[SPEAKER_04]: This episode of True's Table is brought to you by our NAACP Image Award-nominated book, True's Table, Black Women's Musings on Life, Love, and Liberation.
[SPEAKER_04]: Get it where all books are sold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Brothers, y'all all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: If this is your first time at Truth's Table, welcome to the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you've been sitting at the table with us all these years.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are so grateful that you have been listening to us through these years, and we are inviting you to partner with us and support our work at patreon.com slash Truth's Table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now pull up a chair and have a seat at the table with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey y'all, welcome to True Stable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Bitwise, the culture for Grace and Truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a cameyney and I'm Christina.
[SPEAKER_00]: This table is built by Black woman and four Black women.
[SPEAKER_00]: So welcome to the table, see how you're doing, girl.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at me, how are you doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's...
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what's the interest in time in the world?
[SPEAKER_04]: It is.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's the interest in time, but yeah, we are clinging to the good things.
[SPEAKER_04]: The good things.
[SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_04]: So what, what's all your mind today?
[SPEAKER_04]: What is a particularly good thing?
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, we are clinging to today.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are still in our underground railroad 2.0 series.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you know we love music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And who would like music?
[SPEAKER_00]: Who doesn't like your music?
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we need to... That is a research question right at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a no.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are so honored to be joined by Orlando Palmer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also known as I am son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the table I am son.
[SPEAKER_00]: Orlando.
[SPEAKER_03]: Good to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: good to have you at the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just in case our listeners do not know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on now, you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to introduce you a little by and we're going to go in, all right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I am Son is a Richmond VA, Virginia, based musician who sounds weaves to give a gospel, classical, and folk influences rooted in the traditions of the Black Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: His music serves as a soundtrack for the intersection of faith and mental health.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_00]: He aspires to make music with messages of hope that's simple and accessible for people that may need it in stressful and anxious moments.
[SPEAKER_00]: With 15 years of experience in songwriting and performance, I am son honed his craft at Berkeley College of Music where he studied songwriting.
[SPEAKER_00]: His deeply personal and emotionally resonant songs such as slow down and always with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: My personal faith
[SPEAKER_00]: Have resonated with audiences for their pound for reflections on mental well being welcome to the table Orlando We're calling them Orlando, but here's name is I am son of artist Venus So when you want to look up his music you to type in I as you should be looking at
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so good to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a delight to have you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's a real treat to be able to sit with you.
[SPEAKER_04]: I get the chat with you every once and a while anyway, but it's a, it's a real treat to sit with you into here more about your story.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: who you are and I think we probably let's start with the very that what a company just kind of alluded to Orlando as well as your performance name.
[SPEAKER_04]: So why don't you give us some insight into that as you tell us a little bit about who you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah well first of all I love you guys.
[SPEAKER_04]: I feel like you're all my sisters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I feel like your work is very formative to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I am son.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was raised in the Black Church, uh, kind of costal experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: When I went to college, I started songwriting, you know, and that's what I began to truly merge my faith in my music.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I remember in high school, I wanted to be known as the music guy, like everybody to see me as like the pianist.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and that was cool, you know, I wanted that to be my identity marker, but you know, as I begin to grow in the Lord I begin to say, oh, that's not enough, you know, I'm seeing my friends be consumed, but talents are artists But be consumed by their artistry and you know that that wasn't something that I wanted to do I am more than just an artist, so I needed something deeper to anchor
[SPEAKER_01]: who I am, and so the scripture to as many as believe to them gave you power to become the sons of God, give you to them that believe on his name.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I cling to that scripture from some reason through my college years.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want it to be known for my sonship and out of that, I would create and write and make music.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm super powerful.
[SPEAKER_04]: No idea.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, dude, I didn't say that wrong.
[SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you have, and I just have missed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I think that is so thoughtful and so rich and so grounding.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And just a good reminder for us to think about what are the identities that anchor all the other identities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, I told you guys earlier, sometimes people will stop me and you're like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, your name is Sun, and, you know, that's not my name, but there's some reason I think that's a gift when I'm thinking about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, like, I'm known as a Sun almost like, it's my name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: that you're identified by being God's child.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your sonship.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's really rich.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Talk to us a little bit more about your own faith background and what that man and coming up in a black penicostal church and because your music is, it does not,
[SPEAKER_00]: easily aligned in that box, you know, so yeah, just talk to us about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: At least it for my vengeance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, gospel music raises me, you know, in the Pentecostal kind of expression.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember the songs of my youth, you know, my grandmother.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, uh, which sing it in her own way, you know, my father, which sing it in his own way, but you can, you knew you could see there and body joy as they would sing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that, that really stuck with me and they came back.
[SPEAKER_01]: These songs came back when I needed them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I didn't understand like the hand like greatest I faithfulness now, you know, there's no shadow of turning with, you know, those things like a matter.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just keep living.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll can say good songs, never die, they come back when you need them to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, it's such a gift to be a part of that tradition where there's so much joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, the black church in the Pentecostal expression is like a school of music as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like even when I went to college.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the sense of melody, the sense of rhythm, the sense of harmony was already in my body, you know, not just like in my mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do appreciate that about my upbringing and I value and I make sure to bring those songs back, you know, and then, yeah, it means a lot to me, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: So Rich, when you when you started to say a little about the songs that you heard at what I meanly thought was what songs?
[SPEAKER_04]: So as even now when you kind of roll back in your mind and you think about the songs that shaped kind of the melody of that experience, what might have been some of the songs that you would have heard or your father, how many are singing?
[SPEAKER_01]: The center of my joy by Richard Smallwood, my dad always sing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And
[SPEAKER_01]: Man, I talk about like writing her mental health.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that holds that space in my life now.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Just clinging to the Lord as our joy, the center of the joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I appreciate him singing that, you know, week after week, and then my grandma would sing songs like Your Grace and Mercy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, simple songs, but the thing I appreciate about my church is the repetition that happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was more so like you had to lean in, listen to your neighbor, sing the song, you know, and by the 85th time, you knew it got it in, you got it in, and it takes all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it taught us, it taught me about congregational singing, you know, corporate singing, and yeah, it's something that I value and it tries to add to my own songwriting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I picked that up, you know, from your music.
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning as I was getting ready, I was listening to Richard Smallwood, Rest in Peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'm still like, I'm still sad that he's gone, I'm like, oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: But people got arrested, something like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, you know, so I resonate with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, I often describe, I,
[SPEAKER_00]: I receive your music as a warm hug on a dreary day.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it feels like in some ways that you've been with me and my prayer calls it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Christina knows this because I'm on the prayer line.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to start off with a little music.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, to set the audience here before I see the DJ prayer away.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, let's set the music.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have often, often, played your songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: a song for anxiety, slow down, and other plants, you know, I have laid that those a few times on the prayer line.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would pray, but I'd play it all the time if I could, but you know, I don't want to read the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll just wear, you know, I'll just keep playing on repeat.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so some of them streams are coming from me, brother.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're coming from me.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it, thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I need it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our NAACP Image Award-nominated book, Truth Table, Black Women's Musings on Life Love in Liberation is making waves and shifting culture.
[SPEAKER_04]: I close this book feeling like I had just partaken in a multi-course meal, filled with grace and the courage to carry on.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I believe you'll finish this book feeling the same way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Morgan Harper Nichols, Artists in Poet.
[SPEAKER_04]: at our website, or wherever books are sold.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you know, I'm curious about, I love the way in which it's the vulnerability and the simplicity, you know, which comes from obviously you're upbringing, but about mental health, just the, um, I think you're really, you're doing something revolutionary, by destigmatizing mental health, particularly in the church, especially in the black church, you know.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're sure it's been a lot of work that we've been doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've grown in this area, but I'm just curious about how you, I don't know, started to marry your music with mental health, what did something happen, what led to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I wanted to see more of that conversation in the spaces that I was raised.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, I wanted to give them language.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like we have the exuberant, the joy part, you know, and we're loud, you know, and expressive and I appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But sometimes I want it to be just silent and contemplative.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want it to give my people permission to do that as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So when I would write songs like always with me and slow down, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: champion that song.
[SPEAKER_01]: They would call me, it's like, hey, I didn't know I dealt with anxiety, you know, and thank you for giving me language, you know, and there my dad, you know, in the hospital, I forgot what he was dealing with, but we'll just listen to that song over and over again.
[SPEAKER_01]: And just to know that I am kind of serving the church in a way that these songs are kind of like companions in your everyday life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like the first line of the song is I can make it through the day.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I wanted it not to just be a corporate congregation though song, but I wanted it to be something that people carry with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you'd be surprised like how regulated it can be just three minutes of listening to a song.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I needed it for myself first, you know, I think that the Lord showed me, hey, these gifts that I've given you, it's meant to serve people.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's also for you, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I remember like there was a time in my life where I was just, you know, it still happened sometimes, you know, where I would just wake up false anxiety.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I made a practice of getting a look like what I waking up with anxiety Can you describe it a little bit more or like what it weird is just so many things on my mind Sometimes I don't even know where it comes from yeah, sometimes just on that way My chance.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a waiting list that I couldn't pinpoint.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, so I would begin to make a practice Getting up and just coming to my piano and my songs were prayers my tears were prayers.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean and out of that came
[SPEAKER_01]: always with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I felt like that was a point of time where I felt like the Lord was like, this is a gift to you as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you need this as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's so encouraging when I can take something that I've written in my prayer closet for me and give it to the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I find connectivity and knowing that people need it as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that I think that's what keeps me going.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I imagine Orlando there are people who say to you, like, hey, this is my song.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, when you came in today, I was like, let me take the song out.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, we already gave you the song.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have actually five lists of these, singly songs.
[SPEAKER_04]: But I'm curious about what, what is your song to you?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: A song that you have written, and it maybe is something that isn't one that comes to mind for people frequently, but it is the song that ministers to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, that you just, you get a kick out of.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I always say, I feel like all the songs are my babies.
[SPEAKER_01]: It makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense, it makes no sense,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my wife gets out of me so much when you She was telling me that I sent them of like ADHD.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just like like like in too fast So you you know, you need to slow down brush when you're brushing.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is like simple stuff Just rushing through just rushing through just like every day
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, be present with what's happening in your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that song means a lot and then to add the layer of like going to God and prayer, you know, and you know, censoring yourself to being God's present.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that song does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I think the the last kind of bridge says why hurry when you can walk with me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like I'm a lot of people don't notice I'm a hip-hop hit as well So it's just like I love Words, you know me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I love the image of like me hurrying like every day things But like why hurry when you can just Go at a pace that I'm going you know Applying that to every part of my life so that apart
[SPEAKER_04]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now we have the privilege and honor of hearing from I am Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: He is going to be singing one of my favorite songs always with me, a song for an anxiety.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a song that has been a constant companion for me through my time with the Lord, my prayer time, my journaling time, and I'm so, so grateful for this offering that he's
[SPEAKER_01]: As long as I can't, always with me, as long as I'm fringesating.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can make it through the day.
[SPEAKER_02]: When you with me all the way, In my heart and mind, you stay.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can make it through the night When I'm clinging to your light You will make the darkness bright For you
[SPEAKER_02]: With me, for you, always, always, with me.
[SPEAKER_02]: In the calm and in the storm, when it seems I'm all alone.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's your head of find-home.
[SPEAKER_02]: In each hour of a rest, when it seems I've nothing left, you speak peace and every breath.
[SPEAKER_02]: For you, aren't you?
[SPEAKER_02]: With me, for you, always always, with me, in the morning, in the evening,
[SPEAKER_02]: When I'm sleeping, when I'm arriving, when I'm leaving, you will have me, in your keeping.
[SPEAKER_02]: Even from my mother's womb Never hid in from your few I was always known to you When I fade away in death You will catch my final breath You will take me to Maris
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, this, with me.