CLEVELAND—As we go across the country, we’ll be asking people we meet the same question: What stories will you tell your grandkids about the recession? A new response is below:

JIMMY: So I know what I’ll tell my grandkids. I’ll tell them to just be prepared, prepare yourself for success, prepare yourself for failure, you know, as long as you try to succeed and you fail, well at least you tried, so that’s how I look at it … like we try and be realistic about what we could make and why. … We use other factors, like other strengths, to exercise on our weaknesses, you feel what I’m saying, we do as much as we can, and we get help wherever we can, to try to prepare … compromise, have a plan and a system. …Well if you fail, at least you tried, 'cause you gonna die anyway, you know, so I’d rather die trying.

KENDALL: It takes faith too, you gotta have a lot of faith, like, whatever it is, you know, I have faith like that, that everything is going to work out as long as I work hard and try, like if you study hard for a test, you expect to pass, and if you work really hard at your job, you expect to get paid for those two weeks. I think if I work hard and try, if I work my ass off, there’s no way we can fail.

JIMMY: In Cleveland, there’s been a recession in Cleveland for as long as I’ve been born, here. … So just to be able to pay my bills, you know, doing music alone, even though it's not that much even though I do just make enough to pay my bills, its overall, just doing that with my artistry, you know what I’m saying, I feel like I’m a millionaire just doing that.

You can listen to Jimmy and Kendall’s band, Cloud Nine, at MySpace.

(Photo of Cloud Nine by David Backer. Jimmy is on the left; Kendall, on the right.)