This week on A Waste of Time with ItsTheReal, we get on the phone with our best friend, musical partner and third creative partner in ItsTheReal, Greg Mayo! Greg discusses growing up in a creative household, the son of a painter mother and a touring musician father (who played with, among others, Hall & Oates, Foreigner, Aerosmith and Peter Frampton, most famously on Frampton Comes Alive), how he initially shunned his musical side to focus on baseball, what it meant when his parents divorced, how listening to ONYX, Cypress Hill and LL Cool J informed his rhythmic thinking, how being competitive with his brother took his learning guitar into overdrive, how he focused his musical ambitions through high school bands and into studying jazz composition in college, and the unforgettable weekend his dad flew in to feature on a handful of tracks on Greg's first solo album. Greg takes us back to the phone call he got his sophomore year at Purchase College informing him that father passed away in Europe on tour, how he's moved forward in living life, the advice that his dad left that carries through to everything both work and personal, and how he's since responded when dealing with the loss of other close family members, including his brother. We reflect on our collaborations through the years, from writing and recording mixtapes as teenagers in Greg's basement to dreaming up sketches to give to the internet to stepping on stages we never could have imagined, the core values and good energy that surrounds that creativity, and how that same passion to make each other laugh is what we strive for today. All that, plus how's Greg's gotten into doing film scoring, how he became a staple at NYC clubs like Rockwood Music Hall and The Bitter End, who he leans toward between The Neptunes and Timbaland, why he didn't attend his high school reunion, where life could have taken him in a sliding doors moment, another classic Greg Mayo car story and so much more! Wanna collaborate with Greg? Go to GregMayo.net See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.