Ep 418 Resolving Dissonance: What Bands and Marriages Have in Common w/Ron and Catrina
Marriage Therapy Radio
MTR
4.6 • 690 Ratings
🗓️ 31 March 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Zach sits down with Ron and Catrina, a married couple behind the YouTube music show Covers on the Spot, to find out what happens when you treat a relationship like a live recording session. Ron is the creative director and host of the show, where bands are given a song they have never heard and tasked with covering it in a single day. Catrina is a graphic designer on the same media team at Musora and the quieter half of a pairing that, by their own description, sounds like "something harmonic." Together, they have three kids, a shared workplace, and a relationship built on aligned values and very different processing speeds.
Using a "covers on the spot" framework for the conversation, Zach gives Ron and Catrina relationship prompts and asks them to riff. What comes out is a candid look at how they handle conflict, protect their time together, and keep choosing each other through the daily grind of parenting and working side by side. Catrina is open about her tendency toward passive aggression and the work she is doing to change it. Ron talks honestly about learning to stop "winning" arguments and start listening instead. One of the most striking moments comes when Catrina says their relationship at its best sounds like silence: quiet, smooth, still moving.
Zach ties it all together with a Ben Folds story about orchestras resolving dissonance, not just difference, and drops one of his signature reframes: repair is more important than resolve. This is an episode for anyone who has ever stayed up until 2 a.m. trying to fix something with their partner and wondered if there was a better way.
Key Takeaways
- Winning the argument is not the same thing as being right about the relationship
- Giving your partner time to process is not waiting. It is participating.
- A relationship is not something you find. It is something you build with someone who wants to build with you.
- Repair is more important than resolve. You can go to bed without solving it and still be okay.
- Protecting your time together matters more than filling your calendar with activity
- The best relationships keep evolving their sound. What worked five years ago may not be the song you need now.
- Constraints (kids, time, fatigue) can actually sharpen how a couple communicates, not just limit it
- Vulnerability is daring to be fully honest with someone, not just showing them the version of yourself you think they want
Guest Info
- Ron (Catrina's husband): Producer and host of Covers on the Spot, a YouTube music show where bands cover a song they have never heard in a single day. Former high school musical theater teacher. Based in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
- Catrina (Ron's wife): Graphic designer at Musora. Handles YouTube thumbnails, Instagram assets, and physical product design. Former theater student (played Ariel in The Tempest). Self-described introvert.
- They have three children.
- They started dating January 1, 2011 after being friends since high school.
- Covers on the Spot: YouTube Playlist
- Musora (music lessons platform): musora.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. Welcome and thank you for listening to this episode of Marriage Therapy Radio. My name is Zach Brittle. I am really excited about this episode. I have long been a lover of music. I don't know anything about it. I don't know how to play music. I don't know anything about music theory. I don't know genres all that well, which will become apparent in this interview. |
| 0:22.3 | But man, I love a good lyric. I love a good melody. |
| 0:26.3 | Music has punctuated a lot of key moments in my life, just like everybody else's. |
| 0:30.7 | I found this channel on YouTube. It's called Musora. |
| 0:34.5 | Musora is dedicated to helping people learn how to play music, piano, drums, guitar, |
| 0:40.8 | even singing. I'm definitely going to sign up. Part of their franchise includes a series of |
| 0:45.7 | videos called Covers on the Spot where they have a band come in and they will play this band a |
| 0:51.9 | song for the first time. And, you know, maybe they've heard it before, |
| 0:56.4 | but they've never heard it within the context of this assignment, which is to make a cover |
| 1:01.5 | of this song. And it's really fascinating. It's been, I binge these shows, it's a binge like a lot of |
| 1:06.9 | them, because I am interested in the art of making music, but also the art of collaboration. |
| 1:13.5 | Some of these bands have a hard time putting their songs together. Some of them, it's pretty easy. |
| 1:18.1 | But it's always intriguing to me to watch how they sort through differences. And that's the |
| 1:24.2 | conversation we're having today. I'm having a conversation with Ron Jackson, who is the host of Music on the Spots and his wife Katrina Jackson. They're delightful. I loved |
| 1:33.1 | talking to them. I was very keen to understand how music affected their relationship, how they make |
| 1:40.8 | their family work. They have three children. It's very cool and very clear that the two |
| 1:45.5 | of them are deeply invested in one another and in the story that they are telling about their |
| 1:51.0 | relationship. I was thrilled to learn a little bit more about how music works, but also just to kind of, |
| 1:57.8 | I don't know, be thinking about it on myself. I mean, the reality is most couples |
| 2:02.6 | are playing the same old song over and over again because it's familiar. They know it. |
| 2:08.5 | It works. They know the lyrics. They know the tune. They sit down and they start to just let muscle |
| 2:13.9 | memory take over. And what's very cool about covers on the spot is that these musicians have to stretch. |
... |
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