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[0:00] Robert Bannon: Are you ready? It's The Roundtable with me, Robert Bannon.

[0:11] Robert Bannon: Well, welcome to The Roundtable, everybody. My name is Robert Bannon, and you're listening to us on Broadway World, the Broadway Podcast Network, iHeart, Spotify, wherever artists are talking about art.

[0:19] Robert Bannon: I introduce this next guest as a rock star, because I think she is a rock star. I think that the music is out, the new music video is out. The story is absolutely incredible, and in 2026, we need stories like this more than ever.

[0:35] Robert Bannon: So for all my LGBTQIA plus community, for everybody who is across the spectrum, we have an incredible guest with an incredible story, and also a proof that no matter how old you are, you can change careers, change your life, and be whoever the hell you want to be.

[0:50] Robert Bannon: And that is what I love so much about Michele Bettencourt. Welcome to The Roundtable.

[0:56] Michele Bettencourt: Thanks so much for having me. It's good to be here. Good to see you.

[0:59] Robert Bannon: You're a rock star. I know you're just going to say you're not. You're going to say you're just a musician. You're a rock star.

[1:05] Michele Bettencourt: Thank you. The record's doing well. We'll have five songs right now that have been on the radio. The latest one, "Takin' Out the Trash," I like a lot. We saved it for the midterms.

[1:15] Robert Bannon: Take it out.

[1:17] Michele Bettencourt: Yeah. And I think things are going well. I've got a really good band. They're just so good.

[1:23] Robert Bannon: I would like the trash taken out for the midterms very much.

[1:27] Michele Bettencourt: Me too. Please soon.

[1:29] Robert Bannon: You can go to the White House and take that trash out as well.

[1:32] Michele Bettencourt: That's kind of what it's about. Exactly.

[1:35] Robert Bannon: So you are – speaking of though, I'm not trying to make assumptions, but your career before this, you were kind of a well-to-do mover, shaker, tech. You're the kind of people that they like over there. That in my head, these big business making good money.

[1:56] Michele Bettencourt: If you fit the mold, it's great. If you fit the mold, it's wonderful. And when you don't fit the mold, it's awkward.

[2:04] Michele Bettencourt: And I spent 35 years in tech in Silicon Valley. I opened the NASDAQ twice as a CEO, opened the New York Stock Exchange once, opened the NASDAQ two more times as a board member. I had a really lovely career.

[2:19] Michele Bettencourt: And technology in my mind – maybe I'm naive here – it seemed back in the day it was about let's go solve this really difficult problem.

[2:29] Michele Bettencourt: And if we do it well, maybe we'll get paid for it.

[2:32] Michele Bettencourt: And it's flipped into let's go make a lot of money.

[2:36] Michele Bettencourt: And if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter.

[2:39] Michele Bettencourt: It's very different. It's gone from trying to solve complex problems that are meaningful to solve to eyeballs and marketing and data, and it's just shifted.

[2:50] Michele Bettencourt: The whole cultural shift, the political shift in the Valley has been just shocking.

[2:56] Michele Bettencourt: And it's become donate $25 million for a ballroom and things like that that are not what it was all about.

[3:05] Michele Bettencourt: And everyone just – they just switch sides too quickly I think.

[3:10] Robert Bannon: Well, you decided at some point to get out, but you're very honest. I've read articles about you and other interviews about you. You had a very successful career financially. You rose to the top of the ladder.

[3:22] Robert Bannon: You were not worried about paying a bill or your light bills were not shut off. Is it scary to leave something that's so secure?

[3:31] Michele Bettencourt: It was unnerving to leave it the way I did because I was CEO and chairperson of a $350 million company.

[3:43] Michele Bettencourt: I moved us from the New York Stock Exchange to the NASDAQ. We were worth $1.7 billion in the market, doing well.

[3:51] Michele Bettencourt: And I came out and it was a big fumble.

[3:55] Michele Bettencourt: It was messy and it was a bit embarrassing.

[3:59] Michele Bettencourt: I was a meme. It wasn't pleasant.

[4:01] Michele Bettencourt: And so the way I came out, the way I left it, probably not the best way.

[4:04] Michele Bettencourt: And I was upset about it for a long time.

[4:07] Michele Bettencourt: I went to New York and lived there from 2016 to 2019, came back to California late 2019 and mid-2020.

[4:15] Michele Bettencourt: I was trying to get a job again and people were not picking up the phone.

[4:20] Michele Bettencourt: But I got a call from this cybersecurity company. They were looking for a CEO. They wanted me.

[4:27] Michele Bettencourt: I looked at it. I was going to take the job.

[4:30] Michele Bettencourt: And I remember sitting in the backyard here during COVID talking to the internal candidate at the company.

[4:35] Michele Bettencourt: The company is called Corlite. And I asked him, if you don't get the job, what are you going to do?

[4:40] Michele Bettencourt: I said, are you going to quit? He said, well, not on day one.

[4:44] Michele Bettencourt: And I thought, I'm going to be controversial at best.

[4:49] Michele Bettencourt: I will make some people nervous and I'm not probably ready to be CEO again.

[4:55] Michele Bettencourt: And I'm really not, period, ever again, because it's a work ethic I don't have anymore.

[4:59] Michele Bettencourt: I like doing things differently. And so I stepped back and that gentleman, Brian Dye, took the role.

[5:04] Michele Bettencourt: But that was a vice chairman role or chairperson, I keep saying chairman, that we went from 16 to 120 million.

[5:11] Michele Bettencourt: Company's doing great. I left the board December of last year.

[5:14] Michele Bettencourt: That led to two more boards. One was WalkMe. We went public. They made me chair.

[5:19] Michele Bettencourt: I sold it for a billion six to SAP and the other one is an AI company that is doing well.

[5:24] Michele Bettencourt: So I came back and I was able to leave the valley on my own terms, which doesn't happen.

[5:30] Michele Bettencourt: You know, you get older, you age out, you know, you do something like this and declare yourself a different gender.

[5:37] Michele Bettencourt: It causes some problems. But nobody was mean or rude.

[5:41] Michele Bettencourt: In fact, it was everyone was bending over backwards not to upset me.

[5:47] Michele Bettencourt: And I told people, I said, look, don't worry about it. It doesn't just don't sweat. Let's just work.

[5:52] Robert Bannon: Well, you still got it. That magic touch that turns these companies around. And there's so many layers to your story. And I know you probably get asked a lot of the same questions. So I've tried to not bore you by having to tell your story.

[6:06] Robert Bannon: But there's layers to it because there's the business to music, which is such a wild juxtaposition. There's your own personal journey. And then for me, there is the family relationship journey, which is also fascinating.

[6:20] Michele Bettencourt: I was married to a woman. I dated Samantha from 16 to 30. We got married in my 20s. I came out at 33. People ask some very rude personal questions when you go through an experience like that.

[6:32] Michele Bettencourt: They ask and they ask and it doesn't hurt my feelings. I think it makes other people more.

[6:37] Michele Bettencourt: Were you always gay? Did you know? Did you was it fake? Was it a lie? Were you hiding it? Did you do this?

[6:42] Robert Bannon: So, you know, what do you what how do you handle the questions that people have about your personal life?

[6:49] Michele Bettencourt: I mean, I came out as trans and I the trans community gets just it's under siege all the time. And so my view has always been I'm going to be an ambassador. So if I'm asked a question that would make other people nervous or uncomfortable.

[7:06] Michele Bettencourt: I'll advise them not to ask other people that question. They can ask me that question. So I answer questions candidly.

[7:11] Michele Bettencourt: It's I the pronoun thing. I I'm always so happy when it's she and her.

[7:19] Michele Bettencourt: I am grateful when people do that. I I don't worry about it.

[7:24] Michele Bettencourt: I've been in meetings, you know, in companies and someone has said the wrong thing and they freeze up.

[7:32] Michele Bettencourt: And I say, look, please don't. It doesn't matter to me. I I'm working. I've got a family I love and life is good. Don't worry about this. It's the least important part of my day. It really is.

[7:43] Robert Bannon: Yeah. No, it's it's not. It's been a shock to me how well I've been treated.

[7:50] Michele Bettencourt: But it's been frustrating to see how poorly others are treated.

[7:50] Robert Bannon: Agreed. I completely I am coming out as gay is a very different experience. And I'm not trying to take my compare my experience to yours. But for me, I felt very guilty that I had very supportive family. And I met a lot of my friends were very supportive. And I would hear I was older and had been through a lot. I heard a lot of stories from other friends of mine. Their story was much more.

[8:17] Robert Bannon: Tough and and traumatizing than mine. I felt a lot of guilt about that.

[8:22] Michele Bettencourt: Yeah, I do. I do as well all the time. It's I feel I felt guilty about keeping a secret from my family because no one I mean, no one knew.

[8:32] Michele Bettencourt: I was a bit like this since I was five or six years old. I didn't know what it was because I was born in 1960.

[8:38] Michele Bettencourt: So in 1978, when I'm 18 years old in high school, there's gay and straight.

[8:44] Michele Bettencourt: I didn't know anything about trans. I just didn't know. And it was something that was never discussed.

[8:51] Michele Bettencourt: And so I just kept it a secret. And it was my secret. I felt as my superpower, which sounds kind of crazy.

[8:57] Michele Bettencourt: But I was able to show up in the day and be in a suit and open a stock market and I get dressed up, be beautiful and go out to a nice restaurant by myself.

[9:08] Michele Bettencourt: And I realized I read about it. You would go. People knew you say you tip them. Well, people didn't say anything. You took care of people. They they knew that you had a second life.

[9:18] Robert Bannon: And was the actual moment of coming out less scary than the fear and the fantasy of what was going to happen to you?

[9:26] Michele Bettencourt: Yeah, I was I was terrified. I have a good friend in Chris Coleman. Chris was in Jersey Boys. His dad's Ron Coleman, who's won a couple. Oh, yeah. And Chris and I are dear friends.

[9:35] Michele Bettencourt: And we were we were talking one day in Las Vegas. I went to see his show and I never saw the show ever. But we'd go out all the time when I was there. And I told him I was trying to figure this out.

[9:48] Michele Bettencourt: And he told me about how he came out to his father. And it gave me encouragement that I could do it.

[9:56] Michele Bettencourt: It was still it was still messy. Yeah.

[10:01] Michele Bettencourt: My wife and I were at New Year's at the Beverly Hills Hotel because our daughter was at a music festival, you know, 40 miles away.

[10:09] Michele Bettencourt: So we just got camped out there that night. And I said, we're going to go to dinner and I'm going to wear a beautiful dress.

[10:15] Michele Bettencourt: And then that was that was her indoctrination. So she was like, whoa.

[10:20] Michele Bettencourt: And it was awkward. And there were a lot of those awkward moments because I didn't know how to do it.

[10:26] Michele Bettencourt: And I gave my daughter, my four daughters, their big question was, what do we call you?

[10:32] Michele Bettencourt: And I said, I'm dad. I'm dad in public. I'm dad in private. If you want to call me, you call me what you want, but I'm dad and I'm going to protect you like I always have.

[10:37] Michele Bettencourt: And I'm going to protect you like I always have to still be the asshole dad where I need to be.

[10:50] Robert Bannon: So one of the things I'm sure people question about before we're going to get to music in a minute, which if you're not a guy and obsessed with the story and need to be Michele's biggest fan, because this is like the greatest story I've ever heard in my entire life, it's a movie.

[11:06] Robert Bannon: It's really a movie is that I try to explain this to people all the time. Gender and sexuality are two different things.

[11:15] Robert Bannon: So you can be gay and feel like you are a man. You can be a lesbian and feel like you're a woman. You can be transgender and feel like you're in that you're the opposite sex to what you were born as.

[11:30] Robert Bannon: So that doesn't mean because you're trans that you love a certain gender person. You can love whoever you love. So would you explain a little bit about your feelings about that and how people don't understand this concept?

[11:45] Michele Bettencourt: Yeah, I certainly I think people assume that when you come out as as trans woman, then suddenly everything's different. Nothing's that different. I mean, I'm different. I'm better. So I'm not having it.

[12:00] Michele Bettencourt: It's not a secret anymore. My wife, I have a lot of discussion about this.

[12:05] Michele Bettencourt: I'd like if I were not married to my wife, I would be with a man.

[12:10] Michele Bettencourt: I would. But I love my wife. We've been married 33 years and we're great partners.

[12:14] Michele Bettencourt: And and we're we're happy together.

[12:19] Michele Bettencourt: And and so, yeah, so sometimes someone transitions and they they now they're now they're they're attracted to the opposite sex.

[12:26] Michele Bettencourt: Sometimes it's all different and everyone has a different story and they're all and they're all important.

[12:32] Michele Bettencourt: They're all tough. Yeah. So, yeah.

[12:37] Robert Bannon: She has her wife and they're together and you've been through it and I'm sure your relationship is probably stronger and more beautiful and you made your own beautiful love story. And I think it's so incredible. And kudos to you all, all the ladies in the house, all the ladies in the house, the whole family.

[12:52] Robert Bannon: So the music. When did you realize you wanted to sing and could sing?

[12:57] Michele Bettencourt: I love karaoke. And there's a dive bar about three miles from where I would go to on occasion and go to karaoke.

[13:06] Michele Bettencourt: I do a decent John Lennon voice or a decent Tom Petty voice sometimes. I have always loved music. I took a drum lesson at age 13. One lesson. But my problem is I hate lessons.

[13:16] Michele Bettencourt: I hate I hate formal education. So I just dive in and make a mess of something until I figure it out.

[13:22] Michele Bettencourt: And that turned into me being in a band at 17. Not that good. Not a good band. Not a great drummer.

[13:29] Michele Bettencourt: But as I got older, I just, you know, my my income gave me a chance to have nice equipment in the house.

[13:35] Michele Bettencourt: So I played the drums. And when I was 45, I sold a company and I were going through that.

[13:43] Michele Bettencourt: I thought, you know, I want to I want to maybe get more serious at music.

[13:47] Michele Bettencourt: My daughters happened to be on my Super Sweet 16 on MTV season two. And I had a band called Sugar Cold come in and they were great.

[13:56] Michele Bettencourt: You know, Tim Pagnotto wrote all the Neon Tree stuff, wrote "Shut Up and Dance." And so they they came into play. And at the dinner where we kind of inked the deal, I said I'm a drummer and my daughter's thing, my my old band's going to play or not.

[14:11] Michele Bettencourt: But they're so sweet because they're happy about it. And you guys, Dr. Soxoff. And he said, well, learn a song and play in front of your kids.

[14:19] Michele Bettencourt: And I thought, nah, I was two hundred and thirty five pounds. And I was I was I was a tech person. I was, you know, traveling all the time and eating too much food and not exercising.

[14:30] Michele Bettencourt: And I got up on stage and nailed it. And the next day I got on Craigslist and put out feelers for a band.

[14:44] Michele Bettencourt: South Salido, California, where Metallica did it and Fleetwood Mac. So, I was doing that while I was working. And the real interesting part was I'm running companies and suddenly I'm calling Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats because I met him because we booked out his club one night where we could play our show. And Jim and I became friends. He introduced me to Glenn Matlock. So, now I'm having them come to the companies I run and I interview them. I interview them in front of all the employees. And pre-COVID, they'd show up and they'd sign and it was really fun. Jerry Zucker and I, Jerry did Airplane. Jerry's brother-in-law was on two of my boards, Jerry and our dear friends. We had a company together called National Banana.

So, Jerry would come in. So, I met all these individuals. And so, I've always loved music. I've always been connected to it. I just really didn't think I'd ever be able to do it and do it with any expertise. In 2018, I wrote and recorded an album with a gentleman named Hendrik Helmer, Hendrik's great, wonderful guitarist. And it was a very personal album. It's called A New Normal. And it was, I like it. It's just, it's so personal that sometimes I'm embarrassed with it. I never sold it. I just gave it away. And then in 2020, and I didn't write any more music after that because it was exhausting. And then Jim Phantom gave me a call, the Stray Cats are touring, it's coming to show and I'll hook your wife up and come backstage.

So, we're doing that, show ends and Jim's wife opens for the Midnight Cowgirls. So, I called Jim the next day and said, I'd like to buy her records. I'll buy some records. I'll give them away to friends. And he said, call Cary Brown to the label. And so, Cary, I don't do research sometimes, sadly. I did with you, which is good. So, Cary Brown had produced Miley Cyrus, Cheap Trick, had written the soundtrack for Blow, had produced 50 Smashing Pumpkin Songs, and he owns National Liquor's Pizza, Liquor's Pizza, my shirt. And so, we met for breakfast and his wife happens to be Stacey Sher, who produced very recently, the new movie with Dan Hathaway, produced The Heretic, produced Pulp Fiction, a lot of stuff, very well-known power couple.

And my wife and I didn't know this. And I remember telling my wife before we sat down, honey, it'll be 20 minutes, we'll get the records and we'll go home and have a nice weekend. And they roll in and start talking and it's clear who they are. They're not name-dropping, but I kind of put two and two together. And I leaned over to her and said, it's 20 minutes because they're going to be bored as hell with this. It was a two-hour breakfast, Cary talking about his company and what he's trying to do with the record pressing business. And I helped him, I made an investment and we formed a company. Danny Harrison, George Harrison, is the third investor in the company. I've never met him, by the way, Cary has.

So, that's happening. I'm still on three boards, two boards, because we sold the company that year. And then I've started writing music again. I didn't tell Cary I was writing music, but Hendrik and I started writing again. Everett Bradley, who is a percussionist and vocalist for Bon Jovi, was helping to produce. And the stuff sounded better. I'm not sure what it was. Maybe I was more mature. The lyrics were better. It wasn't about me being pathetic and sad and it was coming together. And Cary heard the music and said he wanted to be involved. I don't want to wreck your process, but how can I help? So, he ended up being an executive producer. And the individuals we got in, Russ McKinnon's a drummer.

Russ was 17 years with Barry Manilow and with Elton John and Joe Cocker and Tower of Power. And on bass, it's Caroline Rojas from Bowie. It's an interesting group. And I'm honored to be in their company. And I listen and I'm learning a lot. And we all write the music together. It doesn't make sense for me to write a bunch of lyrics and melody and shove it down everybody's throat and own it myself, because it'll be a very small role for me. Instead, we write it together. And I'm pretty fastidious with lyrics. I was an English major and I was going to be a writer. So, it's my version of being a writer, I suppose. But we test lyrics sometimes, but it's all fair game. And it's so much fun to be in a studio with people who've toured in front of millions.

And they're incredible and they're sweet people and they're friends. They're dear friends now. And the first time, I didn't bring the phone. Oh, dog. The first time, we were filming a video and I wore a dress and I didn't know they were going to take it. And Russ McKinnon came up to me. Russ, born and raised in Oklahoma. And he gave me a hug and said, you look lovely. And that was it. And all the big problems that I was going to have, none of them materialized. So, music's been, it's a place where I can put myself and listen and listen to my heart and write letters to my wife, because sometimes I can't write a letter. Sometimes it's better if I do a song, because it's better that way for her and me.

And it's been a fascinating journey. We were first records doing well. And it's not selling a bunch of vinyl, but we've been on the radio a lot. We've gotten new wallets. And we're working on the next, we have two new songs coming out on the EP, as it'll still ship in the new year. I'm going to put a new album next year. I'm obsessed. I don't know what, this is an incredible story. Vampire Time is out. You could stream it. The songs are out. Taking Out the Trash, the music video is out as of the 15th. And it is literally the most incredible story. Shout out to Russ. I'm a huge fan of Lowe. If you watch, listen to old Barry concerts and stuff, he always shouts out Russ and says, you know, Russ and Russ can hit a drum.

And this is incredible. How do you describe the sound? Like, what is the sound of the album? Yeah, I'm a big Tom Petty fan. And so when I write a song, when I write the lyrics, I hear Tom Petty's voice. And so there's an element of Petty. I think there's an element of Bob Dylan. And it's the worst of his elements. So I can't do a good version of Bob Dylan, but I could probably do a bad version of Bob Dylan. And his bad's great. But there's a bit of Lou Reed in the music. There's protests. It's kind of all over the board. Vampire Time, the song, I was writing about me doing selfies at night. That's what that song was. It was about me doing selfies. That was the first thing we wrote. And I thought it was the least consequential of any song I wrote.

It was silly. It wasn't a flop, but it was. And then Gilded Age was about income disparity and about the oligarchs and gaming the system. Everybody Loves the Circus was about the absurdities of politics and taking out the trash, of course, is about the two-party system that's failed us. So music is all over the board. None of the songs sound the same, which may not be good for me. I don't know. They're all going to sound different. But I think that's what's incredible about it. I have a peculiar way of writing. I go to my office at night, which is now a recording studio. I'll try to get myself in a state where I can think about lyrics and music. And sometimes magic happens in 25 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't. Gilded Age and Circus happened in the same night, which is, I don't understand.

We have a new song coming out. Well, we'll announce it next month, but the new music is really different but wonderful. Highly Nimura, Sarah Greenberg, who's another vocalist in the band, and she has such a lovely voice. We're now doing duets together.

[23:10] Robert Bannon: Okay. I'm excited. I'm excited for people to check it out. I'm excited for me to share. I listened to it this morning. I want people to see it. Is there any plans? Do you have desires to do live shows? Do you want to go on the road?

[23:22] Michele Bettencourt: We'd love to do more. The economics of this band, I've got my guitarist in New York, Sarah's in Chicago. So to get a gig, it doesn't pencil out. I'll pay for a few of those.

[23:36] Robert Bannon: Yeah.

[23:37] Michele Bettencourt: Because we'll do another one probably late this year. We'll do about three of those a year, but otherwise, I want to write and record and see what happens.

[23:47] Robert Bannon: I'm excited. So you have, amongst all of the craziness and the political uprising and the fight to power that you write about, do you have hope? Is there hope through your journey, through your life, to find love, to love yourself, to be your authentic self, to still have love in your life, to have a family that supports you, to have friends that support you? But amongst the craziness that is this world, are you hopeful?

[24:10] Michele Bettencourt: I'm very hopeful. We went through Nixon. Now, Trump's a bit worse, but we've been through bad before. And I think, sadly, politicians are more concerned about their own elections and keeping their jobs, because it's a great job. You get good health care and good perks. And they don't often care about the people. And I say both sides. Obviously, I'm liberal, but yeah, it will get better. You can see the tide turning. It's just too bad that so much disruption has taken place and so much sadness. And I'm working on a film with Jerry Zucker and Janet Zucker. It's called As You Are, and it's about the firing of all the trans people in the military.

[24:58] Robert Bannon: Yeah.

[24:59] Michele Bettencourt: And it's just so sad that they've had to go through that. Their lives turned upside down for no reason, just no reason. So, I think the sickening feeling that we've been treated, the country's been raked over the coals for two plus years, and then four before then, but two plus badly now. It's going to take some time to fix. It doesn't get fixed overnight. And the red and blue is not going to like each other on day one. It's just, we have a 10-year runner to get it fixed. It's true. I feel like you said it perfectly. There's hope, and there's joy, and you can be who you are. And I paid a lot of money in therapists to learn that you could take a step and the path will follow and you'll figure it out.

And for people out here who, and maybe it's not a gender or sexuality issue, maybe it's not an issue within our community, but what about someone who is afraid to make a change? What if it's about a job? What if it's about a marriage? What if it's about starting something new? What advice do you have for them after all you've been through?

[26:08] Michele Bettencourt: I think you have to be smart about it. I mean, transitioning when you're CEO of a public company, you're not smart. It wasn't smart timing. Be smart about it and trust your heart. And you go into it with an expectation that maybe you could change some things about you that you don't like. Maybe you can't. You can't change everything because it dies kind of fast at age five or six, right? But for me, it was forgive myself, first thing. Until I did that, I couldn't forgive anybody else. And I want a lot of people to forgive, by the way. I was the main culprit. And then try to like myself. I went from hating myself to kind of liking myself to, you know, I'm kind of good some days, these days. I have bad days, but I'm over that mess.

And be honest. Just be honest. I'm not trying to disparage the trans community because everyone has things going on. Sometimes communities are so dogmatic that if you don't toe the line, if you don't call yourself this or that, you're not part of the crew. And it's like the whole part of being an individual is to be an individual. And the whole part of transitioning to be you, to be you. Not be put in a box by anybody else. So don't let anyone tell you that you're not trans enough or too trans or too gay or not gay enough. There's no rubric. It doesn't exist. And it took me way too long to figure out how to love and like myself. I wish I could go back and be like, it's all going to be okay. And it would have saved me a lot of nights of being nervous or worried or feeling like I wasn't enough.

And I think it's so important that you share your story because somebody out there is going to hear it and they're going to learn it a lot sooner than maybe we did. And that makes me really moved that the work that you're doing, the music, and the speaking out is literally going to save people's lives and make them feel okay.

[28:13] Michele Bettencourt: Once you get through it, it's miraculous. When you're not hiding and everyone's hiding something and everyone on the planet is hiding something. Some are bad, some are good. When you stop hiding, there's no more lies when you're hiding. Be truthful.

[28:33] Robert Bannon: I love it. Stream the music. We're going to follow you. We're all going to be watching and send it to somebody you love. Enjoy it. When you're angry, when you're watching the news tonight and you want to rock out and have a moment or take a little journey of meditation through some, take the trash out physically and emotionally and cognitively, whatever the wording is, figuratively, literally and figuratively. There you go. This is the album and the soundtrack for you. And we're going to be following and we're going to be sharing this music with people we love as we march to the midterms where we're all going to vote and we're all going to protest and we're all going to take back our democracy and our country and we're going to do it with a lot of music and a lot of joy and art. And the artist is what separates the world and documents history. So what you're doing is going to be looked at and listened to. So thank you for making it.

[29:21] Michele Bettencourt: Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate this.

[29:24] Robert Bannon: I loved it. I love it. Thank you for being here.

[29:28] Michele Bettencourt: Thank you again.