Country Music Unites for Autism Awareness

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Are not alone in this world. Hopefully you gain.
More awareness, acceptance, and a better understanding for autism around
the world. Hi, I'm Tony Mantor, and welcome to today's
episode of Why Not Me the World. We're recording live
at the Nashville Palace for a special remote podcast, unscripted, unedited,
and full of heart. Tonight's episode supports an acoustic evening
for autism, a show happening right here this evening. We're
thrilled to bring you this country experience, and I hope
you enjoy it as much as we're enjoying.
Sharing it with you.
We've got two fantastic guests joining us tonight, and for
the next three weeks, I'll be featuring two guests per
episode to dive into everything we're covering right here tonight.
Thanks for tuning in. All right, I'm here with Doug Mathis,
so tell me a little bit about what you're doing.
Tonight, Tony. It's it's a lot of work, Yes, it is.
We are hosting an event called an Acoustic Evening for Autism,
and we've got Daryl Worley, T. Graham Brown, John Barry,
Dylan Massingale. I've left somebody jay Me, Jamie O'Neill, her
sister Minnie Murphy, who has an autistic child. I'll be performing,
and Farren Hamblin will be performing with his autistic nephew.
So it's gonna be it's gonna be great.
So this is your number two, right, second annual?
Yes?
Yes, yes, Well so what what kicked it off? What
started at all?
I wrote a song a couple of years ago about
a little autistic boy. His name is Jack. He's seven
years old. He's all about numbers because of his autism. Right,
so he's always asking mom, how many days till Christmas?
How many days till my birthday? How many days till
Grandma comes?
You know?
And he was actually about to take his first communion.
They're Catholic, okay, and so he's learning about heaven at church,
learning about Jesus. Yeah, and they're putting the toys away
one night, take it throwing them off the bed, and
he looks at his mom in a very matter of
fact way and says, Mom, how many days till I
go to Heaven? So that evening, instead of tucking him in,
she climbed in with him and began to try to
explain to a seven year old autistic little boy matters
of faith and trust and just she posted about it
on Facebook. It hit me real deep. I wrote this song.
It didn't take me along. I probably wrote it in
less than an hour, and the song took off. It
was a number one song on the Positive Country charts
and people were listening to it all over town and
so here in Nashville. That's kind of a big deal.
So we wanted to do more for the community. And
someone said, well, why don't you hold an event for autism,
And I said, that's exactly what I needed to do,
and so it kind of blossomed from there. We got
some help from some other people in the industry, and
now we're hosting this event and we had we raised
over sixty five hundred dollars last year with about eight artists,
and this tonight we'll have eight nice and we hope
to raise a lot more.
Yeah, yeah, and it's going to what the Kennedy Center
at vandabilt Yes, yeah, yeah, I've dealt with them.
They're nice, They're terrific. Yeah, yeah, that's great.
I mean, so it's it must feel good to be
able to put something together like this because a lot
of people don't realize the hours and the and the
leg work that it takes to put together a showcase
like this with so many different people involved.
We work on it for months. Yeah, it takes months
to put it together. And the real challenge is now
we have formed the Country Music Autism Awareness Foundation, okay,
and we want to do more of these.
Yeah.
Nice, we'd like to do you know, we'd like to
do several of these a year, and I'd like to
take them on the road and do one in Texas,
and yeah, do one in California, and do one in Alabama,
and just move it around, depending upon the artists that
we can get and what kind of participation we can get.
But we really want to encourage these families. Yeah, that's good,
and try to be a blessing to them.
Well, it's a need because I was telling some people
just the other day that up until I started this podcast,
I really didn't know anything about autism. And now in
the last year and a half, I've learned so much,
and you just we don't realize what they go through
and what they have to do deal with every day,
and it's a struggle for a lot of people. So
it's a good thing you're doing.
Well. We didn't even know what autism was. Yeah, yeah,
and so you know, growing up, right, I had some
friends and they were a little different, but I didn't
think anything about it, right, and then I pastored churches
for over twenty years, okay, and I had an autistic
boy in my church.
Yeah, I didn't know.
That's what it was, but it was clearly what it was.
And so after I wrote this song, I started on
about how many people are dealing with this. Yeah, it's
amazing the numbers it is. It is so so we
just wanted to help.
Yeah, well I think it's I think it's a great
thing you're doing. So what we'll have to do later,
since this is just a preliminary to get you get
everybody knowing about what you're doing prior to the show
going on, we'll have to get you back onto my
podcast to do a full episode.
I'd be thrilled.
Well, I appreciate it absolutely, all right, thank you, sir, Okay, thanks, okay.
I'm here with Devin O'Day and she's going to be
the NC tonight. So nice to have you here.
You know what, It's so good to be here. I've
had so many people call.
Me about this event, really because autism touches everyone now.
It's you know, it was something that no one knew
years ago when my mother was a teacher.
My dad was a teacher, right and years ago, the
word autism was never used.
It was special education.
And it's just and my mother was one of the
pioneers fighting to say, you know what, they're children who
don't see well, their children who don't hear well. They're
children who are in wheelchairs because they don't walk well.
They're children who have things that developmentally are different. And
she said, this is not a one.
Size fits all label. And she really started researching. And
that's the reason I've gotten so involved in autism. I
used to babysit a young man in my church, a
little boy. He was so.
His mother said, he's got autism. So I can't find
babysitters for him. Nobody will stay at us I'll stay
and we've got finished and we've started working, and we
were playing these games, and I said, this child is
so brilliant that this world can't contain all that he is.
People can't handle this much brain power. You know how
we only use ten percent of our brains. I said
that these children are on the spectrum.
Sometimes they can handle so much more thought process than
we do.
Well, you know, it's it's interesting because for the longest time,
we always thought that just the odd man out was
just the odd man out, and the odd man out
could have been autistic. With all the people that I've
spoken with, it's everyone is different. You know, you've met
one autistic person, you've met one autistic person, and.
Oh, that's a beautiful way to say that.
And it's like, it's the sad part about it is
that we put a stigma to it, like it's a
bad thing, you know, And and it's really nice to
have have people like this coming out tonight to do
this this show, to help support them, because they need
a lot of help that we don't see. Yeah, so
when what, so how did you get involved with this
particular event.
You know, I knew the people who started the prospect
of They said, we want to have a show and
we want to work with Vanderbilt, and so Doug and
Debbie called me and they said would you do this?
And I said absolutely. You know, because I have so
many friends who's children are affected by this. But if
your children are affected by it, you're affected by it,
that's right.
And your whole family has got to work with it.
I have families, it has their families right now that
have several children who are on this spectrum.
Yeah.
I will tell you I've worked with a lot of
entertainers and songwriters that are so genius. Right, but now
that I know a little bit more about autism, I'd
put money that every single one of them is on
the spectrum in somewhere or force. They are in some fashion.
They're on the spectrum because the brilliance that I see there,
I go, you think differently than other people.
Yeah, well, you know, one in seven they say that
one in seven people around the world world either know
someone has someone of this autistic in their family.
That's pretty huge numbers, that is.
That is and you know, I interviewed one autistic gentleman
and he said, you could walk into a pharmacy you
know where they you know, pharmaceutical company where they're working
in and doing the microscopes and doing all this stuff
for medicines and all this because throw it pebbly, because
you're probably going to hit someon of this autistic because
they're that brilliant. Yeah, the sad part is that we
only see the worst.
You know.
It's like there are, unfortunately, there are some of those
autistic people out here that don't function well and they're
in their thirties and they've got a you know, brain
capacity of like an eight to twelve year old and
that's what we see, but we don't see the other
ones that thrive.
So absolutely need to get that word out there.
They're amazingly talented people who are the spectrum that you
know there are.
I know a young man who's a singer and he's
just the most incredible singer songwriter. And I was working
as this mentor and then I just remember when I
was growing up and I would meet these kids that
were I was in the gifted program when I was
in school, and so we go when we'd stay in
this like stay away camp and we'd all, you know,
everybody called everybody nerds, you know, we were all nerdy
and these extremely smart kids that were just different, right,
And I thought, wow, I knew right off I wasn't
like them because they could do things in their head
that I needed a calculator.
To figure out.
That nice and it was really incredible. And I said,
you know, we're going to live in a world one
day that understands who these people are.
Yeah. I think we will at some point.
It's just unfortunately we as a country, it's not a
problem less that affects our family.
You know, you're right, But that's the way it is
with every disease, every you know, I mean, number one.
Killer in the world is heart diseased? Is it every Yeah,
I mean the number one.
Yeah.
I mean it's killed more than COVID, it killed more
than cancer. And do as a country do we understand
right how.
To fix that?
Yeah? We know how to fix it when we.
Don't and right, yeah, we've just got to take and
find a way to hopefully get people to be more
show more empathy towards others no matter what it is.
And then we get to that point, then we're winning.
Yeah, And not to think if someone everyone's got incredible
an incredible calling on their life.
Everyone, everyone has a calling, Everyone has a purpose, right.
The problem is is.
Sometimes we don't get to find it right, you know,
or we are told no, you.
Don't fit into this particular one. So anyway, I.
Think that if we all start looking for our purpose,
you know, that's that's where it starts.
Now, did you get involved in working with autism?
Oh?
My story is interesting.
I I did a song right after, right after when
COVID was happening. Yeah, and.
I wasn't going to put it out.
My promoters that I work with in New York, Nashville,
LA in London said oh, you got to put this
song out now.
I'm not getting back on the road. I'm not do
any of that.
So long story short, I put it out and I
did a video supporting our first responders. Yeah. And then
after that was done, I had a lady call me
up and asked me if I could do something like
that for them, and she was a therapist for autistic children.
So from that, I did a video called why Not
Me Nashville and I had local people here in Nashville
that there were special needs and autistic in it. And
then from there I just started working and growing and
developing this podcast, and now it's almost two years old.
And the story keeps getting bigger.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've always had horses.
And a young couple had a child on the spectrum
and they brought he was hya AGSI and sensory issues,
and they said, we don't know how he's going to
do with a horse. I said, you know what, I've
got a horse with sensory issues. And I said, she's
really hot and she's really a difficult horse. And I said,
I wonder what the two of them will do when
they meet.
Well, I took the show horse and I had her
in her cross ties and I introduced them. The little
boy was quite terrified at first.
And then I was talking to the parents and I
had my back turned and they had their back turned.
And then I turned back around. The horse was gone
and the little.
Boy was gone, and they would oh no, and I
got kind of scared of go oh, where did he go? Yeah,
And we looked out in the pasture and the sun
was going down, and I said, I wish you would
look at that. This little boy was sitting in the
pasture looking at the sunset, and there.
Was my horse that was so high.
But wow, quietly sitting behind him with her head down,
with her little nose nuzzling his neck on show.
Did you get a picture of that?
I didn't. That was when I didn't carry a cell
phone every day. It was the most beautiful thing. And
her mother started crying. She goes, he's never done anything
like this.
Amazing, I said, But.
An animal has a way of sensing, and that equaled
each other out. That's why I have Angel Horse farm
to this day.
Oh that's an amazing story.
And she was a horse nobody wanted because she was
so hot, because she was so high anxiety.
So I'm always grateful.
For those moments when I could take these animals that
are misunderstood with children or people that are misunderstood, and
watching them understand each other.
That's awesome.
Well I'm looking forward to, you know, sending to you
and I tell you stories as MC. And it's been
a great pleasure having you here.
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.
All right, Thanks, thanks, all right.
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