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Axé All Day
Andrew Thomas Carroll is a modern minstrel, storyteller, facilitator, and speaker. He illuminates opportunities for integration and growth through stories, experiences, and technologies, including psychedelics.
On this podcast, Andrew shares his own story of healing and growth through the use of psychedelics and interviews other people who have also found healing and transformation through a diverse collection of powerful tools. Topics include somatic therapy, movement as medicine, the power of the voice, finding your unique purpose, and the use of psychedelics for healing and personal growth.
If you're looking for inspiration and guidance on your own journey of healing, growth, and thriving, then this podcast is for you.
Axé All Day
Katrina Kope on Early Challenges, Artistic Growth, and Transformative Healing
In a heartfelt and candid conversation, we highlight the emotional struggles faced by creative individuals in traditional education systems. Katrina opens up about battling shyness and social awkwardness, and how substances like marijuana played a role in her creative and emotional exploration.
Discover how these experiences underscore the importance of supportive environments for nurturing artistic youth, and explore the nuanced relationship between personal growth, creativity, and substance use. Tune in for an episode rich with personal anecdotes, transformative moments, and profound insights.
The Earth is so big, it makes me feel so small, as I should, as I should I don't know if people can hear this, but I believe that's your mom. Yeah. Working with some students, yeah yeah, if you hear like a little like quiet piano lesson in the background, yes, that's my mom teaching upstairs. Um, so we're in my house where I live and my mom lives upstairs and we run a music school called musical mind studios.
Speaker 1:Can people find musical mind studios online somewhere?
Speaker 2:Yes. I believe musical mind studioscom musical mind studioscom.
Speaker 1:okay, I'll, I'll find a link for that and I'll put it up, and then is there a facebook page or an instagram account or social media for it?
Speaker 2:you know, there, I don't think there is actually yeah we have a website and and that's uh that's the extent of it. That's probably a good idea if we like did some social media, but oh my goodness, that's another page to add to the pages of maintenance. Why am I doing that?
Speaker 1:Oh, there are so many more fun things to do than social media, but it might be something to think about yeah, you're right, who knows? Uh, but where? Where can people find you? How many? How? How did you get started in music? Actually, let's start at the beginning. What does that journey look like for you? Because you are an incredible musician, an incredible vocalist and you're you make you make entertaining and creating that space for fun and self-expression look effortless.
Speaker 2:Well, I definitely have gotten to a place where I feel comfortable in the space of chaos and uncertainty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get that chaos and uncertainty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I get that. I mean, my parents met in college, so they're musicians. My dad played trumpet and my mom played piano. They were in a band together, so I come from a musical, you know, mom and dad. Uh, so I learned I started learning piano at age four. Wow, um, you know the whole, like my mom's a piano teacher, she started teaching piano when she was like 15 or 16, something like that. Okay, she bought her first piano. It's we still have it, it's a Steinway and it's like in the other, in a teaching space here. So we have uh it, it, uh it. Anyway, I was getting back to the musical mind studios, back to what is my musical journey. Um, I was in an orchestra in middle school, so I played violin okay, is that did.
Speaker 2:I see that is that the violin that's over there, that's like a violin we've inherited because, running a music school, some people be like, hey, we have this instrument, do you want it? And okay, of course we're like, yeah, sure, even if it doesn't maybe work or it's not. So that violin I I don't know, I really haven't picked that up. We also have a cello. We also have like a harp upstairs that's like from the 70s. Okay, you know, I just bought that at a garage sale, that what is that so?
Speaker 1:for people who can't see, it looks like a pyramid made of silver tubes it's like a glockenspiel a glockenspiel. Yeah, you know, like I like to say that yeah, yeah, and you just hit it with mallets okay, so is it. So is it always sitting that way?
Speaker 2:No, it's just sitting there like an art piece right now.
Speaker 1:It is very artistic. Is it played like a xylophone then?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, a xylophone. They're all like I'm probably saying the wrong one. It's probably not a glockenspiel, but it's in that family of vibes. You could have kept going with that I never would have known, and I'm not going to show them.
Speaker 1:So it's definitely a glockenspiel.
Speaker 2:Definitely is so a choir. I did choir in high school.
Speaker 1:Did you get all as in music when you were in school?
Speaker 2:I tried out for the jazz choir in high school and I never got in. And I found out later that it was because Mr Cox, like I don't know, thought I was a bad kid.
Speaker 1:But he thought you were a bad kid and so he wouldn't let you be in choir in the jazz.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe he thought I wouldn't show up, or whatever, I don't know, I just you know.
Speaker 1:Have you seen him since then?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, like after I built a career in music. Yeah, I saw him after and you know, I don't know. I mean like I didn't like make it a point to be like guess what I'm doing now, mr.
Speaker 1:I definitely didn't mean it like that. Let me I'll clarify a little bit. So I asked that because I didn't graduate from high school. I got expelled my senior year for smoking weed at school too often. So I got, I got busted and the principal at the time his name was maybe I. I probably could say it, I don't know, it's irrelevant anyway. So this guy was a real hard ass back then and so I got expelled and then my mom sent me to a place and it was rehab she made me go to rehab for smoking pot.
Speaker 2:Oh man, yeah, I went to rehab too.
Speaker 1:We can talk about that. I learned a lot. Actually I did too, yeah.
Speaker 2:In the adolescent and the adult facility because I went twice.
Speaker 1:Hey, I did too. I definitely did too. So I ran into this principle, I think, like literally 20 years later and I didn't rub it in his face or anything me. It ended up getting me out of Montana, so, and then I ended up joining the air force. So it was this impetus to changing my entire life. But when I met, when I saw him, it was actually ended up being at a random gym, I was having a workout and I was like yo, are you this person? And he's like, yeah, I'm like I'm Andrew. He's like, yeah, I'm like I'm Andrew, you expelled me from high school. He's like I remember I never should have done that. That was the last thing I should have done to it for a kid like you who was going through those things that you were going through, and I was like I was shocked, Wow, it was such a beautiful moment to like connect with him again and say you know like there's no hard feelings for me.
Speaker 1:It did change my life, but because I made choices like school wasn't really for me anyway, but just to hear that he had done his work on himself, to realize like disciplining troubled youth in that way and kicking them out of school is like the last thing you should do to help them.
Speaker 2:The opposite.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really, it really is so. That's why I was asking um about mr cox. Mr cox, I'm sorry for saying you might be good if you listen to this, but um, yeah, that's why I was curious if you'd ever run into them again, because I had a story that related to that mine was more like yeah, I, I think I went to a high school concert or something, and because I had a couple students in his choir, so okay, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:So it was like so I think, I think in in time, I think maybe he was like all right, cool, she turned out all right. You know so that just was my kind of like. See, I'm not totally bad kid, maybe wild, maybe a little wild person, but you know.
Speaker 1:I'm curious what you think about this, because what I see from creatives almost, almost across the board is that we generally didn't fit in the traditional education system. We generally are labeled as being antisocial from the clinical sense of the word, where, like we don't fit into the mold, we do kind of what we want or a lot of very exploratory in our sensate experience, where we want to try everything and do everything, and then the creative part of us is a universal translator that can come back to the normies essentially and be like hey, we went out into the world and this is what we found and this is a beautiful art that we can make for you now, because we did that Doesn't fit in the box so well. How does that hit for you when I share that what comes up?
Speaker 2:uh, well, what comes up is uh, I definitely was a very, very shy kid. It like painfully shy but I really wanted to like sing and like I don't know just some something had to come out of me where it was like had to perform beyond stage. But I was so painfully shy it was like socially a bit awkward. You know, like parents went through a divorce when I was eight, so I was, I grew up in a Christian school until then and then all of a sudden I was in public school, like what the fuck these people are mean kind of a thing you know it was. Yeah, it was like very jarring when, when I was around that age and you know, I was like I don't know considered popular when I was at the Christian schools and then when that, when I changed over, um, I was like I was basically like a nerd, like like a poor nerd, like the piano teachers like the helps kid
Speaker 2:you know, cause on Mercer Island, cause there's lots of money here, so coming here with is like my mom is a single parent with four kids because my dad's parents were here so they really were helpful. They helped out a lot, um, which was great. They lived just down the street from the high school, yeah, so we'd go there for lunch, you know, some days, um, yeah, so that I don't know. That definitely shapes, I think. And then, being so painfully shy, I definitely used substances to like break through that during my teenagehood, my high school years, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:What does that experience look like for you? Do you have a particular story that comes up right away, that was incredibly transformative, or what do you feel is important? What do you feel is important?
Speaker 2:Well, I think part of the thing that people have being a musician is that you are really sensitive and attuned to things like to emotions, to vibrations, to like someone walking into the room, Like you can tell, like the energy changes Right and for whatever that is being sensitive our our childhood traumas, you know, it's like being an empath, whatever it is. I just definitely was so sensitive that it was like that's what I'm saying so painful. So, of course, of course, of course I'm going to be susceptible to substances and want to numb that, numb that feeling, numb that pain.
Speaker 2:And then being a teenager on top of it, where your fucking hormones and emotions?
Speaker 1:I can swear right yeah, oh, you can say whatever the fuck you want say whatever the fuck you want. I mean nowadays, yeah, you can say whatever the fuck you want.
Speaker 2:I mean nowadays, yeah, you can say whatever the fuck you want.
Speaker 1:It's true yeah, a little swearing's, not a big deal yeah it's. Everything we're talking about are actual facts facts, y'all yeah, first of all.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm so surprised to hear that you were ever shy, but that's. It's funny. You say that because I felt like an awkward ugly duckling for almost until a couple weeks ago. Really, no, maybe not like that extreme, but I was a. I was a very shy kid, maybe not initially, but there was a lot of fear drilled into my life. And then I love being on stage and performing, much like you you had said. But I never would have guessed that you were ever shy, especially now, knowing also you grew up with music in your life and that you had put in the work and effort to sharpen those skills and to create that ability to flow seamlessly in that space. Ability to flow seamlessly in that space. What did you find? Maybe, maybe that's not the best question, but I am curious. What was your? What was your drug of choice?
Speaker 2:oh, in high school, like everything everything like whatever I could get my hands on it was like let's you know, and and as many as at the same time as possible. There was just sometimes it was like that, it was like seven things, you know, but I think overall, if I think about it, I mean, if you want to consider it a drug, marijuana.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it definitely is.
Speaker 2:It's definitely a substance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, marijuana yeah it definitely, is definitely a substance. Yeah, I think with that, specifically with cannabis, it's it's very dependent, not dependent I believe, that marijuana is very responsive to the individual's intention of use. So if you're going into that relationship with marijuana and you don't want to feel anything. The plant will answer you if you're going into that relationship with marijuana and you don't want to feel anything, the plant will answer you.
Speaker 1:If you're going into that place and you want to do some deep healing work, the plant will answer you. That's been my experience what do? I want. What am I coming to do this ritual with this plant?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. And for weed it's like definitely creativity, you know, definitely like opening the mind for creativity or cleaning you know yeah.
