GRACE under pressure: John Baldoni with Chad Lawson

Chad Lawson, a Steinway Artist and composer, has released numerous number one recordings including his most recent release, “You Finally Knew” (Decca Records/Universal), recorded at Abbey Road Studios in London.

He has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR's All Things Considered and is usually found on concert stages around the world (at least...until Covid hit the playbill). He began the podcast, Calm it Down, after receiving countless emails from listeners detailing how his music is helping them calm their anxieties and emotional struggles. “I simply had to do something.” he states. “I wanted to go deeper in trying to help others in their most difficult times of life.”

During the pandemic, Lawson widened his reach with the launch of “Calm It Down” in September 2020, a turn of events that’s further heightened his sense of purpose. A fully independent one-man show, “Calm It Down” finds Lawson expounding on an inspired range of topics (forgiveness and anxiety, butterflies and Snoopy), setting his insightful yet charmingly candid ruminations against a tranquil backdrop of his own solo piano music.

Referring to himself as “an extreme empath by nature,” Lawson began classical training in piano as a child and later developed a thriving career as a jazz pianist, but eventually felt compelled to follow an entirely new direction in his music. “The reason I stopped playing jazz is that I didn’t feel it connected on an emotional level,” he says. “When I made my first solo piano album, I was incredibly sick with ulcerative colitis and found that creating this music was very healing to me. Then after I put it out, I started hearing from listeners who’d say things like ‘I just lost a loved one and felt like you were holding my hand through the most difficult time in my life.’ That’s when things started making sense for me, in terms of making emotion the core of everything I do.” As his audience grew exponentially, Lawson soon found himself featured on the likes of “CBS Sunday Morning” and NPR’s “All Things Considered,” in addition to turning out a series of #1 releases and landing high-profile sync placements with such shows as “The Walking Dead” and “Viceland.” www.chadlawson.com calmitdownpodcast.com