> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.hypebot.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What Music Taught Me About Grief, Money, and the Topics Artists Avoid - URL: https://www.hypebot.com/what-music-taught-me-about-grief-money-and-the-topics-artists-avoid/ - Published: 2026-10-09T13:50:48.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-09T13:50:48.000Z - Description: Tony Tripi reflects on how music helped him navigate grief and loss, and how it can help artists begin the difficult conversations nobody wants to have. - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Mental Health, Opinions, editorial, Creativity, songwriting, grief, #trending *By*[***Tony Tripi***](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2wbznbxvKEjFeDwekvDGrm?si=47b31eb3f3fb44ab&ref=hypebot.com) I have spent much of my life trying to understand what **a song** can do for someone. Sometimes a song lets us celebrate. Sometimes it gives us permission to be angry. Sometimes it finds words for something we haven't figured out how to say ourselves. And sometimes it shifts our perspective enough to help us survive something we weren't prepared to survive. I am a songwriter and musician. I am also a person and, for nearly three decades, I have worked with families as a financial advisor and estate planner. For a long time, I thought of those as separate parts of my life. Over the years, I began to understand that they are all asking versions of the same questions. - **How do we talk about the things we'd rather avoid?** - **How do we prepare for loss?** - **What do we leave behind?** - **And who helps us find another perspective when our own isn't enough?** Music has become one of the ways I enter those conversations. That became especially clear in September 2021. Tragedy wasn't new to me. At three years old, I survived a house fire that put me and my brothers in the hospital. There were other fires, accidents and losses in the years that followed. My work in financial and estate planning gave me another kind of education. I spent decades sitting beside families through some of their brightest and darkest moments. I thought I understood how quickly life could change. I didn't. On September 13, 2021, my first grandson Roman was born. COVID restrictions kept me out of the hospital, so I spent much of the day waiting in parking lots and coffee shops. Eventually my daughter called. She sounded exhausted and blissful. I heard Roman over the phone. His mom and dad had given him a bath, held him, fed him, changed him and loved all over him. I was lit up. That evening, I found myself at a nearby coffee shop that was hosting an open mic. I told the owner that my first grandson had just been born, and he invited me to play. I sang three of my songs: "Find Your Way Home," "Love Your Life Away" and "Make It Rain." Somehow I got a room full of strangers singing songs they'd never heard before. Between them, we chanted "ROCK n RO...MAN." I went to sleep completely full of love. The next morning I woke up to a text: *"We need you at the hospital right away."* Roman left us that afternoon. There I was with decades of experience, both personal and professional, around trauma, families, loss and difficult decisions. And I couldn't move. I had nothing to draw from. The doctors were gone. The priest was gone. The chaos was gone. My daughter was holding her son and her husband was holding her. There was a quiet room. And somewhere inside that quiet, I felt something familiar. It was subtle, almost underneath thought. I recognize it when a song is calling. I still don't know exactly what that feeling was. I can only return to that room in small, measured doses. I don't know whether I will ever write a song directly from that moment. But music gets me closer to it. That is what songwriting has always done for me. Artists give us another perspective when our own perspective has reached its limit. I hear it in songs like **Stephen Wilson Jr.'s** "I'm A Song," **Dawes'** "A Little Bit of Everything" and **Jimi Hendrix's** "The Wind Cries Mary." Someone else looks at being alive from an angle I hadn't considered, and suddenly I can see something differently. That shift in perspective has helped me survive. It has helped me recover and has fostered success in my advisory practice. And eventually it became the foundation for [***Close to Fire: Roman's Anthology Release Part I***](https://tripirocks.com/about?ref=hypebot.com), the album I created in the years after losing Roman. What began as something intensely personal grew into a community of musicians, engineers, therapists, advisors and other people bringing their own experiences of love and loss into the project. The album taught me something I had been circling around for years: music can open doors to conversations we often don't know how to begin. And artists need those conversations too. The music business teaches artists a lot about building careers. We learn about releases, royalties, publishing, touring, promotion, contracts and audiences. There is an enormous amount of information available to us. Sometimes it feels like trying to get a glass of water from Niagara Falls. But there are other questions waiting underneath the career. - **What happens to your music if something happens to you?** - **Does your family know what you own?** - **Who controls your copyrights?** - **Who can make decisions if you can't?** - **What happens to the life you've spent years building?** - **How do you talk to your parents about their wishes? Your spouse? Your children? Your bandmates?** Those questions aren't really about spreadsheets. They're about fear, family, mortality, responsibility and love. I know because I've spent nearly three decades helping families have them. And strangely enough, the process I use with a family isn't very different from the process I use to write a song. When I write, I try to get everything out first. Let it flow. Observe it without immediately trying to edit it. Once it's all on the table, I can come back, sort through it, remove things, add things, play with it and look again from another perspective. People often need the same freedom when talking about money, death and legacy. They need time to get it out. For years, I kept these worlds separate. There was financial-advisor Tony, speaking the language financial advisors and estate planners speak. Then I would take off the suit and tie, pick up a guitar and become musician Tony. Eventually those two people stopped fighting each other. I began to understand that a legacy isn't a number on a brokerage statement. It's Grandpa's stories. The family recipes. The dad jokes. The songs. The values. The things we carry forward because somebody mattered to us. Artists understand that instinctively. Our life's work is built around expression, memory and connection. Yet artists can be especially reluctant to talk about planning for what happens to that work when we're gone. The consequences can become very public. Prince died without a will. The estates and intellectual property of artists including Martin Luther King Jr., Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain have all been involved in complicated family or legal disputes. The details differ, but the lesson is simple: **Artists need help too.** I don't believe every songwriter needs to become an estate-planning expert. I don't believe a spreadsheet can prepare anyone for grief. I had spent decades around both trauma and estate planning, and when Roman died, I wasn't fully prepared. I had to get ready very quickly. My family needed all of me. I do believe we can become better at having difficult conversations before circumstances force them on us. That's where I keep coming back to music. Rock and roll can kick the door open. People may resist sitting down to talk about grief, mortality, money, addiction, family or fear. But they'll listen to a song. They'll go to a concert. They'll stand beside a stranger and sing something together. Music lets us feel before it asks us to explain. That matters because financial literacy and grief literacy have something important in common: both require us to enter subjects we would often rather avoid. Information alone isn't enough. We need language, trust, perspective and other people. My songwriting now supports and enriches my financial planning practice, and my advisory work has elevated my songwriting. We've even created a financial literacy academy informed by things I've learned from 12-step recovery programs, Aikido, music and motorcycle riding. Those experiences may sound unrelated, but each has taught me something about practice, awareness, humility, trust and learning from other people. I used to think my different lives needed to remain separate. Now I think the connection between them may be the point. Losing Roman changed the way I understand grief. Making *Close to Fire* changed the way I understand music. Working with families changed the way I understand legacy. They have all taught me that we need other people. We need people willing to sit with us when the conversation is uncomfortable. We need people who can help us see what we can't see ourselves. We need teams we trust enough to tell the truth to. And we need artists. Because sometimes before we're ready to have the conversation, we need a song to help us find the words. --- **Tony Tripi* is a singer and songwriter who releases music as* [***TRIPI***](https://open.spotify.com/artist/2wbznbxvKEjFeDwekvDGrm?si=47b31eb3f3fb44ab&ref=hypebot.com)*, with a sound that bridges rock and soul with a deeply personal, mission-driven voice. His new album,* Close to Fire: Roman’s Anthology Release Part I*, was created in the wake of the loss of his grandson, Roman, who passed away just one day after his birth. Creating this album was an invitation for Tripi, allowing him to process profound grief while inviting connection to others who have experienced similar tragedies.* Close to Fire *launches on October 30 in New York City at The Cutting Room.* [*Get tickets here.*](https://www.eventim.com/eventseries/tripi-close-to-fire-a-grief-support-benefit-concert-4223613/?ref=hypebot.com)