In this episode of Restoring Education in America, Priscilla Ron sits down with her husband, the acclaimed musician Darren Ron. Darren shares his inspiring journey from humble beginnings in Canada to becoming a renowned saxophonist and record producer. We delve into the pivotal moments of his educational path, highlighting the role of music education in shaping his career.
00:25:44 Concluding Thoughts and Where to Find Darren
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. She’s a master educator and author, leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, hello, everybody. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Ron, and I’m so excited that you’ve decided to join me in the conversation today. I have a very special, special number one guest today. His name is Mr. Darren Ron. And how are you, Darren?
SPEAKER 03 :
I am good. Surprise, surprise. Good to see you.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, surprise, surprise. And people would say, like, who is this person? Well, this is my beloved, my betrothed, Mr. Darren Rahn, my awesome, amazing husband and spiritual leader. And as I was thinking about… the topic of education, I thought about you because we’ve had many conversations about your education journey. And I thought the world needs to know your story. And so for those people who don’t know who you are, You are a multi Grammy nominated number one billboard artist. At the moment, you have 29 number ones on the billboard and multiple, multiple top tens, top thirties and wonderful placements of your music all over the world. And you got your start. your big break producing for Wayman Tisdale, Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now, which I remember, I think went number one for nine weeks. Did I get that right? Something like that. Something like that. But we’ve had many conversations because I’m a teacher, a music educator. You started your musical journey in elementary school. So I want you to start at the very, very beginning talking about your musical journey because it’s so fascinating.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, You know, it really, it really completely ties into the whole arena of education because music for me started when I was in school, in grade school. And that carried me through my junior high and high school years and then into college where I got my degree in education, music education. And that was kind of the leaping point from there to even when I got into the music industry. And, you know, One thing that really struck me, the time that I spent in teaching and continue to teach people and share the craft and the trade with others is that when you have to teach someone what you do, it’s just about the best learning and training tool you can have because it’s one thing to know how to do something. It’s a whole nother thing to be able to take that. and put it into words and action and share that with others. And so I think for those that are in education and even those, if they’ve taken their education and gone elsewhere, you never really get away from it. It’s always a part of what we do.
SPEAKER 01 :
So you are originally from Canada, British Columbia. You were born in Banff, a beautiful part of Canada. And your dad decided to go into seminary and ended up in San Diego while you were in grade school. And then eventually he got his first pastoral ship in Canada. the San Luis Valley.
SPEAKER 03 :
Southern Colorado.
SPEAKER 01 :
Southern Colorado. And you made your way here. And tell us about your journey into, you’re a saxophone player, but you didn’t start out as a saxophone player.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, I mean, saxophone was always my dream. And when we were real young, my mom said, hey, you guys we’re gonna have each of you kids take piano for two years and then you know when you’re done with that if you want to continue it’s fine and if you don’t that’s okay too we just want you to have that foundation and so at five years old took two years of piano lessons and the highlight of that two years by the way we had a piano teacher who babysat the queen’s piano so um In British Columbia.
SPEAKER 01 :
I was going to say, okay, which queen?
SPEAKER 03 :
The queen, the queen, Queen Elizabeth. And they were gold engraved Steinway pianos. I think there was one or two of them. And I think at the end of our lessons, we got to play on the queen’s piano, which she babysat. I guess the queen had, I don’t know why the piano was in Canada, but it was. Anyway, that was kind of the highlight. Enjoyed the music, but didn’t connect at that moment with the piano. But what happened was a few years later when it was time for band, my brother and I decided we were gonna join. So he joined on trumpet and I wanted to play saxophone. And we went to the music store and they said, no, your fingers are too small. And so I said, well, then I wanna play the drums. And my parents were like, no, no drums, it’s too loud. Um, I said, well, then I want to play the trombone. And they said, your arms are too short. And so the beginning of, of my wind instrument, uh, time was on clarinet. Um, the guy that owned the music store said, you can, you know, you can move to saxophone when your fingers get bigger, which was a lie. They just, they had too many saxophone players. They needed some clarinet players. So I took up the clarinet and, and, um, in all honesty didn’t really like it that much. So in junior high, they had an opening in the jazz band for baritone saxophone. And I jumped at the opportunity, anything to get off of the clarinet and get onto the instrument that I wanted to play.
SPEAKER 01 :
Now, Oz, a baritone saxophone, for those people who don’t know, is huge. And if you’re in middle school and you stand next to a baritone saxophone, that baritone saxophone is likely bigger than you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. So I was a year younger than everyone else in my grade. And I was small. So at that time in my life, it was as tall as I was. So I would prop the baritone saxophone up on a phone book. When I started, not even a book, I just set it on the ground, sit on a chair and start playing it. Yeah, that’s how badly I wanted to move from the clarinet to the saxophone. I would roll it to school on a skateboard. I don’t know, maybe a mile, mile and a half. And… and anything to get off of the clarinet. And to this day, yeah. I can’t say that I’m not proud that I don’t play much clarinet anymore, but I’m really happy to be on the saxophone. It’s the instrument I always wanted to play.
SPEAKER 01 :
I mean, but what you’re saying is where there’s a will, there’s a way. And if there’s something that you want to do there, you can do it because I know as a band teacher, as a beginning music teacher, I have students who give me all kinds of excuses as to why they can’t take their violin home or their flute home or some little, you know, even their alto saxophone. And I think, man, You can take it home. You’re on the bus and you get dropped off really close to your house. So I do remember that story. So you ended up graduating from Alamos High, going to Adams State, which was not called Adams State at the time.
SPEAKER 03 :
It was Adams State, but it was college. Now it’s university.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, okay. So now it’s Adams University, but Adams State majored in music education.
SPEAKER 03 :
Music education for my bachelor’s degree, yeah. Did my degree in my student teaching and then went to get my master’s and part of a doctorate at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley.
SPEAKER 01 :
But wait, wait, wait. Okay. I went to school to become a music performance major and I switched to education. You went for education and then switched to performance.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. For me, it wasn’t a degree switch. It was a career switch, obviously. But I had planned on You know, I thought maybe I was going to be teaching. And then, you know, at some point during my education years, I felt called to get into music creation. And that’s that’s what really guided me. But it all it all stemmed from education. I mean, even those early years on the Barry Sachs in junior high, you know, it was. There was no saxophone teacher. I had a you know, I had a baritone saxophone and a fingering chart. And I had to figure the rest of it out. And so initially was self-taught. And then most kids start out with the saxophone lessons. I was the opposite. I was self-taught until college. And then in college, I was able to you know, get under the direction of a couple of really good instructors to really fix the problems and, you know, teach me the physics of saxophone.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, that was before YouTube. If you were to tell me today I was self-taught, I would have thought, oh, you just went on YouTube, took some free lessons. How did you do it back when you were learning how to play the saxophone?
SPEAKER 03 :
It was basically a figuring chart and figuring it out. Yeah, there was no formal instruction at all. That first bit of time on the baritone sax, it was a shocker. It took a lot of air to make that horn vibrate. But I loved it. I mean, from the get-go, I felt a real connection with the saxophone as an instrument. And I loved the bigger instrument. It would really vibrate. You could not just hear the harmonics on the horn, but you could feel it. You could feel that metal resonating. And yeah, I just connected with it.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you’re tuning in, you’re listening to Darren Ron, a multi Grammy nominated number one billboard artist, saxophonist and record producer. Darren, you have produced for so many great names. Dave cause who we love right now you’re on tour with Brian Culbertson, a four week tour. You’re in a different city every night, which is why we’re doing this interview. And I thought, you know, your life is so amazing. And I tell my students, you know, if you would just sit and practice, you could create such a great tone and maybe you never know, you could become a great musician like you did. And tell us about those early college years where, you know, your friends were probably going out and enjoying college life. What were you doing instead?
SPEAKER 03 :
I was in the practice room and the time was split between the things I had to do, which were long tones and scales and building my sound. But always, I always took time. I think that’s probably why I spent so much time in the practice room was I didn’t just want to practice scales and long tones. I wanted to make music. And so I would do kind of the precursory things that, you know, the long tones and the, developing the embouchure and the breath and the sound so that then I could then spend time practicing what I wanted to practice, which was making music and making sounds come out of the instrument that connected with my soul. And then I think I had one person in early in college, a professional that had given me advice. And he said, Darren, if you want to be a part of this conversation musically, you need to have your own voice. And at the time, I took it kind of hard, but I took it to heart. There’s a time when we’re learning, when we’re being educated, where we have to practice and we have to imitate. we have to assimilate but at some point we have to take the skills and the knowledge we have and we actually have to convert it into our voice for me that was music and saxophone and so making sure that what was coming out of me was real and it was true and it was authentic to me it wasn’t just a you know a cheap imitation of someone else and so i think when we talk about the importance of educating education meeting reality this i think is one of the things that the great educators do they they find a way to connect the technique and um the learning methods with hey now now we have to put this to use how is this going to connect with people in the real world so for me that was a real pivotal moment
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, I know when I used to teach high school choir, I had a lot of really talented vocalists who wanted to be singers. Their goal was to be on the voice or do something big and record. And They would emulate other artists. And we’ve talked about this a lot where young musicians, they try to sound too much like somebody else instead of, to your point, finding their own voice and having something to say in the conversation. When we first met, I didn’t listen to a lot of jazz. And there would be times you would say, oh, we’d be out. Oh, that’s my music. And I didn’t know your sound early on, but then I grew to know your sound. And then I grew to know, oh, that’s Dave Cause. Oh, that’s Najee. oh, that’s Brian Culbertson on the piano, right? Like I can, you can tell the quote unquote voice of the artist because they’ve developed it musically. And it’s when you hear the nuances, it’s such a cool thing. But that’s something that you have to work on. You first start out emulating people that you admire, learning some of those basic skills and learning the chops. Like You’ve listened to some of your quote unquote idols in music growing up, people that you admire. And some of the things that you do play, I hear in some of the traditional jazz artists, some of their ways. But. you spent the time early on doing the fundamentals, which is creating a sound. When I listen to you play and your softs and your louds and your articulation and your technique, it is so skillful, which is no surprise as to why you’re one of the top saxophone players and producers in the world. And I chuckle because, you know, it’s like, oh, what time is Darren getting up? Whenever he feels like it, you can get up, be in his PJs, go downstairs, get a cup of coffee. When he’s ready to go downstairs into the basement, into the studio, he can work. And then he can take a break and take a bath. And now this life that you’ve built because you did the work early on. affords you this amazing life where you can travel all over the world. You have catered meals. You’re in some of the best musical venues in the United States with some of the best food catered. And I think what an amazing life that you have built because you were disciplined and with your education and you worked hard it didn’t just come overnight so what would your advice to a young person saying how do I get my big break what do I need to do what would you say
SPEAKER 03 :
well i would give to them some advice i was given many many years ago when i was but before before any of the big opportunities had presented themselves i was just focused on doing things well and doing them with excellence and um and wanting god to be glorified through the you know the music and the work and so but years ago i had a mentor tell me darren don’t ever look for big doors to open Just always go through the small doors. And when you do, do it for God’s glory and do it with excellence. And that’s what I did. I did. The opportunities came as a result of that. I mean, some people have, you know, everyone has a different story. But I think the ultimate goal of education is self-expression. And if you don’t learn the basic tools, you can’t ever get to self-expression. You’ll only ever get to being a poor imitation of something or fall short of the true goal of self-expression. And when we look at what God created us to do, it’s to glorify him. And every person is unique. so your voice should be unique and if you don’t put in the time learning the basic foundations and tenets of whatever it is you want to do it doesn’t matter whether it’s music or you know science or math or english or art or theater if you don’t get past the basic tenets of you know just accomplishing the basic stepping stones how are you ever going to get to a point of self-expression or original creation you know you look at an einstein he didn’t he didn’t say i don’t i don’t want to learn one plus one equals two how are you going to ever crack scientific theories if if you’re if you’re not taking care of your basic mathematics he these these people were not only uniquely gifted and brilliant but they took their gift and they developed to a point of uh discovery a point of discovery and expression Um, which is really a reflection of, of who God is. He’s unique. He’s, um, yeah, we, we can’t even fathom all that. He is, we see it in creation. We see it in things like music. Um, what that didn’t happen. without thought it didn’t happen without intention and so neither will neither will the developing of our gifts we we really it takes a lot of time but but yes the payoff you know to be able to say you know several decades later wow i yes i can wake up today when i want and then i can work hard but it’s it’s not a free ticket and you know this um being self-sufficient in in the gifts that god has given you generally requires a lot more time than most people will ever put in you know if if i had started in my college years just saying i’m just going to work eight hours a day and call it quits i would have never been able to reach um the level of freedom that i have now i’d say i probably put two to three times the effort and time into music than maybe more than a lot of my friends. But the ultimate result was, yeah, self-expression and some really cool freedom too.
SPEAKER 01 :
My special guest today is Mr. Darren Rahn, multi-Grammy nominated number one Billboard artist, jazz saxophonist and record producer and my husband and spiritual leader and You are brilliant. You’re brilliant. And when I think of us being made in the image of God, part of that image is the fact that he’s a creator. And when we look at Bloom’s taxonomy, the top of Bloom’s taxonomy is creation. OK. And so, you know, at home. I call you Wolfie after walking Amadeus Mozart, because if you saw that movie, you would see just the mind of his process for creation. And he’s just brilliant. And when I’m upstairs and you’re downstairs in the studio and I can hear the music coming out of the studio, I think, oh, my goodness. That’s amazing. I cannot believe that is coming out of your brain, right? And I said, how does this kid from Canada, from a farm, German Mennonite, have so much soul and you always say, this comes from my heart and it comes from God. And it’s true. I think for those of you who are creative types, it is a special gift. It is special wiring. It is brilliant. Not everybody has that gift and you’re able to crank out these hits over and over and over and over. It’s just something really remarkable to see. And I, to even hear your, your journey that, you know, where you’ve worked hard and, you know, kind of luck meets, you know, you happen to be at the right place at the right time where God opens a door. Um, you’ve been self-employed your entire time as a, as a businessman, you’ve had to learn how to manage your, your business account. You’ve had to learn how to manage contracts by the way, you’re brilliant at contracts too. Um, you’ve had to manage your time and negotiate every part of your career to where you are. So it’s not just, oh, I play saxophone, I love playing saxophone, but it’s like a 360 comprehensive knowledge that you have grown to develop. And one of your dear friends, Wayman Tisdale, was a big part of your journey. What’s something that you learned from Wayman before he passed?
SPEAKER 03 :
We would, we would talk often about, um, musical things and I’m a very deep thinker. And so sometimes maybe even an overthinker and, um, there are times where that’s really good, but Wayman, Wayman would always tell me, you know, if it feels right, it is right. Don’t overthink it. And understanding that oftentimes when we’re creating, it’s very common for the most honest things to come out of you first. Even if the ideas aren’t necessarily refined, even if they’re not ready for prime time, oftentimes they’re the purest, most honest forms of expression that come out of us when we’re, you know, it’s spontaneous, it happens. And before we start trying to hone it and fix it and correct it. So he taught me not to overthink. And then he said something that I think was life changing for me. And I think for anyone in education, in the music industry, in, in any industry, one of the key things that he told me early on, he said, you know, Darren, he said, he said, you need to remember to always stay in your lane. Don’t try to be something that you’re not. And I took that to heart. You know, everyone has a different personality. I’m, I’m a little more reserved and I’m, um, a little more quiet and not quite as outgoing as some. And so for years I thought maybe I had to be a certain something to be, to make it. And the truth was all I needed to do was be who God made me to be and to do it with excellence for his glory. And it was incredible to watch. And I will say too that teaching is probably the most powerful learning tool. You know, I grew up when I was in school, I had two teaching assistantships. When I did my undergrad, I had some, they were called work study, but it was actually more of an unofficial teaching assistantship through my eight years in college. So the last two years I was in high school and the eight, and then more time, about 12, 13 years of my life was spent teaching students. teaching saxophone and clarinet and flute, and even for people that didn’t play saxophone, teaching jazz improvisation. And having to convey those concepts and those ideas to students took me to a whole nother level musically because it forced me to understand things from multiple angles. It’s one thing to know a fact that two plus two equals four, but it’s a whole nother thing to take two and to take two and to figure out all the different ways you can get to four. And so teaching really made me a much more complete artist as a musician.
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, I can’t believe we’re out of time and we need to land our plane and you have a very fancy tour bus to get on to your next show destination. Where can people find you? What’s your website?
SPEAKER 03 :
They can go to DarrenRon.com. That’s D-A-R-R-E-N-R-A-H-N.com. And they can hit me up on, you know, Facebook or Twitter or X. I don’t know if you have any more room on your Facebook.
SPEAKER 01 :
You
SPEAKER 03 :
The artist pages.
SPEAKER 01 :
Oh, the artist page, the artist page and check out his music on any of your favorite streaming platform, Spotify, YouTube. What are the others? I mean, those are the main ones.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. I mean, Spotify, Apple music, YouTube, wherever you listen to music.
SPEAKER 01 :
And if you still have a CD player, you can go to his website and buy a CD and he’ll even sign it for you. Well, my sweetheart, I’m so proud of you. And I know everybody is enjoying your music and you are just sharing your gift with so many people. And you just, you know, get some rest, stay rested and get up and get ready to entertain the masses.
SPEAKER 03 :
Thank you, sweetheart. I’m glad to be on your show and good to see you. This is the first time I’m seeing you in what two weeks?
SPEAKER 01 :
Well, to my listeners, catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. Visit PriscillaRon.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.
