So much of our conversation is routine that we often find ourselves saying the same things day after day . . .but what if you’re in the hot seat? With this column we give our interviewees two minutes to think and one minute to speak their answer . . .  with no advance warning of what the questions might be. How would *you* do in the hotseat?

Question 1: So my bf was a roadie for the Charles Ford band which was Robyn Ford’s first band. We were all in our early twenties. The band broke up because they all considered themselves born again Christians and they didn’t want to go into bars which they considered sinful. I know you are a practicing Christian . . .do you see any danger to your state of grace by going into bars?

Answer:  Definitely not. My beliefs are that you would be called to go into a place like that and not to run away from a scenario. You might not want to go into a bar every day and drink yourself to death, but avoiding other people I don’t think is any kind of Christian practice that I’ve ever heard of.

Question 2: Do you believe in a realm ruled by Lucifer? Do you know if there is a Biblical description of hell in the New Testament?

Answer:  I definitely believe in Satan and the older I get the more I believe that is real. Let me say one thing about Christianity, I’ve never met two Christians that believe exactly the same. In a church of 100 people, I’ve never met two people that have the same belief. What I’ve mostly noticed is that the people in church believe in God and want to spend time trying to find out who exactly he is. But everyone has struggles with things they read in the Bible, and how . . .maybe they don’t want to believe that. So, they are struggling or wrestling with God. Right now, with all the LGBT, that’s real hard on a lot of Christians, because they will read in the Bible that homosexuality is a sin. They don’t want . . .I don’t want to see laws against people for practicing that, I don’t want them harmed, I don’t want their rights taken away, and let’s get real, the Bible doesn’t just pick on gay people, right? They say if I even look at a girl with lust that I have sinned, right? [Interviewer calls time on the 1- minute rule]

Question 3: So, there’s this super handsome mortgage broker with your same name. Do women ever hit on you online thinking you’re him?

Answer: [Loud laughter] Never. I have never had that happen, but I will tell you that I constantly get confused with Josh Fabian of Intrinzik. Maybe it’s because I wear the shirt all the time, but I have had so many people talk with me and I’m looking at them thinking, “I don’t know this person”, and then they go, “How’s the club going?” and I get it.

Question 4: You get the ethics question too. A man’s wife has cancer, she completes 18 rounds of a drug that will cure her, but if she doesn’t get the 19^th round she will die. The husband got laid off because of the pandemic, and although he has always paid for everything, the pharmacist will not give him the 19^th round on credit. The man offers to work for the pharmacist to work it off, but the pharmacist says no. Left with no choice, the man breaks into the pharmacy late at night to steal the medicine. Unfortunately, it is the night the pharmacist stays late to do billing, and he confronts the man, and threatens to call the police. The man knows if he is arrested his wife won’t get the drug, and will die. A struggle ensues, and the pharmacist is killed. If you were on the jury would you vote to convict the man of murder?

Answer: Yeah, I’m familiar with this question, and I already know, and this may be a little surprising maybe . . . I would not convict. I always. . .I look at laws a little bit differently: they are important, but the morality side of me says the life is way more important than the money. The life of the wife is more important than the money in the pharmacy, and I would vote not to convict.

Question 5: If you could make a living at music without risking anything about your current situation EXCEPT you would need to tour a lot would you do it?

Answer: Absolutely not. With our band I think last year was the first year, in like 20 years, that Fractalia did not have a show, and I love those guys like brothers and I love the music, but it was so good for me not to be traveling. I would say at the peak, you know, of our band, we were playing music almost every single day; if not at rehearsal then at a gig. I would find myself in some city, at four in the morning, laying on a floor, going “what the heck am I doing, I’ve got a family at home, why am I doing this”? Right now, I have so much enjoyment playing music with my children. Two of them are grown up, and two are still young, and we play the most amazing music; and I love campfires and jamming in the backyard. I’m not saying I’ll never play on a stage again, but it’s not what I want to do everyday and leave my family behind.

Question 6: I have always been surprised at jazz musicians’ ability to improvise. Do you think music is a language? Like I can make up my own words, or change my pattern of speech, or learn idioms in language, can musicians do that with music?

Answer: Oh, I absolutely believe that it is the universal language. The universal language, and to tie this in with all the questions about God, there’s a part of me that even believes that Adam and Eve didn’t talk. I believe there’s a possibility that the original language was singing and musical, and that sin is what created the more languages that we have today. I think is the universal language and the most beautiful one.

Question 7: What do you think the best life lesson or personality improvement or lack of improvement came from being in Fractalia?

Answer: I met so many people, and I don’t just mean someone coming up after the show and saying ‘good job’. When we would travel to different towns, we would spend the night there, and we were more of the type of the band that we would prefer to crash out at people’s houses and have an after party and maybe play music acoustically all night long instead of getting a hotel. So a lot of the times, in each town, we’d have a big handful group of people that we would see when we would come back to that town. I got to see so many different types of personalities and the one thing that I think makes life really worth living is waking up with a heart of gratitude. But, really, honestly, the people who just woke up and have a heart of gratitude, those are the type of people I want to be with. And, that’s the type of person who I want to be.