Artist Friendly with Joel Madden - JP Saxe

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

On this week's episode of Artist Friendly, Joel Madden is joined by JP Saxe. Whether it’s for his own solo work or the myriad of artists he works with, Saxe wears his heart on sleeve, transforming reflections on love and grief into irresistibly relatable songs. Following 2023’s A Grey Area, Saxe has returned with the new single “Safe,” which he premiered at a benefit show for LA wildfires at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom in January. In a wide-spanning conversation with Madden, the Grammy-nominated musician opens up about the loss of his mother, writing songs for Sabrina Carpenter and Lewis Capaldi, and his upcoming album, Articulate Excuses. ------- 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

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under control. New Potion 9 of Sebastian, the secreto professional, of who don't seein tendences, but of who these let's up. I'm Joel Madden and this is artist friendly. On this episode, I'm talking with multi-platinum Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter J.P. Sacks. Let's go.

I'm smoking on gas and smoking out if that's my kind. I don't want no bad times. I don't want to have bad. Three billion streams. It's too many. Three billion is a substantial number of streams. It's a highly conceptual thing that I do not know how to emotionally internalize. Yeah, I don't know if you, yeah, I agree with that. I don't know how, I don't know if you need to. I think 50 people in a room is more personally fulfilling than three billion streams. I really try and be careful what I allow myself to lean into the validation of. Yeah.

Because it, I crave the fuck out of it. Like, I want it so very badly. Feels good. Yeah, it's wonderful. So I think not wanting it seems like too high of a goal. Yeah. That seems unattainable. Yeah.

But wanting it for the right reasons seems like within reach of something I can achieve. So, yeah, like rooting it in creativity. I've learned I have some favorite compliments. Like you're a good listener is one of my favorite compliments that feels validating. Someone being like, you've made me feel like I matter to you. That's a nice validation. And people obviously like working with you. I hope so.

I like working with people. You have a good track record of working with people. We play a team sport. Yeah. In my opinion. Yeah, we do. So I've got some great teammates. That's a good way of looking at it.

Yeah. It looks like a solo sport sometimes. I think outside looking in, but it certainly is not. Yeah. We are very much on teams. We don't really play against anyone, so the sports metaphor somewhat crumbles. I guess you can.

Depending on your genre. Well, you're playing, I think you're kind of playing against yourself. Can I do better? Can I do better? Can I do better? And in certain moments, you're competing with everyone else. Any given week, you're competing on a chart. Any given week you're competing at an award if you're nominated, billing on a festival or you could look at lots of different ways of like a score card and go like, yeah, I guess so. Like there's a competitive nature to humans period that like we have to like if we don't say we're not competitive i don't know like i just think that's not honest i think like we're it's good to be competitive it's a drive that like makes us do

better definitely like who doesn't want to break a record if you get a shot at it most people are going to try so it doesn't mean that that should drive art but in the sense of art being something we track because it's kind of this commercialized thing that people consume. And that's a good thing. That's not a bad thing. That gives us all a job. It's going to be competitive. Like, that's healthy. And I think. Yeah, I wonder how many of those metrics like actually have a real implication to people's lives and not just our ego within our own industry. I don't have an answer to that. But like, for example, the awards, the charts, the streams, like, there's different kinds of streams. Yeah. So, you know, you could have 10 million monthly listeners and a

bunch of records with hundreds of millions of streams and feel real good about it, but people don't buy tickets to your show. Yeah. And there are plenty of artists who don't have any kind of monthly listener account on Spotify that comes anywhere close to some of the bigger streaming, quote-unquote, artists, but are selling way more tickets to their shows. Yeah. So I think there are a bunch of ways to qualify how you are doing and picking the ones that actually matter can really help not, you know, want to quit and not absolutely hate our career. I also think, like, I have my own qualms with just the general quantification or like the gamifying

of platforms like Spotify in general. Yeah. Because there's no fucking reason that you need to see how many monthly listeners your favorite artist has, and there's no fucking reason to see how many streams a song has, in my opinion. You know, there are other platforms where you don't see a stream. You just listen to a song because you fuck with the song. Yeah. I think that's interesting. I agree with that.

I think they're honestly just exploiting a bunch of insecure artists who they know that if I tell a fan, hey, listen to my song on Apple music. Not to like, it's not that I'm endorsing Apple. Listen to my song on X platform. Yeah, whatever. Whatever platform. If that doesn't give you a forward face it, that doesn't give me a plus stream, it doesn't matter to me as much as if I say listen to my song on Spotify, now my stream count goes up

one that matters to me more, but a fan heard the song the same number of times. But like how often our artists are like, go listen to stream my song on Spotify? Because they want to see the numbers go up. Yeah, it's a weird thing. I think you're right. That's very, you know what? That's very, very, I think that's right. I think what I've also learned about in the last few years of my own work in the other

stuff we do is quality streams. Yeah. And quality views. There's a bunch of ways to manipulate. and manufacture, whatever they call it, CPM. There's a bunch of ways to manufacture, streams, views, whatever. I'm not even arguing with the process

of how they do what they do when they do what they do. I'm just saying that, like, for artists that feel hopeless about their measly millions of monthly listeners, like, I'm like, wait a minute, okay, are we, guys, we're not 100,000 monthly listeners, a million monthly listeners, three million monthly listeners,

that is a lot of people celebrating and listening to your music. And likely it's very, very quality. It's a quality group. In fact, I would say the smaller, the fan group, the more quality of the fan group. Like in the sense of their activity, probably. And as the fan group grows,

there's more casual fans, right? So I don't know the sweet spot of the number, but I do know that like I see fan groups of some artists that are very active. Then I see fan groups of artists with lots and lots of like staggering amount of of monthly listeners, but their core fan group is probably the same size as the core fan group of the artists with the smaller monthly listeners. So it's interesting like if we get into the values of like different streams. Yeah. And I don't even want to think about it, but like because I think we would, we could say.

spend like hours trying to dissect it. That to say, I think there is a lot of validation in any number of fans that are listening to your music and what could be perceived as a small number, like 100,000 or a million, which is not to me. Anytime someone has six figures and up of monthly listeners, I take that they're not to say I don't take people with less than that seriously, but it raises an eyebrow for me, especially if it's someone. I've never heard of. Sure. It says something.

There's light there. There's like a real energy there that like I go, oh, damn. I think it's a, especially in live music, you know, and, you know, artists that are making, yeah, it's interesting. So, but three billion streams. Would you rather have a million people hear a song that you really love or a billion people hear a song that you don't really love? That's a good question. Hmm.

I'd rather have a million hear a song I love. Big same. completely agree. I think if you choose option B, you ain't really in this for the art. Yeah, you're in it for something else. And that's okay. There are lots of reasons to build the kind of life you want. Yeah. And hey, if you want to put food on the table for your family by making art that you don't actually love from a creative place, but you just want to make it work. Well, some people have no artistic perspective. They just want to sing and dance, which is totally cool. Like there are truly artists who are like performer first artists like creator second and like I've always kind of respected

that perspective as well because like I don't know what that feels like to like care about the performance I don't give a fuck about the performance I'll go on stage and like I'll think about what I'm wearing maybe and as a band will kind of put together like a show some people care more about the lights. Some people care about the pyro. Some people care about the video. I don't care. I care about making the record. And I care about maybe the album art. I care about the t-shirt designs. I do. I don't design them, but I like, but there's aspects of it I care about. And then there's aspects like, I don't care what the set list is. I really don't. We decide together and then we whatever. But like some people, like performance is their art. Yeah. You know? So I get it.

like the pop stars who didn't write their music. I kind of get it. I have zero judgment for that whatsoever. I admire. Yeah, but it's a different art form. Like I admire the fuck out of all kinds of artists who are not writing their own music. Yeah.

I mean, most of my favorite singers didn't write. The history didn't write their own music. Like Billy Holiday is not writing her own music. Ele Fitzgerald is not writing her own music. Like those are the most iconic, influential artists of the century. Yeah.

It's because those art forms were delineated. So we were talking about it being a team sport. I have no issue with the position of songwriter being a different position than in the position of singer. It's a reasonably new like the last 70 or so years that, you know, the person writing the song was often also the person singing it. If you could choose, okay, write songs for the rest of your life and have incredible success but never perform.

perform and have incredible success but never write. Do I get the ones I've already written? That's a good question. No, you get to choose and either one you'll have great success, but you can't have both. So I can't perform the songs I've already written. I can only perform other people's songs. You have to go back to zero,

and the only path forward is you're performing and it's all songs you didn't write. You got to choose them, but you didn't get to write them. or you get to be the singular path of writing and having incredible success writing for everyone else, but you don't get to perform. And perform. You choose perform.

Yeah. Wow. You love to perform. Yeah, there's so many great songs written. Right. Like, there are so many extraordinary songs. You never get to write again. I know, that'd be very sad.

Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I love writing. But you love performing. Part of why I love performing is because of how much I love writing, but also part of why I love writing is because of how much I love performing. It's a good thing you don't have to do. choose. It's fucking lovely that I don't have to choose. But there are so, I feel like I could put together

a set list of songs other people have written that I would feel represented by. Yeah, I think so. I would choose the writing. Yeah. It's also, I mean, the lifestyle is also quite different. Yeah. And for me, there's something that I experience, even when I write a song that no one will ever hear, which I have a ton of. Well, I don't know how much a ton is, but I probably have 100 songs, 200 songs that no one will ever hear. Same. And I still needed to write them. Yeah, of course.

I couldn't even remember some of them, but I know I needed to write them because the way I felt when I was done writing them, I feel like it's such a relief. Yeah, if I don't write shitty songs, I don't write good songs either. Like, I think of shitty songs

as the manure that the good songs grow in. Yeah. And if I try and think about writing good songs, I get in my head and it never goes anywhere, but if I just create a big pile of shit, then the good song will grow out of it and I just try and make the pile big enough that the good song has the fertile soil to grow.

Yeah. I like that a lot. Yeah. It's good. Do you have a favorite song you've written? It depends on the day. Okay. When I arrived to the mood I was in when I wrote it

and then sort of feel seen by previous me in my current moment. But once I come around a bunch, a song called 25 in Barcelona that I really love, I really like a song called A Little Bit Yours. It's a song called The Good Parts I like a lot. What keeps me from it is a personal favorite. I've been finding that I enjoy songs more that were longer ago because I feel less like I did them.

Right. The more recently I wrote a song, the more it's connected to the self-consciousness of it being of me. And your present life. Yeah. Which is hard to expose for people to pick apart or people to know even. And a song that makes me feel like red in the face is actually a great song.

For sure. But it's it's vulnerable and it's uncomfortable. I don't mind the discomfort of vulnerability. I actually think it's sort of the price of admission for my genre of creativity. Yeah. But you ever like look at a photo the moment it's taken and be like, I hate the way I look in that photo. And then look at the photo a month later and be like, wow, it's a good photo of me. Yeah.

Because you're disconnected from your present self-consciousness. I feel that effect with songs. Like I listen to my first EP. I'm like, wow, like, it doesn't feel like me anymore. I was a different version of me. So I get to listen to it somewhat objectively and be like, wow, I really like that writing. And then I get intimidated. I'm like, wow, did I get worse?

Is my current shit way worse? Fuck, I'm getting worse. Yeah. And then my friends are like, no, like you've grown as a writer. This shit's better. But it's hard for me to look at it that way because I've done it as the version of myself. I currently am. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathearte recourse of

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month in Shopify. coms bar records. Yeah. How often would you say the version

of you changes every three years? Three years sounds about right. Two to three. Sounds about right. I would say the same. Yeah.

I'd probably say me more like three to five. But I think as you get older, it slows, it like goes longer or starts to stretch longer. Say if in my 20s, it would have been every two years. It's been like a little bit different of a person. See, what I've noticed lately is it's not necessarily new ideas. It's new understandings of ideas that I've had for a really long time. It's not some new concept. It's new understandings.

the same concept. Right. Just like it's not new people. It's new dynamics with existing people. That's kind of been my whole shit this year. Is that like less new things, more new approaches to what's there. Yeah. That's like kind of the age you're at. It's like a very like your 30s kind of start to there's an understanding. That's the 20s is like builds that like the 20s. It like the 20s is experience and like the 30s becomes more like of an understanding of like all of it. Yeah, like I felt like the last 12 years, I was accumulating a lot of life. A lot of experience, a lot of art, a lot of people. Now, still lots of accumulation to be done.

I tend to go on all kinds of adventures. I lead with curiosity above all else. But I'm definitely doing more sifting now, more like sifting through. It's like, all right, like, surrounded by a lot. Let me figure out, like, how to really make this mind. Yeah. You were born in D.C.? Yeah.

Is one of your parents in the military or the government? My mom worked for the state department. Oh, wow. Yeah. So you have a real insight into, like, government. Well, she worked for the Spanish department. So she was part of the program that whenever a state department employee was positioned in a Spanish-speaking country, she was part of the school that taught them in both cultural and language literacy. Oh, wow.

My mom grew up in Cuba and spent most of her life in Peru. Wow. That's amazing. Yeah, she was amazing. Yeah. She passed a few years ago. and so much of the best parts of my life have been in pursuit of a continued relationship with her. That's really nice.

It's hard. How long ago did she pass? 2020. Was it sudden? No, she had cancer. I was with her in the hospital when she died. It was right after if the world was ending came out, which I only say because my career really meaningfully took off right after she died.

and grieving in the midst of success. Grieving while my dreams came true was a strange process. Well, yeah, how can you enjoy it? Because, you know, something like that, especially if you were young, I mean, you were 25 or 26, but it's fucking young. Yeah. And I take it you guys were very close.

Oversimplification, yes. Right. She really struggled with addiction for most of my adolescence. and I really resented her for the ways that she opted out of reality with alcohol. But she was getting sober and near the end of her life, her and my relationship got a lot stronger. And I got to know her as the woman in the stories from before I was born. I got to like meet that woman.

Because I always admired her. That just wasn't who I came home from school to. Right. So there was like the concept of my mom. Damn, that's fucking hard, dude. You know, my, I've talked about it on this before, but my dad was an alcoholic. So I relate to that. That's fucking hard, dude.

You know, so many of the best parts of my life I can trace back to growing up with an alcoholic parent. Yeah. It's the thing that would set her off the most when she was like blackout drunk was, if I expressed any sort of emotion to her that like suggested I was upset. Like her drunk brain was like if she realized that she was like upsetting her kid that would like she would break shit or get violent or leave for days. So I was like 11 like making it a game for myself. I was like, well if I can say all the right things and express myself in exactly the right way, we'll end up like on the couch watching The Bachelor. And if I say anything wrong, she will break some glasses and I won't see her for a while.

So I like made it a game for myself. And obviously that was a very emotionally intense scenario. So fast forward to now, I've built my whole career on accurately articulating emotionally intense scenarios in my art. That's crazy, isn't it? Like I've got to think like that's when I developed that skill. A hundred percent you became an expert in your own awareness of what you were saying, what you were doing, how you were saying it and when.

I mean, if we zoomed out and just like without, first of all, you may not feel this way because you lived it. And what we have to do to live with something is we have to accept it as not that bad. Right? Because it's the only way we can live with it. I'm the same way. I had a lot of trauma that I was like, you know what? It wasn't so bad because it made me this and I made me that.

but it's painful to hear right but but it also reminds me a little bit of my but my it was similar in different ways but and i agree with you like i got skills from it so zooming out and looking at like what you if we take all the pain out of it and we just look at like the situational like upside of like having to be to go through that is yes you become almost like an expert on what you're words and how you use them and when and how people respond to them and you become like so in tune with that you become it's it's it's a sharp it's like it's it's it's a tool you sharpened out of survival right but then you grow up and you're like well yeah it makes sense you use words to achieve things yeah is that crazy it is it's it's

Amazing. I think the therapy lingo term for it that I have come to understand is maladaptive. That was a maladaptive skill, but that I've now used for good. But dark side of that, it's now very hard for me to have an unprocessed emotion. Right. Like for me to have an emotion pre-explaining it to myself. Like I don't really know what I'm feeling until I can appropriately articulate it in my own head. Right. which was a safety mechanism. Right. Because having a feeling before I filtered whether it was allowed

was protected you. Was protective. Right. I think that's something that whether it come from trauma, whether it come from an alcoholic or addict parent, or whether it come from just a very, a lot of turmoil in the household, I think that's something that particularly, like,

men struggle with as something that they associate as a strength, but is really can become extremely destructive. because when strength is stoicism and strength is I'm going to show up as my best self and I'm going to hold it down for everyone. I'm going to be a rock. Like what's more masculine than like I'm a fucking rock? Yeah.

Like rocks are not good listeners. Rocks aren't quite good. Period. Like you could use them for a few things. You need a bunch of them to make a wall. Right. But like a rock is cool. but it isn't like, yeah, you're right, it isn't that great.

Yeah, I mean, I think for most of my, like, youth, like, I really, like, actively, like, thought, like, I'm going to be a fucking rock. That's, like, what I was- You might need another hour here. No, that's what I was looking for for a long time. And especially because, like, I got made fun of when I was younger for my more, like, feminine qualities because-so did I. Yeah, because, like, you know, being a singer is cool now.

But, like, being a singer in high school was, like, choir. We're, like, little feminine, like, in our early adolescent stages, we were a late, bloomers. We were a little feminine. We dressed different. We were artistic. So of course, I got picked on for being a little effeminate, like, different guy. Of course. Then we grow up to these cool ass motherfuckers. Right. Out here, like, making a living life out of songs. Yeah. We make fucking songs. We get to buy houses. Yes. So sick. I'm very grateful for that shit. But, yeah, it took, it's like still now. Like now I am finding parts of myself that, feel sincere that I associated for a long time with quote unquote femininity and therefore I like

don't want to have any part of it like I instinctively reject it. And it keeps me from people. Yes. I think you and me both growing up in a home with addiction like a heavy addiction. It was a very present. My mom also struggled. She was something like an enabler or like a codependent, whatever the words are for people who are with like. alcoholics and like rageaholic like my dad was like rageaholic alcoholic fuck um

but the greatest guy everybody loved them and when he wasn't there were levels to rage it didn't just go to rage it was like levels where you're like okay if he could just stop here he'd be the perfect alcoholic

because he was the best but then it always went here like that's how I made sense of it I was like man if he could just not drink past this, it'd be perfect. I blamed my dad. I blamed my dad because he was the man. And it's like, well, if you held it down, then maybe she wouldn't drink so much. I still to this day, like, have such I kind of blame my mom too. It's sad because it wasn't her choice. It wasn't his either. I mean, he was just getting high in the basement. But weed is less destructive than alcohol. Yeah. And he was an

amazing dad, very nurturing. Like, took me to my baseball practices, like, showed up for me, uh, kind of just like put his head down and did what he could. He's a very nurturing guy. Um, my dad's still around and tried his best in that scenario that was like fucked up. My dad's an,

he's an amazing man. And it took me a while to come to terms with, you know, my dad never, um, was very successful financially. Right. So.

Now there was my mom. Yeah. So, and my mom didn't make a lot of money, but made more than my dad. Mm. So now, you know,

I've built a career out of music, and I support my dad. And there's a lot of us that support someone. Like, I support my mom, too. Yeah. Pretty normal. I'm proud of it now, and I have a great relationship with my dad. I love him so much. I look up to him in a lot of ways.

But when I first, you know, was supporting him, like, I a little bit judged him for it. Yeah. I was like, you're a man. You should be able to support yourself. It's normal. And I realized that if it were my mom, if it was my mom, who had been the super present parent, who had taken me to all the practices, who had always been there for me.

And then I was like getting her the house, taking care of her, I would have felt so good about myself. I would have been like I fucking did that shit. But because it was my dad, it felt like a point of shame somehow. Yeah. Which is such like,

that's just misogynistic bullshit. And I realized that that's me just like, internalizing the patriarchy in a way that is not allowing me to see my dad in his full, wonderful self, his personhood. How did you feel good about supporting your mom? Like, I must have felt good. Yeah, no, listen, I think it's, yeah, do I, yes, do I think it's complicated? Yes.

Sure, complicated. Do I think it has anything to do with anything other than the complications of a parent, child? Do I wish I had one parent who I could go to that would give me advice? Yeah. Do I? My dad gives me advice. It's always the same advice. Right, but you'll never respect it. Yeah. Because we leveled up. Yeah. And so if, if, my dad gives me advice, it's always the same advice. Right. But you'll never respect it. Yeah. Because. And so, if we stayed somewhere in and around where they live, what they do. Success and achievement is a real thing. And you are an accomplished guy. Whatever you want to say about that, you don't have to own it, you don't have to accept it, but I will tell you from the outside, if I look at you and I go, okay, he did this, he's done that. I know, I know what you've done in general. You're a successful,

accomplished guy who's on their way to having more success and more accomplishments. So you're going down and the only way you could destroy what you've built is actively you'd have to actively get after it and get a drug habit and start fucking up every chance you get to destroy what you've done and it would probably take you a few years of actively destroying it you wouldn't do that because our natural inclination is to grow and go upwards and especially if we are survivors you had to survive in a household where you were up against what you were up against. Was it harder than a lot of people? Yes. Could we go find someone out there that maybe had it even harder than us? Yes. Plenty. There's a whole spectrum of like adversity, but your adverse situation is extremely,

when I hear you say it, I'm like, ah, it's like the beginning of the movie that we all watch. We're just waiting for things to turn around. We're watching the hero and they're in this horrible situation and it just keeps getting worse and then they turn that corner and they they get their superpower or they get they discover that they can fly that that's where you're at now you found out oh by the way the spider bite made me super powerful supernatural my horrible situation that i thought was the end of me that i thought was so terrible that i hated so much for so long that i look back at with shame with guilt actually made me a superhero doesn't mean I need to accept less than I deserve with love with with my current relationships but I survived that and it didn't kill me it made me

stronger and it made me into what I am it doesn't mean I need to celebrate it says I don't believe in that either I just think that you're naturally inclined to fucking go not to be a drug addict maybe you've struggled with the idea of that somewhere. I did somewhere. Like I was like, am I an alcoholic? And I struggled with myself having success and like loving myself and all that from neglect and all the stuff, you know, that when you come up in households like that, we, you know, we probably have a bag that we could look in and like what's in your bag and what's in my bag. And I could probably pull out a bunch of issues that you have too. But you probably have a couple I don't have and I probably have a couple you don't have. Yeah, probably. But our bags are similar.

Right? Because we had similar. And like your mom passed away, which I'm very sorry about. My dad passed away as well a year before your mom. And we actually had a nice relationship, but was it like chummy? It was it was kind of chummy in the friendship way. As long as we didn't have to go near any of the subjects that were painful, it doesn't mean you can't have this like beautiful idea of your relationship

with your mom even through all the pain. I have a really nice idea of what my dad and my relationship was, even through all his mistakes and all the pain. By the end, we had made like a really nice, we had mended and like made a nice bond. And I feel the same way about my mom who's still alive. Like we have a nice, like I love her and I have a nice idea of what our relationship is, but it's specific to our relationship.

So there's things I get from her and there's things I can't. it from her. Yeah. And I'm just realistic about it. And I, I'm, I guess I'm comfortable sharing it with you because you're, I'm sitting here and I'm like, oh, we have actually like mirrored, very similar experiences. I'm just like 15 years ahead. But it's interesting. You know, I once heard my dad say to a friend of mine who he's known for a really long time, one of my best friends. I don't even remember the context of the conversation. But they were like, taking the piss out of me for something. And my dad goes, like, well, I, I can't really be too hard on JP because I'll threaten losing my allowance.

And it really, it really upset me. Yeah. I don't think I said anything to him in the moment, but like it really stuck with me. I was like, what, what?

Like, one, you think I would, you think I'm petty like that? And two, like, you know. Why frame it like that?

Yeah, really upset me. I'm sure, like, came from a nice place, but, and he didn't think of it like the way I did and it was just a pass and comment, but it,

really stuck with me. So I said, it took me a long time to, like, find the things about my dad that, like, I do really admire because they're there. He is, like, such he will do anything for his friends. Is he Canadian? He's Canadian. He's Canadian. He's very, very, like, small-town Canadian boy. I grew up on a farm. Right. Like, is a sweetheart. Right. And it's very sweet aspect. And, you know, I know he's very proud of me. His, like, his phone background is, like, a picture of me at Madison Square Garden, like, opening for John. And of course he is. I could tell you that as a father myself. And he shows up for everything. And he, and he, and honestly, he, and honestly, he, and honestly, Honestly, like one of the things that I love about my dad in my life is I love seeing what I'm doing through his eyes.

Right. I do enjoy that. Now, I struggle with like listening to him talk about what he wants to do because it's hard for me to believe that it'll ever happen. And then I have to have my inner voice being like, why am I being an internal, like, why is my internal voice like such an asshole to my father? And I hate that. But like also I have to, I don't want to pretend. Like, because then I feel like I'm patronizing you. And lying makes me feel all kinds of stressed and anxious.

So like I don't know how to engage with that. But then I also want to have real conversations with him. And those real conversations will be him talking about things that I don't believe. You don't believe or real. Do you want to know what I think? Mm-hmm. I do. I think growing up in a house where someone is actively being dishonest addiction,

takes dishonesty to survive in addiction. So we all have to be a little dishonest. Like we all have to pretend a little bit. By the way, a lot of people can relate to this. Everybody listening, I guarantee you, can relate to what you're feeling. So when you say something about your dad, I relate to it. Because I've never quite been able to articulate some of the things I feel about my mom because we grew up in a house where there was an alcoholic and all of us had to pretend.

Everything's okay. We think's okay. We're all right. It's like very like, when's the next episode going to happen? and we start to like get really good at our words and at our, you know, how we move. And then what do we become? Lead singers.

It's interesting. Yeah, the pretending. Like my, we had a code word. If I got home and my mom was already completely blackout drunk, my dad would say the word Aruba. And that meant that like steer the fuck clear. Get the fuck out. Yeah, steer clear.

And the reason the code word was Aruba was because one time when I was like, five years old, we were on a family vacation in Aruba, and she, like, left me in a casino at, like, a different hotel because she got too drunk and came back to the hotel. And my dad is like, where's JP? I think I'm, like, five or six years old. Like, where's JP?

And she's like, I don't know. Like, she was completely, completely trashed. And I think, like, we had gotten in a quote-unquote fight, although I used to term fight usually because I'm a child. You're a little child. And I, but I made my way back. Like, I don't know. however many hours later.

But like it became like a game. Like we used reference of that moment as like a game, which thinking back is pretty fucked. Yeah, it's fucked because you are a sane person who's built a sane life in an insane business. But almost kind of makes us more able to deal with this insane business because we had insane households. Totally.

But you also as an older, as a grown-up, you see a five-year-old and you go like, you know, you were not equipped to deal with any of that and you shouldn't have had to. No. And you didn't choose any of that and any like the idea that like you guys had a had a, we had similar things. Like so to think that you guys had a code word, it's hard to acknowledge how painful that is because you had to live through it. And in order to live through it, you had to stuff the pain down and go, it's actually not that painful. There's worse. I can take more pain.

I actually can do. And then you also have to reconcile your love for your mother. Right. It's different. It's like it's so, so it's very hard to even talk about I find when I can't explain it perfectly to everyone. I still feel guilty speaking ill of her. Right.

Because I really, I admire her. She was an amazing woman. And you love her. I do. So there's aspects of her. That's the problem. That's the complicated like thing.

I feel bad when I tell the truth of my mom and dad. Because I love them. But the truth is the truth. And then there's what we had to live through to survive. And then the story we made it to ourselves to live with it. Otherwise, we would be drug addicts ourselves. We wouldn't want to be in reality. We wouldn't want to live in reality if we had to like recount the trauma and all the bad

things because I know when you tell me at the very top line, if you just tell me the top line, because we're really just brushing on top line here. We're not going into the depths. If you wrote a book and you recounted the details of the first 10 years of your life, those remember so little of it. But if you went in and you really, if you watched the movie. But yeah. You had video footage and you watched it and you, the details are pretty gruesome

in the sense of like if I compared it to my kid's life, they have two parents who are trying really hard to raise them. neither one of us have drug problems, neither one of us put anything before our parenting, and it's a much different reality. It's beautiful. It is, and it's nice to be able to give that to someone. And I can say, thankfully, the only reason I know what I'm doing as a parent is I'm doing the opposite of what my parents did.

I mean, maybe the reason that you're able to look at someone doing something that you see as harmful and graciously look for why they are doing it and where they're coming from is because you have a lot of practice. Yeah. Looking at someone you love doing something that harms you. Harm me straight up. And thinking about why they are doing it and why they got to a place to harm you

and then showing them that grace anyway. And being passive. Yeah. Which is good sometimes and bad sometimes. Why would we like cover ourselves with tattoos? Well, I don't know. Like there's a lot of theories of like wanting to feel or wanting to hide or whatever.

But the crazy parallel of our family lives It's interesting because the story with your mother ended sadly, but well. Seems like you loved her. Yeah. I mean, the end of her life, we were building a different kind of relationship. And honestly, mourning my mom is more about mourning the relationship I thought we could have had than the relationship we did. That's exactly what I got to through some work.

I thought I was so sad about losing my dad. But what I realized was the grief was for what we never got to. to have. Right. The loss of the childhood, the loss of like what I've gotten to experience with my own son, which is like a real bond. Yeah. Like it's amazing. You know, something that has been really healing for me late is the realization that I can still not only foster my relationship with my mom, but actually build my relationship with my mom. Like my relationship with her can grow without her. Yeah. Because I still know her. Like I really have a strong concept of who she was and what she loved and what made her happy and what she pursued and where she was the most curious. And I can, I have found,

you know, I said earlier, like some of the best parts of my life I have found in looking for my relationship with my mom still. I went, I wrote my second album in Columbia. I learned Spanish. You know, I went to Peru. I got to meet my madrina. My mom's best friend is my godmother. Madrina means godmother in Spanish. And I got to hear stories about my mom in her 20s in Spanish from my Medina. Like, that was so special. And, you know, learning a language, exploring different parts of the world. Like, I feel like I'm connecting with her in where she is in me. Yeah, and who she was in those times in her life where maybe she was a version of her

that you never got to meet. Also, the relationship becomes spiritual. So it goes from physical to spiritual, which spiritual is a higher vibration, period. The highest vibration you can have is spiritual. and it's like enlightenment, that's the highest, the people who vibrated on the planet, the highest were all spiritual teachers who found enlightenment.

Now, people have taken that and turned it into these like indoctrination of certain ideas, right? But actually those people were like peace leaders. They were leading people towards compassion and peace. Jesus, the person, one of my favorite historical figures. The idea of... I love him so very much. I'm so here for essentially all of them.

it. I admire it. Right, but people who weaponize it. Totally different. It's different. So what I'm saying is, is like, we actually get to touch that enlightenment in a way when our real relationship with someone, even like with my dad or your mom, I found the same thing. When my dad passed away, I actually felt like our relationship started. Like I actually feel like what we had was we were trying to have a relationship, but there was a block. And that might have been physical. And then when he passed away is the first time in my life. I would say it's the most spiritual experience I've ever had was actually feeling him and a relationship with him that I couldn't identify.

And over time, I realized like it's spiritual. And it's something like in light. One of us was enlightened, likely him because he transitioned. But it also could be enlightenment he gave me by transitioning and going through that painful you know, the scary part of life, it gave me like this weird peace and like our relationship healed completely because I was not angry at him. I was grieving and I think it was something like grieving for what we didn't get to have here. But like I would say like from that point on to now, still, I still feel like I have this like, that's probably why I'm able to talk about him in such

like a real way. But also like there's a lot I remember about him that I always kind of remember was really good about him. And I think a lot of aspects of me were like him. He was like a fucking awesome guy. And I look at myself and I'm like, what, what were the, what were the parts of him that you feel like you are,

that you love about him? He was, he loved everybody. He was like, come on, man. If people got to, if there was an argument about something that didn't matter, like he was,

he was very much like, he loved everybody. He didn't have a problem with it. The things, he didn't love were very much in line with it he didn't like hate he wasn't he wasn't with racism he wasn't with hate but he was open to everybody like there was no religion or political or race or any he didn't care about anybody's anything any labels you want to give somebody and he worked really hard and i worked really hard and he was helpful so if he saw an opportunity to help someone he'd

help him i've done the same way if i if i can help somebody um i'll go out of of my way. Yeah. Um, and he, and he was, he was, he was, he was a, he was a, he was a tough guy. You know, he worked really hard and he wasn't afraid of anything. He would, he would, he would, figure it out. Yeah. So at his best, he was a really charming, uh, cool, fun guy, which that's what I am. Yeah. You know, I find, um, my, the version of my mom that I hold on to now is probably not who my mom was in her entirety. But I'm okay with that. Yeah.

I'm okay with my version of her not being entirely accurate or at least not entirely full. Because, you know, the version of the people we love that we lose that we get to hold on to, like isn't burdened by their humanity. Their physical, like life. Yeah, like I've removed a lot of her flaws. That's in my version of her. But you earned that. But you earn that.

No, but you earn that. Yeah. You deserve that. It's yours. That's the part of her. I want to connect with, like the part of her that was adventurous and curious and spoke six languages and wanted to learn about everyone's culture and, you know, was like this, this Latin woman trapped in a Hungarian woman's body.

And it was the child of Holocaust survivors and had this extraordinary life and so did her parents. But her parents fucked her up. But I admire my grandparents and I don't have trauma from them. My mom does. Right. And now my trauma from her is probably a direct result of her trauma from them. Exactly.

Exactly. My dad, my dad's dad was a World War II vet. He fucked him up. Yeah. But I see him as a hero. I see him as a, as a, you know what I mean? So it's exactly, it's so, it's so parallel. Like my grandfather, my maternal grandfather is my hero. Right. Right. He was a cellist, survived the Holocaust. Um, he, his both of his brothers were killed in concentration camps. Wow. And he had a life in music. Like, he was my example of what it means to live a life in music. He was in classical music and very different. He was in classical music and very different. He was, he was in music. He was in classical music and very different. He was. He was. He was, world, but still, like he, he made the idea of I'm gonna pursue music not seem totally insane. Yeah. Cause he did it. But he's also, you know, the person who, when my mom was like, during 60s hippie era, like experimenting with like LSD and shit and like on her peace and love, like he would like put her in an asylum. Mm. Like one of those like really scary like asylums where they were trying to like completely break you down to your core and then build up a new, like super, super twisted shit. Trauma. And he did. that to her. But he's my hero. Like, you know, we all contain multitudes. Yeah, well, yeah, my granddad

would have, you know, he had PTSD. He came from the, you know, the war, um, and would, uh, beat the shit out of my dad. My dad didn't beat the shit out of me. Right. There was levels to how bad things were. But yet he was a hero. He was a, he was a vet. He was a hero. And so like all things, the truth is so complicated, but your right is that you were, the mother that you remember, you decide what parts of the story to tell. Yeah. Because that's part of honoring our, we are standing on their shoulders, regardless of their flaws, regardless of what they did to us.

Shaky, the shoulders may be. Yeah. And somehow, some way, we gained something and they did their job. So much, yeah. Like, they did their. job. Their job was to put us on this planet and some people do a better job in one area or another when it's all said and done. My mom, your dad, your mom, my dad, we are standing on their shoulders for better or worse, flaws in all. And what the story we tell of them has to be one that we,

especially us being songwriters, we have to romanticize the parts and accent the parts that we think are the most important, and the rest we can discard. As long as we go, the only thing I'll say is the work I've done, the inner work I've done has been healing. And those parts I had to address. But once I got through accepting the pain of things, I didn't want to, I didn't even want to, like, think about, I could let them go. And I can remember my dad how I want to remember him. And he deserves it. There's certainly like, I don't think he did anything with ill intentions. I don't think he was trying to actively, like, hurt us. I think he was, he could never beat that thing.

Yeah, I mean, I feel the same way about my mom. She was never trying to actively hurt me in any way. She was trying to escape herself. Her own pain. And I was a, I was caught, yeah, I was caught in the crossfire of her trying to escape herself because alcoholism was a way of escaping. And the memory of her is not trying to escape anything. So I don't have to consider that.

And at her best, it is that memory. At her best, she loved you, like, more than anything. The last thing she ever said to me was literally that. The last thing she ever said to me was, I love you more than anything in the world. I was walking out of the hospital room. I was with her after this, but she was not conscious anymore. But the last words that I think her last words were I was the last person

to leave the hospital the night before she died and I'm walking out. And I was like, I love you, mom. And then she doesn't answer because she's like totally out of it. And I just kind of jokingly. I was like, hey, I love you, mom. Say it back. She, like, wakes out for a moment. She goes, I love you more than anything in the world.

And then close her eyes and, like, died maybe 12 hours after that. Because she did. No, I believed her. Yeah. I believe her. You mentioned the work you had done to grow through that. Like, if you don't mind. I'm curious, like, what is that work?

I love that you ask that because it's, like, my favorite thing in the world. One is therapy, just relentless. I would say my therapist is something like he is a clinician. He is like a clinical psychologist and probably a psychiatrist and probably everything else because he's very learned person. But he's also like a Kung Fu master and he's interested in a lot of things. So I would say he has a very kind of like work-based approach to like every aspect of life. not just, yes, we go back and we figure out trauma and we actively try to heal,

but we also like are talking about my everyday work, family, marriage. So we're dealing in the now, but we're also going back and like working on things. So I love therapeutic work. I needed it extreme. I really needed it. And then I found through that all these other areas of my life started kind of of emerging as important like my physical health. So I see that as therapy.

I see working out and eating right and all that is part of my therapy. It's part of my work. Like my own physical like relationship with myself has never, hasn't always been healthy, but now I'd say at this stage in my life, it's one thing that I really address all the time as like important, just like therapy.

And then I like, I'm on a constant quest for information and ideas that promote well-being and growth and like healing. So constantly like reading books and listening to books and looking for like more ideas around like personal growth. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say I'm hyper focused on it though.

Maybe it isn't great all the time to be that way because then you probably overanalyze things sometimes and over. But for me I needed it and I always, I think it's a good thing. Yeah. I mean, even the best things for us, you can't do them perfectly. Yeah, or are too much. I have a friend who, like, I'm into all of that stuff as well. Do you do therapy?

Yeah. Good. And she's having to constantly remind herself that she's not a project. But I don't know, I feel like if you're an ambitious person, if you're a curious person, like why not treat self-understanding as just another one of the things that you are pursuing, like anything else you do in your life? That's a good way of putting it. I absolutely look at myself like a project.

Yeah, I think it's nice. and I'm a little too work focused sometimes where it can get in the way of like sometimes my wife is like, yo, like chill, we don't need to talk about how we feel right now. That's, I mean, but like how many, how many wives in the world would love to have the opportunity to say that to their husband? It's great because we have a balance, right?

Because like, I'll, you would imagine, you would see me and Nicole and you'd be like, oh, she's the one who's probably asking how you feel. I'm the one who's coming in heavy with the, how do you feel about that? How does that make you feel? And sometimes I'm not. Like sometimes I'll go dark and I'll go,

I'll revert back to some like old thing that I got, that I'm still working on or whatever. But like she's very, she's so naturally who she is. She's working on herself too, but it's like a different way. Like it's more natural. Like she just is very organic.

It's just, she just is natural. naturally herself. And she's been through stuff, but she's just got a much more natural. Like me, I'm like, force, force, force. Something my girlfriend has helped me understand is that my ability to articulate

my emotional fuckery has superseded my ability to navigate my emotional fuckery. Yeah, that's a good thing to realize. And she's called me out on that shit. She's smart. She's very smart. Because, you know, she spends enough time with me and she knows me intimately enough to know that just because I can understand what I'm dealing

with does not mean I have figured out how to deal with it. Right. Or that you're even dealing with it. Yo, sometimes I use the ability to articulate what I should be dealing with as a way to just like cheat code myself to not even have to deal with it. I'm like, oh, I'm aware of it. Like self-aware is the is the finish line, not the growth. Right. I'm aware. Moving on. Oh, I've already dealt with it because I'm aware. Especially if you put it in your art, you're like, Not only am I aware of it, I made money off of the song I wrote about it, so it's handled. Exactly. Yeah, I worked it out.

It's resolved. Done. Not going to bother me anymore. I put dead mom in a song, so we're not dealing with any dead mom trauma. Yeah. God. That's pretty, that's actually very, very big to, to like, recognize and be able to, like, actually just know it's there.

And know that about yourself, like, you grew up in one of your survival. tools is like talking to make things the way they needed to be straight up out of survival, right? Whether it's like communicating with your dad in a secret code language or it's communicating with your mom to like avoid this or that. Like there's like a genius to it a little bit. Like you learn at a young age how to like communicate. And so of course as an adult you're going to have like probably like a superior ability to communicate and talk your way around anything, including talking yourself in and out of things without. You know, I have to be so careful about that shit.

Like I have to constantly ask myself, is this actually a good idea for me to do? Or have I just explained it to myself very convincingly? Yeah. Like I, sometimes I can't tell. Because in most scenarios, if I'm making an A or B decision, like, I could make a convincing case for A or B. Right. And the whole trust your gut thing, like which one? Yeah.

Like there's at any given time, like 10 to 15 different intuitions going off simultaneously. Yeah. And which intuition is truth and which is fear? Hard to tell. And in relationship to what? Right. Because it's a personality. thing with when you're growing up in a home with somebody who's got personality disorder essentially

like that's alcoholism can be like you're dealing with three different four different five different people depending on which kind of drunk they are any given day this is not just sober and drunk there's different kinds of drunk yeah and you don't realize that you're you're relating to like different you know my mom struggle with some mental health stuff um that yeah you learn how to like be different people and it's not just two different people. Totally. It's like five different people. Because you want to fit into whatever we'll create peace.

Yeah. Growing up, like the goal was shit is chill. I can, whoever I need to be for shit to be chill, like chill before honest always. Yeah. Honest is a risk. Chill I can finesse. So now, I mean, 31 year old man, like to this day, like my, if I don't check myself, my goal in most scenarios, especially with people I love in close scenarios, is who do I need to be to

keep shit chill? Right. To not have conflict. Yeah. Yeah. I'm similar. Very, very conflict diverse. I've been working on that actively. Yeah. Sometimes I like, like, okay, I'm like, overdo it. Right. Sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm leaning into the conflict. I'm leaning into the conflict. Oh, to stop. Way too much. Let's fight. Like, that was too much. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Because I don't know where the healthy is like, oh, I need to be sincere, but I also need to, I want to accommodate other people's emotions. I also like usually can understand where someone's coming from. And if I can understand where they're coming from, does that mean I have to accommodate where they're coming from?

I think it's really easy in relationships often to misunderstand. It's been easy for me to misunderstand the ability to understand where someone is coming from versus the responsibility to then accommodate that thing. Like, oh, I get why you're doing that. And therefore, I'm going to just like acquiesce. I'm going to deal with it however I need to. But just because, you know what the words I'm looking for is, just because you understand it doesn't mean you have to accept it.

Right. You can separate what you. You do after you understand it. Yeah. To me, if I, if I can understand it, means I have to accept it because I know what's coming from. That I'm really working on. It's a good thing to work on. I think that you're ahead of the game, though.

Thanks. I would say, like, where you're at, even just your age is where I was when I started therapy. And I think you've probably been in it a little longer than this. You've probably been in a few years now. I mean, I started it so I could tell women I was in therapy. Right. Because it just, like, felt sexy. Yeah.

Like, I really wanted to, like. He's working on the girl. Give green flag. But then you got into a long-term relationship. Yeah, I haven't been to therapy in a while. How long have you been with your girlfriend? Just over a year. Oh, that's good.

Starting to get to that point where you're like, oh, okay, it's sticking a little. Might work. We like her a lot. That's good. Where's she from? Toronto. Oh. I'm about New York, but she's Toronto.

I've never felt so allowed to say the wrong thing and take it back. Yeah. Like, she really, she interprets me very generously. I try and extend to her the same. I would say the same thing about my wife. She's very gracious with my, like, I can take stuff back. That's so huge in relationships. Like to be able to, like, say the wrong thing and take it back and have someone to be like,

oh, that's not what you meant? Okay. Yeah. And even just like, she really means it. Yeah. Like if I say, hey, coming back in the room here, can I take that back? Yeah. And she's like, yeah, you can.

And then I'll be like, okay, I'm sorry. What I really meant to say was this. And then we actually probably the success of our relationship for 18 years is probably that right there is a grace to have like someone who doesn't really know how to have any conflict at all. Because I was terrible at it too. I had two speeds. Withdraw or go over the top. And it's like there's no in between of like trying to understand. Big same.

You know? Big same. Like go all the way over the top or completely withdrawn. And we're not talking about it. and I'm never you know so um to have someone who's like patient where I can go hey can I get a do do over she's like yeah you can even if she's her feelings are hurt and she's mad at me she'll be like yeah you can and I'll be like okay I would like a do over she's like okay that is probably the success of our relationship yeah that's amazing yeah the whole most generous interpretation thing too

is really nice yeah in my current relationship like not it's not seeing what your partner does through the lens of your own insecurities. Yeah. Like seeing what your partner does through the lens of this is someone I love and they mean me no harm and they only want to take care of me and love me and see me. Exactly.

So if I'm interpreting what they're doing as to me, not that, let me check on myself a little bit. Like she's so good at that. She's grounded and she just knows herself and it's been fun to love her. I like doing it. That's great. I'm looking forward to continuing.

Takes a few tries to get to that place in your life where you're like, wow, I could actually have a decent, healthy relationship with someone who there's room here. I always thought I had more work to do on myself, but she works on herself and she's, you know, it's both of us, but I think it's nice when you get to that, like, place. So do your fans know how much shit you've been through? And when I say that, it makes it sound like it's negative. I'm not saying, so I'm not like summing your life up, but I'm saying, like, it's, your story is like,

I know because mine's similar. And I only know now how if I wrote a book and you read it, you'd be like, fuck. That beginning of the book, fuck, bro. Like, it's fucked up. Like, how did you survive that? You're like, I just did. But I'm careful to say it because I don't want to disrespect my parents because I love them. And I don't want people, I don't want people to remember my parents in a way that makes them

look bad because there were aspects of it that I still hold dear. but all I'm saying is, I guess, do your people and do your fans know, like, what we've talked about? Do they know, like, what you've been through? In detail, probably not, but I would guess, and this might just be my inclination to discredit my own shit talking, but I would guess if you put me in a huge room with the, everyone who's listening to my music, I'd probably, and like, and you were to arrange us by traumatic childhood, I'd probably right around the middle. Right. I mean, from the squad that I've met around the world, like, everyone's gone through some shit.

Yeah. I think it's whether consciously or not, part of the reason that we've been drawn to one another. Right. I think people are coming to the concert because they are overthinkers and overfeelers at the same time. And I think you likely arrive at the... I have too many feelings and then too many thoughts about those feelings. I'm not the analytical or the hyper-emotional. I'm somehow both, and it's exhausting.

I think that's kind of the demo. And I think you likely arrive at that because of some shit that you've gone through. So to answer your question, are they aware of it? To some degree, yes, I've written about some of it. I've never like gone into it super in depth. I'm starting to do a little bit more because it feels like part of my own healing process to be more communicative about those things. Well, you don't lead with it.

I don't lead with it because I genuinely don't feel like I've gone through more than the average person listen to my music. I think it's probably right in the middle. Right. Like, I mean, I'm sure you've had plenty of experience with, you know, you meet fans at shows and you get told really personal stories. Yeah. Which is beautiful and I'm grateful for that. And I think it's very human. Yeah.

And, you know, I've shared a lot about myself, you know, through my heart. So when people are meeting me for the first time, they want to share back. And I love that. And any given Tuesday night at a concert in Madison, Wisconsin, I'm going to hear a story that is far more intense than anything I've experienced. And it happens every night. And in those moments, I'm grateful for my shit because I get, I get to show up for them in an understanding way. It's, I like, I know how to share that space with them. Well, I talk about my mom, like, not a lot, but like, I do talk about her.

I've talked about her in a song. Maybe she's come up in a couple songs. There's only one, like, about her, but she's a character in different songs. But post it on social media about her a few times. So people want to tell me stories about the family members they've lost. And there's such, there's community in that. You know, something I'm excited about with this new collection of music is, you know, the shit you talk about in your songs is the shit people talk to you about.

If I write about a heartbreak, people tell me their heartbreak stories. If I write about love, people tell me their love stories. If I write about my mom, et cetera, et cetera. In this album is my like prompt for myself going into writing this album was who am I without who I'm trying to be for someone else. Which based on our conversation, a lot of the me trying to be someone for someone else, which is me trying to keep shit chill. Yeah.

And I'm excited for the conversations that come from songs about my relationship with myself. Yeah. Because nothing's more intimate than that. You know, songs about my relationship with my masculinity, with my grief, with my, who am I apart from who I thought I was supposed to be?

And what's my responsibility to a previous version of myself's idea of who I was going to become? Like, all that shit. I'm excited to see what those conversations turned into. It's very, you have a very, like, intellectual side to your, to your music. I was looking at, is there already a single out?

First one came out, the second one comes out this Friday. Right. I don't know when this is airing. Smartphone make me dumb, a single number two. I like that. Smartphone make me dumb, I like it too. It does feel like they make us dumb, doesn't it? Yes.

Like we become dumber. So fucking dumb. Brain mushing material. Yeah. But you have two EPs. Yeah, the album is in two parts. Okay, that's cool. I like that.

Yeah, it's like a little bit because I don't trust anyone's attention span, myself included. Yeah. Like, I love those songs so fucking much, and I can't listen to all 15 of them. Right. You split them up. I think that's smart. It's more fun. Way more fun.

Yeah. It's a, it's a course album. Yeah. It's a, you know, it's pretentious. It's like a tasting menu. And do you like them both equally? No. I like the second one more.

You're like the second one. So you're releasing the first one. I like the first one. But you like the second one more. Uh-huh. That's funny. I mean, don't even know. I love the first one.

Right. But my current favorite songs are in the second one. Okay. Are they just later? You just did them later? Yeah. Okay. Exactly.

Right. I don't know. The first one is like, if I were to summarize, the first one is me articulating the fuckery. And the second one is me trying to navigate it. Right. Like there's no answers on the first one. The first one is just like me is the awareness.

There's a little bit of an effort made at understanding on the second one. So it feels a little bit more healing, which is my vibe at the moment. That's good. Where you're at with these EPs, do you feel like you've arrived in your own? own like artist development's a funny thing right we we start and we release music it's pretty honest it's like we release where we're at the time do you feel like you've arrived as an artist

to a place where you feel like you have fully realized your um your sound yeah fuck no um okay that's good i was watching that's kind of exciting to hear that actually there's a cellist named pablo casals who was like a innovator of the cello and he did an interview at 90 years old and he was at that point already the most famous cellist like objectively considered the best ever he did an interview at 90 years old the interviewer asked him you know i know you still practice every day why do you still practice every day and he goes i think i'm still making progress i love that um you know i almost named my album jonathan well the the first album the first half i almost named percy those are that's the j and the p and then i who your friends call you jp truly

No one calls me Jonathan. Okay. I liked the symbolism of, you know, those are the names before I was who I was. Those are like, it's my identity pre me deciding my identity. Right. I liked that symbolism. And then I became quite terrified at the self-titled album

as giving the art a name of me rather than the name of the art. Right. So then I changed it. Also, it might people calling you by a name, you don't want to be called by. Being called Jonathan would have sucked. That's like for the doctors only.

But yeah, I think like a self-title album scary because it's like, this isn't my identity. This is me making something from my own experience. But I don't know when experiences becomes identity is a larger question. But now the first one's called articulate excuses. And the second one's called Make Yourself at Home. That's cool. I like it too. It explains too what you said.

Yeah. And I like Make Yourself at Home as a phrase because in the song I repeated a bunch of times. You know, when you say a phrase a bunch of times, you start like over it starts sounding like a different thing. Yeah. So make yourself at home, obviously first read the phrase someone walks into your home. Make yourself at home. But also you put a little space between word two and word three and you get make yourself at home. Yeah.

The show that we're trying to make here that I'm always trying to make is actually more just about people being who they are and people listening who are going through real life. Like they're out there living their lives, driving in their car to the job they may not like or to some opportunity they're scared they might not get. or they're raising kids and it feels like it's too fucking hard because it's expensive and they're just making ends meet or they're in a relationship with someone who doesn't they don't feel like treats them well like everybody's up against some different problem and so what i see over here is a success story of someone who went through something hard whether you want to believe it was hard

for your own you know you have to live your life by telling yourself whatever you have to tell yourself to survive. I'm telling you as a person who is sitting across from you as a peer, if we're just talking about music, you've succeeded. To know what you succeeded despite makes it that much more inspiring to me and interesting to me to go, God damn, this kid fucking really got out there in the world and did something with himself. I feel like after talking to you, I just really have a different insight. in a real way of like this of you as a person and your music. And it makes me number one really proud of you.

Thank you. And happy for your success. Thank you. Because you've had to work really hard to get to where you're at. Hey, well, I very much appreciate you letting me kick it with you all this time. And I appreciate the purpose that you bring to doing this show with wanting fans to have an experience with the real person who's making the songs that they like because I think like you said it changes the way you experience the song and I hope anyone listening to this who whether they haven't heard my music or hearing it

and maybe they'll take something from your like bag and like that they relate to and then it'll help them get through some stuff in their life that just feels tough that would be lovely some relief from the tough aspects of life which are there okay so the record is uh March and April? Part 1, April, part 2 June. Okay. I won April, part 2 June. Congrats, man.

Thank you. Are you still writing with other people and writing songs? All the time. Okay, cool. I love telling other people's stories with them. Yeah. It's like different characters. Do you have any, like, songs coming out with other people?

I hope so. Yeah. I mean, honestly, because I was touring for like a year and a half, it's been a sex since I had, like, the last two things that I was, like, super proud of that came up with other artists were the Sabrina Carpenter album in the Lewis Capaldi last Louis Capaldi. I love Lewis Capaldi. Me too.

Your song Wish You the Best. Yeah. We did that one together. Oh, wow. I love that song. He's dope. Yeah, honestly, I wanted, it was, we wrote it the day we met, and I've always been such a fan of his voice.

Yeah, he's, he's a motherfuckerging anything in the world. So I was just like, what's the kind of melody that I would love to write, but, like, don't think I could necessarily sing and, like, just see if he can body it. And he certainly did. I love Lewis Capaldi. Yeah. What a sweetheart. I've never met him.

I just, like, am a fan of his music. You would have fun with him here. I bet. Yeah. He seems like such a cool guy. He's friends with someone I'm friends with too. I'm trying to think of who it is. They said he's awesome too.

They said the same thing. It's very hard to say anything negative about him. Yeah. He's annoyingly wonderful. Right. I like Sabrina Carpenter too. She's cool. She's very cool.

Our house is a big fan. My wife and my daughter both really like her. I wrote a lot of the songs that made no money. That's fine. Yeah, like we did eight, eight, nine songs on the last album. Maybe some of our favorite songs, though. It's always like that. Your favorite songs.

is the one that ain't making money, but... I love them. And also, it's like fans usually like those songs, too. Sabrina's a brilliant songwriter. She was fun to work with. That's cool. She was down for the weird shit. That's great, man.

Congratulations. Thank you. I'm so impressed. I appreciate that so much. It's so cool. Thanks for coming and sitting here and spending all this time. Thanks for making it work. I'll go back to New York tomorrow, so this was ideal.

Do you live in New York? Currently, but I'm coming back. Awesome. Thanks, J.P. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it, man. My pleasure. All right.

Thank you. you for listening to Artist Friendly. We really appreciate it. If you like the show, you can also follow us on Spotify. You can follow us on Instagram at Artist. Friendly. And you can watch us on YouTube and Veeps. Leave comments. I always read them. See you next time.