My favourite story to come out of this pandemic is the Pandemic Pie Project by Bradley Harder. Bradley is a multi-passionate creative entrepreneur who has had careers in animation, fine art, film production, music, restaurants, bars, construction, and many more.
During this pandemic, he started to bake pies for his friends and neighbors and before he knew it he was baking pies and giving them away to anyone who wanted one in Toronto. How amazing is that? I’ve tried the blueberry pie and it was fantastic!
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello and welcome to episode 47 of Sing! Dance! Act! Thrive!
What are you waiting for? This season, I’ve found myself longing for the completely booked coaching practice that I had planned for at the beginning of this year and although patience is not my strongest virtue, I keep reminding myself that good things take time and I’m enjoying helping the clients that I do have to build confidence, increase profile and achieve goals so that they can build a thriving career in the arts without feeling overwhelmed to doubting themselves. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The same goes for you: We couldn’t plan for this global pandemic that instantly took away most of your performing and side gig income! This season won’t last forever, and when it comes it will be better than you could have imagined!
What action can you take today that will lay the groundwork for success when this quarantine is over?
Okay, I also get it that you’ve put so much time and effort into your music or acting career. Your mind starts to wander, and you catch yourself comparing yourself to others. You wonder why your career isn’t as big as theirs. “Why don’t I get those opportunities?” STOP!
No matter your niche, your talent and personality are unique to its own. Don’t get distracted. It’s okay to take your career at whatever pace fits your life. Be patient and stay persistent. I’m telling you; you will be amazing!
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I will even help you by offering a free coaching session, so if you want to stop letting fear and a lack of knowledge hold you back I can empower you with strategies to propel you to the next level.
To sign up visit Diane Foy.com go to the thrive coaching section and you can apply for an appointment to see If I can help you with getting on track to achieve your goals. Let’s set you up to rock 2021.
Now onto today’s show. My favourite story to come out of this pandemic is the Pandemic Pie Project by Bradley Harder. Bradley is a multi-passionate and talented creative entrepreneur who has had careers in animation, fine art, film production, music, restaurants, bars, construction, and many more. I can completely relate to managing multiple careers at once or changing careers often.
During this pandemic, he started to bake pies for his friends and neighbors and before he knew it he was baking pies and giving them away to anyone who wanted one in Toronto. How amazing is that? I’ve tried the blueberry pie and it was fantastic!
Along the way he has been featured on CBC news, Breakfast television, and various other media outlets and many people and brands have donated money and supplies so that he can keep this generosity going. And maybe when this pandemic Bradley will open up his own bakery.
Tell me about the pandemic pie project, how it got started and who are some of the people and brands that have been helping you out to keep this going. It
Bradley Harder 4:48
started out with my friends getting groceries for me, when the time that it first started. And being vulnerable, you want to leave the house so I couldn’t go outside of France. Craig and Erica and mark and Darlene we get me groceries and they wouldn’t take my money. So I decided to make them pie. And then my neighbors caught wind of it. And so they want pies and so they’re making the neighbors and so everybody buys. Bye my proposal for the pandemic. And so I started making pies. I put it out there, the pandemic pride prize, I have the project. Hashtag, pandemic, my project. And people just started ordering pies and blossomed from there. Jim wants to know,
Diane Foy 5:43
yeah, when did it start?
Bradley Harder 5:45
April 15. I started making pies.
Diane Foy 5:47
Wow. And do you work? Every day? I kind of thought you were just during the week, but I sometimes see you. I’m baking on a Sunday.
Bradley Harder 5:55
Well, yeah, no idea. Do people really need them. They want them on a Sunday or Saturday so big a few because a lot of them run out of them. I usually give it to them every day. And I make. Yeah. Doesn’t seem to be led up anytime soon either. So that’s good.
Diane Foy 6:12
Who doesn’t want free pie? I know, right. It makes people happy.
Bradley Harder 6:17
A lot of people kick in for two sets. Nice helps. Yeah. Pretty hard to stave it all on my own. I mean, well,
Diane Foy 6:24
yeah, that’s not possible. 900 pies.
Bradley Harder 6:28
Another prize later. Yeah,
Diane Foy 6:30
yeah. So I heard some, some brands have donated like Metro.
Bradley Harder 6:35
Metro has been great. They’ve been awesome. They donated frozen fruit. So they get my strawberries, my blueberries Metro. There’s a farm as well. This farm gave me 100 pounds of rhubarb. Amazing. Yeah, people bring buy stuff, you know, butter stuff that I buy most of my brothers still bought pie plates and pie boxes, lots of flour. flour is cheap. So there’s $80 or 20 kilo bag. Right?
Diane Foy 7:08
So of all these 900 people that have received a pie, you must have heard some amazing stories of just how much receiving the pie means to them. share some of those stories my
Bradley Harder 7:20
friend Michael almond off, got a couple of pints him and his wife son Conte live in Montreal. Right now to the pandemic they’ve been living there. And she wanted a pie so he’s gonna get a real pie. Get her an apple pie and himself he got a strawberry rhubarb. And he ate most of his strawberry rhubarb tonight here their house Drano before he left, he has the apple pie and he stopped at a customer’s place on the way I think and not around outside of Ottawa. And the customer just lost his wife and he was so depressed. So he gave him the pilot brighten his day, it was very sweet.
Diane Foy 8:09
So what happens when you hit 1000?
Bradley Harder 8:12
I don’t know.
Bradley Harder 8:14
Maybe I make more, I don’t know. We’ll see where we are with this pandemic.
Diane Foy 8:19
And so through this, are you thinking maybe you’ll open up a bakery of your own?
Bradley Harder 8:24
Well, you that’s, I think, become the idea now because I didn’t know as a pie maker. We’re gonna do a lot of things. You have a carpenter, electrician, a plumber, contracting business for a while. And I’ve been a musician for 30 years and I was a gap cinematographer in the film business for 17 years. I’m a painter. I paint portraits of people. And then all kinds of things. I guess it’s all artistic. I think everything I’ve done in my life, the editor I was to get laid, but any guy that tell you different will be a liar.
Diane Foy 9:05
Even the pies
Bradley Harder 9:08
that I had I know, I was there baking pies A long time ago. Yeah.
Diane Foy 9:15
So what about your music career? Tell me about that. And your film career.
Bradley Harder 9:19
I was a, I was a gaffer DLP in the film business for 17 years. But yeah, job moves all over the world. Then I was away for six months. And my wife was having an affair with one of my friends. And so I ended up divorcing her and that threw my life into tailspin. So I did go back to the film business because you can’t have a relationship with an industry. You’re away from your family too long. It’s just not a good scene. So that I studied music and running booze cans and bars and
Diane Foy 9:53
what did you do well as a child, like what was their first artistic because you’re very multi passionate with The arts. What was your first interest?
Bradley Harder. 10:03
First interest is becoming a marine biologist.
Diane Foy 10:06
Not an artist thing at all. Or maybe it is I don’t know.
Bradley Harder 10:10
But I was I was one as a sketch one so that’s not a good place to be worried biologist then moved to Calgary sorry. That was also also not a good place to be a marine biologist. I used to collect snakes and stuff forgotten wild animals and bring them on gophers and stuff and train me do tricks. So have shows from my family. That’s fantastic. Was I was an artist I studied animation, life drawing. I worked in the animation business for several years. Most of my family’s data West I came out when I was 16. to Toronto. I guess the first artistically was trouble working in animation for all the studios at the time, ranking scenario or calm now avena inbetweening and inker painter endeavors an in betweener which means that the animator does the key cells are referred. So the in vitro draws between two cells. This is like acetates all animation you drew, do the stuff on paper. The anchors would include your lines from paper on acity itself overlays. They would go to painting the cleaned the paint backs, with the core of the painting that he had to paint. The go to camera was a long drawn out process.
Diane Foy 11:43
Right. And then from there, you went to work on film sets.
Bradley Harder 11:47
Yeah, like I did like some after that. I was in that business for 17 years. I worked in restaurants the same times as I am eating. And I worked in restaurants read times and then film together. My whole life was like I was working like 1214 hour days for six months stints right. You’re always hustling your next gig before you got up the one before. So it was always like constantly hustling that work. constantly working and being in never being home to all Yeah. Carry relationship. Which is crazy.
Diane Foy 12:25
And then, so then you transitioned into music. Where were you into music when you were young as well?
Bradley Harder.12:32
I was I was into music. Yeah.
Diane Foy 12:34
Who were some of your influences?
Bradley Harder 12:37
Oh, shit. Tom Waits. Leonard Cohen. JOHN prine goes Armstrong, Steve Goodman. Right. And do you play an instrument? I play guitar. I’m Monica. And I sing. I was more a singer in my band. Bradley in the bouncers was a jazz blues band. So we did a lot of roots America. and stuff. Swing jazz was just a couple people dancing. Right? Did you record? Yeah, I had a record called bones town. And the title track was a saw that my brother and I wrote is our friend Mark. Well, I worked as a doorman at the reservoir lounge for 20 years. And in that time, I was also playing at the reservoir lounge one night a week with my god Bradley in the bouncers. And I got sick and they kicked me to the curb after 20 years and so I’ve been on disability since since I started having fainting spells. I started thinking about 15 to 20 times a day. Wow. And so I had to stop working. We know what it is, oh, they never figured it out. It’s kind of stopped. Although I’ve vented in a couple of weeks. That’s good. I was I was under the scrutiny of a lot of specialists and a lot of doctors for Three years, they could figure it out.
Diane Foy 14:02
Wow. Well, maybe this new purpose in life has somehow fixed it.
14:09
Maybe I don’t know. It seems like someone worked on so hard, they haven’t painted and you get tired or usually in bed by nine o’clock now. So get up at 430 in the morning, bake in the hot all day. And sit around reading music every now and then.
Bradley Harder 14:29
I want to do everything.
Diane Foy 14:31
I call it multi passionate.
Bradley Harder 14:33
I dream when my brain is constantly going I can’t shut it off. So, you know, while I’m baking these these pies and the sticky buns all day long. I’m also running up on the roof every chance, again, to build this pitch deck that I’m building is amazing, but my brain never stops working songs and just keep doing that shit all the time. Yeah, and I couldn’t see myself doing like that. Being a one career Dude, I love the chance that a lot of a lot of careers
Diane Foy 15:08
what have been your favorite of your careers? Or what is there been any crazy highlights?
Bradley Harder 15:14
Well is a great highlights of what has played throughout threads was amazing people sit in the hangar with Tom Jones and Rod Stewart was their princess come to my shows.
Diane Foy 15:30
My cat is named Prince.
Bradley Harder 15:32
I love that she’s amazing. He would come with his wife and sit in the corner. Jake showed me with a straw and order so ordered order french fries which was on the menu so the should the cooker make french fries in the frying pan on the stove. And then the wrapping now magazine brought to this table.
Diane Foy 15:52
So as the reservoir lounge like people would come and stop by on your night kind of thing, or
Bradley Harder 15:57
Yeah, that was pretty Cool. A lot of good. A lot of amazing people have come through there and played the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. That’s pretty cool and 42nd annual. I had dinner with cloud knobs. We played three shows that we do one show it brands this face of the Chateau Baron brands of this beautiful mountain fed lake. That was crystal clear and cold and beautiful. And there’s a 35 degrees there so it was really hot. I mean, my buddy Mike jumped into the lake It was beautiful. We were all free does see it’s too cold. We jumped into it’s fine.
Diane Foy 16:41
from Canada
Bradley Harder 16:43
Yeah, so you must have confused as Americans.
Bradley Harder 16:49
We don’t like warm bathwater, we’d like it to wake you up.
Bradley Harder 16:53
Anyway, so we we brianza one time. The next game we play the outer state dm them to mainstage at Montreux and then the following day we played the last show the festival on a riverboat going from Lisbon to to Montreal. So we boarded the boat in Roseanne. And all the customers got on the board was in and the sales across Lake Geneva to Montreux and we had there was six bands on long that boat, two bands fan each deck you will need to have our sets and we ran the top deck alternate we have ourselves they were like jazz bands from Hungary and Turkey and and the blue dolls were there from Italy the girls at Santa Fe, Italian Angie sisters, they were great. And by the end of the tour, we had everybody on the top deck for our shows. It’s fantastic.
Diane Foy 18:00
Cool so What are your hopes and dreams?
Bradley Harder 18:03
for the future? I don’t know.
Bradley Harder 18:07
To live happily ever after somewhere,
Diane Foy 18:09
but whatever happens happens,
Unknown Speaker 18:12
or anybody’s hopes and dreams. You never know. Hey,
Bradley Harder18:18
Scott live in the moment I guess.
Diane Foy 18:21
So where will people find you online?
Bradley Harder 18:24
They can find me at Bradley harder on Facebook. I phone numbers, they’re calm they can call me if they want to pie or sticky bonds.
Diane Foy 18:34
Well, thank you for taking the time and talking to me.
Bradley Harder 18:37
Thank you, Diane, nice to talk to you.
