You're running the studio, and I guess there's a real turning point, and it happens in 1984, and I want you to tell me about this because from what I understand, you were invited to a trade show in Chicago, a trade show of musical instruments, and while you were there, you discovered something that would essentially, I- I think it's not an understatement to say would actually change your life.

Yeah, it did change my life.

Uh, I had a friend that owned a local piano and organ store here in Fort Wayne, and he invited me to the NAMM show, and he said, "Well, that means the National Association of Music Merchants, and they have their dealer show once a year up in Chicago." I said, "Yeah, I'll go with you." He, again, he was just a friend, and I had bought some synthesizers through his store, so we become friends through that.

And I went there, and I saw a prototype of a music instrument that just set me on fire, and frankly, set the world on fire for a while, and it was called a Kurzweil K250.

Ray Kurzweil, who's a futurist, he's still alive today, still doing some really interesting stuff, but he'd figured out how to record a nine-foot grand piano and digitize it and put it in memory chips or ROM chips.

And, you know, back in 1983 and '84, this was unheard of.

But not only did it have a recording of a nine-foot Steinway piano, it had an upright bass.

[laughs]

What's your take on the Fort Wayne economy, uh, and some of the investments you've made there because there are multiple major high-profile investments in downtown Fort Wayne.

Yeah.

I'm really excited about our region, not just Fort Wayne, but all of northeast Indiana.

You know, we, we put our heads together many years ago and said that we need to invest in ourselves, and it, it really started almost 17, 18 years ago with a ballpark in downtown Fort Wayne.

We built this ballpark that most of our community was against.

They said, "We have a ballpark out at the Coliseum." And, uh, myself and many other business leaders and a very progressive mayor at the time, Graham Richard, went in front of city council and said, "No, we need the investment in downtown Fort Wayne." So we built that ballpark.

It quickly became the number one minor league ballpark in the country.

Talk about music as an economic development driver in Fort Wayne.