Finding Your Voice : Shrimpnose/Riley Smithson on Stuttering, Survival and The Sound that Set Him Free-Encore

Music Saved Me Podcast - iHeartPodcasts

Riley Smithson, aka Shrimpnose, shares his journey of overcoming stuttering through music, highlighting how drumming and production became his voice. He discusses self-expression, resilience, and the emotional power of e

Key takeaways

• Music provided a non-verbal language for expression

Transcript preview

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I'm Tab Ramos and I'm Tom Boker on our podcast inside American soccer we'll talk about the real story lines. Discuss the tactics that actually decide matches and give you the truth about the US national team from inside the program. Whether you're a lifelong fan or this is your first. World Cup. We've got you covered. Listen, Inside American Soccer with Tom Bogger and Tab Ramos on the I-Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Music saved me. We have to be a vessel for the music more than anything because it's really easy to get stuck and kind of hate what you're doing if it becomes more of an intellectual thing than a feeling thing. I'm Lynn Hoffman and welcome to another episode. I'm Lynn Hoffman and welcome to another episode. of the Music Save Me podcast where we dig deep into the healing forces of music. Today we are so excited to be joined by a producer and an incredible instrumentalist Riley Smithson also known as aka Shrimp Nose. Now Shrimp Nose knows the healing power of music up close and personal from a very young age and we are so grateful that he's here to share his story with us on Music Save Me. Shrimp Nose, welcome to the show it's great to have you here. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be here. Now first I want to offer some congratulations because you just performed at one of Canada's biggest electronic music festivals. I believe it's called Shambala? Yep, that's the one. And also I think a little magazine called DJ magazine just named you the up-and-coming emerging artist to watch for so thank you for being here at the cost of... Thank you so much. Just blowing up. Yeah, I mean it's... it's all this stuff I take in stride. that I'm thankful for it but try not to get too hyped up for myself about things. You need to fit through the doorway. Yeah, exactly. Well, I read that you started playing the drums at the age of five and it was more so a means for you to be able to communicate, which I think is really interesting. It wasn't necessarily just because you loved to play the drums. Can you, sort of connect to you? us with a little bit about that time and what brought you to connecting with music? Sure, of course. So my dad got me a drum kit when I was about, yeah, about four or five. And at the same time I developed this speech impediment that I still have. It's improved quite a bit the last few years, but growing up it was pretty hard in school and making friends and stuff like that. And my mom and dad are both in a band together and have been my whole life and they play with the band on the weekends. So growing up I would often be at home alone without much to do other than play instruments and kind of teach myself how to play instruments. And yeah, that was always felt like a language I could be fluent in a lot more easily. you know it they're how do we put this I didn't have blocks or obstacles in my way what when I was playing drums or playing guitar or whatever it was which kind of made me fall in love with that so to speak do you think that basically when you look back at that time in your life that that was the moment that you realized how powerful it was I mean were you even did you comprehend that you early age? It's always been what I wanted to do, to be honest. I had other interests also. I wanted to, you know, I liked paleontology. I was a little kid. Yeah, complete opposite. But, yeah, it was always the thing that made me feel good and felt natural and was something I felt good at without having to try too hard. And having something that made me feel expressed was important growing up when I couldn't verbally express myself all the time the way that I wanted to. That's right. I read that you, there were times that you couldn't talk at all, that you just couldn't express anything. That must have been extremely frustrating, especially as a kid growing up and hard. Yeah. Yeah. And the hard thing too was in school, a lot of... teachers even didn't understand what I was going through and the speech pathologists at the school I went to weren't good people frankly. The methods that they were teaching me didn't, they weren't for me, didn't make me feel good. And yeah, it was just incredibly frustrating not being able to say how I was feeling and it really led to me struggling a lot with my self-esteem. and anxiety, you know, a lot of people think that having a stutter stems from anxiety, but really it's the other way around. Like, I'll get caught up on a word and that's why I'm anxious. I'm not, it's not like I feel anxious first and then I get stuck on a word. You know, it's