How Music Saved Romeo Vaughn: A Heartfelt Interview on Emotional Healing and Uplifting Indie Music Stories-Encore Episode

Music Saved Me Podcast

In this heartfelt encore episode of Music Saved Me, host Lynn Hoffman interviews musician Romeo Vaughn about his transformative journey from

Key takeaways

• Music served as both escape and salvation during adolescence, steering Vaughn away from gangs and hardship.
• Songwriting functions as an emotional outlet, allowing him to process pain without harming others.

Main topics

• Music as emotional healing
• Overcoming adversity through art

Notable quotes

"If you hear this song Over, it says, 'This is where we start or where we end, but I'm not getting over you again.'"

Conclusion

Romeo Vaughn's story reveals how music transcends entertainment—it becom

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:00) Music Saved Me. I'm Lynn Hoffman. Welcome to the Music Saved Me podcast. So glad to have you here. Now, if you like this podcast, thank you so much. And also, you might want to check out our new companion podcast called Comedy Saved Me, which I also host, where we explore the amazing power of laughter. Now, when the weight of the world grows heavy, some turn to friends, others to faith. But for Romeo Vaughn, it's always been music that casts a lifeline. Rising from the borderlands of Texas to the stages of Nashville, Romeo doesn't just write songs. He crafts survival stories in melody. In this episode of Music Saved Me, we talk with Romeo about the pivotal moments where lyrics became life buoys, music became medicine, and stories found their song. So get ready to discover how for Romeo Vaughn, every note was a step towards hope and how those songs might just save you too. Romeo, welcome to Music Saved Me. Thank you. Speaker 2 (1:01) Hi, Speaker 4 (1:02) welcome. Speaker 2 (1:02) Thank you for having me. I appreciate it so much. I Speaker 4 (1:05) am so glad you're here. Are you comfortable? Speaker 2 (1:07) Yep, super comfortable. All Speaker 4 (1:08) right, we'll strap in because we're going to take a quick break so we can pay some bills. And as soon as we come back. We're going to get into it. Sound good? Speaker 2 (1:16) Let's do it. Yes, let's do it. All right, Speaker 4 (1:18) Romeo, sit tight. We'll be right back. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Speaker 4 (1:27) Music saved me. Romeo, I've read that through your music that you want to give hope and inspiration to all children who come from humble beginnings and, you know, think that the whole world is in the deck is stacked against him, which I think is just such a beautiful sentiment. Can you share a moment when music truly saved you or helped you through a tough time in your life? Yeah, you know, I mean, Speaker 7 (1:52) there's music has saved me through it all. But I remember. You know, being from a small town where I'm from in Santa Rosa, Texas, I always had this dream, right? And I remember a family member of mine specifically told me like, Romeo, that doesn't happen to people like us. You know, look at where we come from. Look at what you are. Look at how you look. It doesn't happen. It's just not, it just doesn't happen. And so when that day I went to school, Speaker 2 (2:26) And there was, my cousin was performing. My cousin, it has a Spanish Tejano band. And he was performing for, remember, I don't know if you remember Mrs. Bush, Drug Free Week or whatever. Oh, Speaker 1 (2:39) back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 (2:41) So if you were doing the Drug Free Week and my cousin was performing and there was a barber and her name was Lady Diane. And she said, Romeo, if you, cause he was trying to get the kids involved. And he said, she said, if you go, I'll give you free haircuts for a year. And I said, no, I can't do it. Cause I, so before I'm a singer, I'm a dancer. So I went up there and I danced to Michael Jackson and well. I had just tried out for the football team and I didn't make it. But when I went up to dance, so my cousin had no idea that I danced like the way I dance because I wouldn't really tell anyone. But when I went to perform with on stage for the free haircuts, it actually got me into this music business because my cousin, he's a Grammy award winning artist. He took me on tour with him. And it kind of saved me from the streets and stuff, like what teenagers get involved in. Sometimes the music allowed me to not be in the streets, not get in the gangs. And I went on tour with him, and that was a part of my life where it saved me from juvenile hall and stuff that all my friends kind of were doing at the time when it was a cool thing to be a bad kid. And so music really got me on that road away from that. So that was the first time music saved me for sure. Speaker 4 (4:16) How have songs served as a form of therapy or self-reflection for you personally? Speaker 7 (4:23) Well, for me, songs, like, we all have our moments where we cry or we're sad and we feel helpless and hopeless. And so, you Speaker 2 (4:37) know, instead of going out and driving fast and where I could possibly hurt someone or myself or just going for a bad ride or going or just, you know, sometimes we take it out on people we're not supposed to take it out on, you know, because hurt people hurt people. And so I write. And I write and I run it down and I let it out. And my binder where I write my songs, they're like, you know, when you wet paper and they're like all mushy. Well, every page is all mushy because I'm just crying as I write sometimes. But yeah, it helps me. It just really, and I leave the room. I don't really write with, like, I don't go into like writes and co-write with people. I don't do that. Speaker 2 (5:26) I do write a lot with a friend of mine, but he doesn't live in Tennessee. So I write and I send it to him and he sends it back. But usually when I write by myself, it helps me because I don't want to hurt anyone. And we've all been in the position where we say something or do something, then you're like, there you go with that long text message. Like, hey man, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to react on you like that. I'm going through a hard time and I hope you can forgive me. So to avoid that, I write. And it really, it's a therapy. And I don't really go to the therapy stuff because I don't know. I'm just not going to tell a complete stranger where I'm going. Because I can't give the therapist hope, but I can give. I know that there's somebody out there somewhere in the middle of. Burlington, Colorado, that's probably going through the same thing that I'm going through. And if they hear it, you know, I'll just give them hope. Speaker 4 (6:26) Wow. I just have to know where this came from, where you realized that that would be the end result of giving someone else hope by writing down your own issues to get through. I mean, that's pretty forward thinking. I Speaker 2 (6:41) heard Michael Jackson. Speaker 2 (6:47) When he would play songs. I'm going to start crying, but when he would play songs, like when he would write songs down, like the Earth song, when he wrote down They Don't Care About Us, when he wrote down Stranger in Moscow, when I would hear those, because we all love the thrillers and the Billie Jean's and the Smooth Criminals, but you go into those deep cuts where Michael really poured his heart out. Speaker 7 (7:17) And like that, It just gave me hope. It let me know like, hey, you're not alone. There's Michael Jackson, the absolute biggest superstar in the world. And he's lonely. Speaker 7 (7:31) and she's getting through it, I Speaker 2 (7:35) can get through it. And I think that's kind of what made me want to be some kind of hope, obviously on a smaller scale. Oh, come on. Speaker 4 (7:45) It's Speaker 2 (7:46) a Speaker 4 (7:46) beautiful sentiment. It really is. And off the wall, she's out of my life. Some of those earlier things too, really. Yeah, you know, she's out of my Speaker 7 (7:54) life. Speaker 7 (7:57) just like those like and if you even his upbeat songs like Speaker 7 (8:04) like, want to be starting something, you know, like, you know, the way he like, just does it. I don't know. Man in the mirror. I mean, you know, like, just, it just, when I heard, cause I've always been intrigued in like, Speaker 2 (8:20) who wrote this, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so, and like, Michael Jackson's biggest song thriller, he didn't write it, you know, it was Rob Timprod, but. But you hear his deep cuts and where he's feeling alone, but he's also giving you hope. And it's just like, I just want to Speaker 7 (8:39) be that hope, you know. And I that's where that's where my the foundation of like wanting to give hope and stuff is. I credited all of it to Michael for sure. Speaker 4 (8:53) Wow. Wow. That's so incredible that, you know, you even knew that at such a early time in your life. Yeah, Speaker 2 (9:00) because when I was younger, I'm from a small town and I'm Mexican-American. And so boys don't cry. Are you a man or a mouse? You know, yeah, whatever. You don't, you're not depressed. Go out there and cut the grass. You know, what are you, what are you depressed about? You're seven, eight years old. You don't have no bills. You don't have nothing,