BECAUSE YOU CAN

'Music, Healing & The Power To Keep Going'
Exclusive Interview with Greg Owen
Featured in 'Innerviews'
Hosted by Allié McGuire

​In the middle of O’Hare Airport, surrounded by rolling suitcases, gate changes, coffee cups, and hurry, Greg Owen sat down at a piano and changed the room. People slowed, smiled, listened, and for a moment, remembered how beautiful it feels to be interrupted by something real. In this conversation, Greg reflects on the lifelong love of music that began at age nine, the quiet power of being heard, and the butterfly effect of one song finding its way into another person’s heart.

ALLIÉ: Nice to see you again, because Greg, I met you in Terminal 3 at O’Hare, not on a stage, not even under theater lights, but at an airport piano where people were simply trying to get somewhere else. Right? Then you began to play and suddenly everyone had somewhere to be right there, and it was there to listen to you play. First question today. What do you feel when you realize your music has interrupted the hurry of a room in the best way possible?

GREG: Like yesterday. Excuse me. I take my daughters shopping. We do a lot of shopping together. After we get done with our Panda Express, we go to this Goodwill thrift store. They like thrifting, so we do that, flea markets, that sort of thing. And there’s a piano, an old dusty Kimball piano from 1912 or 1913, sitting in the corner. So I start playing it. Of course, all these people start coming around because they hear it and they think, “I thought that was the radio.” I get that a lot. Or maybe they think it was something going over the intercom. But it’s actually a passion for me that goes way back.

My grandmother played piano and organ. She had a Hammond organ in her home. We would go there every Christmas, Easter, or Thanksgiving, and I would be drawn right to the organ. This was when I was nine years old. So that was 59 years ago.

It’s just something with the energy in the room. People feel something when I play. That’s what I love to say. I try to project love. I try to project something that you don’t get every day from listening to the radio.

​ALLIÉ: Yeah. Well, I will tell you that in that airport, in that terminal, near that piano, when you started playing, I was working feverishly, typing away while you were playing the ivories. I was doing this on my computer, and the moment you started playing, I stopped, and I never went back to it. That’s where our conversation and our connection began.

So, let me go back to that moment because there was something beautiful when a young man stopped to listen to you, as did so many, and when you stepped away, he sat down at the piano and began to play. It felt like this butterfly effect in real time, one note becoming permission for someone else to share their own. Have you seen that happen before, where your music quietly unlocks something in someone else?

GREG: Absolutely. If you’re on Facebook and you look up Nord Keyboard Users, you will find a video that I recorded on what we call the Nord 3. The Nord is the manufacturer, and three, of course, refers to three keyboards. It’s a Nord 3 Orchestra. So it’s my own sound, my own thing.

There’s so much going on in the world right now. I felt we needed some healing. So this is my feeling behind it. I just started thinking about it and felt that I needed to record this one piece of music because the world needs it right now. Ave Maria was that piece of music.

So I recorded it, and now I have over 215,000 views of that piece of music. But beforehand, I felt like something was happening there. I felt like this was right. You get that little nudge from wherever that makes you feel like, “Okay, this is right. I’m supposed to do this now.” That’s the kind of feeling I had with that.

The comments I have on that, you read some of them too, Allié. You see them and think, “Okay, that’s what I’m supposed to do.” I want to help people. I’m not about getting what I can take from me. No selfishness. I don’t want any of that. I want to give the world something.

People need to heal for many different reasons, emotionally, physically, maybe from something that happened in their life, maybe something health-wise. Like for you, I felt that this is something that even you can use, and anybody watching this can use. It’s healing.

ALLIÉ: Yeah. So, let’s go back to what you said earlier in our conversation, that you fell in love with the organ at the age of nine, which is such a specific and powerful instrument for a child to be drawn to. Do you remember the first moment when the sound reached you differently, not just as music you heard, but as something you somehow belonged to?

GREG: Absolutely. Ocean Grove, New Jersey. The Great Auditorium. It was built in 1894, made out of wood. You go inside and it has this musty smell to it. It’s just beautiful. All the doors slide open all the way around the auditorium. There are colors coming in from different stained-glass windows on the outside of the auditorium.

​I heard this sound coming from there, and I walked in. Gordon Turk was playing the organ. I heard that sound and I was like, “I want to do that.”

I don’t know what it was. I just kind of sense when something leads me somewhere, and I try to go with it and see where it takes me. So I knew at that age that I absolutely wanted to do something with music. That was it. That was the kicker.

During the summertime, kids were out there on the beach. I wanted to be in the auditorium and listen to the organ and listen to him practice. He’d let me sit down and play it once in a while. That was it for me.

I saw the greatest organist in the world, Virgil Fox, play in 1979 and in 1980. He was the world’s greatest organist, and I met him. I told him he was one of the seven wonders of the world. He said, “Can you believe that?” He loved young people. I was 14 or 15 at that time.

I gave tours of the auditorium and the organ to people who came. We collected a little offering, and I gave the money toward working on the organ. Any repairs or things like that would be done.

​ALLIÉ: That’s an amazing, beautiful beginning to a passion, to a career, to a life. Let’s switch gears a little bit here, Greg. Let’s get a little personal. In our conversation, you shared with me a bit about your past. So I want to ask this. As someone who was adopted, I wonder if music ever became a kind of language for you before the world had all the words for you to use. Has playing ever helped you understand who you are, where you come from, or where you’re meant to go?

GREG: Yes, I would say it’s more of a tool for another objective, maybe a universal objective. I think that when I play, I need to be able to make music in order for me to be happy, to stay alive. But it’s always with the intent of wanting to do something nice for somebody.

​I was always told I would never be able to play. I was told, “Oh, you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t do it this way. If you don’t do it this way, you’re not going to get anywhere with music.” And I did not believe any of that because I’m too driven, like yourself, to achieve a goal or a point that we have to reach. So I taught myself. I learned how to play. I learned how to read music.

I would go to New York City by myself and see the greatest organs in the world, instruments and concerts, and I would need to play them. So that was pretty crazy.

I’m going to make a confession. Are you ready?

ALLIÉ: I’m ready. Bring it.

GREG: I would call into the school as my father. “Greg’s not going to be in today. He’s not feeling well. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Bye.” Then I would head into New York City to pursue my passion of playing music because I knew that they wouldn’t take me. Nobody would take me to do this. I was going to do it myself. This was my thing.

ALLIÉ: Well, I mean, if you’re cutting class to pursue your passion and play music, I think that’s acceptable. And admirable. That’s really beautiful.

As a result, you have performed in theaters, auditoriums, restaurants, private residences, historic spaces, and, as I now know, airport terminals. After all of these years, Greg, and all of these rooms, what do you hope stays behind after the final note? Even if the listener never knows your name, what is it that you hope they carry forward?

GREG: That they get a message through music. With music, I can communicate just as well as I’m communicating with you right now. Here’s what I mean by that. If I play, I am playing with intent. The intent, I may not know what it is, but I know that it’s there.

​If it’s a spiritual intent, then that is meant to go to somebody out there or through a number of people. In the terminal that day, it was for you and I. I looked over while I was playing, before I even said a word to you, and I smiled. I could tell you were getting into the music and everything. So there was a message. And boy, was it ever.

Look what happened out of that. So I’m hoping in the end that the person who listens gets something out of it. They don’t have to know who I am. It’s not about me. This is about what they need at that time.

ALLIÉ: Yeah. And just to your point, that day, that terminal, that piano, you playing, and to watch every single person who went by affected in the most beautiful way. Whether they were hurrying by, with their necks almost breaking because they wanted to keep watching and keep listening, or the mom who was sitting there rocking her baby, and then the baby, when waking up, got down and started dancing.

I mean, you’re right. It is almost as if music is this sort of connective tissue that pulls us all together and binds us in these very fragile, delicate, yet very powerful moments. For sharing that moment with me, I am thankful. And for sharing your story here with all of us, thank you.

​GREG: I want to be able to perform music to help people who need it. It’s not about me. I’m just a tool. This is about what they need right now. And I feel like in life, that’s what I want to do going forward.

ALLIÉ: Going forward and right now, I know there was a part of me that was healed in that moment, not only from what I heard, but from what I saw and the impact that one person can have, that one sound can have on so many people. So thank you for that reminder, and thank you for helping all of us become a bit more aware now. Thank you so much, Greg.

GREG: To anyone reading this or watching this right now, I hope this put a smile on all your faces. May you all have a very lovely day and a lovely time, and make the best of whatever ails you.

You have the power to achieve a goal. Don’t let anything take you down. Don’t let anything take you down. Drive. Go up. Look at that goal that you have and go for it, because you can. Because you can. ∎

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Connect with Greg on Facebook: www.facebook.com/organloft2001