On today’s episode of The SHAIR Podcast is the 2nd episode of the O-Zone, where I host a new featured show on InRecovery Radio brought to you by the Star Worldwide Network studios in Scottsdale, Arizona and produced by Bill Gates. Today, we have Mary Lyn joining us, and Mary Lyn has a CD out called Twelve Songs, and I'm going to let Mary Lyn tell us a little bit about everything that she's got going on currently. Mary Lyn, are you with us?

Mary Lyn: I am. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be a part of the O-Zone. I love it.

Omar: I love it, and feel free to call me O.

Mary Lyn: Okay, O. That's great. Just call me Mary Lyn.

Omar: This is exciting, so Mary Lyn, please tell us about your CD. Tell us where the inspiration came for the CD. I also know that you have a workbook that coincides with this CD and where it comes from, so tell us where it was inspired from and where you're going with it.

Mary Lyn Twelve Songs

Mary Lyn: Well, sobriety has just been such an awesome journey for me, and I think I love recovery more now today than I did when I first got sober. I've been playing guitar since I was 16 years old, and just writing songs and music, and it's very personal for me, my songwriting, and it's kind of how I come to understand things ... Is through songs. Or even communicate. It was always through lyrics or songs or going, "Hey, listen to this," and then someone could tell how I was feeling, because I wasn't really capable of describing how I was feeling, so music was a great tool for me to use to help other people see where I was and vice versa.

When I got sober, I just was trying to understand the 12 steps for myself. I was just trying to figure out ... You sit in those meetings when you first get sober, and it's a whole new language. I mean, I never heard people talk like this before. They have all these funny little sayings; Ninety meetings, ninety days, first things first, easy does it, and all this stuff. I was just like, "Wow. Okay, I'm just trying to absorb it myself."

I started writing songs about being sober, and I had gotten in touch with a producer that I used to work with before drugs and alcohol took me out of the game, and I said, "Can I play some songs, and can we make some demos and stuff?" I kept bringing him these songs, and he goes, "You should make a CD," and I was like, "What? No. No. I'm not going to make a CD." He goes, "Well, you should," and then I went home, and a couple of weeks later ... Really, I woke up in the middle of the night and I said, "Oh, my God. The CD is 12 songs, and each song is going to be inspired by the 12 steps," and then the journey began.

Mary lyn

I just kind of went through this journey of doing steps and then looking for the hook, because I didn't want the CD to be this ... I wanted it to be relate-able to any ... Something that you would hear on the radio. I want people to enjoy the music if they were in recovery or were out of recovery, so I really wanted it to have a national flavor to it, so that's what I did. I went around and tried to find hooks and how would I ... How do you explain step two? Came to believe in a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity, right? I mean, how do you write a hook to that? And ninety meetings in ninety days, right? Because that's when that shift happens, in that time period where you kind of either get it or don't.

And so then we just kind of went on from there, and then I just kept doing the next indicated thing with the CD. I'd never made a CD before, so I just kind of asked questions, and it took two years to put that CD together. It took me a year to write the songs, and then it took me a year to get money together to pay for the producing of it and the artwork, and I found out about how you distribute things and all of that.

It was just such an amazing journey, and I never thought that the music was going to go where it went. It was really just something personal. I was amazed that one person bought the CD, because I was really just kind of doing it for myself. I've had to do reorders after reorders of it, and it just blows me away. It's been played all over the world, and I get emails from people saying how ... From Japan and Australia and England. It's like, "Wow, this is so cool." It's completely God inspired, and the whole process of AA has helped me get to the next steps.