David DeLoach

Season 2 – Episode 16. Released on June 2, 2015.

INTRO
Today, on Waking Up In America I’m chatting with David DeLoach, an incredibly talented musician and teacher from Franklin, TN. David talks about his journey from being a successful young guitarist to giving it all up in order to find some balance, only to, years later, wake up with a dream he couldn’t remember. David shares the wisdom he learned along the way and then, him and I play an old song, Southern style – right on his back porch.

BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.

This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.

This is “Waking Up In America.”

TAJCI
David DeLoach, thank you! I’m so glad to be here in this wonderful room.

DAVID
Well I’m glad you’re here in this wonderful room

TAJCI
Tell us where we are.

DAVID
Okay we’re in the music room in my home here in Tennessee.

TAJCI
And you have all these guitars on the walls. I think that’s as far as extra storage goes… the best place for a guitar is not in the case it’s on a wall.

DAVID
Yea, it makes it easier to get them down and play. I tend to play more if they’re easier to get to. That’s the key!

TAJCI
You know, I hear a lot of people, as I travel, Oh, I have a guitar, but it’s somewhere… it’s the case. It’s been in the case in the attic for so long but if it’s right there, right?

DAVID
Right.

TAJCI
Even if you forgot about it, you haven’t touch it in 10 years you just might grab it.

DAVID
That’s true, yea…

TAJCI
So, you teach. You have a wonderful series of…  well first of all, you teach my son and teach me how to play. Since I’m in Nashville, I…

DAVID
Good students!

TAJCI
Yea, thank you. I figured, I’ve got to play right? My dad was a guitarist and I was always shy to play in front of him because he was, he was my dad.

DAVID
Right

TAJCI
So I’m glad to have you, to be your neighbor and your student.

DAVID
Oh yea, likewise.

TAJCI
And when I learned about your story, Wow! So, here we are and now everybody’s gonna… I’d like you to share this path of yours.

DAVID
Okay.  My parents gave me a five dollar guitar for Christmas when I was 11 and we lived on an army base Fort Rucker, Alabama and they didn’t know what else to get me. They got me this guitar, I hadn’t asked for one.

TAJCI
And your parents were not musicians?

DAVID
My dad play the ukulele, my mom played the piano well enough so they could play. Yea they had some musical gift in there there’s music in our home. But they bought me this cheap guitar I got that thing Christmas morning and I was hooked. Couldn’t put it down.

I took a few lessons from an old white-haired lady in an army barracks, She’d sit there and there’d be eight of us kids all plugged into the same amplifier. She’d chain-smoke and tell us we were our making chords wrong.

I learned a little bit from her, three or four songs and my brother-in-law started coming around dating my sister and I learned a lot from him. Lot of John Denver and Jim Croce, Simon and Garfunkel.

TAJCI
All great stuff to play on a guitar.

DAVID
And then I got into folk music. I started playing fiddle, mandolin, banjo, dobro, bluegrass, flat picking, blues… I really got into a folk scene there and just practiced all the time I was a fairly shy young man and if I wasn’t reading or doing school work I was kind of sequestered in my room practicing.

TAJCI
Was practicing, was that your world where you felt comfortable, safe, or?

DAVID
Yea, I think it was an escape, but think was a way for me to validate myself because when I learned to do something new on the guitar I felt more valuable as person.

Now I don’t think that’s an accurate assessment of your value but that’s was kind of my mindset. And so I love to learn. There wasn’t a type of music I didn’t want to learn. But my father was in the military. He was a test pilot Love my dad. Great guy and I guess I just kind of found myself as aerospace engineering student at Texas A&M. I did a little work for General Dynamics on the F-16 and the attack avionics department.

TAJCI
Wow, that’s very different from the music world!

DAVID
Yes, yes and there was a… the day I looked up and just thought, this is not me. I’m I mean, I could do the stuff but I’d just, there was no passion there. And I looked at other people that have been doing it for twenty or thirty years and I thought,  I don’t want to do this. And much to my parents delight, I’m being sarcastic I quit and I went and became a full time musician.

And I was playing in a rock band in Lake Tahoe, and, you know dead broke but living the dream. And I thought, this is it. And I studied guitar at North Texas State off and on for three or four years and during that time if I was awake I was doing music. I was either in class, I was studying or practicing or gigging.

And it was not unusual for me to practice six to eight hours seven days a week. And to gig five or six nights a week. It was just all that I did. It was a little bit out of balance, to be honest, because I think I mentioned I was a pretty shy young man and it got worse the more I dove in the music.

I was incapable of having a conversation with another person unless we’re talking about music.

There came a point in 1982 , I met this beautiful Argentine Girl  that I’ve been married to for 33 years and she kind of pulled me out of my shell. And my life really needed an adjustment. I was way out of balance.  A lot of things changed in my life that year.  But to make a very long story, very short I put my guitar down. And I put it in…

I remember I put my old Martin D18 in the case and I shut the lid and was like shutting a coffin lid. And it was like a death that I thought I’m not going a guitarist, this is all I’ve ever wanted it to be, this is who I was, and I’m not gonna do it.

TAJCI
Why?

DAVID
Well, my life was way out of balance. It really was.

And it was probably, I’ve swung too far on the pendulum, the other direction. Life was kind of measured by how fast I can play songs with, on the metronome, you know how what was my last gig like, my acceptance as a musician, and it was really rather empty. It was. I was up on stage every night, people are clapping, I got to play with some great musicians and I thought, you know, I don’t I never really focused on money and I don’t care how much money I make, if I can do this and make a living, man, I’ve made it.

And I had a crummy apartment, a crummy car and a lots of really nice guitars. That was my world. And it was.. it was a painfully lonely world, it really was.

And in 1982 when I met my wife, I also had an encounter with God that really changed my life and I just thought you know what? I’m just gonna come hit the reset button here and start over, see what happens. I wound up getting married that year.

I changed my vocation from being a professional musician to being a ditch digger. I wound up getting a full ride scholarship out here in Nashville to a school, and I studied I got a degree in theology out here.

TAJCI
Wow!

DAVID
I just… I never wanted to work in a church or anything, but I thought, well you know maybe this is a way to find out about God.

But when they handed me my diploma at the end of it all I thought… I don’t feel any closer to God from all this stuff I’d learned in my head.

TAJCI
So wait, at this point you’re already married.

DAVID
Yes

TAJCI
…and your wife is okay with all of this.

DAVID
She’s a trooper. She’s put up with a very unusual guy for a long time.

TAJCI
She’s Argentinian and all I know about Argentinians is passion

DAVID
Oh yes!

TAJCI
and tango, right? And here is David I’m gonna go learn about God.

DAVID
My  wife is full of life and emotion, she’s also an adventurer and a risk taker and she’s been very supportive of all my wild endeavors. She’s the one who reminds me we’re on an adventure. She’s a a great life partner for me.

TAJCI
Well obviously she was meant to be right.

DAVID
Yes definitely. So I got this degree and now what am I gonna do? I tried to get a job, they were building 840 out here and I wanted to be a welder I thought, I’d maybe run a dump truck or a backhoe.

I could not get a job scraping gum off the bus station floor and for nine months I mean I did little odds and ends things but my self-esteem took a real hit, because I’ve been this construction worker, guitar player, I’ve all kinds of jobs and I couldn’t really get any real work and I really took a hit on my self-esteem. Got really low.

The one place I did not wanna step foot was in the corporate world and especially at a bank in a corporate world. Low and behold, where do I get a job? Working at a bank.

TAJCI
Yes, that’s how it works.

DAVID
I didn’t own a suit, I didn’t know how to tie a necktie, and I find myself working in a bank, this multi-million-dollar big bank, as a consultant to go around these different departments at the bank and tell them how to work better, and to this day in my life I’ve never balance a checkbook, so I just, I was thinking, why am I here? This is the rounders peg in a squarest hole ever.

Like God’s just having a big laugh. Let’s put the most unqualified guy and into this spot. And I was miserable. I just thought, my Gosh, this is awful.

TAJCI
Yea, I’m really, I’m really curious to know, to hear why, what lesson, what is there?

DAVID

In my studies of theology I think I’d become religious in a bad way and thus the misery in my life. Somewhere along the way the late 80s, I kind of just met the real God you know. And it’s like, it was so refreshing.

I’ve got filled with a lot of life and lot of hope, and I thought, ok, man I’m just trusting you with my path here. So I just started working hard at it, I had a lot of favor on my work and I had some articles published in some national periodicals and did a bunch of big projects. Then they asked me to manage their telecommunications for this whole region and then, went to work for Deloitte and Touche managing like eighty offices all of their telecom there for that in the United States and then,

TAJCI
So everything you touch, everything you have interest for you master, you learn.

DAVID
I wouldn’t say that her but I’d like to learn. When I am an IT, I’m reading all these big fat books about IT. Part of it was, I was thankful to have a job because I started having kids, and I was like, well, it’s good be able to pay the rent and buy food but part of me was like, wow, you know, is this really the field I was meant to plow? wearing the suit and all that. And then I went to work for a Wall Street firm for fourteen years. And it was a real pressure cooker. It was a real experience worked with some great people up there. Towards the end of that fourteen years that I had my awakening.  

TAJCI
Although I detected several shifts on your path already.

DAVID
Oh yea. So around 1990 my Mom had given me fifty dollars for Christmas and I thought I’m gonna go buy a songbook. I had one old guitar in the closet that was worn out,  wouldn’t stay in tune… I bought this songbook and I thought I’m gonna see if I can still play and I got it out and I started re-learning.  This was 1990. And…. so I kind of fiddled around  with it there for I guess about fifteen years.

I had young kids, three weeks would go by and I  didn’t touch it and I’d play for three weeks in a row and I’d feel like my fingers are coming back to life then I wouldn’t touch it for another two months. It was two steps forward, three steps back kind of thing.

So in 2005, July 7th I believe was the date I was at a doctor appointment with my daughter at her checkup. I had this episode where I got extremely tired.

I had a big pain in my chest here, I got dizzy my chest got tight, had trouble breathing and I felt like the life was leaving my body. I thought like my was going stiff, and it was horrible feeling inside like I was full of bee stings and poison and arthritis and just was like and I thought, this is it! I’m putting on a jet pack , here I go. I wasn’t  freaking out, I just thought , this is I’m dying.

My wife was there, she said I’d turned as white as a sheet, my eyes rolled in my head, fell on the floor. And there was a nurse in there at the time.

So I fall on the floor thinking I’m dying and I have this incredible dreams and I woke up on the floor, and I was like, what happened? and I felt refreshed and cleansed, like I’d been laying on a mountain streams just felt like a clear water had been running through me, I felt so wonderful, I felt drunk.

And I said what happened? And they were like, we’re taking you to the hospital.

And they took me there for two or three days and did all these tests and scans and they said, we can’t find anything wrong with you. You did not a heart attack, you’re fit as a fiddle. I couldn’t stand up for a couple days, my legs were shaky and… but after three days I was ready to come home.

I came home. And I kept asking myself what were those incredible dreams I had during that five minutes where I went from feeling like death and waking up feeling so wonderful? And I kept saying were those incredible dreams I can’t remember?

What were they? And I was walking out here on my road one night probably five months after the fact, and I said God I really want to know.

What were those incredible dreams I can remember? And he told me. Those incredible dreams I couldn’t remember were the Incredible Dreams That I Couldn’t Remember. It was the dreams of my youth that I had forgotten. Of being a musician. And I instantly understood those dreams will bring you back to life.

Because although I was alive in a lot of ways like my family life was great I had good friends, I’d learned how to talk to people you know, I was shy anymore but vocationally I was a little bit like a zombie, kind of like The Walking Dead. That’s when I thought I’m not a technology guy who plays guitar,

I’m a guitarist that does technology. And that internal shift of my identity really changed everything. At that point I started writing my book. I wrote, I spent years writing this 400 page book that a professor at Berkley would up using for a time which is a real honor. Jammie Aebersold picked it up on his Jazz Education catalogue I started making YouTube how-to videos and I’ve had like two and a half million hits on those.

I started gigging out again, just in bars & clubs, anywhere I can go, and teaching, and you know while, probably a lot of your guests may have had an awakening and quit the day job and just started something new,  I’m still at my day job.  I still like my day job. I like the people I work with. For me having that job gives me freedom musically that I wouldn’t otherwise have.

Life’s kind of like a jigsaw puzzle – you throw out all the pieces and it looks like, what a mess! But the further down the road you get the more pieces interconnect. All of a sudden you start to see a good picture starting to form, and you go, wow, all these things that I didn’t think would never connect actually did, and it worked out to make a pretty cool picture.

So I’m not one that…

I didn’t ride off into the sunset and make a million dollars playing guitar, But what I did was, I became alive!

TAJCI
Yes! it’s the internal shift. It sounds like every other time you went from one thing to another but where, it wasn’t, you weren’t changed. Nothing really changed. This time you stayed in the same situation, right?  You didn’t leave, you didn’t move, you didn’t leave your job, you didn’t get divorced, none of that external shifts, It was really just, you shifted inside.

DAVID
I’ve had some incredible opportunities that surprised me because face it, we live in Nashville,

I could go out the door here, and shake a tree and ten musician better than me would fall out of that tree. If you compare yourself to other people you’ll never get started.

But I thought, I don’t care, I’m just gonna go do it.  And so, like, I was invited to play with the Nashville Symphony at the Schermerhorn. What a trip that was! I’m sitting there on that stage thinking how in the heck did I wind up here?

TAJCI
How did you feel at that moment?

DAVID
I felt like I was in heaven. I was able to play that session, it went really well, and… again I thought, why am I here? You know of all the great guitar players in Nashville, why am I here?

TAJCI
Why do you think you were there?

DAVID
Yeah I don’t know, but you know I believe that, that you’re, when you know who you are that it does something to open doors. It’s not based on my skill level or my ability to schmooze or impress people cause I’m not good at that. Still opportunities present themselves that really just charge me up.

TAJCI
You just said it. Once we know who we are, once we find our purpose because when we embrace that who we are inside and our unique gifts that we’re created with, then we are able to show up. We say, okay here I am!

And the doors open. Because like you said there is, we trust that this picture that we’re that we’re a part of is beautiful, it’s perfect. And when you teach it comes through and you are then making these ripples of change.

DAVID

When you know who you are, it helps you make decisions. You come to a fork in the road and it helps you know which way to go.

There’s been probably twenty years where I stayed up way too late at nights studying the guitar. And I’d go to bed at one or two in the morning and I would think, what am I doing? This makes no sense am I just a fifteen year old kid that never grew up? I’m still in here playing guitar or what?

Because I could have gotten an MBA or a CPA with all the time I put in that but an MBA and a CPA wasn’t my DNA. It was my DNA was, I’m a musician. You cut me down to the bone, it says guitar player right there on the bone. And I just decided to take the risk to invest my energies in who I am.

And… it’s a choice that I’m glad I made.

Again, I’m not driving a Ferrari or you know able to retire from a day job from this but I guarantee there are some nights I come home from a gig and my wife would ask me how did it go? I said, I’m pretty sure I just extended my life span by a year because I had so much fun and it was just such a wonderful experience getting to plow the field that I was meant to plow.

TAJCI
Oh, thank you yeah.

TAJCI & DAVID SING AND PLAY
I was standing by the window
On one cold and cloudy day
When I saw the hearse come rolling
For to take my Mother away

Oh, will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

Well, I followed close behind her
Tried to hold up and be brave
But I could not hide my sorrow
When they laid her in the grave

Oh, will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky

TAJCI
That was cool!

DAVID
Yea!

TAJCI
The stories we feature here are for you to help you to wake up from somebody else’s dream and live the life that you are created for.So join us for more support and more episodes at WakingUpInAmerica.net and join our Facebook group “Waking Up in America and Everywhere Else in the World”

Thank you so much and I’ll see you next time!