Artist Friendly with Joel Madden - Jake Duzsik of HEALTH

Episode Date: May 15, 2024

On this week's episode of Artist Friendly, Joel Madden is joined by Jake Duzsik of HEALTH. Last year’s RAT WARS, their sixth studio album and one of their best, is loaded with menacing bite, noisy gloom, and crushing danceability that points to an apocalyptic future, balancing a bold, ambitious vision with despair. Now, the neo-industrial trio are taking that record out on the road, including an appearance at Download Festival and a date opening for Bring Me the Horizon in June. HEALTH also recently teamed up with Bad Omens on their heavy new song “THE DRAIN.” ------- Listen to their Artist Friendly conversation on ⁠⁠Spotify.⁠ ------- Follow Artist Friendly! IG: @artist.friendly TikTok: @artist.friendly YouTube: youtube.com/@artist.friendly ------- Host: Joel Madden, @joelmadden Executive Producers: Joel Madden, Benji Madden, Jillian King Producers: Josh Madden, Joey Simmrin, Janice Leary Visual Producer/Editor: Ryan Schaefer Audio Producer/Composer: Nick Gray Music/Theme Composer: Nick Gray Cover Art/Design: Ryan Schaefer Additional Contributors: Anna Zanes, Neville Hardman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, what's up, everybody? I'm Joel Madden, and this is artist-friendly. On this episode, I'm talking to the founder-singer and guitarist of the band, Jake Duzek. Let's go. I'm smoking on gas. I'm smoking on piv. That's my kind.

I don't want to bad times. I don't want to have bad. Yeah, thanks for coming, man. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. How's it going? Pretty good. Trying to get ready for tour.

We have a tour that starts in about, I think. 11 or 12 days. When did it start with date? First show is March 2nd. We're doing like a warm-up in Ventura. Okay. I never played there before. I think it's Ventura Music Hall.

Okay, cool. It's kind of like a way for us to do like a full... Like a full run-through. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. Lighting package. We have rehearsals before, but then it's still nice to actually do a venue show.

Yeah. And feel like you're... Because we're playing a lot of new songs. I actually like doing that. better than rehearsing. Yeah, yeah. Like a warm-up show because, I don't know, sometimes rehearsal feels like I never really liked rehearsing, but then as I got older, I kind of liked rehearsing because I, I don't

know, but I got like the last, we played two shows last year and we spent probably like nine days rehearsing. We hadn't played for five years, but I also like cared weirdly more than I've ever cared about like little things like how we sounded. I used to not care as much how we always sounded. I don't know. It was just loud, was good. Now I'm more like, we need another guitar.

So we brought in another guitar player. Our friend came, and now I'm like, I don't think we could play a show without him because I like the way the extra guitar sounded. So I think the older I get, the more detail-oriented I get. Yeah, I mean, I've been kind of struggling a little bit with this preparation on this cycle

because it's like the biggest tour we've ever done more production, there's a lot, like we're spending a lot more money, which is worth it. The shows are bigger. We want to make them memorable. And you kind of,

obviously it happens to different bands at different stages. That sort of realization that you start playing shows and you think like, man, if we could play to 500 people or 250 people, like we'd be set

because you have, you know, you're just driving in some piece of shit van and don't even have a sound guy. And the next thing you know, you're like, it just all sort of proportionally expands to whatever.

space that you're playing. And I think that's part of what's... I similarly don't like rehearsing. I think at this stage in my life, it's like maybe for different reasons than I had before. But I guess I feel like it's... Like what? I guess I feel like it's not very...

It's not that it's not creative, because especially for the way that we do music, there's a lot of problem solving. Because it's not like we're a band that's just in a room and then writing out our songs. It's very modern. It's a hybridization of electronic music. I remember many, many years ago,

like we were doing some shows with Nine-Each Nails, and I was talking to Trent Reznor, and he was explaining the sort of issue that he had every time they would go on a touring cycle with new music was he's just using the studio to create these songs. Right, so there's no rules. You're just painting with any color you want, not thinking of live.

You're just making the music. so you could put 40 tracks on something if you need it to sound a certain way. It could be so processed, highly produced, and there's no, the only thought is what the recorded output is and you're not, it's not like... Replicating that live is the problem solving. Yeah, exactly.

So, and at that time, that was a pretty foreign concept for me because we were still at a stage where the band was very visceral. like we might do certain things on a record that wouldn't be exactly how we would do it in a live setting but there was still a lot more like direct sort of composition that would be the same as it was played live now I'm in exactly the same place as he was talking about where we have a record and then you look at it and you're like okay how the fuck do we do this live

and there literally are songs where you're you spend time in it and maybe you play the song and you're like this song just doesn't work live you know and so that's kind of i guess grading and boring to me i i i'm just at a stage creatively where what i really like it sounds cliche but as i get older i realize that cliches exist because like they're mostly fucking true they are all the things they say yeah you realize as you go older like whoever they are everything they said was well it's just like it's just like data sifted right it's like yeah just that's how it it's been field tested immensely.

Yeah. But one of the cliches that I've experienced as a musician is, I just like the creative act, man. You know? Like, I like writing songs and like writing a new record. And so when it gets down to, okay, like, you need to get your ears recasted for new, in-year molds or oral art.

And there's some people in bands, I feel like a lot of times, like, I don't mean to be stereotyping, but it's like, a lot of times, like drummers, like they really like rehearsing. because it's I think it's it's physical. Yeah, it's physical. And a lot, like, they get to be physical, which is part of like the appeal of music for a lot of people.

And for me, I'm just kind of, I will put in all the work and I will be diligent about it. And I, and that might also be kind of hearkening back to what you were saying is because I care more and more. I know that I'm going to take it more seriously. So once it starts, it's like, once the ball starts rolling down the hill,

I'm going to get kind of wrapped up in it. And I'm going to stress out. about it and then I'm going to realize, oh, this song is going to take like two weeks of running it for me to. There's a couple of songs on this. And especially how I write some things now, I play guitar and I sing and I'm writing those two things completely independently of each other. Yeah. So I'll go to play something and then I'll realize like, fuck, what my hands are doing versus the phrasing are completely separate. And I know from being a kid, you know, when you'd write music, you would sometimes,

if you're writing them together, you kind of write around the feel of playing the two at the same time. So it's just like all these things I got to decipher and figure out, and it's just kind of time-consuming and very, it's just like the work part of it. It's still a great job. It's just not my favorite. I feel from my experience,

when I was younger, I didn't take myself or what I was doing as seriously. as I do now because it all felt like it was a magical thing that happened to me. Yeah, that's the magic of being young and being in a bad. Right. Like I didn't give myself credit for all those nights in the van or all those shitty gigs and all the showing up that you have to do to get in the position to get the opportunity to play on the bigger stage than the bigger stage than the bigger stage and the bigger stage, right?

Where you're at today and where you were at and where I was at when we were 18, totally different places in our life, right? Yeah. It's a never-ending amount of work to exist as a professional in a field that's not a very professional field. It's art. It can be subjective to everyone, right? So as I got older and I started to be more focused on the things I was doing from a

perspective of like, no, I want to do this right as right as I can. It got a little harder because I was a little bit more detail-oriented. I was a little bit more critical. Yeah, I mean, I think I actually resonate very much with what you're saying. I definitely think that for me, I have come to take all those things a lot more seriously. And part of that is because, you know, you have experience and perspective on seeing bands in different stages of their career. And you can really tell, like, there's a kinetic, joyful nature to watching a young band, even if they're sloppy on stage, like you can sense.

joie de vivre like they're just like they love being there and it's like naive in the best way yeah and you can communicate a really memorable experience for an audience and for yourself on stage being at that place in your life and then you can and then you have the experience of seeing other bands as you get older where you see a great show and you realize how much fucking work goes into that show like how much thought in terms of presenting the music to create an experience for everybody that is memorable and stands out from others. And then you can see where people phone it in. And it's just like, oh, they have this backdrop that looks exactly like what you would think

it would look like and then everything is going to do. Or it just sounds, it sounds shitty people that, you know, like they don't want to be there and you can tell. And it's sort of, we're still a small band, you know. So that's the other thing is it's kind of like a new foray into, you know, we're in bigger rooms because we're not a band that got big when we were younger. We're still a fringe band that I even still get to do this. I'm incredibly thankful for and to be growing and finding like newer people in an audience. And I think that that's maybe as you were sort of alluding

to kind of daunting because it is a responsibility and a pressure. And the part that is more fun for me at this stage is writing new songs. This is not to say that I don't like playing the shows. I like playing the shows. Yeah, I agree with that. I do too. And I like being on stage. But you know,

you know what touring is like. It's like a lot of fucking hurry up and wait. Yeah, it's like 23 hours or 22 hours of of waiting and doing other stuff for an hour and a half of really great. It's why you're there.

And now I'm a dad now. So it's just like... It really adds a layer of complexity. It's different from my bandmates where it's like, okay, we're going to go on tour. That means just something completely different from me in terms of what you're missing. Wanting to be around what the additional responsibility that my partner takes on in doing that. And then also the lead up to that, like the trying to be more present at home in while you're being gone.

You're also, you're balancing. Everybody knows the day you're leaving is coming. Those two weeks can be very stressful, three weeks leading up. there's a lot of anxiety that is like present that you're probably not even fully aware of because no one that's truly connected in their family wants to leave them. Yeah.

It doesn't matter what you tell me I'm leaving for. I'm married with two kids and I want to be. Yeah. I mean, I have a four-year-old son and he is a fucking hassler. He's super intense. But I love him. Five days, like a fly-in

with a couple of shows, cool. Great, yeah. But anything beyond two weeks, you know, like the FaceTime starts to bum you out and that, you know, just like this part of growing up. It's really hard. I had the same thing from when my kids were zero to five. I missed a lot.

We were still touring. And we stopped actually after that because one of the biggest reasons was I couldn't do it anymore. After they were like five, six, I just found it like was really hard. And listen, I hear what you're saying about your band. I think you guys are a really important band. And size is an interesting thing because it's hard to measure the size of importance.

I kind of just meant more in a logistical sense. Right, in the logistics of the venues. Yeah, I mean, if we were a little bit bigger, I could like T.O a lot of stuff to production people where, you know, you know, like, I know bands that are really big where it's just like, they don't put a pedal board in a case. ever. Right. I have crew, but I have, I have to be. Yeah. So it adds an additional layer of responsibility of, I'm very detail oriented.

So I'm going to notice if I don't think that the lighting is right. Whereas some people don't really care, but I also don't have the resources to just be like, outsource that. Yeah, just fire that guy and get another. I, you know, like a rule. I don't like that. Get more stuff. It's just kind of like, okay, well, what does this do to the,

We need to live off of this, you know? So that's the only thing I meant. The logistics of what it takes to do what you guys are doing. Listen, I think that fans, music fans, and your fans have an implicit understanding and feeling of what it takes. Somehow I think they do, but I don't think that they understand what goes into making all of this come together so that you can be on that stage. Dude, the funniest thing to me is like my dad is like total rock dad.

He grew up taking me to like I went to see Nirvana when I was like 10 and shit. Amazing. And he been so, my family is very supportive of the band. And like my dad has been like, see us play in garages. That's cool. And to this day, and this is something that I've tried to explain to people because this is how the general audience going public is. And you all understand this just implicitly is.

Like, I can't remember, it was a couple of years ago. We played a show in Portland and then a show in Seattle. My dad went to both shows. I grew up there. I'm from the northwest. Are you like up there? Yeah, I'm from Seattle. Cool.

And, uh, that's why I got the fuck out of there. I don't like the rain. Yeah. So, but anyway, same set. Everything's pretty much the same. We played in Portland and then the next night in Seattle. And my dad, and to this day, he is like so many people in the audience where he's like, and there's a lot of electronic elements,

you know, there's synthesizers, there's things that, like, they sound good. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I can see maybe you don't,

you're having, I'm a vocalist, you could have an off night as a singer, whatever. But that's not what it was. It's just one room was like this metallic ceiling space

that just had terrible fucking acoustics. And we all know from touring, you're like, a bad room, a hundred year old theater, it's not made for loud music, it's going to sound like shit.

I'd rather play. the concrete box, whatever kind of thing, because it's physics. And it's just like not understanding that as a concert goer. And that's what's so pure about it is a lot of people are just there ingesting the experience. But my dad is just like, you guys sounded terrible tonight. But you were good last night. And I'm trying to explain that room, everybody is going to sound bad in that room.

And he just like can't buy it. In his mind, it's just, and it's this thing that I think other bands, you know, like when a band gets to a point where they realize, and I've had this conversation with bands that are buzz bands or bonus, like, hey, the first thing you need to add is a front of house person. Yeah. Before you spend money on anything else because the people at those shows will just think you sucked that night. They're not in there.

A good mix is so amazing. And they're just not in there thinking like, yeah, look at this ceiling. It's rounded. This is a theater, like a, for, you know, plays. Now they use it for, and this heavy-ass band is playing, it's like, doesn't work in here. They just think, oh, that band's bad. Yeah. And so that, I think that's a thing that comes into, you know, it's almost like that you want to have this incredible lighting show and have it sound impeccable, but you want it to all feel like this organic experience that just unfolds, you know?

Because we're trying to, we're not, you want some level of mystery. It's like pop music, I understand. It's like you can have these costume changes and the pageantry of it is very on display. But part of the magic, I think, of like a heavy music experience is that it sort of just should feel like it unfolds in this natural way. Yeah. And the musicians are all playing together and conducting this show together that is really hard to do when it comes down to it. A good band is hard to find live. It's actually a hard thing to execute.

It's sound good live. And that's why rock is, I think it's, I want to say it's the biggest live genre, but it's likely rock and or country. So live music in general, live players is still the biggest in live music. I think for a reason there's something magical about seeing guys get up together on stage and put this music together and play it, that still people are in awe of it because it's hard to do.

It is really hard to do at a high level. Yeah, and I think that that, I guess, is just where that's what we're kind of doing right now and that I feel that, especially with playing new songs. You're putting your energy into this show and you want them to get something out of it and you want them to leave with an impression.

You want them to leave, you want to feel like everybody was there, everybody was invested everybody left like there's something about me that when i'm away i want to feel like the people that i you know whether it's a show or whatever i want to feel like i did my very best that night and that they left with the very best experience because otherwise i just want to go home yeah so i'm not phoning it in and i know what you're saying when you see a band phone it in and then when you see a band that does what they do really well and you can tell the difference And when I go see shows, I see it.

I see bands that are like, they are on their shit. And then you see other ones. You go to other shows and it feels like, yeah, it feels draggy and tired. And the subtleties of that can be so, it can really be reflective of where the band is at that place in their life. Because you could do a rough and tumble, like not polished show, and it can feel really fissural and awesome. Totally.

But it's when you can tell that someone doesn't want to be there or doesn't really care. It's an intangible thing. Yeah, they're just like, oh, I'll just play this show and I don't really want to. It's a super gratifying experience when you make music and people feel it. And certainly I'm sure you've had the experience where people have said, your music helped me through this or it helped me with that. And it helped me in this time of my life. There's not, that's probably the highest return is the emotional.

the emotional effect you can have on people and they can have on you around your art. I don't mean to be, obviously, I'm biased, but in terms of, I know a lot of different people who work in the arts, like specifically film and TV, editors, directors, things like that. Like, I went to college down here and, like, a lot of my friends, like, are in that kind of world.

Right. And there was a time in my life where that actually really interested me when I was young. And I have friends who are writers. I really think that music is by far the best art form in terms of what you get back from it. Yeah.

Because it's collaborative. So you have the experience of being able to be with other people, like your bandmates. You get to create the music and have that effect on people. And it feels so, such a privilege to have someone say like, hey I was really depressed and it took me a while to when we started we were such an underground band we were just playing like warehouse shows and things like that it wasn't that kind of relationship and now it took me a little time to get used to to fans saying things like that

like saying like hey I wanted to kill myself last winter and I didn't because of this record yeah and one of the things I think is so amazing about the way that music we've all had that experience of listening to a record for six months straight or the same song, like 20 times in a day. Yep. And that's so unique to the way that we ingest music. It's so different from seeing a good film or seeing a great photograph that's sort of repetitive, emotional way that you can incorporate into your life.

And then as the artist, we get to go on tour and play that music and have this reciprocity, this energy exchange that happens between you and the audience. Whereas like friends that I have that work on set or work in production, it's like, oh, I finished editing this TV show. And it's like, now it's just out. And I got to go on to do something else. Or they are shooting and they're a cameraman, which is incredibly grueling. And it's like 15 hours.

The reason I feel comfortable saying that is that's also how I feel as someone who ingests art. You know, like I love to read a good book. I love to see a good film. But I've never had the kind of emotional connection to anything else that I've had with good music. the way it can occupy a place that spans your entire life, like from the time it entered into it, whether or not it's something that you listen to consistently, like for me, like a band, like Black Sabbath or like Black Flag

that I've listened to the whole time. So it doesn't have, or it's a band that I only listened to in high school and college. And if I listen to that, it's like this crazy nostalgia explosion that's almost unbearable. Yeah. That sort of repetitive thing, like being able to go out and show. share that with an audience, I think is. There's nothing like it. It is. It's really the best thing. And what would the film be without great music? Yeah, it's true. It's just, it's just a special thing. I had that, I had the same experience the other day, Sunday. I was, I don't know what it was,

but I had a, like a Pandora channel playing in my, my office. And I was doing some work. And this song came on. And it was a song from my, childhood that I didn't even remember. And then I heard it. And it took me right back. And I had to get in the car and go pick my daughter up. And so I got on and I put the, I got in the car and I put the song on.

And I listened to it probably like 10 times on the way to get my daughter. And I was just in a full blown, nostalgic. I sent the song to my older brother because it was, it was that song, Tears for Fears. break it down again. Oh, I love that song.

And I remember when he, my older brother played it for me in my, I think I was thinking ninth grade or something. It was a really hard time in life. Things were just really a mess. My family had fallen apart. Everything was going wrong. And he was always the source of music for me. He would play bands for me and he would put me on like everything.

And I remember he, at this certain time in my life, he was playing. that he really liked that song. And it was when you could do like cassette singles. So it was just like a single. Yeah, yeah. So he had it and he would play it. And it took me right back to that time. And I sent him that and I said,

I texted him and I was like, thank God for music. And you know, like I'm a card carrying member of this union in terms of stowing the virtues of music. But it also ages. Good music ages well. Yeah, because like, you know, film and TV, comedy, I feel like age is the harshest of any art form where it's just like once you're a decade plus on

it feels so of its time which is one of the beautiful things about it but it's really hard to sort of recapture that moment it's so temporal and music great music it really I mean obviously like I'm under no illusions that like everything falls like there was a time when the dominant form

of popular music all had horns in it you know it was like yeah that has that has moved on and I know that that will happen to all the music that we're doing. Yeah, but the best examples of it, they live. They do. I don't know. It just struck me.

It's melody based too. It's melody. It just struck me and I texted him and I was like, I sent him the song and I was like, remember this? And he was like, I just listened to this, you know, like yesterday or something. Yeah, yeah. And I was like, man, it takes me back. And I said, thank God for music.

And what I was saying was, I remember, where it took me was a moment of joy surrounded by pain. And that's the other thing that's really interesting about music too is there are some types of music where you have to have the time and space to handle that nostalgia bomb or you have to turn it off. A hundred percent. And there are films or shows that I watched when I was a kid that I could feel nostalgic about, but it's only music where I could hear some song and it's like,

Not right now. I remember the summer of 2008, and I was like living with this girl, my life was upside down, but it was great, or whatever, I'm like, I can't listen to that right now. Yeah.

Or something that takes you back to your childhood. Like, for me, talking heads, this must be the place. Yeah. That song. I used to go into work with my dad every day during summer

because he worked in downtown Seattle and it was right next to his skate park. And I would skateboard all day. And he had the, the speaking in tongues talking head record on cassette and I love that song so I would listen to it every day and it's like I cannot listen to that song without becoming emotional there's just no way for me to do it it doesn't matter what

if I was waiting to get on to an airplane I'd be like oh shit okay you know and only music sort of occupies that space in my life would you say it makes you emotional because it was a happy time definitely I mean that way I was like when I was like 13 14 years old that's cool and the song itself is very evocative emotionally. And it's tied to the character of how that, exactly what you were saying about the tears for fears,

how it made you feel when you hurt it. Yeah. So like bringing up, like I was bringing up Black Sabbath before, it's like the riff from Black Sabbath's Super Not, for example, I remember the first time I ever heard that, which was an escape video,

I was just fucking pumped and made me want to like break a window. Yeah. And it almost always makes me feel like that when I hear it now. Like all this stuff that I don't do anymore. It's like, I hear that. I'm like, dude, I just kind of want to drink 100 beers, you know?

Like just it still accesses those same kind of emotions. Yeah, it's so crazy. And it's interesting how visceral, I'm sure it's, it's all neurological. It is. It's like those pathways, the way that music works with our synapses and, you know, all those incredibly complex systems. but to me it's just, it's incomparable to any other art form.

It's so hard to quantify the value of it. The transaction is really emotional. It's like people are listening to your songs for different reasons, and they're all important reasons. I mean, that's the coolest thing too, right? Is it, you know, I don't know, there's certain interviews where people, especially Europeans, they really, like, they love to, like, have the lyrical content,

like, really explicated for them. And it's just like, I don't know. But it's just like, well, the cool thing is is that once it's out in the world everybody is going to infuse it with their own meaning so it's kind of

beside the point to have someone explicitly tell you what a song is supposed to be when I wrote songs it was all stream of consciousness I didn't sit down and write like this is what this song's about but they were pretty explicit the songs but they weren't actually

to me because I was just I would literally get in and freestyle Yeah, it's like catharsis. Yeah, and some of the songs are pretty simple, but I still don't know what I was thinking when I wrote them. Yeah, yeah. And it's just the way it is. Like I could say I had some plan to make some song that was successful,

but I didn't. I just was very stream of consciousness, get in, sing what felt good, words come out, start putting them together, and then a song was written. Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe it works differently for other people, but I find it's very difficult to have a plan, to be, to write a successful song.

Yeah, it's more for me. It was always feeling. Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, that feels good. The one thing that I guess I've learned for myself, at least in terms of writing music, just like anything else, is there's something to be said for volume

just in terms of putting in work. Right. You know, like you can't write a good song if you're not writing songs. And that's something that I've found. It's like, if my kid goes to bed, even if I just like fuck around for an hour, You'll write something.

It's just a way to keep connected to, it's like any other routines that we have in life. You know, when you let something live fallow, you're just not very, if there's a sport you played or something, if you're not exercising muscle skeletal system and your muscle memory and all that kind of stuff, you're like, oh, I'm not going to do anything.

You're not going to be as good. Yeah, you're just not going to be as good at it. So I just find staying, that's one of the reasons where I don't love going, on tour anymore also because I never thought about it when I was younger, but realizing how the sort of arbitrary nature of record cycles is very creatively disruptive. I mean, it depends on the band you are. Like, you know, Zeppelin wrote most of Zeppelin 2 just on the road. Right. Because just pages just riffing. And then, you know, they're putting out two albums a year.

It's very different kind of thing. But for me, and I think for a lot of modern people, it's like, dude, it's hard to do anything on tour, you know, other than just play a show. Yeah. So you spend all this time writing a record and then typically, if it's a good creative experience, the sort of zenith that you reach of really being in the moment and in the routine of writing and being artistic is the moment when it's like, okay, now you need to go on tour for like a year. So just stop doing all that.

It's like, would be good to keep doing that in that time. And that's one thing that I've kind of, because you can make a plan, you know, you can be like, okay, we're only going to do, I'm trying really hard to like, I'm not doing anything more than four weeks at a time because of family stuff. Yeah. And if you have two months at home in between something or a month, you can make a plan to write in between there, but then you get back and then it's like. It takes three weeks to get sold and then.

And then you're like, you're, then you get sick when you get home or you're kid gets sick. You know, it just takes you out of it. And I think that's something that, it's way better than me just being over all of it. Yeah. It's,

I'm still into all, like I still care so much about each part that it's like, you don't want to short change anything. It's exactly what we were talking about with the pre-production and getting ready for tour and wanting to perform well while you're on tour. I've just found it's hard to do anything really well and do anything else.

Yep. That's been like thing that I've, and I don't mean just in music. I mean almost in anything. All of it. I agree with you. I think that if I'm doing really, really well at work, I'm likely dropping the ball at home. If I'm doing really well at home, I'm likely dropping the ball at work. Finding the balance of it is the thing that I think we start to learn with our age is like, okay,

if I can deliver at work and I know exactly what I should take on and what I shouldn't is exactly what you're talking about. It's like learning how to measure things and go. But I think that's what makes you a success. I think that the fact that you care about your family and you want to be a good participant in that, right? Because we don't have to be. Plenty of people haven't participated in their family. Especially in the arts. You hear about it all the time. All the time. So-and-so was never home. Yeah, dad wasn't around. He was this. And we're like, okay, there's some version of reality as we have to work in our kids. I think they need to see us going after things in the world and trying to accomplish things. I think that's good. I think the most important thing we can do is try to

evolve and expand our ability to do these things well and find the balance of what that means as we grow. So can I be as engaged as possible as a... And also the fucked up thing is like culturally our sort of obsession with individuality because you hear all these stories about like a great musician or a great writer or film director and it's like they weren't ever around we conflate the two things as being like oh that's what you need to do that.

It's kind of like how like all those people read that Steve Jobs book and they're like I need to be a fucking dick to get shit done. It's like no I don't think you have to do that part you know. It might actually, he might actually have, I didn't read the book, but if that, if that's the, the, the through line is that, it might actually be like a, a good, uh, cautionary tale of who's sacrificing. If I'm choosing this over everything else, everything else is sacrificing. Yeah.

So I can choose it. So if I chose to have a family, they're sacrificing. So the balance is, is can I push and optimize my productivity and my ability? and my ability to do this a little more each year to where I get to a spot where I can really execute at the level I want to. And then do I know what that means as far as what I choose to do?

And can I still deliver the best experience for my family as me? I read this thing. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it... What does you read? It really struck me as I was reading this like a long-form profile

Sophia Coppola. Okay. And she's cool. She was just talking about growing up and obviously her dad would take on these like mammoth film productions. And this impacted her life negatively in that she was never in the same place. But he had a thing where he was just like he didn't ever want the family not to be together for more than 10 days. So it was like he wouldn't do that thing where he would go, I'm going to go film Godfather too. I'm going to be gone for fucking eight months.

I'll be back. I'll be home. But it's my art that matters. He was like, no, no, fuck that. The family's together. So anywhere I go, family is going. And we're all going to be together. And we're going to have dinner at night.

And I just thought that was so rad. Like hearing that. I think when you're younger, you know, it's like, I'm going to be just like, have one shark-like focus. Like, just keep moving. I do one thing. And I guess it was just sort of kind of. Well, we know too much now.

We know the kids whose parents did that. Lots of them have problems. Yeah. Exactly. And also just for you, you want to be around your kid. I guess that's just like, I had a discussion just even with my band and our management, like before we're, we've been around for a while. And like we kind of do, we're a very strange band. I know that there's not like it's niche. You're unique. You guys sit in a space that I say, you hold a space that's very unique to your band. So I think it's likely feels lonely at times. But I think that you guys are just unique. You're, you're, you're, you're. You're, you know, it's not a band that is like a bunch of other bands. So I think that can probably feel niche or it can feel long term. I think there's a lot of, I think I'd rather be that.

Well, what I was laying out ultimately, though, and for us, like, we are kind of doing in certain ways better than we've ever done. I would say that. And so, but I kind of had to, especially for my, my bandmates, be like, hey, like, you sort of look at like the phenomenon that happened to turnstile where it's like we're going to be on tour for two years straight. I kind of had to say like even if the record fucking exploded, it's like I cannot do that. I'm like I'm not at a point where I'm willing to be like if there's just opportunity after opportunity. I have to weigh it.

I have to weigh like there's the financial side of the incentivization that I need to be able to play for my family. Very real. But I also can't be like, oh, I just missed like two years. and then destroyed my relationship, you know, like finding that balance. That's, that to me is, I think, the key to happiness and to long-term sustainable success. It's a tricky thing, man. I never had, like, this is the first record I've ever had where I'm like, like a dad. Yeah.

It's just really, it's different. It's different, but it's a real thing because I think it's integrity too. I think it's really, really cool. I feel the same way I want to. to be there for everything. I only get to raise these kids once. And it's the biggest thing I've had in my life where I feel full on like a different person. Yeah, it does. Completely different person. So it's like a complicated thing. It is complicated. It's funny. I know with health, you guys have collaborated with a bunch of people. Do you collaborate with bad omens? We have collaborated with

bad omens because we're all in the same city. I think that was the most time we've got to spend with another band. Okay. Because they're in the valley, we're in, like, Echo Park, like, Eastside area. So, and they work from home. Yeah. And it's one thing that's so cool about this sort of new wave of heavy music is that all those kids are very much of the same school as us in terms of being, like,

very, very production literate. Yeah, very hands-on. They can make stuff. Yeah. They don't need a call a producer to come in and- No, like talking. So we went to their apartment, which is like they have a production writing a studio in there. We actually did a day in a like a neutral ground studio that was rented, which they later explained.

And it was very, very pragmatic. It's like there's some guy like running Ableton or I think they work in logic. We work in Ableton. There's some guy like running pro tools that neither of us know. and both bands are like pretty fast on like an audio workstation. So we kind of realized that there was this thing slowing us down. But you don't want to have people over to your house for the first time you meet him. And who knows?

It's just kind of weird. You know, like you don't get along. And there's no creative spark. So we did that. And then it was cool. So then the next day it was like, fuck that studio. Like, why don't you guys just come to our house? Yeah.

So we got to do like four days. That's cool. So we did a four or five days, I think. So we did like, we started like a couple other ideas. It was just really fast and easy to work together. I think having that kind of being able to move fast. Yeah. Not being like, oh, well, let's try to explain to this engineer what we want.

Yeah, yeah. You get to cut it out. They seem to write the same way that we write, which is. I'll say as a music fan, I really love hearing that because that's what you hope. to imagine when two bands get together is that they are competent and they can like make music on their own and then together they can make music. You know, I always respect bands that are self-produced, you know, guys who can make stuff. Well, they're very, very, very production literate.

Yeah. Especially like for a band band. It's crazy how how good they are at being them. And I think that like that younger sensibility of being, especially younger kids, it's like, computer is like a fucking appendage to them, you know? Like they're all, they are like, they're like, preternatially understand it.

Yeah. I think that like, like we just did some dates with like sleep token and it's like similar kind of thing where it's just like the music is like this amalgamation of electronic, heavy people play, you know, like Noah can sing his ass off. That was the only part for me that was like a little,

because he's in a heavy band, but he has like, he can sing. He has pop control of his, like virtuosic control of his voice. It's crazy. Whereas, you know, he and I are talking and it's like, I guess he's been listening to us since he was a kid. Yeah.

Which is sort of surprising to me. It's always, that's always surprising to me, that kind of thing. Yeah. So, you know, he's explaining to me that he likes my voice. But I'm listening to him singing. I'm like, man, I really suck at singing compared to this kid. In terms of just, there's like a vocal control. You know, we're like, I'm going to go, I'm going to start like belting it out and then transition to falsetto.

And then do a vibrato thing. I can't do any of that shit. But it was just really fun. And I think that that's like the best case scenario where you can all hang out and like talk about what you want to order for lunch. And if people won't have some beers, they can or whatever kind of thing.

Because that's, then you feel like a band. Yeah, as a fan of the overall genre, if you just say rock music. So I would put you guys, bad omens, all these bands under the one big umbrella of like rock. Yeah. Right. You could say different styles, but that is the kind of stuff I get the most excited about is

seeing bands collaborate and coming from like a actually a creative place where they're actually fans of each other, respect each other, and then they get together and they make some piece of music that you're as a rock fan. It's fun to listen to. And I like both your bands. So it's it's cool to see cool bands collaborate without any. You know, bands can sometimes they, and look, I think it's hard sometimes. but I think bands can be standoffish from one another.

Oh, totally. And I get it. It's like gangs. Yeah, like I totally get it. But when I see bands put down their guard and collaborate with each other, makes me really happy because that's kind of everyone just being kids again and being creative. And I think that's the really exciting thing about collaboration being becoming so much more accepted in the rock world because it used to be. so much more factional and just insular.

Like, it's like we were talking about. It's like your family. And so it's been, the tendency is to keep that really close to the chest. Whereas in, like, what, in the past, like, what collaboration between rock bands really leaps to mind? It's like, there weren't a ton.

There's, like, that's, like, that's really memorable. It's like, there's one. It's fucking under pressure. Queen and David Bowie, that's, like, the only, like, big ones, you know, from that. Yeah. And you think about like it was so good because it was two really good bands collaborating. And that's a weird one because it like, it only works because of, because when you listen to it as a

writer, especially having done collaborations, you can see that they're just trying to one up each other. It's like, it's like there's not a mutual like, okay, I'll just, that's why that song has like fucking eight hooks and like three different choruses. And it's like, and Bowie can't out sing Freddie. so he has to like do a catchier. It's like a pretty crazy one as a, it's definitely like very high octane like trade and punches kind of track. And it's this very unique place that it occupies. But I think for a lot of like band bands,

it's been, especially coming from like the underground perspective, it's always been such like a sacred kind of thing that you don't ever want to let the reins go of. So the idea of anybody contributing outside of the band is kind of looked down upon. But as you get older, you realize that so much of that great art was just made in committee by someone being like, I don't fucking care who contributes just so long as it makes the song better. I'ma And I'm gonna

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and Shopify. And I think also something about bands and coming from the, you know, whatever you want to call it, being underground. I feel like this. I feel like sometimes bands get in the mindset that there's, that only one band can make it

at a time or something. Oh yeah, it's like zero sum. And when I see bands collaborate, it says a lot about those bands. It says, totally. There's room. There's room for all of us. We can collaborate. One thing I'll say about bad omens getting to know them over the year.

they're fans of other bands. So they're not sitting there going, we're trying to get to the top of the mountain and it's just us. They are literally actually just guys who really like being in a band and they like other bands. So I can see it in their collaborations.

I can see it in their touring, but I can see it in you guys. I can see it in a few bands around where I go. That makes me more of a fan actually because there's something about bands that want to be friends with other bands, that want to collaborate with other bands, that makes me feel more, I don't know, I'm a bigger fan.

It's just healthier, right? I mean, there is just this, there's a legacy of feuding and sort of you only can go up by pushing someone else down in the past where like territoriality of if something good is happening that band, that means they're taking something from me. It's not happening to me. Right. Which is thereby a subtraction for me. And it's like, that's just like a really toxic and negative way to think.

And no rock band listens to only one band. Yeah. And so anything that gets out of that, I think, is just net positive. Sharing is good of all kinds. Sharing. It's been especially great for us because by and war, not all the time, but like a lot of the bands that we've collaborated with are just much more successful bands than us. But there's also a crossover because that's the thing. It's like, as a rock fan, I listen to, I always check out records.

I want to find a new band that I love. That's my, the nature of me as a fan is I want to find a new band that I love. So I'm always listening to new records all the time and becoming a fan. If architects take someone on tour, I love architects. So one of my favorite bands. Yeah, yeah. I listen to the bands they take on tour the same way. Like, I'm always looking for like who's playing with who, who's, you know.

And that's the other thing that's so great about this new wave. of heavy music fans is that like from growing up like you were saying growing up in the 90s it's like I grew up skateboarding and then listening to heavy music and it was just like a pretty

aggressive macho kind of cultural world yeah and getting away from that where you have bands that are young and the fans are young and they're like oh

bad omens is playing a show. Who's this band opening? I'm going to follow them on Instagram. I'll check out their music. I'll cheer for them. Whereas like, you know, what's the apocryphal story? It's like you go see Slayer and it's like the opening band just people just fucking yell at him the whole time because it's not Slayer. It's like, good off, you're not Slayer. And it's like, and that's got its own thing too. But it's definitely more fun to be in the like, not in the, you're in opening band and the crew just veiledly hates you because you're not. not the headliner.

Yeah. And like, nobody is nice to you. You know, that's just, I think that the more we get into the kind of world of collaboration and realizing that is a culture. Like you said, it's not zero sum and just sort of this survival of the fittest thing. It's just overall a lot. And the great thing about your band is every fan that is going to continue to discover you guys, because I think you guys are an interesting moment.

I think you're, I think the next few years are going to be really fun for you guys. And I think it's interesting time for rock music in general. It's definitely an interesting time for heavy music. Yeah, it's really good time for heavy music. And I think you guys have a really great history. You have a rich catalog of music for people to discover. And it stands up, you know? So I think that's exciting.

In the world of heavy music and rock music, I put you on the short list of bands that, not only bands that matter, but bands that are poised to make really interesting records. and records matter again like interesting records matter again I think that when a record's doing well and you listen to it and you go oh you know what

they made an interesting record they made a good record I think we're back there I know that that part about it is really cool on this recent record we you know we did some loose it's like the closest thing we've come to doing a concept record yeah I mean it is a concept record except for there isn't like

it doesn't have the thing that I like least about concept records which is like a full narrative lyrical through line like Tommy your quadrophineers and there was like it has to all be rigorously

like Dark Side of the Moon is a concept record but it can lyrically kind of be what it wants to be yeah and part of the reason we did that is

we know it's a song economy and TikTok and all that but at the same time fans are interested so we're like all right that track on Spotify is going to cut off even though if you listen to it

on vinyl it would go seamlessly into the next track we're like fuck it let's just do like I want to do what I want to do. Yeah. And this is what's cool about this moment right now with heavy music is that

you don't have to have this bankrupt, creative approach to being like, all that matters is singles. So let's just have 10 singles and there'll be like two really good ones and the other eight will be just lesser versions of singles. It's like, fuck that. Do some deep cuts. Let's make a record.

Have a long song. Yeah. That song is seven minutes. Like, who cares? Like there's Wild West. There's no. no rules right now. Yeah. I feel like it's a really good time where we're headed into like a really good time for records and touring. So I'm excited to see. I'm excited to watch you guys over

the next couple of years. Thanks, man. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. Awesome. Great talking about. You too. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of artist friendly. If you really liked it, you can follow, like, subscribe to the show anywhere you listen to podcast, Spotify, Apple, Amazon. We appreciate your support, and we'll see you next time.