Dave Combs | The Impact of Love, Music, & Rachel's Song to Overcome the Effects of Divorce, Heartache, & Pain

"A gift is something you’re supposed to give away." - Dave Combs

EPISODE OVERVIEW: 

Did you hear the one about the boy whose parents divorced when he was 10 years old and the consequences of their decision that still effected him 60 years later? You know, the one where he turned his passion for music into a healthy a stress relief, then into a full-time career?

Today's guest not only met his wife during this process, but went on to touch people's lives through a song that came to him unexpectedly via inspiration. Best yet? He's not just going to share with us the practical life tips of what he did, but how he did it so we can achieve similar results in our lives as well.

He's a great storyteller, song writer, and true gentleman. Not to mention a personal friend of Jack Canfield, founder and author of the Chicken Soup for the Souls franchise.  So get your pen and paper ready. You're going to love listening to this remarkable episode of the podcast and glean a ton of incredible knowledge and insights. All of this and much, much more in this heartfelt episode. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the Dave Combs story!

GUEST BIO: 

Dave Combs is a songwriter, photographer, successful businessman, and Amazon best-selling author with four decades of experience writing over 120 songs and creating fourteen albums of soothing, relaxing instrumental piano music. His songwriting began with the now popular standard, Rachel’s Song. His soothing, relaxing music has been played millions of times worldwide on radio, satellite, and all internet streaming media and it continues to touch the lives of millions of people all over the world. He is the author of the new book, Touched By The Music: How the Story and Music of Rachel’s Song Can Change Your Life.

EPISODE PROUDLY SPONSORED BY: 

• Ascend 2 Glory: Sales & Marketing Video Guide

SHOW NOTES:

Guest Contact Info:

• Website: https://CombsMusic.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TouchedByTheMusic
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-combs-62998a6
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/combsmusic

Resources / References Discussed: 

• YouTube link

Transcript

The effects of divorce 60 years later, playing your inspiration and finding your soulmate, all this and more right now.

Hello friends. Welcome to this week's episode of the remarkable people podcast, the Dave comb story this week, Dave's going to tell us his remarkable life journey from childhood to the effects a divorce had on him when he was 10. That carried through to today. He's going to talk about finding his passion and music, how a stress relief [00:01:00] not only turned into a career.

But he met his wife through it, his soulmate, and then he went on to touch people's lives through a song that came to him through inspiration, all this, and much, much more in this episode of the podcast, Dave's going to share with us practical life tips. He's a great storyteller. You're going to love listening to, and on top of it all, we're going to talk about how Dave.

Jack Canfield of chicken soup for the souls. And so many more books are actually close friends. So get your pen and paper. Get ready to take great notes on this episode that you can not only enjoy for pleasure, but apply to your life and thrive while you grow. I'm David Pasqualone and welcome to the Dave Comb’s story.

Copy of RPP E103 INTERVIEW PART 4 Dave Combs: Hey, Dave, how are you today? I'm going, doing good, [00:02:00] David. Now we're not gonna have any trouble re remembering each other's names at all. Are we, ? Not at all. Not at all my friend. I will go by David for that automatic, the artificial intelligence spot. And you will go by Dave and our listeners.

If they're reading the transcript, they'll even have clarity there. How's that sound? That sounds perfect. all right. Awesome. Well, Dave, I just told our listeners a little bit about you. They're pumped to hear this episode. They know the kind of content that you know, to look forward to. So at this time, let's just jump in brother, let's go through your background.

You know, we all have a past good, bad or ugly, but it makes us the men, men, meaning mankind. We are. And so let's start off. Where were you born? What was your upbringing like? Did you have siblings? Was it chaos? Was it a blessing? Let's go, let's go through your childhood. Well, I'll try my best to do that in a, a shortened version.

I'm from east Tennessee and my, my mom [00:03:00] and dad both were come from tobacco farming families in Southwestern, Virginia. So, but they moved to a little town called Irwin, E R w I N, Tennessee to start their married lives together. And I'm one of two children. I'm the first born. I'm the oldest by my, have a younger brother, Don.

and both my parents were into love music. My mother loved to play music. She took piano and she was a little girl up in Virginia. And my father, he played the piano by ear. He could sit down at the piano and it didn't didn't need any music in front of him to play. He could just sit down and play. And I think that came about from his mother, my granny Combs, who was extremely musical.

She was a little, little lady, four, four foot eight. She's born in 1894, granny Combs. And , I don't know if she weighed a hundred pounds or not, but she was a tiny little lady, but she could make some music. And David, I [00:04:00] have right here in my. Her favorite instrument. This is what we call an auto harp. Now mother may bell Carter.

If you want to Google and check out on that after the podcast, you can, but mother may bell Carter kind of made this instrument famous, but my granny Combs could really make this thing talk and she loved to play it and sing in my job. When I would go see granny, when we'd go visit her on weekends or whatever, she had hand me this auto harp and she said, David, now she called me David.

like you, cuz that was my given name. So she said, now, David, would you tune this up for me? And so I'd tuned it up and get it to sound and all good. And she, I get it sound real good. And you just strum it and amazing and graze how sweet so sound and she could just, but she didn't play it that simply she could really make a.

So I grew up around music and making music all my life, really. And, you know, in [00:05:00] church we were members of the local Calvary Baptist church and choir music and him singing and quartets and piano and Oregon duets, all those kind of things were, you know, really an important part of our church service. And, and that is just part of me.

So I really love music cuz it's been in my bones I guess since I was born. And so I was raised in this little mountain community, upper and upper east, Tennessee of Irwin Muno county. My classmates were all from the similar backgrounds. We were. Not there was, it was a rural, we weren't poor, but we didn't have a lot of money either.

If you know what I mean. We, we were mm-hmm we raised our own foods on our gardens and that kind of thing. And when we could, and, but all of us kind of grew up together, but we always liked music in high school. I don't know whether you ever saw the movie, Mr. Holland's Opus. Yes. That was a great movie.

Richard DPH. Yes. Well, [00:06:00] that Richard drefus is character. Mr. Holland. I had my own version of that and all of us did Inor county. His name was pat alderman. Uncle pat, we called him. He was the guy who would come around to all the elementary schools during the week and teach us all these fun camp, fire songs and so forth.

And when it got into high school, uncle pat, by that time got promoted to coral director for the high school. He taught all of us, the, the coral kind of thing, the chorus. So we had spent like four years making music with uncle pat, and he was such an influence on not just my life, but all of us kids that sang for him, just like in that movie, Mr.

Holland's Opus. And so that was another part of my musical kind of influence on my life, along with the church and so forth. And by the time I was like a senior in high school, I could play the piano well enough to occasionally they would let me play the piano at church for, you know, alpha tour or a [00:07:00] prelude or something.

I wasn't the pianist for the church, but I could do special music. So I would play in that. And that was a real. Kind of a special compliment to me, or it was, I think, an encouragement. They, they wanted to see me Excel with my music and they all love music too. So I did that and eventually I got to conduct and be the choir director at my home church.

I did that on a part, you know, an occasional appointment base basis. And, and then when our minister music quit went to another church, they asked me to fill in for him, which I did. And so how, how old were you at that? Well, this time I was a sophomore and senior in, in college. So I was what, like 19 20, 20, 21, 22.

Wow. So that's why you grow up through yeah. Your skills developed and they gave you that huge responsibility at a young age. Yeah. Right. They really kind of took me under their wings. And by the time I was able to do that and they needed me and I needed, you know, they, [00:08:00] they, I think they paid me $25 a week, which was not a lot of money, but back then every little bit helped.

And so, you know, it was a part-time to help me to help them. And so I, I enjoyed the heck out of that. It was a great experience to continue my musical practice and singing and conducting. And, and when I got my first job outta college, now I was a, a math major, a physics minor. So I'm a, , I'm a technical kind of techy kind of person.

And I worked in the computer center. At the college for four years while part-time, while I was going through school to help my make my way through college. And at the end of my college degree, I got a job com being a computer programmer for Western electric, which was a big subsidiary of the bell system.

They were the manufacturing arm of the bell system. And my job was to be a computer programmer. So my entire career began and [00:09:00] followed me all the way through for the next 22 years in technology. I started out in computer programming and then with management. And, but everywhere I was, it had something to do with technology and, and I still love technology.

I, I think I own probably every apple product that they ever came out with. The, from the very, even the very first one. So I love that kind of thing. And, and you may too, I don't know, but I'm, I'm that kind of a person. I like the, especially the musical capability with our laptops. Now we got a studio built into our laptop.

You can record. Yeah. You and I are talking on laptops right now from, you know, you're down in Florida and I'm up here in North Carolina and Winston Salem. Yep. We might as well be right next door to each other. Yeah. Other than touching and like, you know, yeah. Shaking hands is no difference. Almost we could bump fists and everything.

yeah. Yeah. And they're working on suits. You feel things, but it's craziness. So now let's go back through your [00:10:00] childhood. I don't wanna miss anything before you move forward. All right. Let's do. As you're going through your childhood. It's not always just the good things that make us stronger. It's the things we quote unquote bad.

You know, what was your upbringing like in the sense of, I know we talked in private, like in your family. Did you have any kind of challenges or hardships or difficulties while you were growing up or was it all just butterflies and rainbows? Well, I would, I, I would be I wouldn't be telling the truth if it was all I, it was all rosy.

Yeah. My mother and my father separated in 1957. I was 10 years old. And my father moved to Florida and we stayed in Tennessee and my brother and I, I was 10. My brother was eight and I'm not sure we ever understood the background of that. You know, how young kids are when things like that happen. It's, it's really a big mystery to a young mind.

There's know why these two people can't get along or why, why did they have to [00:11:00] separate? And I, I know that was hard. It was hard on me and my brother. It was hard on my mother and but to her credit, my mother kept us boys in Tennessee and raised us on her own. From that point forward. Now, I, I stayed in touch with my father in Florida.

In fact, I went to Florida and spent a whole year with him in when I was a junior in high school, naively, I thought I'll go down to Florida and I'll see if there is a possibility of patching this relationship between him and my mother up. And that of obviously didn't happen. Wasn't gonna happen. But in my young mind, I was, I had to at least try and go spend some time with him and learn, you know, all about my father.

Cause I had not really spent much time with my own father from the time he left in 1957 till you know, that point in time. So yeah, growing up without a [00:12:00] father figure Was hard. And I thank God for our good godly neighbors. I had a good, good neighbor up up the hill from me. His name is bill FA. He was, he had three boys and they were our age and we, he was like a surrogate father for me.

And then down behind our lot was Mr. Malone. He had one daughter, she was like a sister. And he was like a surrogate father to us as well. He kind of took my me and my brother under his wing. You know, Mr. FA came down one day and showed me how the first time I had to tie a tie on my suit. First time that was Mr.

FA. So growing up without my biological father was difficult and it still sometimes gets difficult to talk about because, you know, it's, there's a lot of emotions that come to the surface. The more you dig in there, the you sometimes you don't even realize they're there. Yep. But my father instilled on me.

One thing he did do, he instilled in [00:13:00] me a love of music. The year I went to spend with him in Florida, when I was in the 11th grade, I basically learned how to play the piano completely. That year I started out, I could stumble around and play hymns, but my father could play anything. And he and I played, he had an O a Hammond organ and a piano and an old pump organ.

He and I would make music together on weekends. In fact, we'd go to the two of us and go to a nursing home or whatever. And we'd put on a little program of, of singing and playing hymns and he, and I would sing a duet or I'd play and he'd sing that kind of thing. So I got to know at least the musical side of my father during that year when I was in the 11th grade.

And it's kind of funny, the, he worked for Tropicana products, the orange juice company in Braden, Florida mm-hmm and Mr. Rossi was the original owner of that comp the founder of the company. And he owned it [00:14:00] at this time. It was a private company. And so Mr. Rossi was a deacon in the Baptist church. He was a staunch Christian.

He believed in the lay ministry and to the, even to the extent where, when the ships would come into the Tampa bay, bringing oranges from Honduras, when they would come into the bay, then to unload the oranges, the crew on the ship from Honduras had to stay with the ship. Well, Mr. Rossi said, I want those young men to have a church service on Sunday mornings.

So my father and I, and Mr. Rossi's nephew, Russell Riggler, we would go out to this Tampa bay and, and go up on the ship on a Sunday morning and haul up there. This portable pump organ , and you can Google it, but there is such a thing. It was back in world war two. It was a, an instrument that they literally hauled on ships and round, and you [00:15:00] upgraded it and unfolded it.

And it literally was a pump organ. You pumped with your feet to make the air move and you, you played it. So I played the hymns and my father would lead the singing and Russell regular would give a Bible lesson every Sunday morning to this Honduras crew on the ship. And that was my motivation for learning how to play every him in the book.

And I would practice all week long in that hem book, playing the piano. And this was in the summertime cause I wasn't no, no air conditioning back in, then this was what in 19 and 63, 19 63, the summer of 63. Well, it was hot and humid there. So I stayed inside and I played the piano eight hours a day. I probably practiced eight hours a day.

Well that taught me and to learn how to play and that has stayed with me. So I guess as, as much as it sounds kind of sad and, and not such a happy [00:16:00] ending, I did get something out of that year, long trip down to spend the year with my father learned how to play the piano. And I'm probably the only person in the world that was motivated to learn, to play it, play the piano on.

The deck of a ship yeah, no so, anyway, that's a, a long story about my piano upbringing with that, that part of my music. No, and it's just how God in how God orchestrates that he'll take even things that aren't, he didn't cause, or aren't in his will necessarily, but he'll make beauty out of them. So it's awesome to hear how you made, you know, orange juice outta oranges instead of made outta lemons.

Right. Right. Now let me ask you another question. So today, you know, you're within the quote unquote church and divorce is frowned upon because again, God hates divorce. I, my mom and dad were never married. I personally went through a divorce [00:17:00] last year and fought six years. Obviously it's not what God wants, not what I wanted, but sometimes that happens in life mm-hmm

But back when you were a child, it was very rare. Compared to today where it's like a 50, 50 flip, if people are gonna stay married, mm-hmm back then, especially within a church circle, it was very frowned upon to get divorced. So what was that like? Did you feel a lot of social pressure or did your community kind of rally around you and your brother in love?

I have to say that my church in Irwin and I hope somebody from there will eventually listen to this episode. I want to thank all of them. And a lot of them are since passed away, but they all, I cannot remember anybody being put off for or disrespectful or saying anything but loving and support from my brother and myself and my mother in that church, it was just a church.

You, and it really meant a church family. They were our family. [00:18:00] We were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, prayer meeting, all, you know, all the time, any, I was part of the RAs and, and when I, the Royal ambassadors, the boys part of it, and mm-hmm the, the, the men in the, in the church would always be doing things for all of us kids that grew up in the church and there in my Sunday school class, there wasn't any.

Of this pointing fingers or trying to make fun of anybody because they're, they had a only one parent and so forth. That was not the case. So I have to praise God that, that I did have a loving community and church family. That's fantastic. And now there's many people that are listening to this podcast that grew up without a dad or a mom, and they're going through a divorce right now, or maybe it's the mom and dad listening.

And they're like, they don't even know what to do. You know, when, when you get to that point, it's kind of just sometimes just hold on and survive. So as a young man who went through it and [00:19:00] you had that hope, you know, you're gonna love your mom. You're gonna love your dad. You always want that family to come back together.

Even if people say it's not true, mm-hmm everybody has that godly instinct in their heart. Mm-hmm so what kind words of encouragement or lessons learned would you wanna share with tho the people struggling right now with divorce? My, my feeling is that they need to think more about others than themselves.

I mean, I know that's gonna be hard to do, especially in a contentious situation, but to think like I forget that in there a song that to think, think more of others than you think of yourself. It's, it's if you do that and you express your love for the other person, at least, and love for the, if there are children involved, at least don't, don't make the children suffer for the, the animosity between the two parents.

And there needs to be an amicable relationship. And, and [00:20:00] this, this thing of where, and especially, I think some attorneys are, are really responsible for the, the, the, the headbutting that takes place in divorce thing situations. But the, if the two parents can. Work it out to make sure that their relationship to their children and their influence on their children stays there the love for the children and the, and to make sure that they, the children do not suffer from this, any kind of conflict between the two parents.

That if you can minimize that you have gone a long way. Now I know there are many, many counselors, so I've met some authors that have written books about this co-parenting kind of situation where you're, you're trying to do it with a, in, in friendliness friendly ways rather than hostility. So it's, that's important, especially when you have young kids, young kids mind, and I, I know you, you experienced it firsthand [00:21:00] yourself.

You are very malleable as a young kid and your personality and how you feel about things can be so influenced by your adults, whether it's your parents or the community around you. But I was blessed to have people who always built me up and encouraged me and did not say, you know, I was not gonna ever make anything of myself or, or those kind of crazy suggestions that sometimes happen.

But I was blessed to have people around me that built me up. So build up your kids, build up your, your family. And if you get a temptation to go another direction, just realized that that is not God speaking. That's the devil speaking to you. So you need to, to listen to your higher aspirations and, and, and, and be a good person.

And, and as be like Christ would be. Yeah. And that's such a blessing that you had that. [00:22:00] In your church and you had people living like Christ, they were Christlike, they were Christians and they weren't just a church, a building with reli religiosity. Yeah. So if you're listening now and your parents are going through a divorce or you are the parent and you're going through the divorce, I agree with Dave completely.

You guys chose one another. You made a vow of God. You need to do everything you can to work through this and make it as minimal on the children as possible. Because like Dave shared openly transparently, you know, he's older now and still looking back on the divorce, he feels emotion. And if you're watching this video, his eye got teary When people say kids are resilient, they'll recover.

I wanna punch those people in the face. If you say that you're either ignorant or evil because [00:23:00] kids are resilient to a point, but you're format, you're forming the synapses in their brain and their hearts, and you're teaching them that this is okay. And most of the time it's not. So really stop being selfish is my message.

And think about what you're gonna do to your kid, your children, for generations to come. Because of your instant right now, so that that's kind of my, I might lose listeners or my gain listeners, but that's my advice. Dave, you agree, disagree. What are your thoughts on that? I agree a hundred percent with you, you know, when, when we're in the formative years, those things they kind of, you almost think of it as getting burned in your brain.

I mean, the, and it's hard to undo. Yep. You know, there are people, you know, I'm sure you could talk for hours about your own background of how you had to work so hard to overcome. Some of the things that you had to basically unwire after you [00:24:00] grew a, become an adult, you had to realize that that was not, that's not right.

I gotta go on this path and it takes hard work and effort and repetitive work and you over and over putting positive thoughts in your mind to replace all those negative things that you might have been had dumped in on you when you were younger and, and the more you can eliminate the , the young person having to do that by giving them something positive to move forward with the better off you are.

I think, yeah, I, I couldn't agree more. And again, if you're listening to this, you're like, Hey guys, I'm not even a Christian. I don't believe the Bible. I don't believe in God. I don't believe in church. I'm just here for the growth. Then look at statistics. Statistics prove the Bible real science proves the Bible, not fake science, right?

And when you look at prisons, 90% of the men in prisons are fatherless. You look at people with emotional problems, lot of issues that are social issues. [00:25:00] They were diagnosed as medical illness just a few years ago. And now society's saying they're okay. It really drills back to childhood issues. Mm-hmm , mm-hmm and all this stuff matters.

The only people like you were talking about the attorneys and divorce, the only people who went from divorce is Satan in the, the legal system. And I've told, I didn't use an attorney because I didn't want to get divorced. And I'm like, I'm gonna go with God and do this. And it was the shortest divorce. My ex-wife's attorney said I've never been in a divorce so fast.

It's and I said to him, because there's not two blood suckers, there's just one. I'm like, you're just trying to get $350 an hour. I said, I'm just trying to move past this. But that whole time there's no good. There's no good solution. It's a lose, lose solution. Your kids lose. Everybody loses from problems in the marriage.

And especially if he gets to divorce. So the damage that Dave, he had [00:26:00] a F great community and he had a life that people poured love into him. And he still has. , but for the majority of us, there's an absence of that love sadly. And there's an absence of the guidance and things start, whether you're a child and it MIS forms you, whether you're a teen, it wars your world, whether you're an adult and you're like, holy crap, my parents get divorced.

You might be 30 years old with your own kids listening to this. And you find out your parents are getting a divorce in their sixties and your, your world literally shakes and rocks. And then it changes your perspective and crumbles the future before you so to everybody, man, follow God, love God love yourselves.

And if you truly love and fear, God, you're not gonna begin to divorce. Cuz you made a vow and you're gonna fight and stick it out. And generations come will be blessed. But if you give into the flesh and the temptation and you're sitting there, you know, Dave's parents, I don't [00:27:00] know what happened. I don't know if you wanna share that or not.

If you even know Dave, but at the end of the day, even under the best circumstances, there's still pain. That's gonna be carried because of our sins. So wake up, do the right thing, shut off the damn TV and start reading your Bible and following what it says that that's my bit on divorce. Dave, you want to add anything before we move on?

I think we have pretty well preached that sermon. I hope, I hope it reached to, to receptive ears is all I can say. Yeah. And I'm not trying to be harsh or unloving, but it's sometimes you need tough love. Suck it up, do the right thing and stop looking at the trash. That's leading you away. Stop hanging out with the people that's saying it's okay.

I had somebody tell me once a lot of good Christians say divorce is okay. And my response was number one only. God's good. Two. They're not Christlike. And I can pretty much bet my life. They're not Christians. They're just going to church. So if [00:28:00] that's. I'm sorry, read your Bible. Other than adultery. There's no reason for divorce and there's certain things that happen.

They're very hard. Maybe you need to leave for safety issues, all that stuff's between you and God, but the actual act of divorce and remarrying and moving on. So, I mean, old Testament, new Testament, the only thing I can see is for adultery. And even then God wants you to give your best and try to work through it.

So now, Dave, I didn't mean to take up so much time in your story, but hopefully God led this for a reason. It's gonna help people maybe save some marriages because people are gonna really consider what they're doing. If not, I'll just get a bunch of hate mail , but that's okay. I can get hate mail in, in 102 languages.

I'm fine with that. Oh my, well, I, I don't think that's gonna happen, but we we'll pray it won't. Yeah. Yeah. But going back to your story. So now you spend a year with your dad, you have an amazing experience with the owner of Tropicana [00:29:00] and your dad, which most people can't, you know, who knows a CEO of a major corporation now, and then you're on a boat ministering to people from Honduras, you said, right?

Yes mm-hmm . And then you end up going back to your home, growing through the church, and then in college, taking over the music program, where does your life go from there? Well, obviously once I got outta college, I got this great job with Western electric at and. As a computer programmer now, music was still a big part of my life, actually for the first two years of our marriage.

Now, by the way, speaking of marriage, 

Well, David, I have to say that my wife, Linda and I will have been married in one more week will be for 52 years. So I have been blessed with a wonderful wife for 52 years.

Her name is Linda and I love her dearly. So amen. That's she's awesome. She's, she's a [00:30:00] great lady. And one of these days that we're gonna, you'll probably you would want to interview her. My, if you think my story is interesting, you will you talk to my wife, Linda. She has an incredible story to tell about her career.

She has worked for five presidents and is currently, and for about another two weeks, she is the control. Of the state of North Carolina, she's still working. She will have been working when she retires the end of June. She will have been working since she turned 16 years old for 60 years. So she has quite a story to tell.

And I would, I, I won't steal her thunder, but I know you'll want to interview Linda at some point in the future. She is re remarkable lady. Yeah. That would be great. That that'll be an excellent continuance of the conversation and have her own story, that parallels life. And we see how you guys met. Yes. So speaking of that, where, where is your, did you guys meet in high school?

College? Where did you meet? We met here in Winston Salem when I came right straight outta college from Johnson city, Tennessee at east [00:31:00] Tennessee state university, where I got my degree, I moved to Winston Salem, and Linda was already here in Winston, Salem as a school. She was teaching sixth grade and we just happened to meet at an apartment complex where I was living.

I met some young ladies that lived there and they came over to my apartment one evening to bring some records, to play some music. And again, here again, I guess there's a thread of music through all of this, because back then you used to literally bring records. Now this is a 45 record, but back then we used to bring the old big, you know, LPs the, the, the big records.

But if you're listening, I'll put pictures in the show notes. Yeah. So you can click on the website and check these out. Yeah. What I was holding up was a 45 single record, a 45 vinyl record. So it's seven inches, eight inches. Yeah. It's about seven inches and it's got a big hole in the middle instead of a little tiny.

Yep. But anyway, these friends of ours, friends of mine were living in the same apartment complex that I was, [00:32:00] and I had just bought two brand new, big speakers for my stereo. Well, when you get new stereo equipment, what you certainly wanna play music and share it with people. Right. So I invited these two young ladies to come over, bring some records that evening.

It was Sunday evening and let's listen to some music and they said, okay, we will come. If we can bring somebody with us, we've got company. And we'll bring her with us too, if that's all right. So, okay. So. Six o'clock comes and here comes Susan and Shirley at the door knocking and opened the door and there they are.

And then here's this nice, beautiful young lady behind them. And they introduce her as they want me to meet Linda Morrison. I said, oh, okay, great. Well, come on in. And so we sat there that night and put records on and played all my, my new stereo system. And the more we talked, the more I found out I had in common with this sweet young lady, Linda Morrison that I had just met.

We talked and [00:33:00] talked and talked. And by the end of the night, I had decided this is relationship needs to continue on to the next step here. and we had, one of the things we had talked about was a fantastic country restaurant that everybody left to go to called the polyA. It was a farmhouse out in the middle of a tobacco field and out in the country.

Where they made music on Friday and Saturday nights, it was people brought their instruments and so, and played and sang. And, and they had a big buffet of country cooking, you know, ham biscuits and gravy and green beans and corn, all these kind of good stuff. And I think it was $5 a person you paid at the door and you come in, you go take your plate and get your meal.

And then you sit down and you'd listen to all this wonderful music being played. Well, these lady young ladies had been there and I had not. So I said, well, why don't we all go to poly Rosa Friday night, this Friday night? Oh, that sounds like a great idea. And I remember this was on Monday night was when I, I met.[00:34:00] 

And so by, by the time Friday rolled around mysteriously, the other two young ladies couldn't go for some reason, I, I never couldn't quite figure that out. And so it was just me and Linda. So our first date was to go up to this fabulous place called the polyA have a great meal and music. Now the musical part of this story is I get there and, and they always have a, the owner of the place and his family and other people.

There was an in, you know, somebody played the piano, a guitar, somebody sang, somebody played the bass upright bass and, and they just made wonderful music. They would sing country music or gospel music, hymns, whatever. Well that night at the poly Rosa on a Friday night, it was just me and Linda. Nobody else showed up that night besides the family and come music time, the piano player didn't show up.

So I went up on [00:35:00] the stage with their permission. I said, oh, I played piano. So I went up on the stage and I played the piano with the band on that Friday night. And when I met Linda in 19, and this was in 1969, so I played the piano now on our 35th anniversary, my wife and I decided we want to go back to the poly.

We do. We go back up there, find it, and it's changed it a little bit. The, the old building had burned down, but they build a new one back. And we went in, I think it was 10 or $12 a person this time. So gone up a little bit. We go in, have our meal, we sit down, eat the meal, the band starts playing. Guess what?

Piano player didn't show up. I got to go up on the stage 35 years later and play the piano with the band at the poly. So now, did you tell them that story when you were there? I did. I got 35 years ago. Yeah. The same thing happened, everybody. They just applauded, it was, oh, it [00:36:00] was a grand time. It was. And this time the building was full of people.

I mean, it was must have been a hundred people there, so , it was a, but it was a, it was what a coincidence. I mean, how, what's the odds of that happening, right. zero. It's God. I mean, there's zero odds of that happening or, I mean maybe statistically one in 2.8 billion. Right.

So anyway, I, I didn't mean to get a sidetrack on the, the, no, that, but that's, that was, I, it just brought back that wonderful memory of my, my wonderful, my first date with my wife, Linda, and then the 35 years later. Amazing. That's great. Now. So you're in technology, you're working with music in your church, you meet amazing woman that you spend your life with.

What kinda lessons do you learn on the way Dave, that you're like, man, if you're listening now, here's stuff that's gonna really help you. Like I learned it later, but if you can grab this now and run with it, you're gonna do good. [00:37:00] Well, I, I, it's kind of hard to, to That's super vast and generalized. Yeah.

So you can go anywhere you want with it. Yeah. You know, in terms of finding your soulmate, the one you're gonna spend your life with. I think a lot of that has to do with when God puts two people together. I mean, there's, sometimes there's not a lot of control over that, but it looks like coincidence, but when you look back on it, no, I don't think it was coincidence that that Linda happened to be visiting those two friends of mine at the apartment that night.

I think that was meant to be, and, but when the more we talked and the more we, we got to know each other, I think we found that the compatibility and the, the common set of. Beliefs and moral standards and where we are, are in our religion and our, our, our, our commitment to our, our Jesus Christ and our church and everything, all of that just [00:38:00] fit together.

And it wasn't a force fit. I hear some bad stories sometimes of people that they, they have a physical attraction to each other, but when it gets to the deeper than the physical attraction into the who, they really are deep down in their soul, there's, there's a disconnect somewhere there's. And, and then that eventually kind of leads to a, a separation or a falling apart, but to spend time getting to know the person deep down, not just at the surface is very critical, I think.

And the more time, you know, Linda and I spent many, many hours talking about our past and our families and our church and how much we love music and. And all, you know, our friends, we talked about our friends that we grew up with and they were all of a similar love for each other and support, and that meant so much.

And so I had no doubt in my mind that she was the right first person for [00:39:00] me. And, and likewise for her. Now, I to say that 52 years have been nothing but a bed of roses would be also a misconstrued thing. We've had some tough times and we've had some disagreements and whatever, but the, the thing of unconditional love comes into play.

What does that mean? That means you don't walk around holding a grudge and remembering what somebody did that wasn't too smart last year or two years ago or whatever. Don't keep bringing something up. That kind of thing is, is forgive and forget. And this, this, my wife is probably, I think the knowing me and how I tend to be I'm 75 years old, but.

Sometimes I feel like a teenager. And so I think she says sometimes I act like a teenager, but , but you know, for her to be able to forgive me for all crazy things that I do or whatever, she it's like, it's gone. It's erased. It's like when you're, when you're, when you're, [00:40:00] when you become saved, your sins are washed as wide as snow.

It is, there is no looking back and saying, oh, I wish they'd done this or that or the other. And keep bringing something up. God doesn't work that way either. And so this unconditional love is so critical. I think in a marriage and you have to work at it. And if you catch yourself trying to, to be dragging up something from the past, put that behind you and say, Nope, get the behind me, Satan.

I don't wanna do this. This is not good. You know, you need to move forward and be positive and supportive of each other. Now, how long was it between when you met Linda and you got married? Well, we met on September 1st, 1969 and got married June 20th, 1970. So it was nine months later, took us that long. I need to get the wedding plan and all that.

And we bought our first house in that next spring. And so we were all ready, but it was, and our wedding was . It was such a, a beautiful [00:41:00] thing. I think we may have had three or 400 people there in this little Baptist church. And, and you think of today's weddings that cost thousands and thousands of dollars to put on a wedding?

I think our biggest expense was our $45 wedding cake. The rest of the stuff was provided by the church members and the family. And, you know, we, we probably paid the minister, you know, some fee for his services, but you know, none of this big many thousands of dollars for a big party. And yeah, we had, we had a family rehearsal dinner at the holiday Inn and you know, it was just.

Just low key and, and very kind of a country wedding, I guess I would call it. Yeah. And I still think those are the best ones. I mean, you see these, like you said, elaborate weddings, TV shows about it. And I really think people are so wrapped up in the wedding that they're missing the relationship. And as soon as it's over the wedding and the excitement, they're disappointed with their spouse.

I just don't think [00:42:00] it's very healthy personally. I just talked to somebody and they're again, married for the third time, like same person. Oh wow. but they're like, we want another wedding. We want another wedding and it's like, just throw a party. I mean, don't have, you can only be married once. And that's what I think the world just doesn't see.

Like if you're listening to this, whether you have a biblical worldview or if you're coming at it from another aspect, marriage represents our relationship with God. And then, you know, we talked about father figures and, and wives and. When you don't have a father in the home, it screws up your understanding of who God, the father really is, where there's a love and a healthy fear.

And like Dave was saying him and his wife, there's unconditional love. Oh, a kid doesn't have a mother and a father in the home, a child, a teen mm-hmm they don't see unconditional love. So now yes. Can they learn it? Absolutely. [00:43:00] Sure. But does it make it a hundred times harder? Absolutely. So that's so awesome that you had, you know, maybe not the perfect home life, but you still found you had enough of that core foundation and God, and in godly people around you that you knew this is forever and building on real, not on sex.

So that that's really impressive. Now was your wife's background, mother, father good childhood, or did she have issues in her home? I couldn't have asked for a better mother and father-in-law her. She was an only child and her mother and father whom I loved dearly. They both passed away within seven weeks of each other in 19 and 99.

And Linda's I love hearing Linda talk about her childhood because it, it, it makes me, I wouldn't say envious is not the right word, but I'm so. It gives [00:44:00] such a warm feeling when she talks about the times she spent with her father and with her mother and the things they did together. And then the times she spent with her grandfather and it just, her family life was extremely loving and, and a Christian home.

And they were, her father worked in the furniture factory. And her mother worked as a seamstress in a, in a sewing place making baby clothes, I think. And so they worked hard. They were really hard working folks, but they were also, her father was a deacon in the church. Her mother kept the nursery and they lived right within a hundred yards of the church.

So they were practically in the church all the time. So that relationship for my wife, Linda was just precious. And I know she wouldn't take anything for it now. She, she loves talking about her, her parents, cuz they were super people I couldn't ask for better in-laws than them. That's so good. That's so good.

And if you're listening, I can [00:45:00] feel warm and fuzzy. Just listening to Dave or listening to his wife, Linda, you know, talk about their parents. So sometimes even if we don't have in our own life, we can just absorb and appreciate, and then we need to become those people for our children. Other generations.

Mm-hmm so good, man. So now you get outta college, you get a job, you get a wife you're around, you know, in your mid twenties. Where does life go from there? Well, life was good. I, I went back to both of us, went back to school after our bachelor's degrees. And I got my MBA from wake forest university in 1978.

And Linda went back and got her master's degree from Appalachian state university in 1978 also. And then she went on into Virginia tech and got her doctorate degree later on. But I, I stopped at the MBA part of it, but my career had really pro progressed really nicely within Western [00:46:00] electric, which by the way, Western electric became part of or became at and T by 19 80, 84.

And my job was always very technical, but I, it still had to do with music. I forgot. For example, I, I started conducting what we call the Winka chorus, the Western electric, North Carolina chorus. It was a group of people that I worked with that loved to sing. We'd get together at lunchtime in the cafeteria, we'd make music.

We actually put on programs at Christmas and Easter and whatever. And for the most of 'em were choir members and really good musicians. And I would, I directed that for the early part of my, my career, but my career by the time I was in I guess it was 19 and 81, which I've been working. What now about 12 years.

And music, like I said, was still a foundation under everything I did with church and everything. Everything. But I came [00:47:00] home from work one evening and my way of relaxing when I come home from work. And still, when I want to just chill out and relax is to go to the piano and sit down and play something.

Playing music on the piano for me is my relaxation and my way of releasing stress and my way of taking myself to a really happy, good place that evening in 19 and 81, I sat down at my piano and I played a song. It wasn't a song that I knew or had heard, ever heard before I just played it. It was in the key of sea, a very simple melody.

I didn't really think much about it. I wasn't trying to write any music or anything. I just literally David, I sat down and played this song. It came to me. I, I guess it was an inspiration of some kind. God gave it to me and I played it well, I didn't really think much about it, except I continued to play it periodically.

My wife, Linda came home from work in a couple of days and she says, Dave, what [00:48:00] is the name of this song that I've got stuck in my head all day long. I've been humming this song and I don't know the name of it. She hummed a little bit of it. And I said, well, it doesn't have a name. And she says, well, you play it all the time on the piano.

I said, I know, but it's just something I made up. And she said, what you wrote that song? I said, well, I, yeah, I guess I did. And I hadn't thought about it. And she said, well, have you written it down? I said, well, no, I've got it up in my mind. I'm I'm not gonna forget it. She said, well, Nope, that's not gonna work.

You're gonna better write that down. Something might happen to you. And that song will be gone. so I said, okay, yes, ma'am, I'll write it down. So I got me a piece of paper and I wrote down the notes of the melody and the cords to go with it. And I know your listeners can't see this, but I'm holding up that piece of paper that I wrote it down on.

And it's got the melody and it's in the key of C and it's got the cords written above it. You know, the CA minor D minor G kind of [00:49:00] chords. Well, I put that, wrote it down, put it in the piano. Didn't think much about it. Kept playing it, you know, periodically two years later, some friends of ours had a little baby girl named Rachel and they asked me and Linda to be her godparents.

So we of course accepted and at her christening, excuse me, at her christening service, we're sitting there and it's just us and the family and the minister in this little country, church, and up at the front of the platform on the center of the platform is a baby grand piano. And so they were li listening to the full formal part of the service.

And I, at, toward the end, I punched Linda and I said, Hey, what if I play this little song now that we've been trying to think of a name for, and we couldn't ever come up with a name? What if I play it now? And she said, I think that's a good idea. So I went up to the family and the minister and ask if it'd be okay if I played this song on the piano.[00:50:00] 

And they said, sure. So everybody sat back down. I walked over the piano, sat down and started playing. And as I got into the song, I kept hearing this clear and throat and few little sniffles now, and then, and I noticed there's some tears coming down my cheeks as well, cuz it was a very tender service if you I'm sure.

You've been to christening service for a little baby and they're always so precious and sweet services anyway. And so when I finished playing the song at the very end, I looked up and I said, and little Rachel in the arms of her mother and I said from now on this song will be called Rachel's song in her honor.

And that's how the song got its name. And it, it was the perfect fit for the song. And it's still the perfect, perfect name for that little tune. That's beautiful. And then the song itself, as the years passed, did you put words to [00:51:00] it? Is it simply. Instrumental. How did the song develop over the time? It has always, and still remains without words.

It's an instrumental, only song. In fact, I've received many letters from people asking me never to put words to it because people say that when they hear the song, they wanna put their own words and thoughts into the music and not be guided or constrained by somebody else's words. And I think that's a, probably a pretty good way to look at it.

You know, when you hear an instrumental song, that's totally instrumental. You may be in a happy mood. You may be in a sad mood. You may be in a stressful situation. You may just wanna relax. So your thoughts and emotions can be guided by yourself and led by the music itself. Now, is it okay? Can we. I mean, we can always put a link in the show notes to the song mm-hmm but would it be okay if we took an intermission [00:52:00] and played this song for our listeners?

I think that would be, I've had several people do that and I it's very effective and it, it compliments, I think the rest of the show very nicely. So if you can insert and play Rachel's song for your listeners at this point that would be a wonderful thing to do. And I think then they will have a full appreciation of the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say.

Yeah. And let's do that now, ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy Rachel's song. 

[00:53:00] [00:54:00] [00:55:00] [00:56:00] 

Copy of RPP E103 INTERVIEW PART 4 Dave Combs: All right. Now, Dave, we're back. We just listened to Rachel's song. Now I don't have any emotional feel because we're recording live. You and I, but our listeners just had an experience. And I'm gonna go back and listen to it so I can have that experience as well.

But talk to us from here, your life. You became godparents of this beautiful little girl named Rachel, the song becomes named, where does life go from there to today? Well, the recording that you just heard took place in August of 1986, about three years later after the naming of the, [00:57:00] and it came about by my wife, Linda, suggesting that I get a recording made of Rachel's song, just for fun, just for us to use, you know, to go get a professional musician and a studio and get a recording made of Rachel's song, a demo recording.

And I happened to be working that during those weeks in 1986 in Nashville, Tennessee, and as you know, Nashville, Tennessee is just small music city, small music city , they're only probably four or 500 studios. And just, it it's called music city USA for a good reason. I was actually just there last week.

Yeah, I love Nashville, Tennessee, if, and I, if there was a second place that I could live right now, I think Nashville would be the place I have always loved Nashville. But anyway, I was working there during the week with Western electric and this was 1986. And so I said, Linda said, get us, get us, see if you can find a studio and get a recording made.

So I'm driving around [00:58:00] downtown Nashville, Tennessee one evening after work, looking for a studio to at least talk to somebody about it. So I'm over in a part of town that you probably are familiar with where the country music hall of fame is, and they call it music square. I think there's RCA studio over there that you can tour and there's ASCAP headquarters, BMI headquarters, and everything musical right in that general area.

Mm-hmm . So I'm driving down this one side street over there and it's called Roy a cuff place. Roy a cuff was a very famous dearly, loved musician in Nashville, Tennessee, the named the street after him. And at the end of Roy ACU place was a building that looked like a barn roof to it. And on the corner, they had this huge water wheel.

And on the side of the building, it said the music mill, obviously they were taken off on the, the name of the water wheel. So I pulled in the, the parking lot said that sounds encouraging. So I looked through the door [00:59:00] and there was a man sitting at the desk in the lobby. So I said, okay, I've got a live person I can talk to.

So I go over at the door and knock on the door and he comes to the door and unlocks it and let's, and invites me to come in. He says, hi, I'm George Clinton. Can I help you? And it's not, no, I, I saw your eyebrow. Yeah. Like George Clinton. What? Yeah, it's a different George Clinton. Everybody seems to want to do that.

There are a lot of George Clinton's. Well, I'm Mike. Dang. You have just blessing after blessing. It's just like, what are the going, going? Not, that was the exact George Clinton you needed. Now. This is a different one. And this George Clinton was a recording engineer. He since passed away, bless his heart. And he was a much loved engineer in Nashville, Tennessee.

They wrote a once he passed away, they did a full page spread write up on George Clinton when he passed away. That's how much loved he was in Nashville, Tennessee. He, his reputation was just stellar and he was, he was a great person. But anyway, I didn't know that at the time, all I knew was he's guy that let me [01:00:00] into the, the lobby of this place.

And I told him, I said, George, I'm looking for a Stu studio to record a demo of a little song. I've written called Rachel's song. And he said, well, come on in. And as I stepped in the lobby, I look over at my left and there's this huge life size picture of Glen Campbell and in the middle. And the next wall in front of me is a big Panorama life size picture of the, of the group Alabama.

No there's small group. Oh no. There's people might have heard of them. Might have heard of those. And then there's the Forester sisters. And then there's gold records and platinum records framed around the walls all over the place. And I was impressed. And I said, well, George, I have never been in a studio in my life.

And he said, well, Dave, you're in luck tonight. At this time, this was like six o'clock at night. He said, there's nobody recording right now. Believe it or not. He said very unusual. He said, let me give you a tour of our studio. Let's go over in studio a, the big studio. So [01:01:00] he takes me over and go into this big room where all the musicians set up.

You could put an orchestra in that room and I'm well, I'm sure they had in the past, there was a huge room, big nine foot concert, grand piano back in the corner and glass enclosed rooms around the wall. And it was impressive. He says, well, let's, let's go over into the control room. I said, okay. He said, right, he opens this door, it's a soundproof door into this room and it's about eight inches thick.

He opens this heavy door up and we go in there. First thing I see is this console, this thing must have been eight feet long. I later learned it had like 32 tracks and it was, you know, all the SLS and knobs and switches and lights and everything. I said, wow, George, you could launch a spaceship from in here and around the wall where tape recording machines and all the kinds of equipment and big monitor speakers on each side of this big [01:02:00] picture glass soundproof window, where you could look out into where the musicians were and oh, wow.

This is something, how much does this place go rent for George? He says it's $125 an hour plus. I said, oh, well now this is 1980 $6 today's dollars. That would be probably over $400 an hour today. So I, that would, I would easily conservatively. I mean, in the last 60, I'm not kidding. We, this is gonna air at a different time than we're recording.

We're recording. When is it? June 13th. Yeah. I literally just went to the grocery store and saw in the last 60 days prices double on some items. Yes. So we're in the worst economic times in American history in the sense of inflation and destruction of our country. So. Easily easily $400. By the time they listened to this, it might have been $500 an hour.

Yeah. [01:03:00] Yeah. It's easily that needless to say that was a whole lot more money than I made as a Western or Western at and T person. Whoa. So George, he saw, I think how disappointed I was in that number. And he said, well, don't worry, Dave. He said, the fellow who owns this studio owns another little studio across the street in what used to be a little, two bedroom rent house.

And it's, it's $15 an hour and it's got a little control room and it it'll do little baby grand piano. It'll do everything you need to do to do for $15 an hour. Plus engineer. I said, okay, I, I can do that. Okay, George, now all I. Is a piano player, a musician to play my song. I said, who would you recommend that I get to hire to play Rachel's song for me?

He thought for a second, he said, ah, I know just the person, his name is Gary prim. He said, Gary and I go to church together. I've known him since forever. And he said, he's a wonderful piano player and said let's go back over to my desk [01:04:00] and I'll look his phone number up for you. So he did, he wrote the number on a piece of paper for me and gave it to me.

Well, I hightailed it outta there and I got in my rental car and I headed for the airport near my, where my hotel was. And you say, well, why didn't you call him on cell phone? This is 1986 cell phones hadn't even been thought about let alone invented. And the internet hadn't been invented yet either. So here I am.

I gotta go find a landline in my hotel room. So I get in my hotel room, I call Gary's number, get his answering machine. Well, I leave a message and he calls me back in about 30 minutes and he said, hi, this is Gary. Can I help you? I said, yep. I've George Clinton says that you're a great piano player. And you do a great job doing a demo recording of a little song I've written.

He said, yeah, I'd be glad to do that for you. I said, well what do you need for me to send you to be able to do that? He said, well, just send me a tape recording of you playing it. So I'll know kind of what it [01:05:00] sounds like and send me a lead sheet. I said, okay, What's a lead sheet. , I didn't know the language of the, the mu you know, I I'd never been in Nashville music business before he says, oh, it's just the the, the melody written down and the cords to go along with it.

I said, oh, well, I've got that. I just didn't know to call it a lead sheet. That's this piece of paper I showed you a while ago that has the, the same thing on it. So I made a copy of that and mailed it to Gary. And a couple of weeks later we met on August the 22nd, 1986 at 6:00 PM in this tiny little studio across the street from the music mill.

Gary PRM comes walking in the, the, the, the studio carrying his, his synthesizer under his arm. It's a, it's a Yamaha DX, seven analog synthesizer. I've got one sitting right over here. I'm looking at it right now. Just like it it's a great analog synthesizer. So [01:06:00] he brings that in, sets it down, and then he goes over to the piano to start warming up.

And by the way, he is the friendliest, warm and easy to get to know kind of person he'd ever wanna meet just instant friend. Plus he and I are both from east Tennessee. We speak the same language and everything. So so anyhow, he's sitting there warming up on the piano and I go in the control room with the engineer and pretty soon Gary says, okay, I'm ready to record.

Okay. So the engineer says, all right, here we go. Pushes record and says, we're rolling. And so Gary starts playing. And he gets most of the way through the song and he stops. He says, let's rewind. Let's do that again. I can do better than that. Rewind the tape back to the beginning, push record, start over.

He played Rachel's song from the beginning to the very end, not missing a single note. I mean, it was. Perfect. And when [01:07:00] he finished it now, remember I had never heard my music played by anybody but me before. So I had no idea what to expect when I, you know, when you hire somebody to do something, I didn't know what I was gonna get.

I was blown away with the arrangement that he came up with my simple little song and he came back into the control room and, and, and said, well, how's it sound? I said, oh man, that is just fantastic. And then if he had, if he'd have stopped right there I'd have been happy. Cause it was just be. And he said, but I'm not done with it yet.

He said, I've been thinking about this. And he said, I wanna put some more orchestration along with the piano. He said, I wanna do some strings to give it some low strings to give it some bottom and some high strings to give it some top. And he said, I'm gonna play the piano part on an electric piano sound on the keyboard to give that piano sound a more richer, fuller sound.

And then in the middle of it, he said, I think I'm gonna put some horns in there to give it a little punch here and there. [01:08:00] Okay. So back into the, the roomy, it goes to play and he sets his synthesizer up. Put two more tracks on the machine record, the low strings. And he's of course, he's sitting there with a headset on listening to the original piano part while he is playing along with it.

And then two more tracks to record the high strings and then the electric piano part. Two more tracks for that. And he plays the El and he played it tight. It, the notes were exactly right on top of what he originally played with the pen. And now this is the, before the days of MIDI and all the electronic controls, he he, he nailed the notes, right?

Exactly. No clue what a gift. I mean, I'm not deep into music, but to know enough how difficult that is and to play those multiple parts mm-hmm and to hear it in your brain and bring it all together. Yeah. That's just amazing. And to make it such that it all sounds so seamless and just perfectly meant to be that way.

It's just, it was [01:09:00] totally amazing. And he, you know, you've added the strings that electric piano put the horns in there and when it got all finished, it came back in, we mixed it all, you know, played it all together then. And I I'm sure I had my mouth wide open the whole time. Cause it was just, I was just blown away.

You know, when you hear something that sounds as good as anything I had ever heard on the radio period. And yet it was something that I had written the song and Gary had arranged, just blew me away. So I wrote Gary a, a check for the agreed upon him out and thanked him profusely. And, and he got his synthesizer and he, he left and went home.

Well, I did not know whether I'd ever see Gary PRM again in my life. Ever again, but it turns out that Gary and I would go back into the studio over the next 15 years and record over 170 songs over 120 of which I had written. And we would become [01:10:00] as close of friends as you can possibly get. He and his wife and family are like family to me and Linda.

They're just wonderful people. We communicate as often as we can anyway. And I, I love to, to see them and I can't wait for the next trip to Nashville to, to go visit with Gary and his family. It's just a wonderful relationship. But that recording that night changed my life. I remember when I left that studio that night and playing it in my rental car, I kept saying to myself, this is it.

This is it. And I did not know what it was, but you know, when you have something that is so impactful on you, it just, you know, it's important and meaningful. You're just not sure what it's going to lead to, but it's gonna be great. And it certainly was, it was just amazing. What happened since then and talk about this, cuz I have a bunch of questions and we're gonna get into the talking points.

If people aren't organically learning from this, we're gonna, you know, [01:11:00] hand them some steps, break it down. But what happened after those recordings? Well, first of all, I did get it played on the radio I had. I was another blessing was that one of my dear friends, Bob Mac. Was a, had a radio program of his own.

He's a, he's a well known radio voice in Winston Salem. In fact, in North Carolina. Great. I call him the, the Paul Harvey of, of, of North Carolina. But mm-hmm, , he's it just has a great radio voice. And it's so distinctive when you hear anybody that's heard him before, when you hear it, that if he's doing a commercial or anything, they say, oh, well, that's Bob McComb, but Bob and I were dear friends.

And I told Bob about this recording of Rachel's song. And he says, well, Dave, I gotta hear this thing. So we went, he said, let's go over to my office where I've got a boombox, and then you can play that cassette tape of the recording for me. So we did, and we're sitting there in Bob's little office, listening to Rachel's [01:12:00] song, play.

And remember the, the song that you heard just a little while ago on this podcast, that is the original demo recording that I just talked and described. It has not been reedited, no remastering, no remixing, anything. You're hearing what I heard that night. So here I am playing this song for Bob in his office.

He's sitting there next to his boombox with his eyes closed and kinda his hands in his, facing his hands. And he is listening and I hear this. Mm

You know, that univers, the universal approval sound, you know, and he was just moved by that music. He, he had tears running down his cheeks when it finished. And he said, Dave, that, that song is going to be a standard. And he said, you gotta let me play it on my radio program. I said, okay. Cause he, he was, he had this Saturday morning, three hour jazz, big band jazz program that he did on the radio.

So I said, okay, all I have is this reel to reel master tape [01:13:00] that that I can loan to you. So he said, okay, I'll take good care of it. They made a copy of it at the radio station. And that Saturday morning they played Rachel's song on the radio for the first time ever. And wasn't long after it finished my phone rings at home.

And it's the radio station manager calling me saying, Dave, I've been in radio for over 20 years and this has never happened to me before. He said, Bob played Rachel's song on the program. And our phone bank of about 12, 15 phone lines lit up. Everybody was calling. What is that song? You just played on the radio.

Would you play it again? Tell me more about Rachel's song. Tell me more about this Combs guy in Winston Salem. He said, Dave, this song is, is unreal. You gotta do something with this. This is fantastic. So then is when I really realized for sure that it really was gonna be something special and that I better not just keep it to myself.

[01:14:00] And it's the song took on a life of its own one, I guess, once it got recorded and named it Rachel's song and then got recorded, it just kind of, it was gonna go somewhere with, or without me, I think , and it's, it has really been an unbelievable blessing. I ended up getting up, played on every easy listening station in the entire United.

It was the number one requested instrumental song in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, all these big, big markets. And it was way up on the charts and stayed there. It was an instrumental song and it was eventually got played on airline programs. I'd get in an airplane to fly someplace and I'd hear my own music playing on the, the airplane sound system, guarded feeling.

I tell you it is unbelievable or sitting on the tarmac in Dallas, Texas. I just landed. And I tuned my little portable radio to the local FM station. Tuned it on. And my music's playing. I tell you, it was, it was [01:15:00] unbelievable what a message. And it was just a confirmation that, you know, this, what I had done with this song was the right thing to do, and I needed to even get it out further than that.

And then where did you go from there? So what happened to Rachel's song? How was it changing people's lives? What, what was going on with it? Well, people started writing to me, you know, when they hear it on the radio. In fact, one of the first fan mail letters I got was from a, a lady in New Jersey. She had just gotten certified as an emergency medical technician, just finished her training and she and her husband were on the way home and in their neighborhood, they saw an elderly gentleman fall down on the sidewalk.

Well, of course, with her training and everything, they stopped the car and she jumped out and ran over to the man that had just fallen and to see what she could do to help him well, on the way over there, she heard playing on the car radio, this [01:16:00] instrumental song. And so she yelled back at her husband to turn that music up loud, which he did.

So there they are sitting there with the door open and playing this music and his she's comforting this old man on the sidewalk. And it didn't by the time the song finished, she said the man had calmed down. He was okay. And the another doctor had come to, to look after him. And so she was just amazed at the effect that the music had on the, the man that was, he probably was having a panic attack or maybe might have been having a heart attack.

I don't know, but he was in a stressful, stressed situation. So when she got home, she said, I called radio station, got your name and number. And, and I just had to write you and tell you this, this story about Rachel's song and what it did for this man's life. And so that was one of the first inclination, one of the first letters I ever got, and I continued to get letters from people all over the country, wanting to have their [01:17:00] own copy that they could play of Rachel's song.

And I ended up making a 45 record. I remember I'd only written one song at that time. Rachel's song. So I've I made a, went back to Nashville and got 45 records made of Rachel's song. And I'm holding it my hand for those of you watching, but it's the old, you know, seven inch with a big hole in the middle record vinyl record.

So at least I had something I could send to people that would let them listen to Rachel's song. And, but then this was in late, late 8, 19 86. I realized I need to write some more music. I wanted to have a whole album of this kind of music, but I hadn't written any more songs. So I, that one song. Made me realize I can probably sit down to the piano and write more, which I did.

I sat down at the piano and lo and behold, I did come up with some additional melodies. Now they weren't as easy as Rachel's song. I didn't just sit down and play it. And that [01:18:00] was it. I had to work at 'em a little bit, but I could take and create a melody in a song. I wrote enough music for my first album in 1988, and it's obviously called Rachel's song the album, but it has some other music in it that I have written and recorded with Gary PRM went back to the studio with Gary PRM and he's been doing all of the recordings with me since then.

And that was the beginning of my first of 14 albums that I did with Gary prem with music that I've either written or at least produced with Gary and those tapes and CDs that we used to sell got sold all over the United States, not in record stores or big bus, big box stores, but in gift shops, in tourist towns, all over the country, little tiny little shops that you'd walk into the shop and they'd be playing my music over the store sound system.

You'd hear the music and say, [01:19:00] oh, I like that music, what you're playing. And it would be for sale in a little basket by the cash register. So they'd, they'd buy it and take it home with them. And then I started getting more and more letters from people who had bought the music and telling me how much the music had touched their lives.

And, and David, I ended up with over 50,000 letters. From people all over the country and all over the world, really now 50,000 is a lot of pieces of paper. This is back, this wasn't emails. This is letters in the mail. And I have a, in my basement over here probably about 20 boxes of, of these letters. And I have kept them all.

And they're all very special. I mean, you better get your Kleenex out when you read some of 'em. They're very, very touching. Yeah. And statistically, for people who don't know for you to actually get a letter, if you're getting 1%, that's huge, right. To get somebody to [01:20:00] be so impacted that they pick up, they look for who wrote it, they write to who wrote it and they take action.

If you get 1%, that's crazy high. So that means you had a minimum of what, 5 million people listening to this and for the 50,000 to act. And it was probably millions more mm-hmm . It was, and it was so unbelievably confirming, you know, as it was in 1992, before I was able to quit my job at, at and T and do my music full time.

So from 1986 recording the racial song, I had six years of working during the day with my, my real, my, my day job. And then in the evenings and weekends working my music business to try to build up the sales and the music catalog that I had and recordings and that kind of thing. But by 1980, excuse me, 1992, I had enough gift shops playing and selling my music and people wanting to buy my music that I was [01:21:00] able to quit my job at at and T and go my music full time.

And that story, I ended up writing in a little magazine. You're probably familiar with called guideposts mm-hmm and in that little magazine. I wrote an article about that story of having building, writing Rachel's song and so forth and quitting my job finally in 1992. Well, this was in 1994 of the September issue.

And in the middle of it is an article I wrote called two part harmony. It's that story. And in the back of the magazine, cause the editors that you know of, of guidepost magazine loved the story about Rachel's song and the inspirational part of it. And so they encouraged me to write the article and they published it.

And in the back of the magazine, they put my name and address and phone number of if you want to get a hold of Rachel's song and find out more about it. Here's how you get a hold of Dave Combs. Well, this little magazine has a [01:22:00] subscription of about two to 3 million people. These are not just casual subscribers, either.

These are people who, when they get this little magazine, like my mother used to , she would read it as she said, from cover to cover and the covers too. and it was, they just absorbed it. Well, my, the day that magazine hit the street, David, my phone started ringing and my 800 number for Combs music. And it didn't, it wouldn't stop.

You put your hand on the receiver and pick it up. There was somebody there wanting to order Rachel's song or talk about Rachel's song all day 24 hours a day. And so I had to hire two people just to answer the phone. When that magazine hit the street. And two days after the magazine hit the street, my mailman comes.

Not ringing my front doorbell and he's standing in there and he's holding this [01:23:00] canvas bag that he's too heavy for him to even pick up. And he said, Dave, what have you done? He said, this bag, I can't even pick it up. He said, it's full of letters, address to you. I said, well, I just wrote this little article and guide post magazine.

I, I guess that's where they're coming from. And sure enough, each letter was a note to me. And most of 'em had a check in there for $10 for cassette and 14 for a CD. And, and my wife and I spent stayed up all night that night until six o'clock the next morning, just zipping open. Those envelopes that were in that mail bag.

I mean, it was that many. So in terms of was, was there a message there for me to, and a confirmation that I was doing the right thing? I think, I think so. It was, it was really clear to me at that point that the good Lord must have put me on the right path here, because why would all these 50,000 people?

Cause I heard from 10,000 people in two weeks, [01:24:00] I mean, that was unbelievable. So it was just an amazing time in my life and that, and I still hear from people all over the world now, of course, by email or text message, that kind of thing. And yeah, that's so good that you brought this up. You know, a lot of people are like, oh, they're so lucky.

You're, you know, oh, it's so easy for them. But the average overnight success takes seven to nine years. so you, you were inspired, you followed the inspiration, but you still had a work. And with that came the fruit and the reward where it became a full time purpose and passion and calling and career. But talk about the lessons.

Like if you're, if you were to be one on one right now with an audience member and they're like, you know, I feel inspired. I feel like this is something God has me to do. Okay. That's great. But now you have to do your part, talk to them about their part in the process, what you [01:25:00] learned. Well, first of all, I think you of course need a, you need a creation, something you've created.

Now. It may be as something as simple as just your own gift of being able to be a good speaker or a good, good friend, or a good counselor to somebody. But you may be a, a, you may be a musician. You might be a painter, a sculptor, or a speaker, an author each, you know, all of us have our gifts. And whether it, as I, I like to say some of us have a gift of a beautiful smile, you know, sometimes a smile to somebody in the grocery store that you don't even know.

You don't know what that might mean to that person. So there are all kinds of gifts, but discover, not just discover, but recognize your gifts and recognize them for what they are. They are indeed a gift and a gift is something you're supposed to give. Right. I mean, when you have a gift and a talent of something, you're not supposed to keep it to yourself, you're supposed to give it away.

So you [01:26:00] discover what your gifts are. You fine tune them. If it's making music, you make the best music you can. If you're a writer, you write the best stories or books that you can. If you're a speaker, you become the best speaker that you can to inspire your audiences, all those kind of things. So you become the best that you can with your gifts.

But then like you said, you have to, then you have to put some shoe leather into this thing. You've got to work at it. You've got to find ways to, to, to spread that gift around and, and, and learning how those different avenues of being able to use your gifts is a lot of hard work. And it'll, it'll involve sometimes.

Having an idea to do something. You, you try it and it doesn't work well. You don't just give up and say, well, that didn't work. You just forget the whole thing you back up and say, well, there's gotta be another way. So you keep trying and you keep trying and you keep your, you need to be persistent and have patience.

Like you said, this int overnight success of [01:27:00] seven years is a, is a typical story. You you're you're, you have to work at it. And it takes long time, a lot of, lot of obstacles to overcome and so persistence and being willing to work at it and never ever give up and never let anybody steal your dream.

Don't ever let anybody talk you out of pursuing your dream. If people are around you pulling you down, you find a way to get away from those people. You surround yourself with people who will build you up and support you and help you move forward. And that's another secret too, is that always keep yourself surrounded with a team of people.

That will help you succeed. Beautiful. And when you were coming up through the world and you had your wife, Linda, you had PRM Gary PRM, correct? Mm-hmm who were other people that [01:28:00] God put in your life to give you that positive group? Well, I, I I'd be remiss if I didn't thank my recording engineer, Ronnie light, who has been with me from the beginning as well, probably spent more time with Ronnie than actually Gary, because once the recording is made, then there's hours worth of work to mix the recording down and master it and so forth.

So Ronnie is a dear friend and a wonderful professional musician himself. He has been great. And you.

People that I, that I worked with even at at it kind of sounds funny when I was working with, at and T I was kind of trying to work my way out of a job at, at and T so I could do my music full time, but the, even the people I worked with were very supportive of me and my music. They understood the, that you're not as, you're not a one hit wonder or your life is not just a job [01:29:00] that you do have a life after work.

And many of them were so supportive of me. And of course I, the one number one supporter of everything that I've done is of course my wife. She is such an idea person and a visionary. She's a visionary thinker. She, she can see further ahead than I can. She, she, I think saw the potential of what we were doing long before it even dawned on me.

So I would. Great deal of credit to Linda for all of, of her support. Now on the musical side of things I have, as I've already mentioned about uncle pat alderman in, in my hometown, encouraging all of us, kids in music. And, and but once I got into directing choirs, there was one musician by the name of John W.

Peterson, who many of your church musicians will remember? He has written over, I have two or [01:30:00] 3000 songs, and they're all just wonderful. He's written many cantatas of which I think I conducted most of the ones that he wrote that were Easter cantatas and Christmas cantatas. There were musical performances of that he composed his music was I think ahead of its time, his, his tunes, his melodies, his chord progressions were all more modern than we were kind of used to hearing out of the, the seminal, but they were just great.

He was my, I guess my musical hero. And later in life, when he retired, he retired to Scottsdale Arizona. And my wife and I happened to be going to a wedding in Scottsdale one time. And I think he was in, in the nineties. And so I, I finally got his address and wrote him a letter and he wrote me back. I told him I'd love to meet him sometime, if it would be possible.

And I told him we'd be in Scottsdale as such and such a date. He wrote me back and he [01:31:00] invited me and Linda to come to his home and spend a few hours with him, which we did. And so getting to sit down with my lifetime, just hero of written, all these wonderful Christian musicals that had been heard around the world by millions of people and performed by millions of people to sit there in his living room and talk with him and his wife, Linda and I were sitting there and he invited me to play Rachel's song for him on his piano there in the living room.

I never will forget that that was such a memorable high water mark in my musical. I, but he was a huge influence on my music. And I think my, some of my chord progressions, I think in the songs that I've written, I would have to attribute to, to John w. Beautiful. Now, during this time, your wife and you, did you have a family?

Did you not have children? Where did your personal life go while your career was growing? Well, neither my wife or [01:32:00] I have ever been blessed to have children. So we, we don't have any biological children. However, my, with my wife's career as having worked for five different presidents in, I mean, five different Senate confirmations for three different presidents in Washington at very high level positions, she was the controller of the United States in one of her last position in Washington.

She had the occasion to have many organizations that worked for her. And a lot of these people that worked for Linda were young, really young folks, straight outta college, or, you know, early in their own careers. And here is Linda with a seasoned career experience and ex and reputation. She took these young people under her wings.

And, and so did I, I was the chief information officer at U S D a in Washington, also for five years. So I had a lot of young people that worked for me, but to have these young people then look up to you [01:33:00] while they worked for you. But even after you left, we called them our kids because they still keep up with us.

We still love to keep up with them. And, and many of them now have families of their own. And it's just, it's, it's a wonderful, so I would say we probably have 30, 40, 50 kids even though we don't have any biological children. Beautiful. So I got one big question for you before I ask that from your birth through today, is there anything we missed in your story, Dave, that you want to cover or you're like, you know, this will really help us as listeners, anything like that?

Or are you ready for the next question? Well, let me, let me wrap up this, the, the part about the music by talking just briefly about the progression of the music business from where it was. When I started in 1981 writing Rachel's song to today around 1981 [01:34:00] through, through the eighties was cassette tapes.

That was the primary and vinyl records. Back before that there was vinyl records and cassette tapes. And then in the mid to late eighties, CDs came around and of course, then we had a great high fidelity, high quality version of the music that could be reproduced real easily. That road we rode that wave with CDs up until the mid to late 1990s.

And then the internet came along about the mid 1990s and a company called Napster. Came along and was basically stealing intellectual property. They would take any song, whether it was copywriter or not, and make it available for free or download, which was basically stealing your property and, you know, giving it away.

Well, that really hurt the music business in terms of the sales of any music. Cause you know, why pay $15 for an album when you can download it for free? [01:35:00] That was the attitude that certainly many of the young people had at the time. And that really damaged almost permanently the value of intellectual property for music.

The music business was really on its heels and it wasn't until the advent of iTunes by apple in the early two thousands that that began to turn around. They started, you know, being able to pay 99 cents a song to download it on iTunes. Well, that started the, the, the business model back, at least to where you could get paid for it.

And then along came. Places like Pandora and Spotify iHeartRadio, all these places that would allow you to stream the music. And that's kind of where we are today. We've almost evolved out of the downloads into total, almost totally streaming now where you could just, all of us mostly have these, whether you're Alexa or Siri or whatever box that you happen to have, that you can play [01:36:00] music on.

You just have to say, Hey, so and so play this song. and boom, there, it starts playing. And so that is the, the progression that I wanted to, to leave with folks that, that the world has changed with music. And here we are in a world that's instant availability, all digital, anywhere, anytime 24 7. And to be able to ride that along every way and make sure that the music stays plugged into that don't get left behind.

It was a real job to keep up with it. But I think so far I have, and, and even today where. I'm using the podcast platform like you and I are talking to even further spread the word about my music and so that people hopefully will listen to it and, and want to if, if not buy it at least to stream it on their on their phones or their laptops or whatever.

Yeah, absolutely. And like our listeners know your link is in the [01:37:00] show notes. And if someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to reach you. Well, they probably by email would be the best way go to my website at da Combs music.com, co MBS, music.com. And now at the very, very bottom of this, that first page is a link for my email address.

Just Dave Combs, music.com and all my social media links are down there at the bottom too, for Facebook and LinkedIn. And what's the face and YouTube as well. Mm-hmm and but when you go to my home, my web page on the left hand side, we haven't even talked about it yet, but I have a book that I've written.

Called touched by the music that has these many of these stories I've told you on the podcast are in my book and it's available on Amazon. It's called touched by the music. And there's a link right below. It says purchase from, from Amazon, click on that. And you can either buy a paperback copy of [01:38:00] it, or you can by an ebook, you can instantly download it and read it on an ebook.

Or you can, if you're an audible subscriber, you can listen to me, read it to you for eight hours. I read the whole book through a narrated, the whole book. So you can listen to that. And on the other side of my homepage is a picture of my CD of Rachel's song. And underneath it's just a link that says buy@amazon.com and you can either buy a CD or you can download the MP3 files, or you can stream it.

If you're an Amazon music subscriber. That's the, the easiest way to get ahold of is just go to my website and my email address is there. And there's also a contact me link at the top. If you want to write, write me on my email PA on my webpage, you can do that too, but it's easy to get ahold of me. You don't have to remember much, but my last name.

Nice. Now, one thing I find interesting is [01:39:00] vinyl's coming back. My kids play vinyl and, you know, records, what people call it, vinyl records, whatever you want to call it. So it would be interesting if you get a Reba, you know, like do another mix of the Rachel song on vinyl. That would be pretty cool.

And go back old school. Yeah, it would. I've I've thought about that. I'm I'm not, I haven't given up on the idea, but I it's I'm I know there's a fair amount of expense in doing that cause of the, you have to create a, a master and it's an interesting process of how they create vinyl records anyway, and that's a subject we could talk about another time, but yeah, it's a lost start, so it's more costly, but it would be interesting if you could find a company to do that for you, that would be excellent.

Oh, there's a company. There's a company in, there's a company in Nashville. That, that, that does that today. Yeah. Nice. Now let's do this. Your book talks about changing lives. How, and what kind of [01:40:00] information does your book bring? That's gonna help us ch have our life changed. Talk about. Well, I've, I've done a lot of studying here lately about cause there's tons of research available on the connection between music and healing or music and stress reduction though.

Those kind of things. If you Google the there's lots of medical studies and all kinds of articles written about. And so I know there's a scientific basis for that, my kind of music and the effect that it has on your human body and your, your hormones and all that kind of thing that are about stress.

but I, the, the thing that's I know is that in the 50,000 plus letters that I've gotten from people, many, many of those talk about the, and these are all, of course anecdotal evidence of what's happening. But many of them talk about the effect that my music has had on their lives. [01:41:00] And for example, I've got one that I clearly remember early on was a letter from a lady who said, she says, I am a recovering alcoholic.

And one of the side effects of alcoholism apparently is insomnia, restlessness. It just cannot sleep. And so she said, I was, I got a copy of your Rachel's song album. And she said, I put it on. And she said, I was able to sleep through the night for the first time in years. And she said that music has helped me maintain my sobriety.

And so she attributes that my music to that, and I thought, wow, this is pretty powerful stuff. And I've had you know, therapists write to me and say how much they have been used my music in their therapy sessions to help their clients reduce the stress and tension of their life. And there is a lot of evidence of how much.[01:42:00] 

This kind of soothing, relaxing music when listen to in the right environment, does indeed help you bring down your stress level. I think there are studies that show that it helps to bring down your blood pressure. It helps to bring your heart rate slows your heart rate down a little bit. And so all those things are, are good things.

And so the fact that, you know, I, I even got one, just a postcard from this one fellow. He said, I am so and so, and I am in a, an iron. You may remember back in the polio days of the fifties and sixties, they literally put people in an iron lung to help them mechanically breathe. Yeah. One of our guest mother was in an iron lung for a year of her life and he's a fantastic Tony Gar Garcia.

And we can check out his episode. If you're listening, we talk a little bit about his mother. They wrote a book about his mother mm-hmm , but you talk about [01:43:00] perseverance and grit, isolation being treated like you're a leper. But yeah, she had an iron lung for a year. That's amazing. Anyway, I got a card from this fella that simply said Dave Combs.

I just want you to know that Rachel's song brought me back to life twice. Right. And that was, I, I just, I, it just was stunning. I just had, I didn't know what, how to respond to that. It was just, it just was amazing. And so those kind of anecdotal evidence and of which I've gotten in in fact, chapter 20, one of my book is 22 pages of these stories that I've picked up.

Just, just the, the ones to highlight out of the 50,000 and better, better get you Kleenex out whenever you read these stories, cuz they are, some of 'em are real tear jerkers. They are they'll tug at your heartstrings. Yeah. And to our listeners, whether you're [01:44:00] a follower of Christ or whether you're agnostic or wherever you're at in life, you might be listening to this podcast to grow.

But you know, our purpose is to help you grow, to help you find peace and joy and to glorify God. And what Dave's saying, it's not just anecdotal. It lines up with the Bible. I mean, there's so many people in the Bible, like David would play music and it would soothe the Saul's temper. And so many places in the Bible that happen with other characters, but in our lives, we know we can be super angry or super depressed and the right song can turn things.

It can, you know, turn the light bulb on her head. It can mm-hmm, calm us down. So there's so much to. And then when you talk about energy everything's energy, God is energy. Everything is made of energy and true science. The Bible talks about it and all the laws of thermodynamics are right in the Bible.

You know, energy can either be created nor destroyed. And [01:45:00] then when you talk about music, you not only have energy, but have vibrations and we're mostly energy and vibrating, and it's like a radio frequency mm-hmm and it's just tuning into the right frequency to bring us joy and health and wellness.

And again, this is all you can find the basis in the Bible. You can find the science. In reality, you can even go into the quantum physics room. Yeah. But one thing that I found was really cool is there's a man. I, I don't know a lot about, but what I do know about him, I really respect is Jack Canfield.

And he wrote the forward or, or not the forward, but he's on the cover of your book. Talk about that relationship, cuz there's not many people who they know of Jack Canfield, but they don't know Jack Canfield. So how did you get that, that endorsement on your book? Well, well I had admired Jack Canfield a long time, you know, as he's the coauthor of all those wonderful chicken soup for the soul books that everybody loves.

And so it was a year and a [01:46:00] half ago. I had the privilege of signing up for a a retreat, a mastermind retreat. He called it, it was me and 16 other people total of 17 of us that we got to spend three days. With Jack Canfield. Now this was pandemic time. So we were, it was all remote by, by zoom, but it was literally, you know, 10 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at night with Jack Canfield on, on zoom.

It was a all day long. But over those three days, I got to know Jack and Jack got to know me and he got to know my music. One of the first things he did, when we first met, when I told him about Rachel's song and we took a little break and he came back from the break and he says, well, I got on iTunes. I downloaded, I bought Rachel's song.

He said, I listened to that song twice. He said, wow, that is a special song. So he and I, he loves the music. And he said, I want to use that music in my seminars. He, I think he, he plays [01:47:00] my Rachel song as in the openings of a lot of his seminars. But anyway, so getting to know Jack over those three days, Was a kind of a life changing event for me too, because in the process I was, I was meeting with him to talk about the possibility of writing a book.

And I told him about these 50,000 people that had written all the letters to me and about the music and, and told him some of the stories. And he said, Dave, you have got to write this book. He said, it's just, these are stories are great. I said, okay, I'll write the book. I said, will you do the forward for me?

I was up, I was up front. I said, would you write the forward for me? And he kind of chuckled, he said, all right, Dave, you write the book first and then we'll see I did. I wrote the book, of course sent it to him. He loved the book and lo and behold it's forward by Jack Canfield. And I'm so honor. And pleased to have Jack [01:48:00] write those kind words about my book as the forward.

It's just a relationship that even endures to this day. And I, I, I love Jack. He's a great person. He's in my top 10 people. I want to just go to dinner with and get to know. So that's so cool to me that you got to hang out with him. Like I got guys like Sylvester, Stallone, Dana white and Jack Canfield and people who are living today that I could just, I'd love to break bread with and learn from.

So that is so cool. You got to actually meet him and know oh yeah. Yeah. I have to pinch myself sometimes when I think about that. Oh, what are the odds of that happening? But it did. And I'm so grateful. Yeah. Well, listen, Dave, you're Nolu yourself. You're remarkable, man. You're fantastic. It's been great.

Getting to know you. Is there anything from your birth to today? That we haven't covered before we close this episode or any parting thoughts you wanna leave with our audience. I just want to tell your audience [01:49:00] that if they don't know about you, they need to check out David high because your story in many ways, Trump's mind, many times over you're, you're the things you have overcome and the persistence that you've had and exhibited, and the, the obstacles you've overcome are just totally amazing.

Your testimony is unbelievable. So I want people to make sure if they don't know about you, I want them to check you out because you are amazing. And I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for inviting me to spend time with you today. Well, thank you. Those are very kind and humbling words and they make me very uncomfortable, but not because you'd said anything wrong, but because it's overly lonely kind and loving.

So thank you, Dave. Yeah. It's God's the man. God's the only one that matters. We just get to be part of his world. Right? So if you're out there, reach out to Dave, reach out to me. We're gonna [01:50:00] help you in any way we can, but check out Rachel's song, listen to it, download it, enjoy it. Biblical meditation, you know, time, your quiet time in the background.

Instead of playing something that's gonna cause chaos and stress play. Nice music, play Rachel's song and just let music like that. That's divinely inspired, heal you and grow you. And I'd love to have you on the podcast someday too. So I'm David Pasco alone. This was our great friend, Dave Combs. Dave, thank you again for being here today.

David. Thank you brother too. It's been a real pleasure. And maybe we can do this again sometime. Yeah, I, we got another podcast. We just launched, hanging out with David Paschal and friends. And the exact intent is for just people like you that have so much power and knowledge that we can learn from and grow with to come back and give us updates.

You know, where are you since the podcast aired [01:51:00] what's going on in your life and, and you know, what can we do to help one another iron sharpen, a. Absolutely. Thank you so much, David. Awesome. And to our listeners, we love you. We hope this episode helped. I know it did, but remember like our slogan says, don't just listen to this great content Dave shared with you, but do the good of it each day.

Repeat it over and over again for those six, six to nine years or a hundred years, whatever it takes so you can have a great life in this world and more importantly, an attorney to come. So I'm David Paone. This was Dave Combs. You're you let's all go love each other and serve Christ together until.

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