Dan The Road Trip Guy
Join Dan the Road Trip Guy as he explores the adventures, memories, and life lessons of diverse guests from all walks of life. This podcast goes beyond the road to celebrate the journey of life by uncovering stories of passion, resilience, and the pursuit of happiness. Whether you’re a seasoned traveler or simply love a good story, Dan the Road Trip Guy will leave you inspired and ready to embrace your own adventures. Buckle up and enjoy the ride!
I hope you enjoy the episodes. You can find me at https://www.dannyneal.com.
Dan The Road Trip Guy
Never Say Never: How Thom Mariner's Winding Career Journey Led to Nonprofit Publishing Success
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Reconnecting after 35 years, Dan sits down with Thom Mariner for a fascinating conversation about musical journeys, unexpected career paths, and finding success in Cincinnati's nonprofit publishing world.
Thom opens up about his "confused and twisted life" that began with opera training and has taken him through retail management, B2B sales, music direction, marketing research, and finally to his current role in publishing. With disarming honesty, he shares how a pivotal conversation with his father before ninth grade – "You're not going to be a football star, we think you should be something in music" – set him on his musical path.
The conversation weaves through nostalgic memories of first cars (a Ford Pinto station wagon and later a beloved Saab 900), epic road trips across the Rockies, and the challenges of balancing musical ambitions with practical realities. Thom explains why he and his first wife, both trained singers, chose to pursue "real jobs" while maintaining professional singing opportunities on the side, a decision that has preserved his voice well into his seventies.
At the heart of the episode is Thom’s journey with Movers & Makers magazine, approaching its 30th anniversary as the public voice for Greater Cincinnati nonprofit organizations. What began as a for-profit publication has evolved into a nonprofit platform integrating print, digital, social media, and email newsletters to support causes ranging from animal welfare to social justice, arts, healthcare, and education.
Thom’s life philosophy – "Never say never. Absolutes get you in trouble" – serves as powerful advice for listeners of any age. His biggest regret? Not taking certain chances when they presented themselves. "The worst somebody's gonna do is tell you no," he advises, encouraging everyone to "put yourself out there and be brave."
Ready for a road trip with fascinating conversation? Subscribe to Dan the Road Trip Guy for more inspiring stories of passion, resilience and the pursuit of happiness from everyday travelers to thrill seekers and everyone in between.
Be sure to visit the website for Movers & Makers, https://moversmakers.org/.
Welcome to Dan the Road Trip Guy. I'm your host, dan, and each week we'll embark on a new adventure, discovering memories and life lessons of our incredible guests, from everyday travelers to thrill seekers and everyone in between. This podcast is your front row seat to inspiring stories of passion, resilience and the pursuit of happiness. So buckle up and enjoy the ride. Well, my guest today I haven't seen in years. I've known him for probably 35 years. I was thinking about it today. His name is Tom Mariner. He's here in Cincinnati. Tom, when I met him, was selling something and I don't remember what he was selling. But what Tom is really about is music and I just remember that very much about him and I'm about as non-musical as could be. So I'm just excited to talk to Tom. Welcome to the show, tom.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much for having me, yeah well, it's a pleasure to have you here.
Speaker 2:I was selling graphic arts supplies and equipment to feed my musical habit.
Speaker 1:That's what it was. Yes, I remember that. Now, take a couple minutes and just tell them who is Tom Mariner.
Speaker 2:Well, I've led a confused and twisted life which has led me through music training in opera and voice, music training in opera and voice to retail management, to, as I mentioned, b2b sales in the graphic arts industry, to music direction producing, arranging voice lessons, to marketing research for about 12 years, and then a combination of publishing, which we've been doing since 2008, with a little side stint into running a chamber orchestra here in Cincinnati for a couple of years. In the midst of all that, so currently looking to find a way to wrap up a glorious career. Final career in the publishing industry here in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll get to that and fill my listeners in on what you really are up to. I can't remember. I love to ask people what was your first car, and Saab kept coming back to my mind, but I could be totally wrong, because that was about 35 years ago.
Speaker 2:Well, and and and you know, about 20 years after I had my first car. But the first first car that I remember learning to drive in was my dad's 67 Pontiac Le Mans, white, with red interior and red stripe tires. Yeah, that was a great car. I loved that car. I think the first car I owned believe it or not, was a Ford Pinto station wagon.
Speaker 1:Ah, the Ford Pinto yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, indeed, indeed, but the car you're talking about, I think so. It would have been late 80s. It was an 86, saab 900, the old clamshell. It was just a wonderful car Piece of engineering. I used to just stand in my garage and stare at it. I love that car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember that Back to that Pinto. Was that a college car or high school car?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, college, yeah, just because I was moving around moving lots of stuff back and forth from home to school and school elsewhere and that sort of thing. So yeah, my dad helped me buy that.
Speaker 1:I remember the Pinto, and I didn't see many wagons though, back in those days.
Speaker 2:No, that's what I liked. It was unique yeah.
Speaker 1:I liked it. Any fun stories from that Pinto Unique. Yeah, I like that.
Speaker 2:Any fun stories from that Pinto. No, just I got run into pretty hard in a parking lot and that was the death of the Pinto. Oh yes, Somebody did not yield, turning left and ran smack into me. Wow.
Speaker 1:In Norwood in the Surrey Square parking lot, the Pinto, best I remember, had some issues with the gas tanks exploding.
Speaker 2:They did. Fortunately, the gas tank was in the back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are you driving today?
Speaker 2:Well, we live downtown Cincinnati, Actually, technically kind of Mount Auburn, slash OTR over the Rhine, and so we only have one car now, and that's a 2016 Mazda CX-3.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And we put about 6,000 miles a year on that.
Speaker 1:All right, so you pretty much walk everywhere.
Speaker 2:We walk or ride the bike or something like that. Yes, indeed, yeah that's cool.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of miles, any epic road trips in your life, you know, either growing up or later in life you either went south to Florida, which was a couple days drive, or we would.
Speaker 2:A lot of people would typically go overnight to Denver and to the Rockies and so it was about a 14-hour drive and you'd leave at four in the afternoon and trade off driving or whatever and arrive early the next morning in the Rockies.
Speaker 2:I and two friends took about a three-week journey I think it was summer between junior and senior year of college, but two friends from my hometown and I went out for three weeks of camping kind of all over the Rockies and sleeping in the snow and all sorts of crazy stuff, even though it was August. But that was a wonderful trip. Yeah, you know, I can't remember whose car we took. I think it was my friend's car, but the uh, that was the interesting thing about that during that drive and of course you can get WLS from Chicago most of the way through Nebraska, but during that drive that was the whole Nixon Watergate business was all unfolding during. During that the time we were driving out there and we were listening to all that news kind of collapse on top of us as we drove under the stars across Nebraska.
Speaker 1:Wrapped up college.
Speaker 2:Boy. This is where it gets circuitous. So I finished. I got two degrees from DePauw University in Greencastle, indiana. My first degree was in psychology, because I couldn't make up my mind about whether I was going to be a musician or not. And then I just pretty much begged my dad to give me one more year and I did three years of music in one year, okay, and stayed and finished up my undergrad degree and then came here to the University of Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music, better known as CCM.
Speaker 2:But after that I went to work in record retailing. I worked for the first real record superstore here in town called Record Theatre, which is 15,000 square feet, and I worked there about five years and then that little mini recession that happened in 1983 necessitated the end of my job as the classical music buyer. They didn't have a classical music buyer. After that they eliminated the job. So I went to work in the printing business, which afforded me a lot of flexibility and a chance to do professional singing on the side in the evenings and schedule. If I needed to be off for a long weekend or something like that, I could work my schedule. That was the beauty of it.
Speaker 1:Now speaking of the music. Going back, was music always in your life, as a small child and then growing up?
Speaker 2:Well, I guess I was always musical and my brother and sister played the piano and they were in the choirs and junior high and high school so, and I was quite a bit younger so I think I emulated them along the way. But somewhere in junior high I started to sit down at the end of the day and just noodle around at the piano and I had taken a few years of lessons from elementary school. But my dad finally sat me down day and just noodle around at the piano and I had taken a few years of lessons in elementary school. But my dad finally sat me down in the middle of the summer before my ninth grade year and said you know, we've never given you any ultimatums. And he says it's clear, you're not going to be a football star, we think you should be something in music. You have your choice. You can be in the band or the choir, but you have to do one or the other going forward.
Speaker 2:And so that little nudge kind of got me into. I was kind of terrified of the band director. She was a taskmaster. Taskmistress, however, yes, and so I joined the choir and the rest is history. Yeah, I was so. In high school I lettered in two sports and I was the lead into a lead in two musicals. It's a very confused young man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. A little nudge from your dad, though, sent you down that kind of musical journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, and they were not musical at all. They just saw something in me they thought needed to be nurtured. So hats off to them.
Speaker 1:Two letters in sports. What sports Cross country and track. Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, I survived one summer training session in football. I was like that's all I'm doing. It's too hard.
Speaker 1:I'm going to go out and run fast and sing right. Yes, exactly, take me a little more on that musical journey then through college, and then you mentioned a few things you were involved in.
Speaker 2:Well, the best things about being involved in music in college is that you get to go on tour and stuff. I mean, I went to Russia and Poland for three weeks in 1977 in December, which was quite the adventure. But we recorded things for national release and was part of a fantastic ensemble at CCM. It was kind of the showcase for University of Cincinnati. We'd go out to alumni events and, you know, help them raise money.
Speaker 2:But my, my first wife and that's I met you and Linda through her, vera um.
Speaker 2:But we were both singers and wanted to get married and it was really not feasible to have two opera careers and ever see each other, because opera is unique. You go someplace for three or four weeks, then you come back, and then you go somewhere else for three or four weeks, then you come back, at least in the US. That's how it works. Or four weeks and you come back, at least in the US, that's how it works. So we both decided that we would get real jobs, do as much performing on the side as we possibly could, both as soloists and church choirs, and then we had a professional, a cappella group that we were a part of for a while and then I continued that after she and I separated and that continued through the 90s into 2001. And I've continued to be involved. I sang Thursday afternoon for the installation of the new Archbishop at St Peter and Jane's Basilica here in Cincinnati On Thursday just part of the choir, but it's nice to still be involved even at my advanced age Never stopped singing right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the things that saved me is that I haven't had to sing hours every day, and so my voice is still pretty fresh compared to some folks I know my age who have had to make a living doing it. I've not had to do that, so I'm in luxury in some ways.
Speaker 1:So you talked about. You're in the publishing business and I catch you every now and then on Facebook with your post about its magazine, right.
Speaker 2:It's a magazine, but that's only a fraction of what we do. Okay, it still pays the bills. The magazine, the magazine is called Movers and Makers, not Movers and Shakers, but it serves as the public voice for greater Cincinnati nonprofit organizations and has for going on 30 years now. In November will be 30th anniversary of the founding of the magazine. Now, truth be told, it's only been known as Movers and Makers for the past nine years. Okay, so it'll be 10 years in November. So it'll be 10 years in November.
Speaker 2:It's a public forum through which we can help nonprofits share their news, promote their fundraising events and activities, tell their stories. We profile their movers and makers, their motive people, important people. We help them acknowledge their benefactors through photos from fundraising events and, of course, if they would like to run ads to thank their benefactors, those are most welcome as well. So we're a nonprofit publication. Now, we didn't start that way, but the pandemic made it necessary that we become a nonprofit to really kind of survive and we merged with another organization to make that happen. Okay, it's funded almost entirely by advertising.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that comes out monthly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we have print monthly. The way things work generally is that an organization, if somebody sends us news, we will post that on our website, usually within a day or two. Then that's shared to social media. Then we publish a weekly compendium of the most important stories each Wednesday morning in an email newsletter, and then a lot of those little news bites are compressed into a smaller form and blended with feature content, so profiles of people and columns about issues and topics. Then that comes out in the print magazine, which is monthly except for January.
Speaker 1:Okay, and you said that's just kind of in the background. Are there other things you do with that also?
Speaker 2:In the background. Are there other things you do with that also? No, I just meant that really to say the magazine is only part of what we do because of you know you've got all the other aspects now. You know the magazine by itself is a full-time job. Yeah, sure, but then you have social media and posting on the site and all the other things that we're a part of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's really, it really a mountain of work, no question, and that's nonprofits, not just in the arts world, but just nonprofits in general.
Speaker 2:So across the board. So everything from animal welfare to social justice and anything in between arts and culture, education, health care, medical research, social services, anything that is covered by a 501c3. Okay, we kind of draw the line there, although we do help support some individual artists by promoting exhibits that a for-profit gallery might might have, but they're supporting an individual visual artist, for example, and we would, you know the same in some jazz clubs. Uh, for example, we will include in our, in our event listings, and we have the most comprehensive uh event listings in in the region and are very proud of having that as well. Well, thanks for sharing that.
Speaker 2:It's an interesting way to make a living. I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.
Speaker 1:You've always been on that interesting way to make a living, though how long has that been?
Speaker 2:Somehow I end up in jobs that I have to explain. Yeah, that's all right. I mean, I was a focus group moderator for a dozen years and people have no idea what that is unless they've been in a focus group. So, yeah, you spend a lot of time explaining things and, of course, as a musician vocal musician especially you have to explain yourself a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah sure, what's on your bucket list?
Speaker 2:What we've decided. So my wife is six years younger. Okay, if I retire in a couple of years, or at least pare back or something, she probably will continue to work close to full time for a little while. Our plan is to travel more. This is kind of an all-consuming job, and in December we took the first shift two-week trip we've ever taken together oh nice. And we've been married for 25 years, okay.
Speaker 2:So we would like to do more of that kind of thing, a one-special-trip-a-year type thing, and do it now, when we can and are physically able to travel, rather than waiting until we fully retire and who knows what kind of ramshackle shape we'll be in at that point in time. So we're doing some of that, uh, but I think travel is kind of it. In a lot of cases I bucket. I'm not a person who keeps lists of goals per se. They're places we'd like to go if I have time in retirement. It all depends on who wants or needs me.
Speaker 2:But, uh, there are things I'd like to return to, maybe some arranging, musical arranging and possibly composing if I feel inspired, because I've just had to put all that aside in order to help my second wife, beth Elizabeth, raise her three kids, okay. So I got married for a second time in 1999. Okay, and she had has had three kids at that point in time, I think when I met them, they were eight, five and three and they are now 39, as of in a couple of weeks, 35 and 33. So they're, they're, they're grown and out of the nest and making their own ways in the world.
Speaker 1:Well good, I hope you can get to to do some traveling. That's something Linda and I enjoy now and we have lots of good road trips. If you ever need a map, we have a lot of those.
Speaker 2:You know, one of our challenges is is thath's family is in joplin, missouri. Okay, so there's. We have a road trip each year. It's a 10 and a half hour road trip each, each way to joplin, missouri, and we kind of get get all of that out of our system to a certain extent right in that, usually once or twice a year yeah, well there, well there you go.
Speaker 1:There's always flights to everywhere. Yeah, indeed, tom, if you could take a trip with anyone today, living or deceased, who would it be? Where would you go? What do you think you'd talk about?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question. That's one I hadn't thought about. I think it'd be fascinating to take a road trip as long as I had the proper ventilation in the car with Leonard Bernstein and we'd have to take frequent smoke breaks probably. But he was just so overflowing with musical talent. Just a voracious learner and reader. A musical talent, just a voracious learner and reader. I think I would have really enjoyed driving around the Catskills with him or something to learn more about music, but also just his perspective on life and as a guy who really lived a hugely vibrant life and in fact kind of lived himself to death, frankly, but a tremendously talented and vibrant person and who just uh, when he would walk in a room would just change, you know, the, the temperature and the personality of that room just by just walking into it, and so I think that would be a really interesting question. And he kind of encompasses all of.
Speaker 2:I'm a very eclectic musical person. My training is in voice and opera and I have a great passion for classical singing. But through two five-year stints in the record business, I have a tremendous appreciation for most genres of music. A couple of things I'm not really all that wild about, but I mean, I listen to everything from you know, from world music to jazz, to some really interesting kind of alt folk things, and I'm incredibly eclectic in my tastes.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, I remember that and I could be you know, we are older, but I remember you having about a quarter of those were promos.
Speaker 2:The rest, yeah. I was kind of a vinyl junkie in my day, although my best customer had 27,000 LPs, so I was a piker compared to him.
Speaker 1:Now did you hang on to those?
Speaker 2:No, no, those are all gone. I still have about a thousand CDs, but nothing to play them on except in my car.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:So I don't even have a CD player right now.
Speaker 1:I mean, you're in the music industry. Vinyl's kind of made a comeback, though, right.
Speaker 2:It's what they tell me. I mean, I have not reinvested in that at all and I'll be honest with you in terms of I have so much music in my head stuffed in there from performing and listening over my 70 year lifespan that I don't really do a whole lot of recreational background listening anymore. I listen to to kind of expand my horizons and to maybe learn a new piece or something like that, but I just don't have music on all the time. Actually, my wife is much more likely to have background music on while she's working than I am. It's weird. It's kind of always in my head. Anyway, I kind of don't need it as much as I used to yeah, yeah, you just think it up right.
Speaker 1:Pretty much, yes, speaking of 70 years, and I'm catching up with you. I'm still trying to catch you, but if you could leave my listeners with some life advice, maybe you're talking to your 20-year-old self, or maybe you're talking to a room full of young folks, or even older folks. What would you tell people on how to live life?
Speaker 2:My mantra for a long time has been never say never. Absolutes get you in trouble. You have to be flexible in life. I've learned a lot from 39 years of as someone who was raised Presbyterian. I've sung for 39 years professionally reformed Jewish temple which is based on. You have to continually adapt your thinking to current times and I've learned so much about that and how to rethink the world based on and reevaluate your stance on things. So never say never is a big one, and I think the one thing I regret is not having taken certain chances and opportunities. The worst somebody's gonna do is tell you no and so just put yourself out there and be brave, good advice.
Speaker 1:Well, tom, this has been fun for me. I know we haven't seen each other in years and I do have fond memories of meeting way back in 1988 or 89, I don't know somewhere in there a long time ago but uh, leave, uh, leave my listeners with, um, how to find you movers and makers business, whatever you want to, whatever you want to leave us with.
Speaker 2:So the magazine is called Movers and Makers. It is a hyper local magazine to Cincinnati. The web address is moversmakersorg. There's no and or ampersand or anything. We are distributed in about 110 physical locations throughout greater Cincinnati coffee shops, libraries, museums, etc. That's pretty much how to find us. It's free. Both print and email are free subscriptions. We don't want any barriers between us and the news we're sharing.
Speaker 1:Well, tom again, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Daniel, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thank you for tuning in to Dan the Road Trip Guy. I hope you enjoyed our journey today and the stories that were shared. If you have any thoughts or questions or stories of your own, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to me anytime. Don't forget to share this podcast with your friends and family and help us to spread the joy of road trips and great conversations. Until next time, keep driving, keep exploring and keep having those amazing conversations. Safe travels and remember you can find me on the internet at dantheroadtripguycom.
