He's back — and he came bearing good news. Phil Madeira, 35-year Nashville veteran, multi-instrumentalist in Emmylou Harris's band, songwriter, painter, and author, returns to StorySessions™ for a bonus update episode that delivers on every front.

Since his original episode — one of our top-rated conversations — Phil has been everywhere. He successfully Kickstarted three projects at once: two albums (The Millionth Mile and More Miles) and a memoir. He's returned from Emmylou Harris's farewell European tour, including a sold-out night at the Royal Albert Hall, dinner with friends near Jimmy Page's house, and a gin and tonic with Downton Abbey's Elizabeth McGovern. He ran his annual Mercyland songwriter workshop in Gorey, Ireland, and is gearing up for his American Mercyland in July.

And his memoir? Summer of Gone — a title given to him, unexpectedly, by someone who didn't even mean it as a gift — arrives in October 2026.

This episode is a reunion, a celebration, and a preview of more Phil to come. If you haven't heard his original episode, stay tuned — we replay it in full. If you have, welcome back to a conversation that always goes somewhere worth going.

About This Episode

This is a bonus update episode. Don Donahue opens with an intro, Phil delivers a personal update, and the original StorySessions™ interview with Phil replays in full — one of our most beloved conversations to date.

In This Update, Phil Shares:

• His successful Kickstarter for two vinyl albums and a memoir — goal: $45,000
• Life on the road with Emmylou Harris — her European farewell tour, Royal Albert Hall, Liverpool, Amsterdam
• The 4th annual Mercyland songwriter workshop in Gorey, Ireland — and a flying shoe
• What it takes to run a successful Kickstarter (hint: it's not passive)
• His memoir Summer of Gone — the title's origin, the publisher, and the October 2026 release
• His upcoming July Mercyland Nashville workshop (open to attendees)

• Phil Madeira website: www.philmadeira.net
• Mercyland Nashville workshop (July 12, 2026) — contact Phil directly via his website
• Summer of Gone — W Brand Publishing, October 2026
• StorySessions™ all episodes + links: www.storysessionsthepodcast.riverside.com
• Primary site: storysessions.live

Melissa Lewis spent 25 years teaching middle school, raising her family, and pouring herself into other people's kids. Then, at 51, she did something most people in her season of life wouldn't dare — she went back to school, earned her master's in marriage and family therapy, and opened her own counseling practice in Franklin, Tennessee.

But the story underneath that story is the one worth hearing.

In this conversation, Melissa and Laura Lyn — friends of 25+ years who raised their kids side by side — talk about what it actually costs to reinvent yourself, the voices that tell you not to, and the grief that can arrive right alongside your greatest new beginning. Melissa shares what she's learning in the counseling room, why she hands every new client a snail, and what she wants anyone in the middle of a hard season to know: change is always possible, and hope starts right now.

Topics covered: second acts and reinvention | self-care across generations | going back to school at 51 | loss, grief, and "brutally beautiful" moments | Brainspotting for trauma | loneliness as a universal theme | the courage to stop people-pleasing | finding hope in the last third

Guest contact: melissalewiscounseling.com | melissa@melissalewiscounseling.com | Franklin, TN | 615.210.7724

Musician, songwriter, producer, and now author — Brent Bourgeois has lived many lives inside one remarkable journey.

In this conversation, Laura Lyn sits down with her longtime friend to talk about his memoir, The Real Things: An Intimate Journey of a Working Musician from Bill Graham to Billy Graham to Instagram. Brent traces a 50-year path through New Orleans, New Jersey, Dallas, California, Nashville, and back again — playing bars at 14, chasing record deals in the Bay Area, producing Point of Grace in Nashville, sharing a stage (and a piano) with Billy Graham, and eventually building the music library at Meta.

Along the way: addiction, sobriety, faith, family, loss, reinvention, and the hard-won wisdom of a man who finally stopped hurrying to get somewhere. His memoir is available now on Amazon in print, e-book, and audiobook —which is something special.

About Brent Bourgeois

Brent Bourgeois is a musician, songwriter, producer, and author based in California. He was one half of the 1980s duo Bourgeois Tagg (Island Records), a Nashville-era producer whose credits include Point of Grace, and the architect of Meta's music library — a catalog of over 16,000 original tracks. His memoir, The Real Things: An Intimate Journey of a Working Musician from Bill Graham to Billy Graham to Instagram, is available now on Amazon. Find Brent and his book community on Facebook: search "Brent Bourgeois and The Real Things."

Resources & Links

• The Real Things by Brent Bourgeois — available on Amazon (print, e-book with color photos and music links, and audiobook)

• Brent's Facebook book community: search "Brent Bourgeois and The Real Things"

• StorySessions™ the Podcast: www.storysessionsthepodcast.riverside.com

• Subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon Music, and iHeart Radio

Connect with StorySessions™

Instagram: @storysessions_thepodcast

W Brand Publishing: @wbrandpub

Producer: @donahuecreates

Website: www.storysessionsthepodcast.riverside.com

What happens when a 15-year music industry roadie trades the tour bus for a laptop and a blank page? Philip J. Kriz—sound tech for Paul Simon, Green Day, Queen + Adam Lambert, and Kiss—found himself at a career crossroads when the pandemic stopped the world, and chose to write the story he'd always been carrying.

The Roadie Cartel is a fictional dive into the music industry's shadowy underbelly, built from years of backstage access and one unforgettable question: what if it was all run by a cartel?

In this episode, Philip talks about the courage it takes to tell your story, why fiction might just be the safest and most powerful creative tool you have, and how writing gave him something touring never could: himself.

Resources & Links:

• For more info on Phillip, visit https://www.phillipjkriz.com

• Follow Philip on Instagram: @philipjkriz

• The Roadie Cartel — Paperback and Kindle

• Learn more about StorySessions™: StorySessions.live

Just over a year ago, Laura Lyn published her memoir Who Do You Think You Are? through W Brand Publishing — and in this solo episode, she tells the story behind the story.

What made a writer in Tennessee, with no celebrity status, decide to write a memoir? What did she risk? What actually happened in the year that followed — the readers, the book festivals, the connections she never expected?

Laura Lyn traces the origin of the book back to a single podcast episode she heard while driving to Nashville, shares what vulnerability truly cost her, and reads a passage from chapter 45 that started as a book launch reading and became the heart of everything she hoped the memoir would do.

Whether you've read the book or you're hearing about it for the first time, this episode is an invitation to tell your story, because your story matters too.

Resources & Links:

• Who Do You Think You Are? — available on Amazon (paperback + Kindle): itslauralyn.com

• Link to Purchase

• Follow StorySessions: @storysessions_thepodcast

• Follow "Who Do You Think You Are?": @itslauralynauthor

• Follow Laura Lyn: itslauralyn.com

Remember to Follow, Like, Share, and Leave a 5-Star Review

What do a pandemic, a broken sewing machine, and a pile of chopped-up black t-shirts have in common? They're where Curtis and Fergus were born.

Dee Nichols is a union camera operator who has spent his career behind the lens for some of the biggest names in music and film. He's also — somewhat unexpectedly, even to himself — a children's author. During the pandemic, with a tour to 14 countries canceled five days before departure, Dee sat down with a sewing machine he didn't know how to use and started making bears from his own clothing. A friend told him if he wrote a story about them, he could probably sell them. He'd never written a long-form story before. He did it anyway.

What emerged was the world of the Scaredy Bears — Curtis and Fergus, two very different bears living in the Big Woods, whose friendship is at the heart of everything. Curtis, who seems to know everything and worries about nothing. Fergus, who worries about everything and seems to know nothing. And beneath all of it, a quiet question Dee has been sitting with for a long time: what does Home really mean?

In this conversation, Dee talks about the Ohio farm country that shaped his storytelling instincts, the brother he lost in 1994 whose memory lives on in the Curtis and Fergus relationship, the Cherokee grandmother he barely knew but never forgot, and what it means to take the parts of yourself you're least proud of and put them in the mouths of little bears.

This one is for the kids. And it's absolutely for the rest of us too.

StorySessions™ — where your story matters.

Connect with Dee

• Website: scaredybears.com
• Instagram: @curtisandfergusthescaredybears
• Curtis and Fergus and the Sleuth of the New-New on Amazon — link at scaredybears.com
• Audible: available now for the first book

Connect with StorySessions™

• Website: storysessions.live
• Instagram: @storysessions_thepodcast
• W Brand Publishing: @wbrandpub
• Editor/Producer: @donahuecreates

The Playlist of Your Life with Shaka Mitchell

Every memory has its own soundtrack, and few people understand that more deeply than Shaka Mitchell. As the founder of the Come Together Music Project, a Nashville-based nonprofit, Shaka has built something quietly revolutionary: a framework for using music to create the kind of conversation most of us are starving for.

In this episode, Laura Lyn and Shaka explore the emotional landscape of childhood--a blended families, latchkey afternoons, the homes that shaped them--and trace how music became the thread connecting memory to meaning.

They talk about what it really means to listen, why vulnerability is easier when a song opens the door first, and how sitting in a room with someone you disagree with and sharing a playlist might do more for community than any town hall ever could.

This is a conversation about love, really. For music. For people. For the stories we carry.

In this episode:

• The Come Together Music Project — what it is and why Shaka built it
• Growing up Gen X: latchkey kids, blended families, and what was left unsaid
• Dancing in the living room with his grandmother and why that memory still moves him
• Music as a bridge across difference — and why it works when words don't
• His live events in partnership with TEDx Nashville, featuring Scott Hamilton and John Oates
• The question he wishes someone would ask him — and what it unlocks

Connect with Shaka Mitchell:

• Website: cometogethermusic.org
• Podcast: Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and all major platforms
• Substack: Shaka's Substack

Subscribe & Follow StorySessions™

🌐 storysessions.live 🎙️ Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, iHeart Radio, and Amazon Music

📸 Instagram & Facebook: @storysessions_thepodcast

Story Sessions™ — where your story matters.

What does a handwritten recipe, a jar of barbecue sauce, and sleeping on a Coleman cot in an empty apartment have in common? They're all part of Charlynda Scales' story, and she's not hiding any of it.

Charlynda is an Air Force veteran, TEDx speaker, serial entrepreneur, and the author of Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline. She's the founder and CEO of Mutt's Sauce, a barbecue sauce company born from her grandfather's original 1956 recipe — and a legacy she inherited on a handwritten piece of paper. What she did with that piece of paper is the story of hard work, grief, grit, entrepreneurship, and ultimately, peace.

In this session, Charlynda talks about the grandfather who she called Daddy because he raised her. He was an Air Force veteran whose call sign was Mutt for his ability to make friends anywhere and blend in everywhere. She shares how she turned his recipe into a product while still on active duty, the mentor who believed in her before she fully believed in herself, and what it looked like to show up on magazine covers and television while sleeping on a cot in an empty apartment.

This is a conversation about what it means to let your work speak for itself, to give grace to your own rock bottom moments, and to discover that peace--real, quiet, uncomplicated peace--might be the greatest trampoline of all.

StorySessions — where your story matters.

• Website: charlyndajean.com
• Instagram: @charlyndajean
• Mutt's Sauce: muttssauce.com
• Mutt's Sauce on Instagram: @muttssauce
• 6888 Kitchen Incubator: 6888kitchen.org
• Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline on Amazon: amazon.com/dp/195690669X

Charlynda Scales is a serial entrepreneur, Air Force veteran, TEDx speaker, and author. She is the founder and CEO of Mutt's Sauce LLC — a multi-flavor barbecue sauce company built on her grandfather's original 1956 recipe — and of OH Taste LLC, with its nonprofit arm the OH Taste Foundation. She is also the co-founder of the 6888 Kitchen Incubator in Dayton, Ohio, a shared-use commercial kitchen for food entrepreneurs.

Charlynda and Mutt's Sauce have been featured in Yahoo! Finance, NPR, Forbes, QVC, Men's Journal, CBS News, NBCUniversal, Black Enterprise Magazine, and Military.com. She was also featured in Shark Tank investor Daymond John's bestselling book POWERSHIFT.

Her book, Rock Bottom Has a Trampoline: How to Turn Every Loss into a Win with the Like-Hearted Mentor, was published by W Brand Publishing in October 2023.