We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ron Grigsby. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Ron below.
Ron, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My Childhood. I believe that’s where it started for me. Mine was a mashup of mixed signals from my parents and not much structure, due to my dad’s difficulties with connecting and being closed off and angry a lot of the time, taking it out on us verbally. I know it was mostly a generational thing. They grew up during the depression, relatively poor, on their respective farms in neighboring parts of rural Arkansas. I think the mindset of any particular generation and their childhood environment mixed with a person’s own idiosyncrasies really set a path for them a lot of the time. To me, as kid, the way my dad dealt with his “stuff”was to vent on us his frustrations, anger, and whatever other demons he had that moment or that day. That was all hurtful at the time. Deep inside me, somewhere beneath all that, I always felt I wasn’t the nothing he said I was. That was a personal and emotional tug of war for me for a very long time. My mom suffered it a lot too, but held things together for us emotionally. My brother and sister and myself were all very different personality types. This was our generational, individual tendencies at work. I was in my mind a lot, a kind of survival response for my self. But that can also put you in a limited mindset as to seeing yourself growing out into the world. It can also feed a sensitive and protective lack of self confidence. Which was me. But I loved certain things that I let myself get lost in. Movies, TV shows and music. At 10 to 12 years old I’d spend a lot of time in my bedroom listening to records. Everything from my older sister’s Elvis, Leslie Gore and Lou Rawls and Ray Charles albums, even soundtracks to movies like Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady to my mom’s collection of classic country 45s from Marty Robbins to Earnest Tubb, Ferlin Husky, Hank Snow, Don Gibson, you name it. This was my solace from the unpredictability of our family dynamic. In addition, I’d absorb certain aspects of film/TV, be it favorite shows we watched or movies that aired. I connected to the art of what I was seeing in those and what I heard in the music I played on the record player. To that, I spent the entirety of my childhood, adolescence, teenage years and early adulthood living in my head and heart, misfiring emotions and trying to reconcile all the feelings about me, what I meant to the world, how or if I fit in to it. Doing this, I think, built up a safe landing place in my mind and heart I could always go to that would filter out a lot of the toxic feelings that surfaced and remind me there were things worth it out there beyond my inner turmoil and it somehow dampened a lot of the pain about this stuff. Through out my life I think it has continued to do that for me as I’ve made many mistakes and been dealt setbacks and losses, self disappointment and embarrassment. I’ve always been able to see a chance to try something again. I guess all of that stuff became a form of resilience. I mean it did transform over my life with work I did on myself, efforts made to make peace with all the stuff in my childhood and with my Dad and understanding what his issues were by realizing my own. And forgiveness for all that hard stuff between us. I learned there’ll be adversaries in my life far more harmful to me than my dad, and my healthier version of resilience always kicks in, even if it was born out of an early unhealthy survival mode.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
Kind of a saving grace in my life has been my creative connectivity from an early age. The other side of my childhood experience was my mom, who sort of tried to protect me from my dad’s negative nature. She played guitar and could sing and we’d often sing together. As well, we had a few other relatives that played and family friends which led to musical gatherings. With my exposure to that and my built in creative nature, I was hooked for life. From 5 years old with a small ukulele to me picking up the guitar when I was big enough to play it and up until my early twenties I only played it to records in my bedroom. Then I met a few musicians that wanted me to join their bands, which I did until my mid-twenties. One connection really pushed me to get better and exposed me to songwriting. During this time I also made the plunge into acting. Starting in theater in 1980, I pursued it all the way to Hollywood and back stopping after 12 years and going back to a 9-5 for 26 years.
Fast forward to what has put me where I’m at now. In 2010, I met my current partner, Jennifer Moraca, in a stage musical and it led to us getting together as a couple and a music duo. The Odd Birds were formed. We played a ton of open mics and showcases in Orange County and Long Beach, CA for about 10 years until we met our mentor, fellow musician and recording engineer/producer, Bobbo Byrnes.
Working with Bobbo, we have increased our forward motion, elevated our songwriting, released two albums since 2020 and have begun recording our next LP due out later this year, 2024. It’s all hard work but so worth it. Especially hard, because while we used to do longer shows of covers and such, we became focused more on making original music and that’s much harder to get booked with at this level. Plus all the self promotion and footwork. So our goal is to keep increasing those odds somehow.
I retired from my day job in 2016 allowing me to spend more time for our music and my desire to take another shot at film acting. That has led to my getting two feature films since 2020. It’s all been an uphill battle, but worth it.
So here we are in 2024 with a new album coming, also some good news for The Odd Birds that we can’t announce yet, but soon, that might hopefully propel our bookings and widen our exposure. So readers please check us out and get on our mailing list if you’d like. Things will be revealed in about 2 weeks or so, including a song release as a teaser to the album. So check out how to find us and what we’re up to. Plus we’re on most of the music streaming platforms. Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not stress that the music would either, not be happening at all, or as good as it is, without our mentor Bobbo Byrnes, our support structure in fellow musicians, friends and family, and most of all, my partner Jennifer who, without her voice and her overall contributions in songwriting and other things that absolutely make it happen, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
1. Focus. This one is active in the other two, as well. But laser focused on any aspect you’re trying to accomplish. Whether it’s small like fixing lyrics or a chord structure in a song you’re composing.
2. Recognize the hard work involved in doing what you want to do good and do that work. With kindness, constructively assess if you’re doing good and getting better. It doesn’t help to tear yourself down about where you’re at with any efforts or accomplishments. I personally don’t mind the failures in the process. There are a lot of little ones all along with performing and creating. You run that risk every time you try something new or to write a song. You have to learn to live in that process and coexist with effort and failure and repeated effort to problem solve using all the little failures as an opportunity to grow from them. Get more specific with the work. A lot of good stuff in exploring the small elements in something. It’s in the Details
3. Have a clear understanding of who you are, what you want to do at it’s core and what your strengths and weaknesses are and play to those. It’s kind of branding but I hate that description because it can move people toward being inauthentic. But somehow find who you are with it. Be that authentically and do everything from that core understanding of who and what you are.
Especially now with how it’s a double edged problem of having the ability to put yourself out there with all the technology and social media at you fingertips and HOW to navigate that, how to use it. We’re in that exact spot as we’re getting to a tipping point with our music endeavors, of how to make that next leap, how to get it out to as much of the right audience as possible. It can become very difficult to keep that focus and create. So getting very clear on who you are as a as a creator, your voice in what you want to say, your sound, how you present yourself and where you fit. I never formally trained in music or acting in the beginning because it came to me naturally, to a degree. But I finally did train in ways that worked for me and I found how to mesh that with my instinctual approach I’ve always used.
All the wisdom you’ve shared today is sincerely appreciated. Before we go, can you tell us about the main challenge you are currently facing?
There are actually a couple of challenges I personally face right now. Both are older issues. One developed later in life and one has been there my entire life but I only recently realized what it was. I have bone cysts on top of my right hand. Those developed maybe 20 years ago and it was painful to use my hand. So strumming and picking the guitar became an Issue. Then it subsided more or less 10 years ago. Just recently it has flared up again. So as we move into possibly a busier time playing, it really is frustrating. There is surgery if I want it but only as a last resort if it gets too painful, because surgery will limit my use of that hand. I will adapt if that comes about.
The other obstacle, with me my entire life but only realized what it was in the last 3 years, is ADHD. I didn’t do well in school because of it, I struggled with things that seemed easier for most others. When I felt I was doing my best it wasn’t nearly enough to keep up. It makes it very difficult to pursue the bigger things that matter because there’s a lot involved in doing those things and the ability to focus is really a main element. ADHD puts up a big obstacle for that and the anxiety that comes with it can be paralyzing. Although when I was a kid in the 60s, they didn’t diagnose that stuff and I just struggled for all that time in school, work and life. So that all sucked. I finally got diagnosed about 2 years ago and I do take medication now. Not a cure but It sure helps.
Contact Info:
- Website: Theoddbirds.com
- Instagram: The_Odd_Birds
- Facebook: Theoddbirds
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCaE9GgIWJC7HhaFEOZcFlkw
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/oddbirds
