Play It Forward Episode 26

Listen to "Play It Forward Episode 26 With Tara Henley Lean Out" on Spreaker. Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. The goal is to feature two different types of episodes. The individual conversations as well as a collected array of the entire picture. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 26: Controlling Anxiety Tara Henley is a Canadian Broadcaster and writer whose new book, LEAN OUT shows how people can overcome the anxiety brought on by Covid-19. Henley knows of this trend personally – what she thought of as a health crisis wasn’t a cardiac event, but instead anxiety that told her it was time to slow down. What Henley then learned as she searched for answers can change how we look at the biggest issues of our time.

Katerine McNamara

Listen to "Katherine McNamara From The CW's Arrow" on Spreaker. Katherine McNamara, named one of Vanity Fair's "Breakout Bunch," is an accomplished actor, dancer, singer/songwriter and was awarded the 2018 People's Choice Award for Top Female Television Actress for her leading role of 'Clary Fray' in the Freeform series, Shadowhunters (2016) ; a book-to-screen adaptation of the bestselling "The Mortal Instruments." The series premiered to stellar ratings, being the #1 series debut in more than two years, and helped launch the re-brand of the channel alongside fan favorite Pretty Little Liars (2010). Kat was nominated twice for a Teen Choice Award for "Choice Sci-Fi TV Actress" and won the People's Choice Top Television Actress Award on the The E! People's Choice Awards (2018). In 2015, McNamara closed out a lightning year, portraying another fierce female role as 'Sonya' in the second installment of Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials (2015) trilogy, Maze Runner: The Death Cure (2018) (2018) alongside Dylan O'Brien and Kaya Scodelario. Most recently, she was cast as Mia, a tough street fighter, in the CW series Arrow (2012) with Stephen Amell and Emily Bett Rickards. McNamara began her professional career on Broadway, at the age of 13, as the principle character "Fredrika Armfeldt" in Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music", starring opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury. She was fortunate to continue on as "Fredrika" with the second ALNM Broadway cast of Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch. Her other theater roles include "Esther Jane" in the per-Broadway world premiere of "A Christmas Story, the Musical!", as well as "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Crucible", "Inherit the Wind", "Annie", "The Secret Garden" and "Galileo". She has also been cast in a number of Equity workshops/readings, including "Little Dancer" and "Pan" (aka "Fly") with Laura Osnes, which was created by the "In the Heights" creative team - Jeffrey Seller, Alex Lacamoire, and Andy Blankenbuehler. McNamara's love for acting stretches beyond the stage, with credits in television and film productions. Television credits include Happy Together (2018) (2018), Glee (2009) (2009), Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999) (1999), Drop Dead Diva (2009) (2009), 30 Rock (2006) (2006), Late Show with David Letterman (1993) (1995), Good Morning America (1975) (1975) and PBS's Great Performances: Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (2010) . McNamara starred in Disney Channel's Girl Vs. Monster (2012) with Olivia Holt which attracted more than 5 million viewers and had recurring roles on Jessie (2011) as "Bryn Breitbart" and on Kickin' It (2011) as the mean girl from Swathmore Academy, "Claire". She filmed the much anticipated Disney pilot, Madison High (2012), where she portrayed "Cherri O'Keefe", resident fashionista and creator of Madison High's popular gossip blog. She can also be seen in the highly acclaimed Freeform series, The Fosters (2013). McNamara made her big screen debut film in Warner Brothers picture New Year's Eve (2011), where she portrays "Lily Bowman". Besides the Maze Runner series, Kat also starred in Universal's R.L.Stein film R.L. Stine's Monsterville: Cabinet of Souls (2015) opposite Dove Cameron as well as the independent bullying film, Contest (2013) with Kenton Duty . The film dives into the dark world of high school bullying and found a home on Cartoon Network as part of their anti-bullying initiative. Other film projects include Katherine starring as "Becky Thatcher" in the re-make of Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn (2014), alongside Joel Courtney and Jake T. Austin, which was released in 2013, Disney's family-friendly Little Savages (2016), A Sort of Homecoming (2015) opposite Laura Marano, Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? (2016) with Cloris Leachman, Natural Selection (2016) with Anthony Michael Hall, A Wife's Nightmare (2014) with Jennifer Beals and Indiscretion (2016) with Mira Sorvino, Christopher Backus and Cary Elwes. She recently finished filming a cameo in the new Charlie Day comedy, El Tonto. The triple threat has added music to her resume. Katherine plays the guitar and piano and enjoys singing and songwriting. She has several songs featured in films/television, including her original song "Chatter" on the "Contest" soundtrack, "Wait for You" in "A Sort of Homecoming" and "Ember" in the Shadowhunters series. Besides working on music, McNamara wants to expand her creative repertoire to include directing. Katherine is also an advocate for education. At the age of 14, McNamara graduated with top honors from high school and then quickly graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Business (emphasis in Finance) from Drexel University's Le Bow School of Business at the age of 17. She is now pursuing a Master of Science in Literature at John Hopkins University as part of their Advanced Academics Graduate Degree program. McNamara is an award winning dancer and has a passion for all forms including ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, lyrical, waltz and even hula. She was a member of the Actors Equity Young Performers Committee and is a reader for the Blank Theater's New Play Development Reading Committee and recurring performer in their Living Room Series. Katherine is committed to giving back to the community as well. She is an ambassador for Girl Up, the United Nation's girl empowerment organization, a spokesperson for Stomp Out Bullying, an avid supporter of the MS Society, a member of the Lollipop Theater Network, a lifetime Girl Scout and a volunteer for the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. She also supports St. Jude's Children's Hospital, the Big Slick benefiting Kansas City Children's Hospital, and Michelle Obama's Global Girls' Alliance, an organization that helps young women around the world achieved their potential. She currently resides in Los Angeles and her hometown is Kansas City, Missouri.

John Hues

Listen to "Jack Hues Releases The Album Primitif" on Spreaker. Jack Hues has had a career that most musicians can only dream of. He studied at the Royal College of Music, he recorded sessions for John Peel, he topped the U.S. charts, scored major Hollywood motion pictures and is now, finally, releasing his first solo album, the double LP, PRIMITIF. PRIMITIF will be released on March 20, 2020. PRIMITIF is the culmination of a career that has spanned 40 years and has seen Jack visit all four corners of the Earth, but we start our journey in Kent. Jack grew up in Gillingham in the Medway Towns about 40 miles southeast of London. He was interested in music from an early age. “My dad was a saxophone player and my grandfather was a musician too, but it was hearing ‘Please Please Me’ by The Beatles on the radio when I was about 8 years old that made me wake up and think…ahhh, so this is MY music.” Jack asked for a guitar that Christmas and while his parents agreed, they insisted he have proper lessons. Twice weekly Jack was taught classical and folk guitar and, unusually, how to read music, a skill that would serve him well many years later. “By the time I was 18, I had passed Grade 8 guitar and got a place at Goldsmiths College, London to study for a music degree. At this stage I knew very little about classical music. It was David Bowie and early ‘70s Prog that was my focus. The lines between genres were about as loose as they have ever been. Classical music didn’t seem remote, although I was turned down by 4 out of the 5 universities that I applied to, as Rock music was considered worthless by academics at that time.” Jack got his degree and won a BBC Composers Competition which enabled him to take a year at the Royal College of Music studying composition and electronic music. “Those four years immersed in classical music, particularly modern classical music, were very important and expanded my musical horizons immensely. However, when I came out of college the musical language I ‘spoke’ was rock music, albeit a highly seasoned vernacular.” Jack played in a variety of bands until he met bassist Nick Feldman through a Musicians Wanted ad in the Melody Maker. They formed a couple of bands before finally distilling their talents into Huang Chung. The band later renamed themselves Wang Chung at the suggestion of the head of their record label, David Geffen. “The name still comes up now. It was even on Saturday Night Live a couple weeks ago. I guess David was right.” Jack wrote the future hit-to-be, “Dance Hall Days”, while still teaching guitar at various schools around London. The song proved pivotal in the band’s development and established Wang Chung as an international success. They were signed direct to Geffen Records in the U.S., so Jack’s career was based in LA throughout the ‘80s. “I was fortunate to work on movie soundtracks during this time. William Friedkin (director of The French Connection and The Exorcist) commissioned us to score his movie, To Live and Die in LA, which was an incredible opportunity. We contributed songs to The Breakfast Club and Inner Space. In 1986 we had a Billboard #2 (Cashbox No. 1) hit in the U.S. with “Everybody Have Fun Tonight” whose chorus line ‘Everybody have fun tonight, Everybody Wang Chung tonight’ continues to capture the public imagination thirty years later.” 1987 saw Wang Chung on a coast to coast U.S. tour with Tina Turner and gigs all over the world, but by 1989, the times they were a’changing and the attention of the music business turned to grunge and hip hop. The band didn’t embrace either of those genres and eventually split in 1990. "Through the ‘90s I did various projects. I scored The Guardian for Bill Friedkin. I was the only composer to ever work for him twice! I recorded a solo album for Columbia in the U.S., but for various reasons the project foundered. I produced an album for Arkana and an EP for Arturo, working with Mick Glossop. I co-produced a couple of albums with Chris Hughes for The Definition of Sound and Gene and I formed Strictly Inc. with Tony Banks (of Genesis) to record his eponymous solo album.” For a change of scenery, Jack moved from London to Canterbury in 1998, only 25 miles away from where he was brought up, and with it came a new phase of his life which started to coalesce around Jazz. In the mid-nineties Jack met Sam Bailey and formed The Quartet, recording 2 albums Illuminated and Shattering with producer Chris Hughes on his Helium Label. In 2012 Wang Chung reformed and released their first new album in twenty years called Tazer Up!. Summer tours in the U.S. followed, but after a couple of years Jack stepped back from gigs to consider what he really wanted to do as he entered his seventh decade. “I released a trilogy of collaborative albums between 2013-18. My ‘jazz’ work tended to be instrumental, focusing on my guitar playing, but meeting and working with poets revived my interest in words and music. “ROTE-thru” is probably the most extreme experiment consisting of a long semi-improvised poem spoken by David Herd and Simon Smith set to music which I composed as 12 separate sections to be played in any order. “A Thesis on the Ballad” to poems by Kelvin Corcoran is more conventional, setting his words to song-based structures, but including space for improvisation.” Last, but not least, Jack recorded an arrangement of Beck’s “Nobody’s Fault But My Own” with his Quartet and members of Canterbury Prog band, Syd Arthur, plus Paul Booth on tenor sax. The recording was released in 2019 to critical acclaim. Also in 2019, in a parallel universe, Jack recorded and released an album of orchestral versions of Wang Chung songs entitled Orchesography to enthusiastic reviews. Due to a series of personal losses, Jack found himself more concentrated on music than ever. In the first 3 months of 2018 he wrote and recorded most of PRIMITIF. When asked to name the music that led him to the album, classical composers such as Schubert, Mahler and Debussy rub shoulders with Miles Davis, Robert Wyatt, Jon Hopkins, The Books and Lana Del Rey. He also wanted to design the album specifically as a 4-sided, double vinyl album, each side having a distinct character in the manner of The Beatles’ White Album or Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland. “I worked on the album through 2018-19 with another intensive period of writing and recording at the beginning of 2019. The resulting double album is my first-ever solo release and is, for me, the culmination of nearly 60 years of fascination and ultimately, obsession with Music and Recordings.” Music Videos: "A Long Time" - Jack Hues "Whitstable Beach" - Jack Hues

Thunderstorm Artis

Listen to "Thunderstorm Artis Makes It To NBC'sThe Voice" on Spreaker. Thunderstorm grew up in a large musical family with 10 siblings on the shores of Oahu. They formed a family band and would perform at their father's art gallery, attracting tourists from all over the world. Sadly, his father passed away suddenly after suffering a heart attack and Thunderstorm started singing as a method of grieving. He later teamed up with his brother to tour as a duo until Thunderstorm decided to go solo. For the past six years, Thunderstorm has been performing all over the U.S.

The Lyrics From Billy's Forrest Chapter 198

Listen to "The Lyrics From Billys Forest Chapter 198" on Spreaker. What language are you listening too? I mean with so much being thrown onto social media and our ears overtaken by the world of news and opinions, it's completely natural to find strength in selective hearing. There's a lot of movement outside the human drive to get their bodies back in shape before checking back into work. The message I keep hearing is how the mental stress caused by the Coronavirus is an issue that we're gonna have to face as business leaders and co-workers. The typical reaction would be to toss things aside and keep pumping forward but the experts that are looking beyond the lock down are forecasting a change in the mannerisms we once called our path. On this podcast I step into the early moments of the virus appearing in the states. March 4, 2020. The writer isn't sure of what's happening or how long it's going to last. While reading his notes I actually chuckled because its already April 21, 2020 and nothings really changed. While local and state governments struggle to bring life back to the streets of everyday America, the people that'll be the life are biting at the bit caused by several different explanations as to what's still happening versus what's going to happen. One news report puts focus on washing everything just purchased at the grocery store while another jumps all over the idea of retail businesses opening in South Carolina. I chuckle again when the headlines read how the beaches will open today but not in Charleston or Myrtle Beach. It gives you that feeling of, "Hey... um. My mom and dad always said what's good for one is good for all!" Look... I'm all about staying healthy and you can probably tell that there's a lot more patience in me to wait this stuff out. But back to the original question. What language are you listening to? Are you being swayed by AM Talk Radio hosts and or television networks striving to one up the other? My choice is to watch nature. Yeah! Have you seen what's taking place this season? It's been amazingly colorful! The birds are unbelievably louder and I still find enough space in my uncertainty to take note of how the stems of flowers look to be reaching outward in ways that trip the human imagination as it walks by. There's a lot of languages being shared by way of the universe. It's only difficult to understand when you choose not to pay attention. Yeah yeah we're gonna get back to work again. And in the months that follow you'll be yearning for the distance time provided to each and everyone of us that needed to feel longer than a two week summer vacation. Savor this one. It's got purpose.

Play It Forward Episode 25

Listen to "Play It Forward Episode 25 The Seeds Of Experience" on Spreaker. Hey it’s Arroe. This is Play It Forward. A look at the unexpected changes endured by entertainers, writers, camera people and all others affected but not infected by the global invasion of the Coronavirus. The goal is to feature two different types of episodes. The individual conversations as well as a collected array of the entire picture. Real people. Real stories. The struggle to Play It Forward. Episode 25: From The Seeds Of Experience When a huge part of what you do is a nightly thunder crash of live Metal Music, the next step during a pandemic is to readjust your creative avenues in the way of preserving the way you think. Ralph from Ravenscroft talks about how the entire field of all shapes and sizes of entertainment have shut down or completely reinvented their presentation. Actor/musician Hayley Orrantia has played her share of Top 40 Pop Music on ABC’s The Goldbergs. Her current project is actually deep rooted Country. An avenue of sounds that’s spent the past 100 years endlessly communicating with the fans that support it and she feels she’s going to help continue that tradition. Mike Mostert from Gogo Tuner has always had a deeper direction when it comes to marching musical art forward. I admit in the conversation that many artists have chosen not to let the Coronavirus become a part of future lyrics Mike actually sees it as a new age of experience. That’s Play It Forward I’m Arroe

Ed Begley Jr

Listen to "Ed Begley Jr Celebrating Our Earth" on Spreaker. As one of the most respected environmentalists in America, Ed Begley Jr. is often a go-to resource for politicians, community leaders, corporate executives, social media influencers, celebrities and company & brand leaders seeking information and guidance on environmental topics and facts. Ed is very knowledgeable and informative when it comes to all things green and eco. He has a way of making talking about the environment in a fun and positive manner! He is very funny, quick-witted, non-judgmental and above all, he loves to educate and engage those who want to learn more about ways that they too can be more Earth friendly and eco-responsible!