The Primary Cast

Lewis Blues

The mentor, mythmaker, and backbone of the band. Learn more about Lewis Blues right here at The “Happy” Studio.

The “Happy” Studio @ the Home of SONGA.FM

Lewis Blews

“We don’t take our art to the world, we create art so spellbinding that the world comes to us…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Sage Storries

The artist, alchemist, and emotional pulse behind the music of The WORLD of SONGA. Learn more about Sage Storries right here at The '“Happy” Studio.

The “Happy” Studio @ the Home of SONGA.FM

Sage Storries

“If your art was your life, how would you live…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Brand Storries

The bridge, the buffer, the brother. Learn more about Brand right here at The “Happy” Studio.

The “Happy” Studio @ the Home of SONGA.FM

Brand Storries

“Therapeutic entertainment for families brave enough to change: We build culture, not content…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Dr Wyoming

The architect, director and man behind the curtain at The WORLD of SONGA. Learn more about Dr Wyoming over at The Millionaire’s Campfire.

The Millionaire's Campfire

Dr. Wyoming Schmetterling

‘I went about casting the cast of characters who had the time, talent and treasure to make this massively shared dream a reality…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Emerson Spelling

The visionary, volatility, and venture heart behind The WORLD of SONGA. Learn more about Emerson over at The WORLD of SONGA.

THE WORLD OF SONGA

Emerson Spelling

“Isn’t the ultimate job of a parent to show the world how to love, and understand, their story—and their children…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Erin Spelling

The quiet force, emotional mirror, and soul of the Spelling family. Learn more about Erin Spelling over at The WORLD of SONGA.

THE WORLD OF SONGA

Erin Spelling

“The lightest of life’s laughter follows the heaviest of tears…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

The Supporting Cast

May Dove Munnie

The heiress, harmonizer, and first true believer in the Songa vision. Learn more about May Dove over at The Millionaire’s Campfire.

The Millionaire's Campfire

May Dove Munnie

“Whatʼs the point of passing wealth to future generations, when we havenʼt healed the wounds we passed down too…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Mohammad Munnie

The manager, husband, and steady hand reshaping what legacy means. Learn more about Mo over at The Millionaire’s Campfire.

The Millionaire's Campfire

Mohammad Munnie

“Learning to leave more than money behind…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Forbes Nash

The former master manipulator turned misfit meaning-maker. Learn more about Forbes over at Confessions of an ex-Billionaire (and CMO).

Confessions of an ex-Billionaire (and CMO)

Forbes Nash

“Books are like our Selves. It’s hard for our loved ones to unsee the ugly first drafts.”—ForbesNash.com, recovering #1 Wall Street Journal bestselling author…

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a year ago · Forbes Nash, ex-Billionaire

Cheyenne (“Shy Anne”)

The challenger, catalyst, and unshakable conscience in the room. Learn more about Cheyenne over at The Millionaire’s Campfire.

The Millionaire's Campfire

Cheyenne (”Shy Anne”)

“Art goes where words cannot…

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a year ago · Jack Ebstein

Dr. Jack Spelling

The editor of emotional arcs. Co-author of messy truths. Rewriting relationships on and off the page. Learn more about Jack over at The WORLD of SONGA.

The WORLD of SONGA

Dr. Jack Spelling

“What if the life you’ve spent years authoring… isn’t the one you were born to live…

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10 months ago · Jack Ebstein

And then read Songa’s Rules, but know its (F)laws.

THE WORLD OF SONGA

THE RULES OF SONGA

The RULES of SONGA outline the creative behaviors we practice, protect, and pass on once you cross the portal into The WORLD of SONGA…

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a year ago · Wyoming

THE WORLD OF SONGA

The f(LAWS) of SONGA

The LAWS of SONGA outline the culture of behaviors we expect, encourage and discourage after you cross the portal into The WORLD of SONGA…

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a year ago · Wyoming

I grew up in the trailer parks of Aspen with my older sister, Sage Storries. I’d write poems and stories, but most of all, I’d write songs. It was how I’d bond with Sage, the musician who could express our messy childhood emotions through her voice, the same feelings I learned to keep muted. Our parents gave us a choice: follow the professional path they had chosen for us, or hit the road and live a life without family. I chose my parents’ dreams for me over mine, but that choice turned my life into a nightmare.

After my parents split up, I stayed in the Daniel Boone Mobile Honey Park outside of Frontenac, Missouri with my dad, but I stopped writing.

My parents and I stayed on speaking terms, but those terms were never mine. I bent to their will—both their figurative desires and the physical document, the will which they had rewritten to exclude my sister after she chose to follow her dreams of a life in the arts. I went to Indiana University where I got a degree in digital marketing. I began marketing for the personal brand of highly successful people. I remained in my parents' trust, but they lost mine after trying to poison the relationship between Sage and me—the one we had written about in song on those fall Aspen days in our trailer park yard, accompanied by her guitar, and my drum.

But she was gone.

I couldn’t break free and write my own story. I became a digital marketer on Madison Avenue. I fell into a depression, until I received a phone call from a one-named enigma named Wyoming who said he was creating a place called Songa, where talent feels home.

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Apparently, Sage had left LA for St. Louis and joined songa.fm, the artist-owned record label and world’s first social radio station She told Wyoming. about our family situation during a podcast taping.

Turns out, he was helping families reconnect and said we could be one of the first.

But what artist would go to St. Louis? And besides, I was no artist.

I wasn’t a writer.

I was a copywriter.

Whatever writing talent I did have, I’d sold to the highest bidder.

Then, Wyoming said to me,

Unhappiness is a disease
of unlived dreams, just
waiting to be unearthed.

He told me to listen to my heart. My heart was pulling between an artist’s life and a life in business. But what if I could serve as a bridge between both?

I thought…

Don’t Depress… Express.

What if 100 years after the Great Depression, we ignited the age of the Great Expression?

I bought a pair of sunflower yellow sunglasses at LaGuardia on my way home. Life was no longer cubicle gray, it felt like the sun was finally shining.

I knew that if your art is business, you might have a sales playbook. And I discovered at Songa that we can create a playbook for a novel way of life.

Now, I’m doing just that as digital marketing mastermind, playwrite, coderight, copyrighter and copywriter, dropping digital clues in Songa’s ‘The Plot to Save the Soul of Business—(with music)’ using a new breed of SOCIAL media that actually makes us more social.

What if we could unite
this world, and the families
in it, using the very same
screens that divided it?

And if you doubt that I can, then know this, I am not alone. Behind me is an eclectic and extraordinary band of screenwriters, songwriters, jokewriters, codewriters, copyrighters, copywriters, and of course, we can’t exclude the most efficient writers of all… the ones who write the checks… the underwriters.

We have the time, talent, and treasure to change the course of the future and build a new more hopeful world, for our children, and yours. We’ll build it with words at first. Then song. And then, we’ll invite the players to join our game, and film a documentary while we make this story true. But we aren’t just writing a new story of the world we dream to live in, we’re writing a new song.

I rewrote my song and laid my old Self phone to rest, and became my new Self, and when I walked out of the Schmetterling Jail, I changed my name to Brighton Hart.

My sister, Sage, and I have since reconnected, and we’re helping other families do the same, in St Louis, through music. With Lewis Blues by our side, listen to our emerging stories, and songs—on The Riverfront Tim Show with Sage and me, Brand Storries—in soul-stirring augmented-reality sound, on songa.fm.

My mom dreamt of acting on Broadway as a child.

She lost a big opportunity in her twenties to be the lead in ‘Phantom of the Opera,ʼ and the phantom of her failures haunted our family ever since.

I grew up with my brother Brand, in the trailer parks of Aspen. Now, a trailer park might sound shabby, but don’t take pity on us. Because to live in Aspen, even in its ‘slums,’ comes with a million dollar purchase price. Still, Brand and I saw the children of wealth everywhere we looked. As my classmates were taught to dream of lives in finance with clear paths to wealth.

I wanted to become a singer. I remember when I was eight years old and I soloed on stage for the first time: My mom tore my performance apart. She was ruthless, and that critical voice of hers would echo in my head and become my own. But that didn’t stop Brand and I from writing songs together. Because you see, he wanted to be an artist too: a writer.

Our parents divorced, I stayed behind with my mom in that little trailer park and off my dad took Brand to the suburbs of St. Louis.

Alone now, in song.

Until one day, my mother’s critical voice turned into my father’s ultimatum: ‘If you become an artist, we’ll not only cut you off financially, but we’ll cut off all contact with you too.’

Brand chose his life. I chose mine.

The life of an artist is a lonely one, especially when you’ve lost your family. I found one on the road with other traveling troubadours.

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I moved to St. Louis because the cost of living was cheap, but so cheapened too was my art as I traveled with nothing but my guitar case slung over my shoulder, and my palm outstretched to a series of rich party planners from Miami to Ibiza to Bali.

They paid the bare minimum and that’s what I thought I deserved, because that’s what my mother had taught me I was worth. Still, I poured my heart out and into my songs for the families of wealth, no different to me than the happy families I’d imagined in those Aspen mansion as I wrote songs from my childhood bedroom in ‘Rocky Mountain Mobile Homes.’

I played for the families of the world’s wealthiest, I realized they were just as unhappy as I was. And if they couldn’t find joy, what chance did I have?

We were all playing covers of our songs that used to be originals. I was tired of this tired life, playing 17 Gigs a Month just to get by. So, I looked inward to find that joy I and regain my singing voice, while listening and speaking to my Inner Child.

I bought myself a pair of deep violet sunglasses: A little armor for the road, a shield between me and the doubts that still whispered from my past.

I learned , all the light and the dark. I started only playing originals, and helping families find the lyrics to their own song. And when I began playing to those same families of wealth and showing them how to turn their lives into art, their wealth become a force multiplier that had the potential to bring joy to hundreds or thousands or millions of people. But I didn’t know how to harness this new form of musical entertainment. And then, on one of those rare days that I was off the road and home at St. Louis, I heard Riverfront Tim on the ‘The Riverfront Tim Show’ and his plans for the world’s first social radio station.

It was the microphone my voice needed, to broadcast my message to the world and reach its wealthiest families, whether that wealth came in time, talent, or treasure. The next day, I found my part, even before I knew what exactly it would be. I was busking in St. Louis’ Compton Hill Reservoir Park, when a man in faded jeans and cheap cowboy boots slipped past me, while slipping a part of a playbook into my coin-filled guitar case.

It came with a piece of a secret manuscript that detailed plans for a ‘The Plot to Save the Soul of Business—and St Louis (with music).’ It was a social change game that was operating on a massive scale, but ended with a specific direction: ‘If you’re to change the world, you must first change your Self.”

I knew my story would start with my brother who I’d lost, Brand. And soon, my brother and I would reunite on ‘The Riverfront Tim Show’ and get to work on creating a show of our own: ‘Brand and Sage Storries Hour’ on SOSTL.fm.

And none of it would have been possible without Lewis Blues—Songa’s band leader and my musical partner—who helped me find my voice again. Together, we’re helping others find theirs.

A Prodigal Son’s Return Home. First I lost faith in God, and later, my Self. Some people find God in a cathedral. I found Him again in a song I didn’t mean to write.

I’m Lewis Blews, the music director of The WORLD of SONGA.LIVE.

I grew up Catholic in St. Louis, raised on stories of Miles Davis and a city that once sang from porches, church basements, and second-story windows. My father was a jazz musician—quiet, reclusive, devout in his way. We haven’t spoken in years. There was a time I considered becoming a man of the cloth—leading the youth music program at the cathedral just down the street from St. Louis University. But somewhere between tech conferences and broken tour buses, I lost the part of me that believed in sacred things. Church became a metaphor, then a memory. Music replaced prayer. Performance replaced presence.

I didn’t just run away from my faith. I ran away from my home, too.

I left St. Louis when it felt like the music had stopped. I couldn’t catch a break in my hometown, so I took my songs and went searching. Nashville, San Francisco, New York—I chased the spotlight, then the check, then the bottle. During the dotcom boom, I tried my hand in tech and made a fortune. Then I lost everything. Including my Self.

In San Francisco, I built a marketing tech company that helped launch the first iPhone campaign. My claim to fame? I helped Apple sell the future. My curse? That same iPhone killed everything I built. When Apple dropped Flash and forced the world into the App Store, my clients vanished. My business collapsed. And I went with it.

That’s when I started calling it the iScreen.

Not because it connected us—but because it didn’t.

As our screens got smaller, so did our gatherings. Until our screens got so small… we didn’t gather at all.

Live music died with it.

I even pitched a class-action lawsuit against Apple for false advertising. Still might. They said the iPhone would bring us together—but what they delivered was high-definition isolation. Ever since parents started buying their teenagers iPhones, they stopped calling. The world stopped singing. We stopped looking up.

But in that wreckage, I found something better.

On a recent visit home, I found A pair of crooked yellow sunglasses from a Tower Grove pawn shop. A dusty guitar. A memory of home. And a voice I hadn’t heard in years: my own.

I’m not a freestyler. I’m a real-time songwriter. That means I write what’s true in the moment—not for applause, not for algorithms, but for healing. Sometimes it’s a whole song in a single take. Sometimes it’s a whisper in the dark that becomes a roomful of people harmonizing like they remembered something ancient.

In the silence that followed, I picked up Daddy’s old guitar and vowed to heal the town that’d cast me out. Not for the charts, not for the industry—just for the truth.

Everything changed last Nee Years Eve, and when I met a one-named engine named Wyoming at the bodega at the intersection of Church Street and 3rd Avenue in Nashville. Or maybe it was the day I met his twin brother, Forbes Nash.

He handed me a piece of the secret manuscript he’d penned—“As the sun sets upon his past, out sets the son, upon his future.”

On it was a code—2112.

He said, “That’s the door code to The World of Songa,” and he pointed across the street, “Come in any time. But know this. My children are in that house. Bring friends, but don’t bring anyone who’d do anything in that house that wouldn’t make your momma proud.”

I was on a mission to save music. Wyoming and his brother were trying to save something deeper—the soul of business.

Together, we started songa.FM—a private social radio network that’s 100% REAL, designed to create sustainable income for working musicians and storytellers who never fit the algorithm. No ads. No tracking. Just rhythm, story, and healing.

He called me home to St Louis. To rewrite its story.

But St. Louis didn’t just need a new story—it needed a new song.

So I wrote one.

It’s called Our Town.

The first time we rehearsed it in front of a live studio audience, the saxophone hit. The crowd lit up. People didn’t just clap—they cried. They remembered.

That night, the city sang back.

This isn’t just my comeback story.

It’s St. Louis’s.

And that song—Our Town—it’s more than a song.

It’s a rebellion.

It’s a homecoming.

It’s the beginning of a new verse—for me, for St. Louis, and maybe even for the man who handed me that old guitar.

Here’s a little ditty called Daddy’s Old Guitar that I improvise for a guest who I met recently in The Family Room @ Songa Studios ST LOUIS.

(recorded on iPhone)

A "True" Story About Sound, Vision, and a Surprise Reunion

Sage had seen a hundred studios in a dozen cities, but nothing about her walk up to the front door of Songa Studios ST LOUIS felt familiar. Something about the air—part ozone, part cedar, part potential—made her chest tighten the way it used to before stepping onstage. She wasn’t here to perform. She was here to decide whether this place would become home.

“You must be Sage,” I said, holding out my hand. “Welcome to the place we’ve been building for you—before we even knew your name.”

The Tour Begins

Songa Studios wasn’t just a studio. It was a prototype for something bigger: a cross between a cathedral of sound and a Silicon Valley incubator for a musical community.

She was a founding investor, now she just had to invest her time, talent and treasure.

But most of all, her Self.

For her to buy in completely, I started with the basics. The soundstage was wrapped in honeycomb bass traps, diffused oak panels, and fiber-treated walls that bent reverb like light in a lens. The main recording room had a Solid State Logic Duality Delta 48-channel console, paired with Neumann U87 vocal mics and Universal Audio Apollo x8p interfaces.

“You can feel the difference,” I said, pressing my hand to the walls. “We don’t just capture your music—we preserve its intention.”

Sage nodded, half-listening, half-eavesdropping on her own heartbeat. Something strange was building in her chest. She d idn’t know if it was nerves or nostalgia.

A Studio That Breathes

I led her into the heart of the building. It was unlike anything Sage had seen.

Every corner pulsed with intention. Rooms weren’t just acoustically treated—they were emotionally tuned. Cedar walls wrapped around live recording rooms like a hug. Honeycomb-shaped bass traps seemed to hum beneath her boots.

“This is our main soundstage,” I told her. “We call it the Temple.”

Sage raised an eyebrow. “Bit dramatic?”

“Trust me,” I said, flicking a switch. “Wait for the reverb.”

I clapped my hands. The sound hit the walls and returned like silk. Controlled. Velvet. Sacred.

“Okay,” she admitted. “The Temple it is.”

Tools of the Trade

From the control room, I pointed out the gear.

“SSL Duality Delta board,” I grinned, patting the 48-channel console like a beloved dog. “Paired with Neumann U87s. And all routed through the Apollo x8p interface.”

Sage leaned in. The lights, the knobs, the meters—they felt like the cockpit of a spaceship.

“We can take your rawest whisper and turn it into something cinematic,” I said, directing her out of the control room and through the hall, lined with lyric sheets.

We entered a lounge that felt more like a low-lit jazz bar than a green room. And then into a vaulted space with blackout shades and video monitors.

Some offers aren’t too good to be true. They’re just true.

“We offer three tracks,” I said. “Essentials. Pro. Elite.”

Wyoming had told me the same, on the tour he gave me only a week prior.

I opened a drawer, pulled out three vinyl records. Each sleeve was blank but for one handwritten phrase:

The Essentials are $1,500, and you’ll save an additional 10%, or $150, if you grab your annual Substack membership right here on Substack below. 100% of profits go to the artists. And your package includes…

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“Our story isn’t sci-fi, it’s why-fi,” he said, and smiled, “A secret manuscript that asks an aching world Why? And, perhaps more importantly, Why Not?”

I didn’t know what I was walking into—but somehow knew I wouldn’t walk out the same.

He didn’t wait for a response.

It wasn’t a formal meeting. No receptionist, no wa…

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I’m Lewis Blews, the music director of The “Happy” Studio @ The WORLD of SONGA.

I grew up Catholic in St. Louis, raised on stories of Miles Davis and a city that once sang from porches, church basements, and second-story windows. My father was a jazz musician—quiet, reclusive, devout in his own way. We haven’t spoken in years. There was a time I considered becoming a man of the cloth—leading the youth music program at the cathedral just down the street from St. Louis University. But somewhere between tech conferences and broken tour buses, I lost the part of me that believed in sacred things. Church became a metaphor, then a memory. Music replaced prayer. Performance replaced presence.

I didn’t just run away from my faith. I ran away from my home, too.

I left St. Louis when it felt like the music had stopped. I couldn’t catch a break in my hometown, so I took my songs and went searching. Nashville. San Francisco. New York. I chased the spotlight, then the check, then the bottle. During the dotcom boom, I tried my hand in tech and made a fortune. Then I lost everything. Including my Self.

In San Francisco, I built a marketing tech company that helped launch the first iPhone campaign. My claim to fame? I helped Apple sell the future. My curse? That same iPhone killed everything I built. When Apple dropped Flash and forced the world into the App Store, my clients vanished. My business collapsed. And I went with it.

It killed more than my company—it helped kill the soul of music. Tech platforms turned songs into data points. What once lived in church basements and smoky bars got shrink-wrapped for ad placement.

Art became optimized. Song became commerce. And the holiness my father heard in every note? It got buried beneath swipe gestures and autoplay.

That’s when I started calling it the iScreen.

Not because it connected us—but because it didn’t.

As our screens got smaller, so did our gatherings. Until our screens got so small… we didn’t gather at all.

Live music died with it.

I even pitched a class-action lawsuit against Apple for false advertising. Still might. They said the iPhone would bring us together—but what they delivered was high-definition isolation. Ever since parents started buying their teenagers iPhones, they stopped calling. The world stopped singing. We stopped looking up.

But in that wreckage, I found something better.

On a recent visit home, I found a pair of crooked yellow sunglasses from a Tower Grove pawn shop. A dusty guitar. A memory of home. And a voice I hadn’t heard in years: my own.

I’m not a freestyler. I’m a real-time songwriter. That means I write what’s true in the moment—not for applause, not for algorithms, but for healing. Sometimes it’s a whole song in a single take. Sometimes it’s a whisper in the dark that becomes a roomful of people harmonizing like they remembered something ancient.

In the silence that followed, I picked up Daddy’s old guitar and made a vow: to heal the town that cast me out. Not for the charts. Not for the industry. Just for the truth.

Everything changed last New Year’s Eve, and when I met a one-named engine named Wyoming at the bodega at the intersection of Church Street and 3rd Avenue in Nashville. Or maybe it was the day I met his half-brother, Forbes Nash.

Wyoming handed me a page torn from what he called “The Plot to Save the Soul of Business.”

On it, a line: “As the sun sets upon his past, out sets the son, upon his future.”

And beneath it: a code—2112.

He said, “That’s the door code to The WORLD of SONGA,” and he pointed across the street, “Come in any time. But know this. My children are in that house. Bring friends, but don’t bring anyone who’d do anything in that house that wouldn’t make your momma proud.”

I’d arrived on a mission to save the soul of music. Wyoming and his brother were trying to save something deeper—the soul of business (with music).

Not business as usual. Business as belonging.

Together, we started SONGA.FM—a private social radio network that’s 100% REAL, designed to create sustainable income for working musicians and storytellers who never fit the algorithm. No ads. No tracking. Just rhythm, story, and connection.

It is art that may be the only way to get our community, communicating.

So, Wyoming called me home to St. Louis. To rewrite its story.

But St. Louis didn’t just need a new story—it needed a new song.

So I wrote one.

It’s called Our Town.

The first time we rehearsed it in front of a live studio audience, the saxophone hit. The crowd lit up. People didn’t just clap—they cried. They remembered.

That night, the city sang back.

This isn’t just my comeback story.

It’s St. Louis’s.

And that song—Our Town—it’s more than a song.

It’s a rebellion.

It’s a homecoming.

It’s the beginning of a new verse—for me, for St. Louis, and maybe even for the man who handed me that old guitar.

Listen to “Daddy’s Old Guitar,” written live
in The Family Room @ Songa Studios ST LOUIS.

🎭 Curious who’s shaping this story?
🎶 Below the paywall, you’ll meet the Storries—
the musical siblings behind what comes next.

Some characters even have their own blogs:
🧢 ex-billionaire.org
🌍 theworldofsonga.com
🏕️ themillionairescampfire.org

👇 Or just keep going — ACT 2 continues at the bottom of the page.

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