Get ready to be inspired (and possibly cry). Richard Casper, co-founder of Creativets, shares his journey from combat Marine to champion of the arts. A wounded veteran — Richard’s Humvee was blown up four times in Iraq and he watched his dear friend die — Richard credits art and songwriting with saving his life. To help other veterans heal as he did, Richard co-founded Creativets, an organization that uses art and music to help wounded veterans heal from Post Traumatic Stress and brain injuries. For his work, Richard was named one of Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders and a CNN Hero, among many other accolades. And his creativity expands beyond his nonprofit. He’s also an entrepreneur, most recently creating an app called We Should Write Some Time, which connects songwriters around the world. This is a powerful episode about how art not only heals but also saves lives -- repurposing devastating memories as good ones and remapping our experiences.
Get ready to be inspired (and possibly cry). Richard Casper, co-founder of Creativets, shares his journey from combat Marine to champion of the arts. A wounded veteran — Richard’s Humvee was blown up four times in Iraq and he watched his dear friend die — Richard credits art and songwriting with saving his life. To help other veterans heal as he did, Richard co-founded Creativets, an organization that uses art and music to help wounded veterans heal from Post Traumatic Stress and brain injuries. For his work, Richard was named one of Time Magazine’s Next Generation Leaders and a CNN Hero, among many other accolades. And his creativity expands beyond his nonprofit. He’s also an entrepreneur, most recently creating an app called We Should Write Some Time, which connects songwriters around the world. This is a powerful episode about how art not only heals but also saves lives -- repurposing devastating memories as good ones and remapping our experiences.
Takeaways:
Resources:
Follow Creativets @creativets
Follow Richard @veteranart
Follow the songwriting app, We Should Write Sometime @weshouldwritesometime
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School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Richard: Hey there. I'm Richard Casper, the co-founder, Creativets. And this is no time to be timid.
Tricia: Hey there. I'm Tricia Rose Burt, and I want to ask you some questions. What creative work are you called to do but are too afraid to try? Is there a change you want to see happen in your community, but you're waiting for someone else to step up and do it? Is fear of failure preventing you from starting new things that will make a difference to your life and to others? In this podcast, we look to artists to lead us and show us how they use creativity and courage to make changes in their lives and in the world. Pay close attention because this is no time to be timid.
Tricia: Welcome to the show. We're so glad you're joining us. And thanks to all of you who heard our request last episode and wrote a great review. Keep the reviews coming. And don't forget to subscribe! And if you want to reach out, send an email to podcast@triciaroseburt.com. In our last episode, our guest, Lila Ford, talked about how she always knew she would be a singer/songwriter. No other option even crossed her mind. Our guest this week, Richard Casper, is the exact opposite. In our conversation, he literally says that growing up, art and music were never an option. And yet Richard, a six foot five former combat marine, now leads Creativets, an organization that uses art and music to help heal wounded veterans with post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. Richard knows about these experiences firsthand. While serving in Iraq, his Humvee was blown up four times, and he watched a dear friend die. He returned home with post-traumatic stress and a severe brain injury. No one was more surprised than Richard when art and music saved his life. Now he wants every veteran to have the same chance for healing that he had. For his work, Richard was named one of Time Magazine's Next Generation Leaders and a CNN Hero, among many other accolades. And if you look at the No Time to Be Timid Manifesto, and if you don't have yours, download it now at triciaroseburt.com/manifesto, Richard checks off every single principle. The takeaways from our conversation include: art can not only change, but it can also save lives. Dream big and stick with that dream, no matter how hard it gets, because you have no idea the impact you'll eventually have. Ask for what you want -- the worst thing that can happen is they'll say no. And art is an option for everyone. This is a special and powerful episode that illustrates how art can heal our world. Enjoy the show.
Tricia: Hey, Richard, thank you so much for joining us.
Richard: Hey, thanks for having me.
Tricia: Okay. Well, this has been a long time coming because I've been wanting to have you on the show. And I know you've told the story a million times, but I'd like for you to tell it one more time, sort of your origin story of how this all began.
Richard: Yeah. How how long do you want me to go from my keynote speeches to my elevator pitch? What do you want?
Tricia: I know that you after 9/11, that was a very big experience for you when you joined the Marines right out of high school and and dove in and asked to be sent overseas to Iraq.
Richard: Yeah. And art and music was never an option in my head growing up in high school. From a town of 1100 people where I had 22 kids in my graduating class. I was 22nd in my class. What's up? Sounds good. If you go to a big school. Doesn't sound as good when you know how many people are in my class. Because I honestly didn't, I didn't try very hard because I knew I was going into the Marine Corps. I didn't know until 9/11 happened. I was a junior. I knew I was going to the military because my dad is one of 11, and all of his siblings went to the military, and it was an extremely poor family I grew up into. So I just knew if I had to get out of that tiny town to be successful, I needed a route out of there. And so all, I had this deep yearning to serve. But I also also was realistic and said, well, I also need to get out of town. So I joined the Marine Corps after 911 because I thought maybe if I was a marine, I could be the first person overseas fighting for my country, because this is -- I graduated high school in 2003, which is the first push to Fallujah. It's real, you know, the charge in. And so I had no idea, the job I ended up getting even existed at the time because I was, like, headstrong, like, okay, Marine Corps Infantry, 2003. I'd be over there with my friends. Just like serving the country that I think the way I need to serve it. And so when I was in boot camp, I was doing this whole workup, but they come out with, my name on a list and they're like, Casper, because that's my last name. And a bunch of other names. And so we're like, what is this? They call us special testers and so super confused, but they take us away from normal boot camp activities to a building. And they are doing, like, psychological tests on us and ask us questions like, do you talk in your sleep? Does your family owe money to anybody? Do you family ever travel overseas? And these are all like super weird questions to me at the time. And then we just go back to normal boot camp and then, you know, maybe a three weeks later they called us back and there was less marines there this time. It went from like 2 to 400, I don't know what the, it was a lot of people in the rooms to now like, you know, 100 of us to then we go back to boot camp routines. Then we get called back and now there's 20 of us and we're like, what is going on? They tell us when there's like 20 of us they're like, you all have been selected to guard the President of United States, either at White House Communications or Camp David. And I was just blown away because I was like, I didn't know that was a job, especially for the Marines. All I knew about was Secret Service, like, what is with that? And so I was like, well, this seems like a cool job. But in my heart, I didn't want to go because that's not why I signed up. So I'm very faith based and led. So I said, whatever is in God's hands, like that's what's going to happen. But I still had this urge to go. So I graduate from boot camp. Three months of that, and I go to what they call the School of Infantry for two months while I was training, because I still had to keep my normal job of infantry, even if I went to Camp David or White House Communications. So then I go up to Washington, DC for 11 months while I'm waiting for my clearance to go through. I'm at, you know, it's called 8th and I's, the base that's up there. Because you can't actually go guard the President if your clearance doesn't go through.
Tricia: So what are they trying to clear? What are they trying to just, like, make sure you're not some terrorists that we don't know about?
Richard: I'm holding a loaded weapon next to the President, so they have to do a lot to find out that you're not crazy, or that you don't want to, you know, do bad things. So, but being from extremely poor family, I thought I was going to get ousted. And I had three siblings, all in prison, in jail. I'm the youngest, but all three of my siblings been to prison, in jail, even my sister. And so I figured I'd just be not, they wouldn't pick me. But luckily I ended up after 11 months, got selected. And you get to choose at that point, if you're going to the White House Communications or Camp David. And since I'm a country boy, I was like, I want to go to Camp David because you're living on the mountain, like on the retreat center. And it's more personable and just it's felt way better to me. So I chose Camp David and got it. And I went up there, under George W Bush. For 14 months, I lived and worked to Camp David, which was a whole experience in itself. And then this opportunity came up to where they said, hey, because typically you just do that 14 months and you leave. They said, hey, we're actually low on Marines up here. So if you want to stick out your contract here, you can. And I said, you know, with all due respect, I didn't join to do this. It was awesome. But I joined to go overseas. So I want to do that. So they sent me to Twentynine Palms, California, which, if you haven't been there, don't go. It's like when we were doing our training there in the desert, when we flew to Iraq, it was pretty much like we landed in Twentynine Palms. Like we left Twentynine Palms and we landed in Twentynine Palms. It was like, exactly the same. More people shooting at us over there. But still, it was pretty, pretty similar. And so within that first four months of me being in Fallujah, Iraq, my Humvee was blown up four times, separate times, causing left traumatic brain injury. And my friend was shot and killed beside me, and he was my gunner in my truck. And that was like just three months after I was there. So I go through all this, three of the blasts were within a month of each other like it was, so it was almost back to back to back. And after the fourth time I was blown up, they just said I was unfit for duty. Like I couldn't work anymore.
Tricia: Let me ask you a question. When you say that you were blown up, was it like right next to you and the car flipped over? Or like what? What happens? What does it look like when you get blown up?
Richard: So all IEDs, depending on where you're at, where they're placed, is different. But for me, the first, the very first explosion hit the back right of our Humvee and it tore cartilage in my chest so it doesn't actually flip, they're made so that the concussion does more damage than the blast, typically, because they know that a lot of the Humvees are up armored now. And and to flip them, you'd have to have an IED directly underneath that had to be super powerful now with the weight of these vehicles. So the idea is a concussion blast strong enough to to rock your brain a little bit or to kill you through the process. So but the very first blast tore cartilage in my chest. So just because my mouth was open when it blew up, that that pressure expanded my lungs to the point where it tore cartilage. Then the other three, two of them were right beside us. And so they were just maybe ten feet away on my side of the truck. The truck took a lot of shrapnel, and my brain again got damaged. The third one was, you know, the last one was directly underneath us, which did lift up the vehicle and blow up the tires and stuff. But it was it didn't like flip it or anything. And it's just a surreal experience being blown up.
Tricia: Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't mean to make you talk about it again, but I just didn't understand how that works.
Richard: No, I don't mind. And again, it's something I talk about now and it is interesting to think about, like every time I say it now so nonchalantly, people are like, wait, wait wait.
Tricia: Yeah, yeah.
Richard: So yeah, that happened. And it just completely, kind of destroyed me that I couldn't work anymore. That my guys and my teammates were going outside the wire. And I just had to stay at the camp, like, until we flew back home. So we fly back home and again, I don't know, I'm truly injured because they never sent me anywhere to get a CAT scan or anything. This is 2007 now, when TBI wasn't a big thing. So I just checked out of the Marine Corps not knowing I was injured, not knowing how injured I was. I knew I was injured, but I thought it was just going to go away. It's like going to fade away into the distance. And so I leave the Marine Corps in July of 2007 and just kind of take six months off just exploring, just do my thing. I almost died so many times, I wanted to live a little bit. And so I had a Harley at the time I took it to Sturgis, and I just like doing all these rides and six months in, so I didn't have to use my brain. That's what I'm saying. Like I was just taking a really easy. Six months in, I'm like, okay, now I should get a job and go to school. And so I started that process. And almost instantly, started getting plagued with anxieties, deep anxieties and depression. Just all these issues that I never had before. I was class clown, prom king, guarded the President, went to war. And now I'm 22 back home and I can't even speak in front of people. I can't go to job interviews. I can't do all these things. And when you don't know why you switched and what could have done it, you know you're injured, but you don't know why you can't do normal things again without seeing the injury. So I went downhill fast, and I always say zero was killing myself and 100 was me before war, I was at like a nine. And it was only my faith in God that kept me at that nine until I discovered art. And the funny way I discovered art was, yeah, I used it as a cop out degree because I was sitting there thinking, I started failing all my classes. I went to the V.A. hospital. They said I had a brain injury. I couldn't learn new skills. All this, like the way they talked about it back then was so, like demoralizing and not helpful because they said, oh, you're broken and you're always going to be broken. So I took that to heart and I, you know, go into school and now I'm like, well, if I can't learn anything new, what can I do to be successful? And I think about, you know, I guarded the President, I did all these cool things. Why can't I just go into FBI, CIA or something like that? But all I need is a degree because I don't want to go push paper. I want to be an actual agent, and to be an agent, you need a degree. Degree could be in anything. And so I said, you know what? I'm going to get an easy degree in art at this community college, Heartland Community College, Bloomington, Illinois. Just a super easy degree. I could be around kids, I don't want to talk to. They don't want to talk to me.
Tricia: Here's the -- I love this. I'm going to get an easy degree in art. I just loved the perception. I, at one time had, I read an article about an astronaut, and he said it took him seven years to learn how to be an astronaut, but 15 years to learn how to paint.
Richard: My easiness on that was like, oh, I could just draw and doodle my career away, and just be around people who don't want to talk to me, and I don't want to talk to them. And so I just dive into this, not thinking anything about it. It ended up just changing my life forever. I started taking creative writing classes that led me to the idea that I could write a song and tell a story without being the person to tell that story, because that idea was because my gunner, who was killed beside me, Luke Yepsen, I always cried when I talked about him, but I didn't want to cry in front of people. And but I wanted them to know that he lived. And so I went down this path of trying to write a song, teaching myself guitar, and going on YouTube and writing parodies of country songs just so I could learn how to how to write music by myself. But then on the art side, which is I had no idea that would be so transformative was, and the big piece that I did that really was that breakthrough was I had this photo of me at my gunner's grave. I go to his house in Houston every single year, visit time with his family and, and go to his grave. And I have a photo of me at his grave my uncle took of me. And in this class around these kids I don't want to talk to, I said, you know, I'm still going to make this for me. I put myself in a corner. It was chalk pastel. I was doing, I was coloring in this photo exactly how I saw it on paper. My skin tones, my cami shorts, my black shirt, the headstone gray. It didn't have his name on it, though. Just said John 15:13 on it, which is "no greater love has than a man who laid down his life for a friend." Just as a general reference. And the only thing not colored in was the background at the time, and the background in the photo was grass. And so when my teacher came up behind me, he could see the photo, he could see my drawing, and he said, hey, Richard, I just want to challenge you to not do the grass green. I want I want you to put something different in here, the way that the color grass would never be it. I was like, well, that sounds super dumb. Like, I don't want to ruin this awesome image that I'm creating here. And he's like, but if you do this, then when you're not around and your art piece is just up on the wall, people are going to know that there's a connection to the artist like that you're emotionally impacted by this and all these other artsy words. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know about this. I don't know if I trust you on this one, but like a good marine, I'll do it. So I just do everything red, the whole background, not knowing why, just the the crayon that I picked up, the chalk pastel crayon I pick up and I'm doing everything red. And I think I kind of ruined the image by doing it after it's done. And I'm like, I knew I shouldn't listen to that guy. But then I put it up on the wall for critiques, which I didn't know about critiques before going into this art world. And, they're like, he was like, hey, Richard, do you want to talk about your piece? And I was like, heck no, I don't want to talk about my piece. That's why I'm in this class. I didn't say that last part, but in my head I'm like, that's why I'm here. Then he's like, students. What do you think about Richard's piece? And this is where it drove home this whole idea that you could say everything without saying anything. And one by one the students are like -- and these again, are 18 year old kids just out of high school. No real life experience at all. And I've guarded the President, went to war, did all these things, and I didn't think there was a connection there. But one by one they're, I think you put red in there because, you're angry your friend died. I think you put red in there because you loved him. Then one student said, I think you put red in there because you're with him when he died and you saw his blood, and I'm just like, oh my gosh, how would, I didn't have to say anything! And I felt emotionally connected to them like they were my battle buddies and which allowed me to kind of open up more to them. And I'm like, I would have never thought that we could relate in this way. And how did that one color tell you my story? And what if I could use all these colors and all these patterns and symbolism? And so I just kind of I always say I was like, what is this voodoo witchcraft that just happened? And so I dove into this idea like, okay, discover what just happened and repeat it and repeat it again.
Tricia: So you're having an epiphany. You're having a moment. How did you repeat it?
Richard: Someone from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago came down to our school while I'm learning art. And had no idea the school existed, what it was, and they came down and they kind of like we're talking like it was the Harvard of the art schools. Like one of the top art institutes in the country, Walt Disney, Georgia O'Keeffe, all these famous artists went there. And I was like, well, this sounds cool and it's in my backyard. I don't have to go very far. And so I told my teacher I was going to apply and he's like, no, no, no, don't apply.
Tricia: Why?
Richard: Because he said you had to have a lot of money to go there, or you studied art your whole life. So almost like the equivalent of Harvard being very, very smart. He's like, you had to be very, very artistically smart and like, honed in on your craft before you go there. My issue was when everyone else went up there for their critiques or for their, like, entrance, you had to do a portfolio review, which is all your art form to get into the school. Most of these kids have between 16 and 30 pieces that they're showcasing on why they should be enrolled in the school that has a very low acceptance rate. And I go up there with 12 pieces, and ten of them are still lives, which is what you're not supposed to show, like just the craftsman like of this orange that I colored in and all the like the, the, the class requirements on testing. And only two had actual concept in them. And so I had to negotiate my way in where they were like, hey, listen, you're a good draftsman. Like, we could see that your work's good, but you're lacking in and this idea of, like, the next big thing, concept, all these things that, you know, modern art, and other conceptual artists focus on. And I said, well, listen, I was restricted. I learned art two years ago. Like, I had no idea this path I was taking. But here's what I want to showcase you. These two pieces that I do have that touch on war. I want to show you what it's like to be blown up without being blown up. And I want to show you what loss of innocence in war looks like I was like. And I think I could do this through your school. I just need the tools now because I didn't have that. He had to teach me the skills that he taught me. But there's so much more I need to dive into. And so they even brought in someone else to come in and like, do my portfolio review with them. And I told them the same story and they said, let's give them a chance. And they gave me a chance.
Tricia: Wow.
Richard: Yeah. And so it ended up changing my life. The issue was at the time -- so I was again extremely poor family. I had the Montgomery GI Bill; didn't pay for private schools. And so I knew that I was going to go in extreme debt and lose my relationship. And that's what happened. But I had to do it because it was saving me. It's like, you know, you put on your mask before you help anybody else. I knew that if I didn't put my mask on, then I wouldn't be around much longer. And so I had to take that chance and I did it. And, it was legitimately the best thing that ever happened to me.
Tricia: Richard, that's just so amazing that that journey from I'm going to go take an easy art class, and now it just completely transformed you. You know, very different circumstances, but I went to art school as a mature student. I was in my mid 30s. I'd been in business for years and then found myself in art school. So I understand making that choice that makes no sense on paper, but makes all the sense in keeping you alive. You know, how did you manage the vulnerability of saying, this is who I am, even though, as you say, you're telling this story without telling it, but how did it feel in a critique? What did, you know as you did that regularly? I know you had that first good experience, but regularly. Did you get used to it?
Richard: Yeah. Here's the crazy thing is, when you dive into them the right ways where you're telling your story. And this is what I love about conceptual art. And at the highest levels, they get it kind of wrong. They make it an elite art where only they can understand it, and other people could pretend to understand it, but they really don't. But there's this awesome middle ground to where you can really showcase what you do, but you could hide yourself in these pieces so you never had to fully say the things out loud without feeling like you've been heard. And the other part of that is if you do it in the right ways to where I want you to feel something and I put up this art piece, and you tell me that you feel exactly the way I wanted you to feel. It makes me happy to the point where I'm like, what can I talk about next? Oh, my brain injury. I don't usually talk about that. How do I show it? So I'm starting to get excited about talking about the worst things that ever happened to me, because I'm thinking about new, creative ways that I could showcase that to you, and then you feel it or feel something of that nature. So I almost took it as like it made me happy to do this and do this, do this. The only time I felt really frustrated is when I thought I had a solid idea that someone didn't understand where I was like, no, it says this, but then you learn through the process of like how other people feel and how other people see a whole, your experience is so much different than theirs. So how do we make them relate and just kind of adjust to that? But the first times about talking about it, I just would never talk about I'd let my art do it and sit in a room and even up through after creating Creativets, there's this piece that I did knowing that it was gonna be the first time that the my gunner who was killed, his mom was going to be at the art exhibit where I was teaching the veterans through our program, and I made a piece for her. But she still to this day, doesn't even know it was for her. She didn't know the name of it. I left it with no name, no like no artist name. But it was me telling her the story of how her son died, but without telling her. And it was just even though I never verbalized it and she probably didn't fully understand it, I feel like I told her. And so it's so awesome to be able to, like, get something out without actually saying it and feeling comfortable that someone knows your story.
Tricia: There is this direct healing of art. Do you feel like there has been just a major transformation in the healing around your PTS because of art? Are you ever completely through with your PTS or do you just get further along the scale?
Richard: No. You you there's a portion that's still there, like so my, scenario zero killing myself, a hundred me before war? When I graduated from the school of the Art Institute of Chicago was at 85 back to myself. And now and now that I help with Creativets, I'm like, in 95, there's 5% you'll never probably get back. But 95% of your self is pretty awesome. Like people can live with that. And there's this thing too, where you always have to outpace it or create with it. So there's a time to where now, if I stop doing art and music, it'll catch up to me. It's way behind me, but it's going to slowly creep up. But now I know myself. I know if I start getting a little bit more reclusive or a little bit depressed, I'm like, oh, I need to do art now. And it gets me because there's something inside of me that I need to get out that's going to help me. So I don't think truly it'll fully go away way, but it gets so much better and it gets to the point where it's livable. It's so livable. If you could do it the right way. And I don't do it through art therapy or music therapy, I do it through art and music education. Everything's therapeutic when you want it to be water's therapeutic, horses are therapeutic, dogs are therapeutic. So art education taught in the right ways, and I call it the warrior brain to artist brain transition. How to baby step through your story. Talk about trauma in certain ways, just through normal art education, and not babying it and not doing these things to where -- okay art therapy works. And it's there's a very specific reason for it. But when they give you and this is something that Intrepid Center did and it's awesome and it's been very successful where they they give you a mask and then they have you put your feelings on the mask and they display it. And there's a lot of benefits to that because you, you see how other people feel. You're getting your stuff out. But I want to teach you how to make that mask and why the color is important and why the things that you put on there or why they are, like subconsciously, why did you use a brick in your piece and some artist -- so this happened with a female veteran up in VCU. I just kept questioning her.
Tricia: And that's Virginia Commonwealth University up in Richmond, right?
Richard: Yep. Where we taught it, where we taught a class. And I push and push and push to these veterans who don't really understand why I'm asking these these what they think are dumb questions. But until they have an epiphany moment and she came back to me and she was like, Richard, I figured out why I'm attracted to these bricks. Because you give them all these options to use whatever they want to do. She's like, my dad was a bricklayer. I never put the two the two together. But I had this issue with him and now I'm using bricks because subconsciously her body is screaming for it. And I learned this because when I was in art school up in Chicago and I'm in a ceramics class like clay ceramics class, and my teacher during my critique said, Richard, why did you use clay? Like I was so livid. I was like, that is the dumbest question ever. In my head, I'm just like looking at him like, he's so dumb. And it took me a while to be like, oh, why do I use clay? Like it was a more of a why are you attracted to clay? When you got to the school, you never did clay. Now you're doing clay. Why are you doing clay? So that drove down this road of even me being like, why am I attracted to clay? Well, for one, it's so therapeutic in nature just to, I don't think about war when I'm working with it. But two I started really diving back into my story, and I kept hearing the ceramic word and I was like, where did I hear that ceramic word? Ceramic plated SAPI plates? So our ceramic or plates that we wear like our bulletproof vest plates are ceramic coated and my gunner, who was shot and killed, had a plate right here, but he was shot right here. And so in my own head, it was my way of making it beautiful and big, because I make really big ceramic pieces. And it challenged me to think about why I do big, too. And it was because if that was bigger, he'd still be here. So it led me all the way back to that point in time where he was killed, of why I did ceramics. So this whole chain of diving into your subconscious and finding out why you work in things you do is what heals you and saves you and gets rid of this PTS. It's, but when it's just taught as like a therapy to where you can only do it if I instruct you to do it, that's I feel like that's the wrong way because it's a temporary healing. It's not teaching you how to make that mask. And why to chose certain things, and how to dive into your subconscious and understand your own body.
Tricia: Well, it's that exploration. And just for our listeners, when you were saying here and here, apparently Luke's vest didn't go up high enough.
Richard: Yeah. He was shot directly into the armpits area. Yeah, like when his hands were up on the gun. So the side SAPI plate only came up probably like, yeah, maybe there's probably, like a four inch gap between his armpit and the plate. And so if it was bigger, it could have saved.
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Tricia: You know, this also is the value of amazing art teachers who know how to ask the questions and push you. Yeah, any teacher, any teacher. But also, again, we have very different backgrounds going into art school. I had similar teachers that would push me and ask me questions. And that resistance that happens at first like, whoa, you know? And then you're like, oh, maybe they know what they're talking about. And that push and that exploration, you're right. You own it if you're picking the materials and you own it, if you're the one that's making some choices. I mean, fair play to you, Richard, for having such self-awareness in this process to understand what was happening to you and how then you can take that and replicate that experience for other people. So you graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago and you're like, now what are you going to do? Like what did you think?
Richard: So I really thought when I was starting to get better than I was going to now actually apply for CIA, FBI or something like that. And the closer I got to the graduation, I started realizing that other veterans weren't going to do what I just did. Like most six foot five combat Marines are not going to be like, I should get an art degree if they never done art before. And also throughout that process, I was already blown away by the whole, like trying to write a song thing.
Tricia: You started writing just on your own at night, even before you went to art school. Or did art school prompt you to start writing at night and playing around with songwriting?
Richard: Yeah, so. Well, the creative writing class and in Heartland and I was a bouncer at like a country bar. Okay. And my friend at the time who was the lead singer of a band, who was the band that was like the house band for there. He would talk about traveling to Nashville and write music, and I was, I was, oh, this is a job, people write? If you're outside of Nashville, you assume that most of the artists are the writers. So you think, oh, you have to have the talent of singing and writing to make it. Then you find out there's a whole ecosystem of people who write for artists. Like it just got me thinking that, like, wait, I could probably do that. If it's a skill set, I could probably write a song that maybe I can get someone to play. And then they know Luke lived and I could walk away from it. And, you know, so that same guy is the one I asked to teach me a few chords on the guitar, if I wanted to learn that to write because he said, you should learn how to play guitar if you want to write. And there's two times before this that I'd never learned guitar. I tried to learn guitar mainly to impress chicks, you know, but it never stuck. But now I had a need to learn guitar because I needed to tell his story, so it stuck this time. He showed me three chords. I went to YouTube, started looking up all the stuff I could again, writing parody songs just because I learned rhythm and like how people write and rhyming from there. And so I kept trying to write and just writing throughout the weekends and whenever I could, all the way up to Chicago when I was going to school there. But I also took a bouncing job there because, again, I'm just real big. And I didn't go to job interviews so they'd see me and ask me if I wanted a job most of the time. And so Joe's Bar was a country bar. Big artists, Miranda Lambert, Blake Shelton, all them played up there, even though it was a little sports country bar. And so I just loved it. And one night they had a writer's round and called it like Nashville of the North. And it was a legitimate in the round where they, four songwriters sat in a circle and you got to sit around in chairs. So I took that night off specifically so I could be there and watch it, and I'm watching it and it gets done. And I go up to one of the writers and I say, hey, have you ever written with a veteran or for a veteran before? And they said, no. And I was like, well, thanks. And I went to the next one. They said, no. I got to the third one, his name's Mark Irwin. And I said the same thing to him. And he said, actually, yeah, I wrote a song with Billy Ray Cyrus called Runway Lights, about a staff sergeant in the Army coming home from war. And so I said, I just dumped everything on him. I said, hey, I've been trying to tell my story through song for over a year, and it doesn't put my friend on a pedestal. It needs to be, I just need to get it out. If I come to you in Nashville, will you help me tell my story? Because you're a professional. I don't know if I'm doing this right. I don't know if I'll ever be able to do this right. And he said yes to me, a nobody. And I had no idea about the songwriting business and what that look like. But Mark Irwin wrote Alan Jackson's first number one, but he also wrote, like Redneck Crazy, which was number one, and Highway Don't Care, Tim McGraw, Taylor Swift Song, and Blake Shelton's Neon Lights I think it was or Sangria or one of those. And so he is highly sought after in this community. And even number one writers can't get in a room with Mark sometimes. So for him to say yes to me a nobody from Chicago that he's never met before was huge. And I had no idea how huge that was. But I come down and I write a song and a half with him in three hours, something I've been working on for a whole year we do an hour and a half. And then we start a new song and I'm like, why can't every veteran who's struggling do this? And so now fast forward, back where I write the song and I'm about to graduate. But my buddy, and this is when the idea for Creativets came in, because I was like, will this work for other people without going through four and a half years of art and songwriting now? Like, I've been doing this for so long and I'm almost 100% again because art and music education. But can I help someone realistically, in three days and four days and two weeks and three weeks, how small or how big do I have to go? Is this efficient enough? And so a buddy of mine who lost his leg in Iraq and has burns over 60% of his body, who's from my hometown, who hated telling his story. I just said, hey, Jesse, do you would you want to come to Nashville with me? I met a number one songwriter, and they're willing to write your story with them. And, he was like, yeah. And he kind of took me up off guard a little bit because he doesn't like telling a story. But his his love for music that made him say yeah so fast. So instantly I realized in that moment that if you can outweigh a veteran's anxiety and depression, timidness, whatever you want to call that with excitement, you can get them to do anything. So his excitement was music and writing with the number one writer. So I started working with him on this idea because, again, I know what it's like to feel alone and not tell civilians what you're going through. So I was like, I'll be your battle buddy. Tell me everything. I'll tell you everything, and we'll just figure out what you need to say. Not what you want to say, but what you need to say. So we do that on the back porch. Find out what he needs to say. I do like a GoFundMe raise, like 300 bucks. We stay in the same hotel room, like $45 a night outside of the airport. Horrible place, one of those ones where you can live there if you want. So horrible place. But we went. It was Jeff Copeland, Rob Blackledge and Noel Billings from this band called Blackjack Billy, but they all also had success as writers with other artists. And we sat there with Jesse and told his story for the first time. And it was incredible to see a person who never tells a story. And even in the session, when his head's down and he's like, still kind of afraid to talk because they're civilians, saying a few words to all of a sudden hearing them play his words to them. And then all of a sudden it's like word vomit. He's a new Jesse. He's just like, oh, and then this happened. This happened. Stuff he wasn't even tell me because in his head he was like, oh, if I tell him everything, it's going to make this song better. And so even in the moment, I didn't know that it was repurposing his memories as good ones and remapping the way he thinks about experiences and all this stuff. He was just so excited to hear his own words come to life and speak for him that he was willing to give up more. And so we got done with that song and he was like, honestly, that did more for me than the six years I've been at the VA hospital. That was incredible.
Tricia: Six years versus one session. I mean, that is so powerful. And it was at that moment when you thought, I have to make this a real thing? How do I make this a real thing?
Richard: So I'm back in Chicago and I meet a lady named Linda Tarson. I knew she was obviously wealthy because when I had to pick up some Bears tickets that she gave me, it was from her place on Lake Shore Drive. And so I just I gave her a gift of my artwork as a thank you for these tickets that she gave me. But then we just did follow ups, like every month we just go eat lunch somewhere. And on one of those trips was after I wrote with Jesse and I was just sitting there, I was like, I wish I could turn this into a nonprofit and do this for every veteran. Every veteran deserves a song, and every veteran deserves to go to art program. And she's like, okay, let's do it. And I was like, what? You can just do that. She's like, yeah, I sit on multiple boards. I'll just all you need is a direction. So like, I'll find a few board members, you find a few board members and we'll start it. I believe in you and I believe in this program. We'll let you run this. So we start building this idea. She again gives me full rein, full runway, saying, like, I'll bring on these people. We have our first board meeting. I was like, my dream is that we could just every veteran could do art and music. We'll start with songwriting because it's easier. And I have a few connections now, and it's like it's a sexier program is what I call it, because it's a lot easier to get a veteran to do songwriting in Nashville than to go to a school and do art. And so that very first year it was just nine veterans, but there's roughly 20 suicides a day in the veteran and military space. And that's actually low end because The Warrior, the American Warrior Partnership did a whole other study where it's around 24 to 44 veterans a day. 14 of those 20 in that V.A. study don't seek help. Yeah. And so they're the ones that are missing out on these opportunities to heal. There's a friction to receiving help, obviously, especially with the people who are committing suicide. And so I was like, if we get rid of this friction point of them, the first one is the excitement thing. So make sure they're excited and they're not anxious. So we have to write in Nashville with hit writers. We can't just do this in Bloomington, Illinois or Chicago with normal writers. Has to be there. Second thing, I didn't have a lot of money, and so it has to be paid for. Everything has to be paid for because that's another friction point to someone receiving the help, saying I can't go because I can't afford it. We have to cover everything. What's the next thing? And I was like, wait. When I used to, like, just get really bad off and cry and go to a cornfield and not know why I was suffering at 2 a.m., I'd call my battle buddy Jeremy. So every veteran needs a battle buddy. They need someone who knows what it feels like to be through this process or be injured. And so that's kind of what I told the board right off the bat saying, this is what we need to do. And they said, okay, green lit. They all threw in a little bit of money and they they pretty much just let me run with it from day one.
Tricia: Smart move on their part.
Richard: And so we only help nine veterans that first year. But every time I brought a veteran -- so I'd be the one that calls them and say, hey, Richard, Creativets, I was blown up four times. Lost my friend. What'd you go through? And they tell me. Then I'd go, well, what's that one thing that you can't get off your that you need to get off your chest? You can't tell your family or friends, that just haunting you from your experiences. And they'll tell me they said, well, I'm going to bring you to Nashville. That's what we're gonna write about. But I'm going to be with you the whole process. When you get off the plane, I'm picking you up. I'm going to take you around. We're gonna go to a writer's round and show you Nashville. The next day, we're going to go into a writing session. I'm going to be with you the whole time. Make sure that your story is told the way you need it to be told. And then we're going to get your song. Does that sound good? And it was one by one. Yes, yes, yes. And it was so cool to see people out of the woodworks. It started with family and friends that I knew that were suffering to then them telling their family and friends, and then we'd get a veteran I never met before, I never knew who knew them. And I was like, this is crazy that someone's reaching out for this. And so we built this song writing program from scratch. And then the next year I was like, well, how do I do this in art? Like, how can I do the same thing in art? And then I went back to the school at the Art Insitute in Chicago just said, hey, my dream is that veterans with no art background at all could come to your school. I don't know what this looks like it, but it's probably going to be a class to teach them how to dive into their stories. And instantly the Vice Provost was like, okay, let's do it. And you could teach it. And I was blown away again, because I'm sitting here thinking, oh, no, I would just be a part of it. I don't need to teach it. It was all these things I never thought I'd be able to do or even be asked to do. It just it blows my mind that I was just asked to be a teacher at the best school in the country and run these programs, and I've been blessed beyond measure with these people in my life who just are opening these doors when they see that there's a need to be filled and they're helping me fill it. So that's when 2013 I graduated December 2012, and by July 2013, Creativets was started.
Tricia: Wow. That fast. And so okay, so it's a little over ten years. How many vets have gone through the process at this point?
Richard: So now that we've expanded our programs, it's a lot because it's, there's main programs, which is art and music, which is flying them to Nashville. Now it's four days and they all -- there's five veterans that come into town and five Richards. So five mentors who are flying in. If you're a Vietnam vet, we have Vietnam vet call you. If you're a female vet, we have a female vet call you. They become your mentor. So they all come out here. And now we have a partnership with the Grand Ole Opry. So we actually write backstage of the Grand Ole Opry. And then after we write the next day, we go to a typically it's The Rukkus Room, which is a recording studio where we record all five songs we just wrote with individual veterans to hear their stories come to life. So that's a four day process. And then we have our major art programs. Again, these are all fully funded for veterans, everything. So those program numbers are different than our major programs, but we've helped probably up to 3000 veterans to date with just 800 this year alone. But a lot of those are in secondary or even third tier programs, which only means they're either a very introduction to art to allow them to know that it's an option, like whether it's with a webinar around songwriting and healing through the process, or if it's a one on one virtual write with our staff writer here just to get some stuff off their chest to our partnership programs with other nonprofits where we go in and we do group writes with them to teach them how to tell their story, and that anybody could tell a story and write a song. So that's what kind of inflates our numbers with veterans. It still is impactful, and we still help those veterans. Like when we went to New Hampshire to Camp Resilience up there, we wrote with two different veterans in this group session that absolutely changed their life, and they ended up coming to our main art program because they needed it so bad. So it's our way of finding them and bringing them up the chain if they need it.
Tricia: Okay. So now. All of this happens. You've changed all these people's lives, and you're actually now sort of a legitimate songwriter.
Richard: I don't know how legit. No. Just kidding. But yeah, I became a songwriter through the process.
Tricia: You've now become a songwriter. You still make visual work, right? Your medium is really ceramics, clay. And do you still do works on paper or canvas? Right?
Richard: Sometimes it's my, yeah, my art is on, not on a hold. But when I teach, I create again. So when I'm not teaching, I hardly get any time to actually do the art.
Tricia: Your bio says you've had 70 placements in film and TV of your work. So where has some of your, where have some of your songs appeared?
Richard: This is a cool things. I did a side project out in LA with this company called APM music, where I was just trying to write -- it was outside of Creativets --but I was trying to write more veteran songs that would end up in film and television. And we're writing with people under Universal and other things, and those are the songs that ended up getting placed and slowly, even though one was a very specific my story that, called Angel on my Shoulders that I never thought was going to get placed. I was writing that one mainly for me and the other ones more for placements. But what was really cool was on an episode of Quantico, the show Quantico, that was out for a while. Because a lot of times there's not like -- I've had placements in like Jeep commercials for Patriots Day where they don't even use the lyrics. But this one was so cool because it was such a thoughtful placement. But you don't see a ton of those, and it was just everyone would have skipped over it. It's a bar scene, and Stevie Nicks is playing in the background of the bar, and a guy gets up -- and I've never even seen the show before, but I watch that segment -- and the guy gets up because the the other guy just, like, blew up on someone, walks over, and he goes over there to talk to him about losing his buddy when all of a sudden in the background, it's like "I'm an angel on your shoulders" it was like a my buddy who shot and killed beside me who I wrote this song about and it was his perspective. It was my gunner's perspective to me, telling me not to kill myself. Like I got to live for both of us now. Yeah, that's what the song was about.
Song Lyrics: Angel on My Shoulder, written by Richard Casper.
Richard: And so it was just playing in the background so nobody else knows it. And then, but there's some other random ones too, like it's the walkout song, that same song is the walkout song for like, two players on MLB 19 2019, like video game. The co-founder of Creativets one time was watching the Hero Dog Awards on on Hallmark. And my song Every Hero Needs a Hero, which wasn't written about a dog but makes way more sense now hearing it on that was playing on the TV. She's like, I know this song. And she's like, wait, this is that song. So those are really cool moments to see, like where they're placed. Other ones in that, like it'll just show up on a list saying, like NBC 1995, whatever the company's name is, and it'll say, like the Olympics, and I'll be like, I don't know where it played on the Olympics, but I just know in the 2018 Olympics, one of my songs was played, but it could have just been the the, the instrumental.
Tricia: I just love where this has taken you. I am I'm certainly sorry for the catalyst of it, but talk about turning something negative into something incredibly positive. It's just it's really wonderful to talk to you and then how you just keep transforming and saying, yes, you say yes a lot, Richard. And that makes a big difference. Sure I'll teach. Sure I'll this. Sure. And also yes to the idea. Yes to the idea of saying, well, wait, can we do this? And, you know, as soon as you put it out there, you get all the reinforcements you need to make it happen. Yeah. You know, for those of you out there trying to think, should I do this? The answer is yes. You started with nine vets and now you have this big program. It's it's really important to know you got to start somewhere and just see where it goes.
Richard: Oh yeah. People look at it now and I hate that they don't see the path that got here. But it was hard path. It was like everything was so hard. And now when I look at it, I even feel like when I look back on my life, I say, I couldn't do this. When I look back at Creativets where it's at today and, I'm just like, I can't do that. And then I had the realization that I did that. A big part of my success is always just asking, just always asking the question about, like, the Grand Ole Opry, for example. In my head, I knew that I can get more Vietnam veterans to our program if we partner with the Grand Ole Opry, because there's such a historic thing that it's even a bucket list just to go backstage at the Opry. The Opry's never done writing sessions in their rooms, but I noticed they have rooms back there, dressing rooms. And I went to the Opry and I said, hey, oh, how could I get my veterans to write with our artists and songwriters backstage at the Grand Ole Opry? I told them the whole program about Creativets, and, they said, oh, we could do that. That's an easy ask. So all of a sudden now I built my programs in the Opry, in the back dressing rooms where nobody else gets to write, like, how crazy is that? And then the Country Music Hall of Fame, they've never done continuing education programs. So most people would be like, well, let's go to the next person that does. I went to them and said, hey, I would love it if my veterans could have a follow up with you on learning why they wrote the song they way they did with your education department, and they said, this is perfect. We've been looking for continuing education older adult program, so let's do it. So again, it's those just going there and asking the questions. The biggest one was probably was Scott Borchetta at Big Machine Music. When I finally got a meeting with him, it was around funding. It was his his Music Has Value nonprofit. And so obviously when he asked the question, what do you need from us? He was asking about money. And even though we needed money at the time, I had a higher strategic plan. And I said, although I need money, what I really need to do is release our music created for veterans by veterans and my team's not big enough. I would love a partnership with Big Machine to where we could release our music through you. And he signed on and said, okay, let's do it. And so.
Tricia: Fantastic.
Richard: Figuring out these ways of being like, yeah, no other probably veteran nonprofits ever been, probably no nonprofits been have a record deal with a label like that. But I just ask the question, why not? And it gets me so much further, because the worst they can say is, no, we don't do that.
Tricia: [00:50:08] There's so much bravery in saying of just saying, I'm going to open myself up for no. But what happens if I get a yes man? You know, if you get that, yes, everything is different. Okay. I do want you to tell me about your latest app. Yeah. Please talk to me about this new project that you're working on that's really and becomes an extension of your work with Creativets. So tell me.
Richard: It does. So the cool way that this came to be too was I now, I wrote in LA and the lady under Universal she was like, I'm so jealous of what you have in Nashville because you can go to any bar and find a songwriter. We kind of can. Like it's it's pretty awesome if you want to co-write, just go to a bar and you meet someone, say, hey, we should write some time. And so I was like, that kind of sucks if you're under a major label and you can't set up your writes. Like your publisher does, and you have a lot of weeks where you don't have writes. And then I come back home.
Tricia: And when you say writes, you mean co-writes.
Richard: Co-writes for songs, and so most songwriters have to co-write every single day, and it's usually three or more people in the room. There's reasons behind all that, but that's typically the normal songwriting day. And so to find new songwriters is really hard. And only publishers typically connect. So I come back home and I think about all the veterans that we fly in. We've helped veterans of 50 different states. So we fly them in, we write music with them, and then they leave back to Montana, back to Iowa, back to New York, back to Maine. And then I'm like, well, why can't they connect with songwriters in their area now? Because they now learn this lifesaving skill of songwriting, and the only way they're going to keep doing it is with collaboration and other people to help them master their craft. And then the last thing was, I met my now wife and I was like, well, I don't want to go out and recruit songwriters. I legitimately would go out to 3 a.m. in the mornings, and I don't even drink alcohol to meet songwriters for Creativets, because I needed two pro writers per veteran, and it all hit me at once saying, there's got to be an easier way to connect with people around the globe. And there's just such this problem with the music industry. So I was coming home from a work out when it all hit me. The dating apps are so simple where you could just swipe left on a profile, swipe right on a profile. If you like someone you connect with them, start chatting with them. Why can't the songwriting industry and music industry be the same way? So I went to my buddy Kevin, who's now the CEO, and I pitched him this and he loved it. I said, my full time thing is Creativets. I know what it feels like to save a life. So I need someone to run this because this is a huge idea that I think is going to be extremely successful, but I can't do it alone. And he took on that charge. And now we have an app and it's a completely free app called We Should Write Sometime that you could now geolocate to a different city, but there's 7000 songwriters using this app right now.
Tricia: That's so fantastic.
Richard: If you're in Nashville and you get on this thousands of songwriters at your fingertips, that you don't have to go out to a bar to meet, if you're an introvert or you just don't want to go, or even if you're under 21, you can't make the bars yet. You can see their profile. You could see the lyric, like if they do top line melody, lyrics, what their skill set is, link to their music, everything. And if you like it, you both have to like each other. Swipe on and you start messaging. The reason why I built this too, and this is the coolest story ever, was a lady named Delaney reached out to us on Instagram and she just nonchalantly was like, hey, you're the reason I have a publishing deal. And we're like, tell us more. This sounds interesting. And so my co-founder calls him or calls her, and she was like, yeah, I live in Atlanta because my husband's in the military. My dream was to be a Nashville songwriter. Never thought I could actually do it because of these restrictions. But I got on your app. I put my profile in Nashville, geolocated there. I met this guy who's a published writer. We wrote 5 or 6 songs together. He pitched them all to his publishers. Publisher was like, who is this girl you're writing with? They ended up signing her to a pub deal, and then just recently, a record deal. And she now lives in Nashville pursuing her music. We just went to her showcase and she's even pitched her songs to the Grammys, and I'm like, all because this app existed. It gave her access to Nashville she never thought she had access to. Now imagine around the globe, a kid in Compton who has extreme talent could just geolocate to Atlanta, New York, L.A. and get out with his raw, his or her raw talent just by having access. But it also just helps the music industry by by connecting people, connecting things. When I talked to Craig Campbell about it when he first came into Creativets office and he was like, man, I walked around for a year trying to find people to write with. He's like, now you're saying this app could just done that right away. He's like, out of and further along my career meeting people. And then on top of that, we put a pro tier in there because we saw this need. Even pro writers still have a need, especially cross genreal. Like if you're in L.A. and you do pop, your publisher probably doesn't have a connection to Nashville. If they do, they're going to have to like, call someone to call someone to see a schedule, to see if the schedule works. And by the time it's done, it's just too many problems. So now we have a super mega hit writer who's on our app in L.A. that I didn't know who got on there, and we called him because we're like, hey, I mean, he wrote like Holy with Justin Bieber, all these ginormous songs. And we're like, yeah, we know why we think you should, you should be on our app, but why are you on our app? And why are you requesting the pro tier? He's like, honestly, because I can't get my publisher to get me a connection to Nashville, and I want to write a country song. I want to write with people at my level too. So in our app now, if you're a pro writer, if you're if you've been a published writer, you've had any top 40 songs, like we had to vet you in the process. But if you're a quality writer, no matter where you're at in the world, you apply for pro status that means that people like him could geolocate to Nashville now and just connect themselves with pro writers or a pro writer from, like, say, Ireland could geolocate to L.A. to find a top liner who's a pro and so they're still doing stuff at their level that they need to, but it's more efficient.
Tricia: You know what, Richard? It's just fantastic. It's just fantastic. Okay, so I have one last question for you. What do you need courage for right now?
Richard: So much I mean, everyone always needs courage to, it's especially in the the world of the tech startup space, which is obviously funding, and then the nonprofit space, which is funding, which is, it's a it's so hard for me, it's getting easier to ask money for the nonprofit because the life changing measures that we do. But then when you go to the for profit, which is the tech startup, it's actually a lot harder to ask for money when you're doing this kind of stuff to keep building your brand and going forward. So this idea of getting in the room with the people that we need to, but then just straight up being like -- because you can't do the same thing with my nonprofit, I could say, here's this life that was saved by it. If I go into a funders meeting on the app, I'm like, here's a girl who got a publishing deal. They're like I don't care. How you make money off this? So the courage to not give up on just knowing that this is going to change the music industry. And we've been we've been raising money for a really long time, not having a lot of success with certain people who just don't understand the space. But it's just that courage to keep going, knowing that it's a worthwhile venture, obviously, but just that there's going to be people out there that say yes and want to invest in us and keep pushing this forward so we can help more Delaneys and more people have access.
Tricia: Somehow I think you're going to keep going, Richard. Somehow I think that that's just kind of in your makeup, but we will all be rooting for you and sending courageous thoughts your way. Your story, it's, obviously, thank you for your service. And also thank you for just keeping Luke alive and creating Creativets and all the lives you've touched and all the, you're just touching lives everywhere you go, man. You know, whether it's a vet or it's an aspiring songwriter. So really, thank you so much for stopping by the show.
Richard: Thanks for having me. And letting me tell my story.
Tricia: You got it any time. I'm not sure you can get more inspiring than Richard. Plus, he's made me so proud to be an artist. We're doing good things, and art matters now more than ever. And here are some questions for all of us. How has art changed your life or the life of someone you know? How big are your dreams? Can they get bigger? And are you asking for what you want? Or are you afraid of getting a no? You can learn more about Creativets by going to their website. creativets.org. While you're there, make a donation and you can follow them on Instagram @creativets. You can follow Richard @veteranart and follow the songwriting ap. We Should Write Sometime @WeShouldWriteSometime.
Music
Tricia: If you're listening to this podcast, it's because you care about creativity and courage too. And believe, like I do, that this is no time to be timid. This year I'm taking the no time to be timid message on the road. And maybe your part of the world needs to hear it. If you're looking to awaken boldness and creativity in your company or organization, I'd love to come speak to you. Let's have a conversation. Please reach out to me at booking@triciaroseburt.com. Join us for our next episode when our guest will be renowned photographer Laura Wilson. Laura recently published the book The Writers, featuring 38 world famous authors including Seamus Heaney, Cormac McCarthy, Zadie Smith and a host of Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer Prize winners. And she's known for her extensive work in the West, which is why she was inducted into the Cowgirl Hall of Fame at age 79. Laura is 84 years old with no intention of stopping. You do not want to miss this episode. In fact, you don't want to miss any episode this season, so make sure to subscribe. And remember, this is no time to be timid. No Time to Be Timid is written and produced by me, Tricia Rose Burt. Our episodes are produced and scored by Adam Arnone of Echo Finch, and our theme music is Twists and Turns by the Paul Dunlea Group. If you like what you hear, please spread the word, subscribe to the show, and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. No Time to Be Timid is a presentation of I Will Be Good Productions.