's not as many. There's almost no artist, there's almost no songwriter, recording artist for whom the bulk of their best work came later in their life. I mean, I literally can't think of anybody like even, like, even like my best example of wonderful late career work, which is Johnny Cash, his, you know, his Walk the Line and man in Black and Boy Named sue and Folsom Prison. I mean, all that stuff is, is in his late 20s and 30s and stuff. Like, you know, so it is, you know, across different domains there is. I like that, that, that's sort of like, it's the kind of intelligence that creatives use of like, yeah, I'm flowing here, I'm seeing what comes up. I'm like maximally open to these ideas and stuff. And then later maybe this is good news for me, trying to be, you know, this, if I'm still on the first mountain, at least it's the kind of thing where you're supposed to be a little older and have like years of wisdom and some professional knowledge and stuff like that. So it's a bit more crystallized than it is that total creative stuff. But yeah, so it just seems to be true across multiple domains. And I find that interesting.
- [58:25]
John Mark McMillan
Yep, I do too. And there's a temptation, I guess, going back to the identity thing to think of yourself as one thing. And when the person you think you are in your brain and in your heart and then the person you see in the mirror are not the same, it's very, very hard. It's very, very difficult. Right. And so I think that for me there was a moment when that idea had to change and it was liberating. Honestly, it was wild. It's something I never really thought of before, but letting go of that old idea. And the thing is, it's not even putting down who I used to be. Like, I'm moving on to something better. It's like, no, it's actually more like, ah, I love that person. I was like that John mark person that 20, you know, in my 20s and 30s. I love that person. I'm not mad at him. He's just gone, right? Yeah, he's wonderful and he's gone and he did what he needed to do. And now it's like I get to reimagine who I am, which actually is kind of beautiful. It's kind of a beautiful thing.
- [59:30]
Dr. Dan Koch
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- [60:26]
John Mark McMillan
Close your eyes.
- [60:27]
Dr. Dan Koch
Exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [60:40]
John Mark McMillan
Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry.
- [60:44]
Dr. Dan Koch
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order.
- [60:48]
John Mark McMillan
Oh, sorry. Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order, 1-800-contacts.
- [61:01]
Dr. Dan Koch
So there's one more thing I want to ask you about before we wrap up here. One of the things that you have mentioned you are going to be focusing on is, quote, more local projects and localism versus kind of, it's not nationalism, but it's like most of the stuff that musicians make, podcasters, creatives, you know, films, all this stuff, these are all products that can be consumed by anyone. That is sort of part of what they are. That's what an artwork kind of is in some ways. And you can contrast that with local things that might also be, in theory, visible by everyone, but practically they're not. They are up in a local art gallery. They are going to be seen in person by people locally. They're not, not a part of some digital project or something like that. I have spent my whole life in part on things that can be consumed widely and nationally and internationally as long as people speak the language or whatever. And I also think that there's like, when I was In Sherwood, I developed, for ego protection reasons, a sort of disdain for the local. The local bands. I was appreciative of them for playing, maybe bringing some of their friends to our show, but I also thought I was better than them. And, you know, local pastors who have to do the day in, day out physical work of tending to their congregations. I have liked the fact that I don't have to do any of that shit. And I just get to talk. I just. I get to do the fun part, which would be sermons or whatever, or leading discussion groups or. That'd be the part that I would like if I were a pastor. I just get to do that part. And you know, crucially, therapy is localized. It's extremely localized. It's two people in a room, especially in person therapy. And that's my favorite type to do. So it's not. I'm not fully indicting myself around this stuff, but that feels powerful to me. It also, the Second Mountain stuff to tie that in. A lot of David Brooks's examples he gave were of people who ended up doing running initiatives where they lived, you know, with the population that they understood based on their life experience from the first Mountain. And there is a kind of unselfishness in that. There's a lack of, you know, publicity, a sort of right sizedness, you know. Daryl Van Tungren, my buddy psychologist, talks about humility as like seeing yourself as the right size and local is what most of us are. That is the size that we are. We have neighbors and other people are other people's neighbors. And these are our neighbors. And so there's something just really, like, interesting. There's like a lot of meat to this. Obviously, I'm taking a long time to ask you about it because I've got so many thoughts in my head about kind of that shift to a local approach. I wanted to just get that out there and then sort of, what are you planning here? What do you think about any of that?
- [64:13]
John Mark McMillan
Yep. So I got a lot of thoughts on this. Let me start here. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about this. Like, one thing that blew me away the first time I went to Japan is how you can go into some of the best sushi restaurants in the world. This is true of not just sushi restaurants. This is true of a lot of things in Japan. But you can go into a sushi restaurant that has six seats, right? You can go into a bar that has four seats. You can go to a ramen spot that has four chairs and There will be a person there, an amazing human being who has committed their entire life to making the best ramen, the best sushi, the best cocktail for the four people who come in that day. And they're not necessarily trying to expand. Maybe they do. There's nothing wrong with that. But there's just something so beautiful of people saying, I am going to find the sweet spot and I'm going to do something that, that, that where the quality can only truly exist in a small setting. You cannot do real omakase for 75 people. You know, like. And so, you know, coming from the United States, where it's always like, bigger, stronger, expand, maximize. And there's some of that in Japan, too. Then, you know, there's a. There's a bus lane economy there. There's people selling stuff.
- [65:37]
Dr. Dan Koch
They make pretty. They make pretty good products.
- [65:39]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah, they do. They do for millions of people.
- [65:41]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [65:42]
John Mark McMillan
The free market is raging in Japan as well. But they do there. But there are these little places, I'm sure probably you've seen or heard of the Hero Love Sushi documentary about the guy at the train station. Yep. And I think at one point, I'm not sure if this in the documentary or not, but Obama wants to come eat there. And he's like, I'm booked up. And he doesn't dislike Obama. Yeah, he just. I think Obama was the actual president at the time. He was the sitting president. And he's like, but someone booked a seat. And I just thought that was just amazing. He's like, I think the president of Japan had to come in and talk to him. And they let Obama come in and have a seat.
- [66:18]
Dr. Dan Koch
But, hey, we'll figure this out on the back end. Yeah, we'll make it worth their while.
- [66:23]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah. But he's committed to this excellence. And I was like, what if I could approach worship music that way? Right. What if I could make something? What if there's a quality that I cannot present on a large scale because it can't be scaled? Right. What if there's something I can only do? What if the technology, and I love technology, but technology also forms the liturgy. Right. Forms what you're doing.
- [66:55]
Dr. Dan Koch
The medium is the message.
- [66:56]
John Mark McMillan
Exactly. And so what if there are things I can only do, that I can't do, that just cannot literally be done on a large scale? I'd like to explore some of that. Like, you know, singing, for instance. People have always wanted to hear a good singer. They've always wanted to hear a professional musician. But music throughout most human history, including up to the late 1800s. Early 1900s was not early pretty. Primarily a thing you observed. It was a thing you showed up to do. You didn't sing because you had a good voice. You didn't sing to impress anybody necessarily. There were those environments, but generally you saw a lot of families had a piano and before the invention of the radio, families would gather around the piano and they would sing. They'd sing on Christmas, they would sing on Thursday, they would sing on Saturday night. Right. And then when after the invention of the radio, you turn the radio on and the family would gather around the radio. Right. There are places in the world that couldn't afford radios and pianos, but they still sang. Right. And there's some real interesting history about how music formed differently in places like Jamaica where the average person couldn't afford a radio, that I'm so fascinated with the history of music and the way technology shapes different groups. But let me say this real quick.
- [68:09]
Dr. Dan Koch
It sounds just really quickly. Yeah. Like the. The big bass and these kind of elements that we associate with Jamaican music come out of sound system culture because people are living in squalor in Trench Town and like so much poverty. But a group of people would scrape together enough for a couple big speakers and then a few hundred people would have hours long dance parties into the night for basically free, as opposed to a more private experience. And actually the sort of recording studios in Jamaica this might be not exactly right, but. But my sense is that they were the first one. They were on the cutting edge of making bass frequencies sound good. Like actually fit within the music. Be really present. You listen to like 70s recordings from America, even huge great records. Like there's really very little low end. And Jamaica was already pumping that bass. They were all about that Bass in 1962, when Ska was turning into reggae and rocksteady and like they're just like. That's an example, like a real specific example of that sort of bass heavy dance stuff coming out of a lack of resources and then technology sort of rising to meet a cultural need. And that shit is endlessly interesting to me too. I imagine you're thinking about things like that. That's just one I have in my mind.
- [69:41]
John Mark McMillan
Yes, that's wildly interesting. And how the sound systems we call the sound system, we think of just a couple of speakers, but the sound system would be like 20 people, bouncers, people selling food, speakers all over the corner. And these shop owners were the ones who invested the sound system. Some of them became popular. They became like gangs and had rivalries and Violence between the different sound systems. And so they would all try and get a record no one had. They would all try and get a bigger sound than the sound system two blocks away. So that. Because there's this constant competition, it's really. I believe. I'm almost pretty sure this is where the subwoofer came from. This is kind of. This is really. A lot of people would argue that hip hop and EDM and electronic music and pretty much all popular music came out of Jamaican sound system culture or it was influenced or affected by Jamaican society culture. Jamaicans moved to Queens, New York. They moved to Brixton. And it's endlessly fascinating to me, too. But technology has unbelievable leans on the way we have liturgical experience, right? So, for instance, like, you know, before there's radio, people sang together. After they mentioned the radio, the family gathered around and they listened. So music moved from a participatory experience into a one we observe. Now, take it even further. I've got my earbuds, and now I don't even experience it with other people. I experience it alone. But when you go to a sporting event or you go to a big church meeting. I know people make fun of megachurch, but when you walk in a room and 5,000 people are singing a song at the top of their lungs and it makes a physical change to your body, and there are some scientific studies about the good things that group singing does. There's some pretty amazing TED talks about that I don't have. You can look up a link or whatever at some point if you want to. But anyway. But I want to explore what it means to move back towards participatory singing where you're not showing up because you like my voice and my words. You're showing up because you are a person and you have a voice and you get to sing not because you're good, but you get to sing because you're a person. So what happens if we don't have a sound system? What happens if we turn the cameras off? Like, why are we filming every church service? It drives me nuts. Like, I get. We want to reach people, and there are people who are sick at home, and that's cool, let's give it to them. But, like, why is. Why all of a sudden do we need to film church worship? Why is worship now? It seems like it's only for professionals. That would be my only real issue. Well, my only real issue. That's the only issue that I want to get into or talk about with modern worship music. And I don't think that the. I don't think they're doing it. I think they're just doing what we do now. But I don't think that music was created especially worship. Music was created to be something you observe. I don't think it was created just for professionals. And I like the professionals. I enjoyed being one. I still enjoy being one. But what I enjoy more than being a professional is being with a group of non professionals who are singing. Because it's what we do, it's what we enjoy. It's how we share our life. It's how we share life with one another. We're not showing up to be entertained. I don't even like the term entertainment. You know, I think that these things we do in the world of entertainment are actually meaning making devices. And they're a lot more important that we give them credit for. Like, it shapes our worldview, it shapes who we are, it shapes the way we see the world, it shapes the way we see ourselves. And I just even. I'm not even saying, like, I'm gonna do this local singing thing and we're gonna like, end poverty in the world because we sang together. But I just feel like there's just something good that can happen if people decide to show up and sing together. I'll tell you a story real quick.
- [73:33]
Dr. Dan Koch
Well, before you do, I can fill in what you were saying earlier. Here is a brief summary of the benefits of group singing. And this applies to both religious and secular, although especially the last bit about existential value is going to be more relevant in a religious community. But you've got emotional benefits, emotional elevation, stress relief through the mechanisms of endorphins and reduction in cortisol. You've got social benefits, a sense of belonging and trust for other members of that group. And that happens through the mechanisms of synchrony. So there's Emile Durkheim, Collective effervescence. He gets brought up a lot of. But like, just engaging in synchronous behavior predates language in human evolution and proto human evolution. Also, oxytocin has been measured to be released by the brain in these social singing experiences that bond us to the group, just like it bonds us to our children and our partners. Physiological benefits, which you were kind of hinting at, you know, calmness, increased energy, overall health. A lot of this happens through breath and heart rate, you know, basically formation and change and effects. Cognitive benefits can help with focus and memory. And this is done through shared rhythm and shared repetition of movement and words. So kind of also related to that synchrony, this stuff is very deep, deep, deep in our bodies and goes back before we even had the tongue. Developments that allow for modern language before those evolved. And then finally, existential benefits, meaning transcendence. And this happens through a collective identity being reaffirmed. So this is especially true in religious or spiritual settings, but can also be true of fandoms, Taylor Swift, et cetera, and ritual. So just engaging in ritual regularly. So, like, you can go Tour and play 50 different shows in 60, 65 days one time each, and maybe you get back there next year. But if you're actually just in the same building with the same people week after week, maybe twice a week, just the sort of the raw power of that ritual to affect change on individuals on tour. You are reaching way more people, but you are reaching them for less time and with fewer experiences. And they are only seeing each other in the crowd the one time a year versus you transplant that into the same building or whatever, and you're just multiplying that by such a large number. For fewer people, the total number of people is smaller, but the power is significantly multiplied. And so that's kind of where my brain's going of putting together both what you were hinting at, filling some of that in and then kind of putting that back in conversation.
- [76:32]
John Mark McMillan
Yep. And I do think that it's difficult. There's just certain things that are difficult to do on the large scale that you can do on the smaller scale. Like one is like, on the smaller scale, it's less intimidating. Also, you can hear your own voice. Like you said, you see the same people. But also it's hard to sell 5,000 tickets and be like, hey, I'm not gonna plug in and use the sound system. Cause this is about you guys singing. That's hard to do. It's really, really tough to do. But on a local level, you know, I can do it on a church on Wednesday night in the back room, or I can do it at a pub and say, you know, let's. What is the, like, least attended night at the pub? Can I bring some buddies and their families and can we like, you know, do a beer and hymns thing where they're like, drink beer and sing together and you guys will make some money. And I guarantee this place is going to feel awesome when we leave, because there's just something beautiful about it. But I had this experience. I was in Belfast and I was with a friend. He was showing me is a local showing me the town. And I was like, the guys want to go out to like a, to a pub. I know, it's so cliche. Let's go to an Irish pub in Ireland. But he's like, yeah, I have the perfect place. So it took us to this place. It's got a thatched roof. I feel like it's a thousand years old. Maybe literally a thousand years old.
- [77:49]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [77:50]
John Mark McMillan
We walk in and there's just a group of locals just double fisting at the bar. You know, one tiny little tv. That's all they have, one tiny little tv. We walk in and they're like, it's funny how the energy went from like they like loved us to hated us, wanted to fight us, wanted to kiss us. It was very intense back and forth, you know.
- [78:10]
Dr. Dan Koch
But they're like alcohol maybe having something to do with that.
- [78:13]
John Mark McMillan
Oh, definitely. Where are you from? What are you doing here? And when they found that we were musicians, they're like, you have to sing. It's like, you absolutely have to sing.
- [78:20]
Dr. Dan Koch
This is fucking Belfast. What are you gonna do? Exactly? Come on.
- [78:23]
John Mark McMillan
And I said, I said, well, we don't have our instruments. And I've never cussed on the podcast before, but I'm gonna quote, I have a family audience.
- [78:31]
Dr. Dan Koch
Religion on the mind?
- [78:32]
John Mark McMillan
No, here we go. Yeah, but this is a quote. I said we don't have our instruments. And that guy goes, well, you got a folkin mouth on you, don't you? Right? And I was like, we do have mouths. So they were, yeah, fair. I felt like they may, they may, they may fight us if we don't sing for them. At the very least they're gonna be very disappointed. I'm like, it's not going to be good. So me and my brother in law, we sang a half ass acapella version of one of my songs. And before I knew it, the guy in the, the guy next to us was singing one of his songs. And then a red faced guy in the corner who never turned around sang 15 verses of an Irish lament. And then there was a young couple who got out a little bouzouki and sang a Taylor Swift cover. And then before the night was over, we were standing in our chairs singing smash mouth Springsteen. We were singing hymns, we were singing Madonna, we were singing Whitney Houston. And I left that night and I told my buddy Paul, I said, paul, thank you so much for introducing me to your friends. He's like, what? I never met those guys before in my life. I have no idea who they were and I don't know that that's normal. Even in Ireland.
- [79:50]
Dr. Dan Koch
Anymore little magic there.
- [79:52]
John Mark McMillan
But that used to be. And that used to be normal everywhere. And I realized, like, that's what music used to be for. And they turned the one little TV off. And I shared life. And I had a moment with a bunch of strangers who wanted to punch me in the beginning. At the end, I had to tell them, I don't kiss men. I don't kiss. I don't want any. I don't want kisses. You know, they're like. But we had this love. We felt this feeling that felt a lot like love. Felt a lot like church. They knew we were believers. Yeah, I knew a lot of them weren't. Some of them weren't. It didn't matter. It was like we were sharing life. And I thought, you know, between that and my experiences in Japan, I was like, can we do this on purpose? Does anyone do this anymore? I'm sure they do somewhere, but I don't know. Does anyone do this on purpose? And so I don't have any plans just yet to start this thing, but when I say local, like, that's what I want to do. It's part of what I want to do is I want to create these opportunities for people to hide their phone. Maybe you, like, check your phone in when you walk in, not because we're mad at you, but really as a gift to you. Like, we want to give you some headspace. So what if we all, like, the two rules are like, no phones and you have to sing and nobody's good. And I'm not going to sing good. Nobody's good. Just check your phone in and you have to sing. Those are really the only rules, you know? And you don't even have to sing the whole thing. I'm just saying you can't show up to watch. You don't have to sing. We're not gonna force you to be uncomfortable, but the idea is, like, this is what we're getting together to do. So that's one of my ideas about some things I wanna pour into. As we say, I just wanna love.
- [81:33]
Dr. Dan Koch
On some younger creatives.
- [81:35]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah.
- [81:37]
Dr. Dan Koch
Okay, well, we're gonna wrap it up for time reasons here. John, Mark. Dude, great conversation, man. Thank you for. Yeah, thank you for this ROTM exclusive. I really appreciate that. And as always, I just. I love. I love talking with you. I look forward to the next time. Now you're going to be more available, so we'll just kind of see whatever it is that you've been thinking about and then maybe just have you on regularly to shoot the shit and see what's there. Now you're not. You can't even share this episode with your audience. Because I swore too many times, probably. Huh.
- [82:09]
John Mark McMillan
I can still share it. Yeah.
- [82:10]
Dr. Dan Koch
Okay. All right. Well, the fearless John Mark McMillan steps into the void.
- [82:17]
John Mark McMillan
I was just quoting somebody.
- [82:20]
Dr. Dan Koch
Changing his career and also taking a real chance that someone's gonna hear me drop an F bomb and hate him.
- [82:29]
John Mark McMillan
I shaved. Shaving the beard.
- [82:32]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah.
- [82:33]
John Mark McMillan
I quoted an Irish F bomb.
- [82:36]
Dr. Dan Koch
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [82:37]
John Mark McMillan
I mean, if you ever been to Ireland, though. Yeah.
- [82:39]
Dr. Dan Koch
It doesn't mean the same thing there. No, it's like, really. It's like the word for really bloody is actually the one that is, like, their F word in the uk and we think that's, like, nothing. But to them, that's actually the stronger word than the F word. Anyway, language is interesting. I like to speak it with you, John Mark. Thanks, dude. We'll have you back, definitely. Yeah. Best of luck on these new endeavors and the. This new season of your life.
- [83:06]
John Mark McMillan
Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you.