An Inspired Chat with Tony Malzone of Westside

We recently had the chance to connect with Tony Malzone and have shared our conversation below.

Good morning Tony, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? Are you walking a path—or wandering?
Well, I’ve always been wandering a little. It’s good to wander. Among the many strange lessons we all get taught as kids, we’ve always heard, “Make sure you have a plan,” or, and while you’re at it, “Don’t forget to have a backup plan.” Sure, there’s a point to be made that having a plan is good, and having a backup plan, even better. But perhaps that’s not always the case. Few are the plans of mine that I’ve actually seen through. More times than I can count, have I been staring at the ground, wondering if what I was looking at was still the path, my path, or a rough old trail someone else made that I followed with wide eyes. Keeping with the path requires focus, discipline, you must keep your head down, watch every curve, know the difference between the path and an old trail. But even then, there’s always that low-hanging branch that’ll knock you square in the head, reminding you that it’s still important to look up a little, and sometimes then, you’ll see it. Just off the path, out in the distances, through those branches, it’s just what you were looking for. You laugh, as what you were looking for wasn’t quite on the path you mapped out, but it was still out there. Out there somewhere you might’ve wandered to, just off the path.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My career started in finance, particularly community development finance, where I worked on behalf of government programs to deploy capital for business resiliency during the pandemic. This followed my academic work, where I took an interest in human development and was fascinated by how finance could change outcomes, and media can shape perceptions. I later took a break from those interests to embark on a much larger journey that I deeply yearned for. I was inspired to serve, and I joined the AmeriCorps. In the AmeriCorps, I became a U.S. Forest Service Sawyer and a wilderness first responder on a conservation corps chainsaw crew. Out there in the backcountry, I began to write more and become more in tune with the beauty and art all around us in the story of our world. I produce work that pushes the bounds of creativity and enhances the human experience. That work is at the center of my belief that anything is possible, and that at the center of our human development will always be our creativity. When we think of eras past, it’s not the mundane that survives our memory; it’s the progressive leaps in innovation and society. The bold statements in fashion, music, and film. The enshrining of significance in physical art, and architecture. And the groundbreaking discoveries that open new worlds. One day, when everyone of today is no longer around, what will remain is what we did here, what we made here. For some, there will be a day when their name is said for the last time, when the last memory of them is revisited, that is when someone truly dies. But for the ones who create, the ones who build, the ones who discover, those are the ones with a line written in our great big story, and those are the ones that live forever. As we live now, there’s much pain in this world, that’s not a commentary on the world at its current state, but rather a statement of humanity. Humans are emotional creatures; we will feel pain. We will feel love. And we will feel happiness. My hope is that creative work can be the light of someone’s day, their week, or something even more significant. Although art and entertainment can sometimes feel like a silly game, and in many ways, it is. What we do means something. Stand in the back of a comedy club or a music venue. Take in the sounds, watch the people’s faces. That person up there, up on that stage, that person’s making them laugh, that person’s making them smile. That means a lot more than people realize. That crowd out there is billions of unique stories. They have a billion bills to pay, a billion family members to feed, and the weight of a billion lifetimes on their shoulders. That laughter, that smile, that may mean more to them than we could ever know. There is a magic to that. The people want to be entertained, the people want to laugh, the people want to smile. Let them smile, let them laugh, and let the people be entertained, because that’s what we live for. Those are the little moments that become a memory, a billion of them. Those are the moments that years later we say, “you just had to be there”.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. What breaks the bonds between people—and what restores them?
We may listen to the same song, but hear different stories. The way we experience the world could never fully be grasped by someone else. I have no idea if the color blue that you see looks the same to me as it does to you. It’s easy to shut people out. To proclaim that “nobody understands me”. It’s easy to feel miles away from the one standing right beside you. Art is beautiful in the way that we can hear or look at the same piece, feel different emotions, but both understand their significance. It’s a choice. Art can isolate you, art can break bonds between people, but yet art also has the power to restore them. Art does not need to mean the same thing to everyone. I like the color blue, and you may too, but we don’t need to debate what blue looks like. Blue looks beautiful to me, as blue looks beautiful to you; that’s our bond, and that’s as simple as it needs to be.

If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
There’s that old song from The Byrds, in it, they say to everything, there is a season. Growing up with ADHD, you change your mind a lot. You experience these intense, hyperfixations, obsessions really. It’s this intense pull, and then a release. In what feels like the blink of an eye, your obsession becomes indifference, or even hate, or sickness. You did too much, you flew too close to the sun, and you burnt out. It was the story of my life. I hated those feelings. I did everything I could to suppress them, avoid them. I hated it when people brought up how much I loved something, but little did they know I actually hated it by then. I especially hated it when people pointed it out, when I heard the typical “you used to love this, remember”. I found myself mad a lot, mad at other people, but especially mad at myself. Mad because I did it again, and again, and again. I drove myself mad and made myself sick. There was an intense pull to madness, but then, a release. I can’t pinpoint when, but at some point in my life, this just didn’t bother me anymore. I learned to love my seasons. I learned to embrace the hyperfocus that I can have. And I especially learned to love when it was time to move on, turn the page, and write another chapter. I like looking back in my book now. Revisiting the lines I once wrote, and laughing, wow, what in the heck was I thinking? To be honest, I probably didn’t even know then, and I especially don’t now, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
All throughout history, every king still took his crown off when it was time to sleep. We’re all the same at the end of the night.

Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What false labels are you still carrying?
I’m not a producer, I’m not an entertainment manager, I’m not a MexItalian from Chicago, or even the kid with ADHD who struggled in school but found his way. I’m Tony f**kin Malzone. None of our labels carries the weight of our name. Our name is a billion labels, a billion stories, a billion twists and turns, ups and downs, that create the beauty that is you, that is me. I’m just Tony, the only label I need to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tonymalzone.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tony_malzone/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonymalzone/

Image Credits
Jay Soni