Garza Podcast - 33: Johnny Crowder | PRISON, Cope Notes

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

Johnny Crowder is the singer for Prison and founder & CEO of Cope Notes. We go deep into mental health, why the metal scene gets stagnant and much more. SPONSORS: distrokid.com/vip/garza 30% OFF! emgpickups.com Promo Code: Heavy 15% OFF!

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Just hit over to distroKid.com slash VIP slash Garza to get 30% off your entire membership. That's distroKid.com slash VIP slash Garza to get it. 30% off. Dude, dude. This is hard. You can get it. Welcome, Johnny. This looks amazing.

Thanks, man. I can't believe what you've done with this place. This is so cool. This tour? Yeah. Dallas got a kick last tour. It was like the actual OG line. Look at five finger all the way at the ball.

Yeah, they were... And the red cord. You guys are... That's where I really got to meet you guys. Wow. at the corn tour. That's insane, dude. Direct support for corn. What? You ever signed Paul Gray?

Oh yeah, so the cameras can't see it, but that was a 2008 NAM. He was doing his signing at the Ivan's booth. I think my first time ever meeting a person in the band that I loved. And he signed it. He was super cool. Got a

signed picture. And then obviously, unfortunately when Paul Gray died, I was like, damn, I have that picture that he signed and I found it. I'm like, damn, This is like, this means something more. Oh, yeah. Now this simple picture I didn't think about when I was a little kid. Now this is everything.

Wow. The sign. So, when I was, I want to say 16, maybe 14, yeah. I met Nick Thompson from Slipknot. But it was at one of those guitar center things where you like wait in line. It was in Florida. They must have been playing close or something.

And it was like he was launching. I think he had like the signature. or Abenez or something that he was launching. I can't remember exactly what it was. This was like 15 years ago. And I was in line to meet him so nervous the whole time because this was like, you know, the freaking dude. Mick Thompson was always like the biggest member of Slipknot to me.

Because I grew up playing guitar. So in my mind, like Mick was the star of Slipknot, you know? And so I'm in line to meet him, nervous for like a whole hour. And then the line's moving really slow. I finally get to the front. And I'm like, this guy is massive. People don't understand how large Nick Thompson is as a person. So I'm this like little pimply teenager meeting one of my favorite guitarists.

And I'm like standing next to him and he goes to shake my hand. And I have at this time debilitating OCD. So I'm a huge germaphobe. I cannot shake his hand. I can't touch hands. So I reach out my fist for a fist bump. and he like doubles down. He's like, shake my hand.

He's wearing his mask and stuff in his jumpsuit. He's like, shake my hand. And I'm like, I can't. Can you please fistpump me? And he goes, be a man and shake my hand. And I was mortified. And keep in mind, there's like a photographer there who's like taking photos of everybody.

Yeah. And the photographer's like, is Mick about to like stomp this little teenager? And it was one of the most awkward exchanges ever. And every time I watch Slipknot, live every single time, I'm like, oh yeah, he's larger than life. And also, he almost crushed me like a soda can. Oh, my goodness.

I was so nervous, bro. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And it would take too long to explain, like, imagine if I was like, so I'm diagnosed with something called obsessive compulsive disorder and I can walk you through some of what that looks like in my daily life. Like, there's a line of kids behind me. Yeah. So I'm like, okay, sorry.

Dang, dude. How did that... So you... Did you fist pump him? Did he... What do you do? He refused to fist bump me. And that was it.

I refused to shake his hands who were kind of at an impasse. And then the photographer person was like, okay, go. So the next person came home in, I'm like, dang, I blew it. That must have been such like a physical sight because he's so tall and massive. You're like smaller than... Well, overall, it's shorter than Mick Thompson. That's been like such a sight to see, man. I felt so stupid.

And I actually waited around afterwards. I kind of like loitered around to see if I would see him again, like have a second chance, like a round two to kind of like make up for my first chance. And I kind of waited for the line to die down. And then he was like escorted away by somebody and I never got a chance. But I don't even know what my plan was to go up and be like, hey, sorry that happened. Sorry that was awkward. I love you. Dude, I actually remember the first time I ever,

do you remember that band Thick as Blood? Mm-mm. No. So there was this band from Florida called Thick as Blood, I think, I can't remember who they were assigned to. But I remember at the time, this was when I first started playing shows, my OCD was still really bad at the time.

And the singer of Thicka's Blood wore gloves, and one day we were playing with them. It was one of our first shows supporting a pretty significantly bigger band. I had their posters on my wall and stuff. So it was our chance to support them. I'm setting up our merch table. They're setting up their merch table

and I look over and the vocalist is there and I'm like, okay, I'm a vocalist, he's a vocalist. I think we were a direct support that show and I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to start a conversation. So I was like, hey, I noticed that you wear gloves when you perform what's that about? And he said

I actually just have OCD and I was like what? And I kid you not I just start word vomiting. I'm just like oh dude I grew up with OCD and I can't touch doorknobs and I can't touch my food and I can't touch other people and I can't step on cracks and I can't sit near windows and I just start telling

him everything about me like I was I used to carry a hand sanitizer on my belt loop everywhere I went like I had my whole life revolved around like how debilitating my OCD was and I felt so comforted to know

that another vocalist felt that way so I just start sharing everything and he's just kind of staring at me after a couple minutes and I'm like what do you think about all that and he goes I'm not joking he literally says

oh I was just kidding. That's really weird. Oh, no. And I will remember that for the rest of my life. And I'm not, I only tell these stories because, like I have no beef with, like, I'm sure Mick Thompson is listening right now,

as he does to every single episode of your show. And no beef with Mick, no beef with thick as blood. These are really formative memories for me because as I was learning to talk more, about my mental illness publicly, I needed to experience these like strange, awkward moments and work through them and understand that it's worth those moments of feeling awkward to self-disclose about mental illness because the other option is to bury it.

Yeah. Well, you've figured away, man, you really dug deep into the subject of mental health. And I was like, damn, you know a lot, dude. Well, first of all, Johnny is great to see you, man. You fucking flew from Florida. Only did the podcast. So we're just going to pretend that. That's why you flew down.

Heck yeah. So worth it. You are the founder and CEO of Cope Notes, which is incredible. I'm a big fan of your band Prison. Thank you, man. I was jamming the EP. I'm jamming the record, the singles at the gym of the day. I'm like, yeah, I'm pumped up, dude.

It's heavy. So, yeah, man, thank you for being here, man. Thank you for having me. It's cool. Before we jump in any podcast stuff, I want listeners to know that I have one formative memory of you. So my formative memory of Mick Thompson, I told you. My formative memory of thick as blood, I told you. My formative memory of you.

You had one? Yeah. You never told me. We were playing. This is the thing that sticks out of my mind every time I think about you. We were playing. Yeah. Let's go.

Dot, dot, dot. We need cut to commercial first to, like, build suspense. So I remember, I think we were playing Arizona. It was on your headliner. And we're all on stage. You were wearing a prison hoodie. And we did a sound check was taking a while, like the sound guy was having some kind of issue. Yes.

And I step out back and you are in the process of walking onto the stage to give us all water bottles. Oh, wow. And I was like, this is the headliner of the entire tour running to his business. bus to get water bottles for us. Like we didn't, we didn't ask, we didn't even voice that we didn't have waters. You just proactively were like, okay, prison doesn't have waters on stage. It's hot. I'm going to get them waters.

And I was just like, oh my word, that level of kindness will always stick out of my mind. I've told that story to so many bands when they asked like, what was it like towing with Suisland's silence? I'm like, let me tell you about this one thing that I remember five or six years later. Wow You know what's even stranger I don't remember that at all I believe that

At all I mean isn't that the way it's supposed to be You're just doing things Hey there's someone without water I'm just gonna give them water Yeah It was like probably like a thoughtless thing I didn't even fucking water it is obvious

I want somebody to give me water Jesus Yeah I mean I think Here I am give you more water Yeah I'm Yeah I think like the things that we do In the lives of other people That really matter to them the things that they remember.

Yeah. They'll never remember. Like I remember one time I worked at Chipotle. This was years and years ago. Yeah. I worked at Chippole. I was super, super depressed. And I had it in my mind that nobody cared about anybody, that the world was terrible,

that nobody was, I felt like people were just inherently awful. I had like such a negative view of humanity. And this guy comes in and was just like, hey, I'm, and it was after close. So it's after 10 p.m. I didn't have to let him in, but I ran to the door unlocked it. And he literally only came to get Chipotle for his family because they liked Chipotle. And he was coming home and passed one. That was it.

So all he did was stop to do something kind for his family. And it freaking, I remember that. This was probably 10 years ago. And I think about that all the time. Wow. Someone made a decision to do something kind for somebody else. and it broke my brain because I'm like, well, not everybody is awful.

Because this guy's, and he thought nothing of it. He wasn't like, I'm the best husband and dad in the world. He's like, I just figured they would like it. Blew my mind. Wow. It's so bizarre, those small moments, like, would just stay with you forever. Forever.

The smallest little things of someone like, something nice for you, they give you water, just stays with you. I remember any, like, small, kind, pointless gestures. that people did for me, it stays with me. Oh, yeah. You're right, dude.

It's so like that. And anyone that's done anything mean to you, this stays with you as well. And that's the other side, which unfortunately ruins, this ruins your brain, dude. And this, you kind of focus on that, unfortunately, you know, it sucks.

Yeah, there's, I read this study recently that said, I believe, I'm probably going to get this wrong, I believe it was, um, 11 to 1. So like for every negative thing that

happens or a negative thing that someone says to you or something you need i think it's between eight to 11 positive things to happen to balance that out mentally so it's not that the negative thing is actually more important it's that the brain ranks negative stimulus as heavier more important as like a protective mechanism so if someone says um your tone sounds terrible like in a youtube comment oh the guy's tone sucks yeah and you look at through all these, you scroll past comments of kids saying, oh, freaking his tone is so good and like, wow, it's so dialed in. Then you read that one comment and all the other comments seem like they disappear. And you focus on like, who's Hello Kitty 69? And what does he

know about tones? Like, let me check this out. And the brain like picks it apart. And that's, that's why I'm so focused on like, how can we help fill other people's lives with those little positive moments? Because we need tons of them. For every one negative thing, we need. like 10 times as many positive things just to even out. Wow. Well, I mean, that ties into what you're doing with cope notes. Yeah. You know, so for just to put it as simple as you can know, you'll say it way better than me. What exactly is cope notes? So in short, it's an anonymous mental health resource that sends randomly timed text messages to train the brain to think in healthier patterns. Unbelievable. That's like,

the one sentence version. Yeah. But it's a simple concept, but I find the most simple concepts are actually the hardest to come up with. You know, it's like, it's like a vocal, it's like a lyric or like a riff. Those simple ones are the hardest to get out. And the fact that you have a very simple concept, but it's the hardest come up with and it's very effective. Dude, I, my big beef with technology is that we overcomplicate things needlessly. Yes. So now I work, I kind of have a foot in two different worlds, right? I guess three. Like I have my foot in music, which has always been there.

And then I have a foot in public speaking, which has been there for like 10, 11 years. But then over the last five years, I have a foot in like the tech world because Cope Notes is a tech startup. So I've had, and I also have three feet, I guess. But that third foot, like branching in a tech, I've learned that. So a musical example would be like, you ever hear a band that could have had a great riff? But then they like made one of the measures really complex for no reason. you're like, oh, why'd you do that?

It would have been so good if you didn't complicate it. That happens in tech all the time. It's like, this is a toothbrush that links to your phone, that also via Bluetooth can play a speaker in your living room. And it's like, what are you doing? Stop doing that. Like, as a consumer, I don't want that. I just want a toothbrush. You're fucking toothbrush.

And I think it happens in music all the time. And it's a bummer. Like, some of my favorite riffs are simple. Yes. That's what makes them catch. Yeah, but it's like with that Which also ties in what you're doing with the cope notes How do you say something or or convey a feeling of something that will stay with you and stays?

Those riffs are like how do you hear a riff or song and you walk around the park and then it comes in Dun dun dun dun dun dun it's like it's like a riff to stage it kind of like which what you're doing How do you say something then oh I mean that where a person will carry that with them when they're at the store and And that text, this pops up, boom. Dude, I think, like, so I went to school for psychology. Yes. And most people don't go to school for psychology. Like, most people go to school for anything else, or they don't go to school.

Yeah. So the idea that I know things about behavioral health that the average person does not know, in my opinion, is not fair. And so the way that the mental health industry for a long time has addressed this is they go, well, why don't we, put out these like complex lectures and textbooks and case studies. And it's like, who in their right mind is going to understand all of this if it's not written in plain English? And then who's going to have hours and hours every week to pour through like the latest data in research? Like, people don't have time for that. So the biggest thing that Cope nodes wanted to do is how do we make mental health support accessible to people on a daily basis without requiring a bunch of

personal information or personal whoa it's a tough word imagine if I would have had that monster I wouldn't be pronouncing anything correctly well actually might maybe you had a sip you might fucking get that right never know without we didn't want to collect personal information yes we didn't want to require people to spend a lot of time on it and we didn't want to have this big cliff like a learning curve like you start using cope notes in your third text you're like i don't understand three or four of these words like we needed to make it simple so that it would make an impact wow and you did it man i i got to say i was i went to the website and i was looking i'm like i was just proud of you i'm like this is this is johnny and this it looks like a

professional website like damn like you and like i mean you know when you don't know somebody i need to see a website. Like, oh, okay. But then normally you see like, I start seeing small details. I ask myself, why do you choose green? And I understand your, uh, your deep understanding about, about the human brain. I wonder why he used green because I don't know. Yeah.

You know, that's so green is indicative of growth. So we associate it with nature and plants and flowers growing. So actually a lot of our early messaging had a lot of phrases like grow in the direction and we talked about like personal growth and personal development so even though we don't use that same verbiage still we wanted to keep that theme of like it's not it's not a medicine that will like fix you magically to my knowledge you know I study behavioral health I'm fairly certain that there's not like this magic pill that will magically fix everything overnight yeah like it's a process whether you're taking medication whether you're in therapy or whatever it takes time so growth

is something that we see like when we watch a plant grow we don't literally sit there and go like how come it's not bigger how come it's not bigger we give it time we give it water we give it sunlight and we wait and we understand if we check it a week later a month later

six months later that it might be kind of bit you have a snake plant here right I just have a Christmas tree oh that's right that Christmas tree is not growing that Christmas tree is the same size it was the last time I saw it

yes yes but it's But it makes my heart grow. So, you know, so it's still doing its job. That's right. Right. Yeah, there's a Christmas tree in the front lounge that, shout out to George Corpse Grinder that he gave us a Christmas tree during Christmas. It was fucking...

That's... So my formative memory of Corpse Grinder is being on your bus and having him pull me aside and explain to me how wholesome the Karate Kid movies are. That's unbelievable. So sick. And then it was, no, it was either, I think it was karate kid, but then he started talking about Christmas and how important it is that everybody respects the sanctity of Christmas. Wow.

And he was like, there's nothing like the kindness and cheer and spirit of Christmas. And I'm like, bro, who are you? Like, this is the hammer smashed face guy. Yep. Making sure that I understand how important kindness is. And I'm like, I will cherish this moment forever. Dude, there's a picture of you and the singer of After Burial Anthony and George and Eddie. I'm like, that's such a cool picture, man.

I know. I need to post that. I think it was either you or Mark sent me that and they're all like super washed out and terrible lighting. And I'm like, I saved all four of them and I will cherish them forever. I should post them after this airs just to be like that was one of the coolest memories. So listeners might not know that I have really. severe memory loss from taking antipsychotic medication for a long time. Really?

Oh, yeah. So I cherish, that's why I'm talking about like memories and formative memories and like hanging on to these special moments because a lot of people have a really deep bank of memories. They're like, oh, yeah, I remember all these things. Because I don't remember as much, I cherish these little like trinkets of memories and experiences. They're really valuable to me. Wow.

Like on the plane on the way here, I watched videos of my life and looked at photos. And I do that every plane trip. And I watch like a recap of my life to kind of remember what I've experienced. And it's the coolest thing ever. But that's why I care so much about those little memories because they're the things that I remember. I forget 90% of everything. Wow. That's crazy.

Do it for every plane around you. So what you have videos, some old, old. photos, I mean, photos that date back how far? Like, you, like, you being a child or two? Like, you being, how far? I mainly focus. I had, like, a really traumatic upbringing, so I kind of don't dig too far back. But anything from, like, the past five or six years, I just like, because that's when

I really started to get healthier. It was probably, like, six or seven years ago. Yeah. And so I will, like, look through photos. And it'll be these crappy photos, like, like a, like a, and even yesterday, I took a photo of a signed headshot of Tom Arnold that was taped to my friend's

roommate's door and I just thought I want to remember that I'm never going to like post it it's never going to be like oh check it out I'm you know for me it's like I want to document this stuff so that when I look back on it

I'll be like I remember that but sometimes I look back at a photo and be like I have no recollection of being here or experiencing this when did you stop taking your the psychotic medicine and uh because i never knew there was like a memory loss associated with that i mean not always like i started taking really heavy medication when i was 16 probably and i started weaning off so i've been off medication for about four years so i took i took medication for 10 or 11 years and i was very heavily medicated with good reason like i was very unstable

I was not really like a functioning It was very difficult for me to function Like on a daily basis So medication was really important to me Yeah And I think about it now like My two main side effects are Number one I have pretty significant memory loss

And number two I have something called tardive dyskinesia Which is an involuntary movement disorder So you might have even seen like when we're on tour I don't know if you ever seen me like rock back and forth No Or like rock this way or like shake my hand or something I literally don't know that I'm doing that because part of- Oh, actually, oh man, wow, okay.

Ah, you kind of remember a little bit? Oh, wow. Yeah, so I'll like, I'll be moving rhythmically, but not know that I'm moving because the part of my brain that regulates involuntary movement is damaged. So long story short, I have two side effects. So I forget things and I wiggle, basically. and if that's the price that I have to pay to form complete sentences and make eye contact and have a job and be functional, it's totally worth it.

Wow. Like those side effects are nothing compared to like being able to have a life, you know? And you stopped taking those four years ago? It might be longer than that. But yeah, just about four years ago I've been off medication. So the process of weaning off took over a year because you have to do it really slowly with a doctor. In fact, the one time that I tried to stop taking medication, I was texting Brooke from impending doom literally on the way here.

Oh, cool. Love them. And I had a psychotic break one night when I tried to stop taking my medication. And I was just like, you know what, I'm going to stop taking it. Instead of weaning off with a doctor, like everybody tells you to do, I'm like, you know what, no more meds for me. And then that night I called Brooke. And this guy has like a newborn baby at the time.

and I call him at like what's probably three in the morning or something and he like leaves his baby's side like his baby's like I just got the baby to go back to sleep and he's on the phone with me for like an hour talking through and like praying with me while I'm like free I think like there's demons in my room and stuff and I'm hallucinating and I'm like I punched a hole in the wall like I was going bananas

and Brooke talked to me through that And ever since then, I was like, if I do stop taking medication, I'm going to do it the right way with a doctor. And that took like over a year, like a year or a year and a half to actually go from like full dose on all my medications to no medication. Wow. What was that? What was that year like? Like what were you feeling and thinking? Dude, I was going through serious like withdrawal.

It was really like. So inside a medication, there are chemicals. and those chemicals are designed to help the messed up chemistry inside of your brain that causes the condition in the first place. So basically, let's say your brain doesn't have enough of chemical A. You take a supplement of chemical A to help balance that out, just like you would take iron if you're iron deficient or something like that. The scary part is when you start,

if you stop taking that vitamin, your brain goes, what? We're so used to having that support and now we don't have it anymore. How are we going to adjust? So the reason why you're supposed to go slowly is that by taking a little bit less of that potential like chemical A,

your brain kind of steps up to the plate a little bit and it's like, all right, we'll produce a little bit more. We'll try to make up for that gap. And that's not an easy process because your brain is adjusting to getting less and less support. Kind of like, have you ever broken a bone? No, thank God.

That is unbelievable. I'm so lucky, dude. I'm so lucky. It's one of the things I was thinking about I'm so lucky I never broke a bone before. I think about it all the time. Dude, so I mean, I don't know if there's a personal question. Do you have insurance?

Yes. That's crazy. So I don't have insurance. And I always think, like, dude, if on tour I like jump off of a cab or something and break my leg, like we're going to have to crowd. fund my hospital bill. We'll have to get back on stage. We'll be like, hey, guys, please go check

out our merch table. Please buy some t-shirts. Like, my ankle's broken. It is worth it, man. You got to get insurance. I know. I know. I'm so overdue.

That's like me telling you to, like, let to brush her teeth. It's like, you got to do it, man. It's something, we don't like doing it. It makes no sense. But, man, you just never know. Sometimes, like, it's that piece of mind. It's that some conscious piece of mind. If you, let's say you break your leg on tour, you know,

you always like, well, At least I got insurance. I'm covered. Yeah. Like honestly, that's the only time when I really think, like, I could get, like, at home, basically I live a pretty low-key life. But on tour, like, you're up and downstairs all the time, loading gear all the time, you know, walking through mosh pits and even, like, playing and stage diving.

And, like, I've broken my arm stage diving. Actually, it was during all-shell pair. parish for thrash and burn. Eddie knows this because I walked straight up to him and I said, I think I broke my arm. And he was like, I don't know what to do about that. Like I'm not a doctor. That was like my first time I ever met Eddie. With a broken arm. Yeah. And I think now it's so funny, like I still will stage dive at the end of every single prison set. So at the end, so the last song of every prison set, I try to find the youngest person in the audience or or someone who has never done a stage dive before.

Oftentimes it's both. It's like an eight-year-old who's never done a stage dive, never crowd surfed. And I bring them up. I have the crowd chant their name. And then we start the last song and they get to do their first stage dive. And I do it every freaking show I've done hundreds of times. It's like one of the most wholesome moments. And it's so funny because it's such an integral part of our show that we do that.

And then I jump in the crowd at the end that I have not considered, you're doing the thing that broke your arm. Yes. And you don't have insurance. And you do it every single night. Yes. That seems very reckless. Well, I think we've established that you've flown here just for me to tell you that you need health health insurance.

Now I know why I'm here. And that's just it, man. You know, hey, it's, it's how it is, man, you know. I did pray on the way here, like, God teach me something. I want to learn something. And I think I just learned that I'm being irresponsible. Dude, you are, man. It's a big gamble, man.

Because imagine if you get hurt. I mean, that's a very unnecessary bill to have. Dude, why is it that Monster will sponsor bans, but like United Healthcare won't sponsor bans? Let me get a United Healthcare sponsorship so that my ban can be safe. Do you know, you could be the first to do that, man? Oh, shoot, with Cope Notes.

I didn't even think about that. Yeah, well, yeah. That's such a good idea. I want to reach out to all these insurance companies and be like, hey, how do you feel about death metal? Not big on death metal? Okay, how about like slam? Is it a slam at all?

Is it a hard open? Yeah. And then eventually I'll be like, okay, what genre do you like? And if they're like, oh, contemporary country, I'm like, okay, we're kind of like that. Don't look us up. Just trust me, we're kind of like contemporary country. Will you please sponsor us so that we can survive? Most musicians that I know don't have insurance, though.

Which is what makes. It's a thing. That's what makes access to therapy so hard. Like almost every touring musician I know has dealt with or is dealing with depression or anxiety, either currently or recently. And whenever I ask them, like, are you in therapy or are you taking medication? I'm like, heck no, dude. Where am I going to get the money for that? I'm like, dang.

Oh, yeah. It's funny. I have the same thought process. I'm here telling you about health insurance, but there is another thing that's part not paying it forward. But that's always your go-to. It's like, well, we're a musician. I mean, any place I can save money, like, shit. I know.

It's crazy. And what's sad is we save money on our health in order to have money to either print high-quality merch or to have high-quality gear or to get better production quality on music videos or a record. So we literally say, I'll deprive myself of my basic needs. Like I skip meals on tour. Like we skip, we skip, every musician skips basic necessities in order to save money to produce a better experience for the people that we play for. Yes.

We do it all the time. Yeah. And if we, if we knew somebody who was not a musician doing that, we'd be like, I mean, imagine a mom who never ate dinner. And there are moms like this. Oh, absolutely. Who worry so much about like, oh, I got to get this person. person of school and pick this person up from practice and then I have to make them dinner and clean up and then I'm exhausted and go to bed. They're not showering. They're not eating dinner.

And we would tell if we had a friend like that, we'd be like, bro, you have to eat. You have to shower. But then we deprive ourselves of those things. Yes. So that people can have a good time for the, for the 12 hours that were in their city. It's insane, dude. Why? I care. I think it's because you can't do music full time if you don't like give a crap about the people. you're playing for long term. I have met people who short term are like, you know, their band will blow up. But if they don't actually care about the experience of the person at the concert, then they burn out after a couple years.

So that compassion for the people in the audience has sustained me. But compassion fatigue is real. You get so burnt out serving other people that you can't serve yourself. And then that's how bands start making bad records. That's how band members get sick or struggle with addiction. or any of those things because it's like you haven't taken care of yourself

for eight years and then the next eight years are worse for both you and your fans and that's the hard balance is like I need to take care of that I need to take care of myself before I take care of

how happy somebody is at our concert and that's been a really tough pill for me to swallow. I still struggle with that now. Yeah. No, you got, yeah, I mean, we get older, you know, you're 29, correct? Yeah, I mean, we're getting older

and then trying to figure out that it's all about balance like we always have what's I think every person or band has their own personal balance

what is that and it's hard we're all we're all struggling with it you know our personal balance what is it I don't know

I don't fucking know dude it's tough still it's still trying to figure it out and then but I think it is you're conscious of it

and you're trying to figure out your personal balance I mean you're a lot far you're a lot more further ahead

you know dude when I when I when I first started working on Cope Notes, I remember, so I had been working in like peer support and public advocacy, like working in the mental health field for a while. And when I was on tour, this was back in Dark Sermon. And I was talking openly about my recovery, maybe not as vocally as I am now. But before I would like, you know, people knew that our songs were about like hallucinations and suicide and self-harm and addiction and stuff.

So at that time, people would come up to the merch table and be like, you know, what? has helped you. And I would say, you know, medication has helped me. Therapy has helped me. Faith has helped me, like reading these books about human psychology have helped me. And I swear, every single person I talked to at the merchant was like, ugh, I want to do that stuff. And I was like, well, shoot, like you asked me what helped me. I'm telling you what helped me. Why wouldn't you want to do it? And there's stigmas associated with that. Like, faith is viewed in a certain way in the metal community. Medication is viewed in a certain way, like big pharma and stuff. And then there's, you know, as metal guys, we're supposed to be tough. We're not going to go to therapy and

write in a journal, right? So there's all of these like old stereotypes that keep people from engaging in care. And I remember thinking like those excuses that people have for not engaging in care are the exact same excuses that I used to not take care of myself for almost my whole life. Oh, wow. Like, they're very common retorts. Like, if you say, hey, man, like, you say, hey, get insurance. I'm like, oh, it's expensive. And I don't have, like, you know, that's honestly a legitimate reason to not have insurance, but it's not a good enough reason to not have it.

Just like if someone says, you know, I don't know about, you know, people will say, I don't have money for therapy. And then I will immediately follow that up with, like, what are you reading? what videos are you watching? What free resources are you using? Like there are things out there that won't cost an arm and a leg and I think I wanted Coke notes

to kind of bridge that gap. Like if you're in between never using a resource and in full-time treatment, what's a little stepping stone that can kind of bridge that gap so you don't have to jump from nothing to everything.

That's beautiful, man. Where the gateway, like think about how many people suicide silence has been the gateway heavy band for. Like when you you play the gathering, right? Yes, once. It was beautiful. So think about that.

Think about people at that concert who now you were the bridge to get them to start going to metal shows. That'll be pretty insane. That's my dream for cope notes to be that for people in their recovery. And then that's my dream for prison to be that gateway band, the thing that helps them get to that next level of exploring something new. That might be good for them. Wow. Well, that's, it's perfect.

Because, I mean, if, if you have the power to open someone's mind just a little bit, that's all takes, dude. Every single musician who takes a stage has that power. And I think we don't use it wisely. Like, we've toured with bands who get on stage, and they're like, ruin somebody's night and punch somebody in the face. And people. kind of true.

People do it. Yeah. And you know why they do it? Because you have a microphone. You're on a stage. It's not because you're smarter. It's not because you're more talented. It's not because you're different.

It's not because of anything you've ever done. It's only because you're four feet higher. You're four feet above sea level and they're at sea level. That's it. Or your voice is being amplified through a PA system and theirs isn't. That's the only reason why we have that power. And I think for years, musicians have taken. in for granted that we have a microphone and we can say whatever, we're like, jump, everybody jumps.

We say, knock somebody out. They knock somebody out. Shut the show down. They will shut the show down if you say to do it. And I think post-COVID, I'm seeing a lot more musicians kind of take a beat and say, like, if we're on stage and we can influence the people in this room, how do we want to influence them? Because we just went through two years of not having that ability. And now we know how special it is to be able to have that influence. Totally. Yeah, it's just, unfortunately, that that's how our brain works. You got to get something, you got to get something important to you taking away. That's sad.

It's sad, dude. But it's true. Yeah. It's like, oh, shit, this can go away. Your positive thoughts can go away. And then you really, so the ones that come and like, oh, this is awesome. We're a good day. This is nice, you know.

Dude, it makes me think of, I have a dog named pepperoni pizza. not joking. She's a yellow or no, she's a golden retriever. I'm so used to just saying yellow lab because that was my previous dog. Rest in peace, Casey, if you're listening. Beautiful.

And my current dog, when we first got her, she was a terror. She didn't care about anybody. She didn't care about anything. She was like a monster. She didn't show love. She would disobey all the time.

She would bite and pee indoors and not listen. She was just a monster, dude. And then I left for a business trip for a week. And I came back and her whole vibe was completely different. And I read about it and apparently that happens. Like once a dog realizes that you can leave and not be there, they're like, oh, shoot, I didn't even know that could happen. So her whole, now we love each other.

We're on great terms. Pepperoni pizza and Johnny sitting in a tree. Like, we get along great. But for the first six months, she was a terror. And until I left for a week and came back, like, after I came back, she was loving and caring. And I think, unfortunately, you're right, like humans do have to go through that. Like, I'm not going to lie, I got pretty used to touring full time. Like, I started touring when I was 19 or 18.

Yeah. And before COVID, I had, I was. I was so used to spending six, eight months out a year that it was like a part of my identity. And then not having that, I was like, I had to figure out if I, this is going to sound bad, but I had to figure out if I deserved to live independent of that. What does that mean? Like, I felt like me playing music was justifying my existence. Oh, wow.

And if I couldn't play music, do I even deserve to be alive anymore? Wow. It was freaking rough. That is rough, man. Shit, yeah, you got to like separate like the, sometimes in your instance, you got to separate like the music from yourself. Wait, like, who am I? You know, who am I?

Am I this? But what do I think about myself? that so and that's also like you know if you're so used to playing shows and being around people all the time you can kind of build your identity you kind of piece it together from little slices of what other people think of you yeah so you're like oh well you know I know that kids in Rhode Island really like this song and I know that this label really liked this music video that we did and you kind of like you build this version of yourself that's pieced together of all these little slices of what other people think of you And then when COVID hit, it actually was great for us in terms of writing because we went from

we went from writing what we thought we wanted to write to actually writing music we've always dreamed of writing. And the big difference was when you're on tour, imagine like you guys have changed sound. Yes. And imagine how hard it is to change sound when every single night you're around kids that are reinforcing your old sound. Of course. It's like, why the heck would I want to put this new stuff?

out that I love when I know that all of our fans love this old stuff so much. So being separate from that, like being, COVID actually forced us to figure out, like, who are we as a band? Like, what type of music have we wanted to make versus, like, being subconsciously influenced by what is clapped for when we tour? And do you find that when you get to that point, that's actually figuring out who you are first and then, and then said, that members. That's what I found, like, to kind of do a reset or figure out, like, wait, like, who are we, though, first?

It's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, someone that you love. It's kind of the same thing. I didn't even think of that. Like, so I, clean singing has not come naturally to me. It's always been very difficult. Like, ever since I was young, um, screaming came a lot more naturally. Clean singing.

I, I was always off key. I always had this like, we. nasaly tone or I'd be too sharp and it's something I've struggled with for like my entire life and it's interesting now to think that a majority if not all of the music that we've tracked in the last two years we've tracked like over a record like we have we have a dozen plus songs that are all finished and ready to release we just haven't put them out yet yes and when I listen to those I think all of them have clean singing in it and I do wonder would I have the ability to clean sing if I hadn't done that, you know, what you're saying, like,

dug into myself and be like, what kind of, like, who's Johnny Crowder and what type of music has he always wanted to make? Like who, not what, not what is prison supposed to sound like. Not what will audiences like, not what will labels like, not managers or agents or other bands, not what will other bands give us credit for. Yes. Because it's easy to fall into that trap. We want our friends bands to like our music. Yes. We had to get totally unplugged and be like, who are we as individuals? And then outside of that, who are we as musicians? And then outside of that, what have we always wanted to create before we knew all the industry stuff that we know now?

Yeah. Wow, it's true. Actually, one of my favorite parts in your songs is I believe the song's called Mental Illness. And it's that singing part that comes in, Austin's playing the perfect chords. And you're like, don't pretend. Oh, yeah. To understand. Like, dude, I was like, that's probably my favorite part. And again, we're talking about earlier. Catching this.

Now I'm just walking around. Yeah. It's going. That's awesome. Sick. It must be really cool for you seeing that you struggle with clean singing. And to me, like, it's so funny how, like, you have these thoughts in your head and you try, you probably practice it. And then when someone hears it, like, me and some boneheaded, I'm hearing it for the first time.

That sounds great. You know, like, but you were like, oh, I suck your clean singing, and then you do it. And then sounds fun. It honestly, so my mom, I showed my mom one of the new songs that has like, it's exclusively clean singing. Oh, wow. It's really cool. It's like really heavy, riffy, like the music is just like classic prison.

Like it's so heavy and awesome and catchy. But then it's all clean singing. I showed my mom. And first thing she said is, is this you? And I said, yes, I'm like the vocalist of the band. So yes. And then she also said, she told me next time she's. saw me, she said, the reason why I put that in the chat, like, the reason why I texted you

that back is because I remember you living at home and practicing clean singing in your room. And I'm not joking. She said, I used to laugh with your girlfriend at the time, like outside of your room at how bad the singing was. Oh, my goodness. I was like, what? Is that why we're broken up? She thought I sucked at singing?

Wow. But really, I had no ability to sing. And I've worked on my clean singing for, I started taking it seriously, probably, when I was 16. When I really focused on trying to be a good singer. And it just took me 15 years to figure out, like, how to make it not sound bad. and then hearing the new songs, and I'm so excited to release them because I think it's important for me,

like I think people will really like the songs, but I also think it's important for me to like put out music that is representative of the hard work that I've put in, even if people don't know it. Like no one's going to listen to one of our new songs and think, he's probably tried to sing for 15 years. They'll probably think, oh, it sounds cool. But for me to know that it's like published

and out in the world that those 15 years, singing in my bedroom into a dry shampoo container, which is what I would use to practice mic control. Those 15 years weren't wasted, you know. Wow. I wonder how people or fans are going to take it. We're trying to, um, like in my opinion, the new music that we've written is the type of music I've been searching for for my whole life.

That's sick. Like the music that I've been trying to find. It's not quite It's not like heavy enough To be like death metal Or death core or anything like that But then it's not bubble gum poppy enough To be on the radio, right?

It's like this It's like this magical middle ground So our dream has always been To be the heaviest band on the radio Oh wow So we want you to be able to turn on Whatever your local radio station is And you hear like Breaking Benjamin

And Cedar Prison Then Three Days Grace You know And just like we want to be able to to fit in with that um it's not a matter of fitting in with the sound it's a matter of fitting in with what is culturally what we consider culturally acceptable so think about this when we're grown up yeah ben stiller is in a corn music video or no he's in the limp biscuit music video yeah yeah and then i know corn had some cameos from like movie stars and

their in their music videos as well. I think so, yeah. And I think, like, at the time, like, you know, Fred Durs could, like, host the VMAs or something. And he was, like, dating Britney Spears or something crazy. Like, the culture was such that you could be heavy and still a part of the mainstream media conversation. Yeah. Like, you, it wouldn't be unreasonable to see, like, for Best Song of the Year, the nominees

are Limp Biscuit and, you know, Backstreet Boys or something. It's like, what? I dream of seeing metal in that level of like cultural accessibility because what I, the reason I'm so passionate about this is because when I was growing up, because I saw that, I discovered a passion that produced, that flowered into like hundreds, thousands of people that I never would have met otherwise, a reason for being alive, like art and music. And it's like my whole life is different because I discovered that. And right now, metal is not discoverable.

The next generation of kids right now has to decide between what feels like an ever-narrowing genre pool. And I want to make sure that metal has a seat at the table because if the next generation hears metal and doesn't like it, that's fine. I'm totally cool with that. You don't need to like metal. I feel like you do need to hear it. You do need an opportunity to say no. And I feel like the next generation doesn't have that right. now because it's not as easy to find yeah yeah there's a lot of uh artists out there and uh

obviously like the hip hop and pot they're just so overly taking over you know and i so in my mind the solution i'm not dude i'm i'm i hope everybody hears this i i used to be so um quiet about like my dreams and goals for for prison because i didn't want to i didn't want people to think it was like silly or goofy or whatever yeah i i I want to submit for tours with Demi Lovato and Justin Bieber and 21 pilots because the worst they can say is no. I want to submit for all these pop tours, these rap tours. I want to submit for everything because if we get a thousand nos, if we get a thousand nos in a row, and one promoter, one agent, one manager goes, hey, check out this submission that we got.

This band's, I mean, they don't fit, but it's kind of catchy. what do you think we'll put them on a date see what happens put them on a couple dates and see what happens like i would rather roll the dice on that 10,000 times for an opportunity to allow pop and hip hop and country and anything else to lift metal than to segment and be like oh metal is over here and pop and hip hop over there like we have an opportunity to work with those genres to bring metal to a whole new generation of listeners and i think for a long time metal has been all or nothing. And I think we're seeing, especially in the last 10 years,

you go to a concert and you see people in Jay-Z shirts and Tupac shirts and Biggie shirts, and then you see a Miley Cyrus shirt, and then you see a Madonna shirt. And you're kind of seeing that, like, that openness of the music listener. And I want to lean into that. I don't want to separate any further.

I want to be like, yeah, let's do mixed bills. Let's run it. Yeah. Lowein and Blink 1-82. It's pretty sick. I don't know how well that did. I mean either, but it's pretty sick, though. You never know.

But it is sick. It is, man. Yeah, I mean, it's all about the number of nose and failure you're willing to handle. And then if it knows after a thousand knows, you might get, yeah, this one person. This band is actually kind of, they're kind of catchy, kind of heavy. It's pretty cool. Throw them on it. Yeah, you never know, dude.

Keep trying. I've seen crazier of stuff, dude. You know, just keep doing it. I think as a community, like as a metal community, we're not super supportive of each other. It's like, have you heard the crabs in a barrel analogy? Where like the analogy is, I don't know if this is actually true. I've never put crabs in a barrel,

but the analogy is that if you put crabs in a barrel and you don't put a top, like a lid on the barrel, most of the crabs won't get out anyway. Even though crabs can like walk on walls and stuff. Yeah. The reason why they won't get out is because other crabs will keep pulling them down. Oh, my goodness. And that's, I feel like that's what happens in metal.

We're always like, I feel like people are kind of, because there's so little to go around, right? There's, it feels like there's little opportunity. There's not a lot of tours. There's not a lot of, like, labels aren't signing 100 bands a year, right? There's limited opportunity. So I think what we do is kind of like, you know, we don't want to wear our friends, bands, merch to their show. It's funny.

Because we're like, well, we don't want to like support them too much. We don't want to be, and we say, well, we don't want to be corny. And it's like, well, you're choosing, like, you know, how do you feel when you go to a show and there's kids in suicide silent shirts? It's amazing. Like that, we're depriving our friends. People we call our friends of that feeling, of feeling seen and valued. And then we kind of like cross our fingers and hope that like we'll get billed above other

bands or some other band will have to drop off of a tour so that we can get it. It's just very like unhealthy competition. We don't take the time to be like, I'm straight up a fan of your band and have been for a long time. And I think if we choose to have that mentality towards each other, everyone will get lifted. It won't just help or benefit a couple bands. It will help everybody. You are 100% right. And that's actually, that was almost the death of the death court scene. I mean, back in a day, like when we were getting like bigger tours, like you saw, so the poster is like I won't name names

but yeah it was like this no one wanted to help each other no one wanted to help each other and it was like this unhealthy competition and no matter what we did the smallest that core band would be like we'll like co-headline

with SS when we're like killing and we're like doing all these numbers but they wanted like they were basically a bunch of crabs like no matter what we did they were just trying to put you down and no one talked about how I won't see their names again

yeah but they would have band try I would say we want to sound like suicide silence in this band and to this day some of them have not said that to me personally but but you hear run the great the great finder like this one band won't him again is

we had a message board uh man we let's bring back the message board that shit was sick on on your website dude do you fans could talk the bands are talking other bands will come in and chat this one band which are now big and signed

maybe question maybe even bigger than us. They're asking us what we used as far as gear. Yeah. What tuning, what are your influences? And we went aboard. I was like, oh, there's this, who's that band? I don't know. We just drop A, we're fucking these amps.

We go to their town. It's everything. And it's just like, I was like, at the time, you know, you're like a young, bitter kid. I'm like, fuck those guys. Yeah. But the least you would expect is, okay, we're up-and-coming, it was us and Jop for a Cowboy.

We're like... Oh, legends. We're talking like, we're not playing clubs anymore, dude. We're in arenas. Yeah. Like, it got to a level what you didn't even expect. And the bands that should have helped this scene were the ones that were, I guess you could say, kind of crabbing the ways up.

If they just did that, this scene would be so much bigger. And they didn't. None of them did. Yeah. I'm going to repeat that. None of the bands did it. And the death chorus scene couldn't get. way bigger sooner

and it took us a whole career and well over 15 years and now you got this whole new wave of heavy bands like Lorna Shore signs to Swarm that they're giving they'll tell us our faith too like they're so inspired and they and I see how those

bands are working they're torn with each other they're wearing each other shirts they're all all that stuff that I wanted to see 15 years ago they're all doing now and you got bands like Lorna Shore actually doing massive shit. And like it's because they're they're a team. Yeah. And now the older bands like us are just now doing that as well.

We're, you got the co-hand lines. You got everyone's dropping the egos, including myself, including us. These bands are all this, okay, let's bring the scene up together. Everyone's finally being a fucking team. Of course, there's a few like, okay, you're still a fucking old head and you just look out your fucking ego. I get it. But we're finally like being a team, dude. And this took us well over 15 years to scene. well over 15 years to finally fucking figure it out. Dude, there's no way that this scene, so we have to capitalize on what's happening right now.

Like, it feels like, so a lot of people who are making music now, like the Lorna dudes, they've been making music. It's not like they just now came onto the scene. And like we've been making music long enough. There's a whole cohort of bands like this who have been making music long enough

to see sometimes metal is hot and kids go to shows and everything's all hype. Sometimes it's really not important to people and it goes through these ebbs and flows over the course of 10, 15 years of playing music. The only way that the genre will actually grow is if we capitalize when it's in a peak. Absolutely. So I think what happens is we'll peak and then we get competitive and greedy and then we dip down. That's exact on and then we try to work together to bring it back up. So we literally always stay between this high, this low, this high, this low. We never break through that ceiling because we only work together when things suck. One thing starts, once things start getting good, we start grabbing, we play hungry, hungry hippos. And we're like,

no, I need more for me and more for me. Hungry, hungry hippos. That's so true, dude. And I think that like right now we have a tremendous opportunity to work together. Yeah. And also I'm thinking like right now there are, so we we are friends with like 100 150 bands and I would say friends as in like actually someone in our band has toured with them or we have like an existing relationship with them and of those bands we've toured with maybe three or four wow and it's like the fact that we haven't taken advantage of like the fact that we trust each other we respect each other we listen to each other's music if we don't capitalize on that while the scene is healthy which is right now it's right now it's right now it's It's literally like not like, it's not coming to tomorrow. It's happening as we're talking right now. It's insane to see it. We can't break through unless we capitalize on it now and work together.

Because what I have seen happen in the past is things fall into a deluge and then bands start reaching out. Saying, hey, maybe we should do something. And it's like, we need to do it while it's hot. So yeah, literally right now, if every single metal band committed to choosing one other band, that they're like, I'm going to see what I can do to leverage. my position of power to help that one band because I believe in them I trust them I like them as people I like their music I respect their work ethic they're good live if every band chose one band like if we buddy systemed this thing right now it's a great metal will be twice as big this time next

year that's a great idea of buddy system it's true man for for us it's a band long ashore you see them live they're killing it I listen to them they're fucking doing it you you you you mean got it worst case scenario you don't even have to be a fan but you could feel something it's like they had they have the energy they make me feel something yeah and like do i want to see them i want to see them get bigger than us is that possible like well let's try that desire i don't know i don't know i don't know anybody who has that desire right now wow to say i want another band to be bigger than my band because i mean i mean what what what's the worst case scenario that they're doing bigger than us i mean if we could do another

fucking 2000 cap tour. Yeah. Oh wow, that fucking sucks. I mean, however many bands in this genre that could get to that level were bigger, everyone wins. Everybody wins. And the thing is, and this is coming here

from a place of abundance. I truly believe in abundance. I believe there's any, there's no, there's an unlimited number of bands that could get to the higher level. There's not like, there's no scarcity, dude. I mean, you've got to have sick music. You know, you have sick music, you fucking deserve a spot.

Do it. Dude. So in working in tech, I learn a lot about competition and like IP, like intellectual property, like different companies suing each other because they're like, you're doing what we're doing and stuff like that. I see a lot of that in music too. Like, oh, you're, you stole a riff from us or whatever. And actually, I was reading this article that suggested that, so you know Uber and Lyft.

do the exact same thing. Yes, exactly thing. And like, I mean, I'm not an investor in either of them, so I don't know like their documents and their tech behind it. But from the outside, it sure as heck looks like they're identical companies. Nike and Adidas, they sure as heck look like identical companies. Coke and Pepsi. And this article was saying that actually having more than one choice brings both up.

So if it's like Lyft or Uber, Coke and. or Pepsi. The fact that there's a competition between the two is actually healthy for the entire soda industry or sneaker industry or rideshare industry because it grows the ceiling. And we're not doing that with metal right now. We don't think like, and this is true, if suicide silence gets bigger, more people like metal. That's the truth. That's a victory. And you could take out suicide silence from that sentence and plug in any other band and it would still be just as true. Why are we not

working towards that? I don't know, man. I don't know. I don't know. But it seems like what's cool about that is it seems we're getting, not, when I say we, I don't mean like SS. I mean like I think the scene is getting a second chance.

Thank God you, you, I didn't see this coming. A whole new wave of bands. I couldn't have not predict this shit. So actually there's this new wave of bands coming up with all kind of styles of their version of heavy coming up like the death chorus scene other ways of heavy coming up

like this is called a second chance yeah this is a second chance and god damn we can't blow it can't blow it dude some will a lot will a lot of the bands will will blow it but this is the time to put in the tour as much as you can

to bring up as many of your friends bands as possible this is the time to do it you know and I learned to have I'm very competitive I'm fucking pretty lethal but as I get older

it's healthy competition yeah because I know who I am I know who I am and I don't really care where I go as far as like how big the band gets no matter what

how many bigger bands than us who are like younger bands we're going where we're going and that comes from knowing who you are I mean where's true that's honest dude I mean we're going to go where I'm going

where that peak is we're gonna get there. Dude, I love that phrase. You just said, we're suicide silence, dude. Like, if every band just said that about their own band, like, we're prison. That's it. That's who we are.

We're not trying to be. I think a lot of bands, including, I've caught myself doing this saying, like, you know, especially in Dark Sermon, I would say, like, we want to be the next behemoth or something. Yeah. I want to be the next goger. We kept saying the next and then a different band. Oh, wow.

That band already exists. You already exist, dude. Like prison wants to be prison. For the first couple years, we're like, we're going to be the next slip knot. We're going to be the next corn, the next slip biscuit. And then when COVID hit, we were like, why not just be prison? This is our one opportunity.

This is our one opportunity to be prison. And we're going to take it. And when you ask, like, how will people react? I can't say we don't care. I'm very skeptical when a musician says, like, you know, I write this record for me and I'll put it out. And if you don't like it, screw you. Like, there's in a lot of creative people, there's a desire to,

when we share what we make for people to enjoy it. Absolutely. That's part of why we share. Yes. But I need to say and hold myself accountable to this that I can't not share what I'm passionate about for fear of people not liking it. Absolutely.

Yeah, it's a hard line of hit, dude. It's hard. Actually, something that you were just talking about what Suicide Boys announced 2020 tour would knock loose and quote orange. Dude. That's pretty fucking sick. So we have submitted for rap tours before.

This was like 2016, 2017, 2018. Yeah. And most people were like, no, it's not a good fit. And then remember when King 810 did that Tech 9 tour? Yes. I was like, okay, now we're seeing a little bit. And then we almost did a rap tour in 2020. It got canceled because everything got canceled.

And then I was nervous that this boat, like this ship sailed. I was like, oh, no, what if we missed the opportunity for really heavy hip hop and rap to tour with really heavy rock and metal and hardcore. And when I saw that tour, that AdMAT come out for the Suicide Boys tour, when I saw it, I realized four years ago I would have been freaking angry that that came out because I would have been like, that was supposed to be us. And I think I even catch myself now doing that. There are bands that I've always wanted to tour with.

And bands that were really good friends with. Like I'll see an Acacia Strain ad mat. And I go, oh, if only we could. do that tour, knock loose, ad mat. Oh, of course. I get that feeling. But as time passes, like you said, if you know who you are, if you're like, we're prison, dude, we're prison. We're really good, we're really bad at being the Acacia stream. Yeah. Prison is really bad at being knocked loose, but we are the best prison. Absolutely. We are the best prison. And that, that, um, confidence that comes from feeling like you don't need to be other bands or,

need every opportunity allows me to see an ad mat like that the suicide boys want to go it's happening that's fucking stoked it's good for everybody it's good for bands who are not on that bill it's good for rappers who are not on that bill it's good for fans who won't even go to this tour it's good for everybody it is man what a fucking crazy tour i love the bill where's it going i think it's full u s 2002 look at the ad mat that's a pretty cool that's what i'm talking about classic dude this this shows me that cooperation requires participation from both sides like we can't just oh wow amphitheater amphitheater arena oh yeah oh my goodness can you believe that august oh wow it's a long tour too yeah there's amphitheater so there's different support on like

different legs kind of like the lamb of god one los angeles a forum with suicide boys and the hell are in it. That is unbelievable. That is how it's supposed to be, man. Wow. And think about it. These are artists that I'm going to go out on a limb and say

are not mainstream accessible. You do not see like middle-aged substitute teachers listening to suicide boys. So these are like niche. I mean this is like this is an alternative like a subculture choice that is leading to the same venues that huge pop stars play. That's what I'm saying

about Uniting. Because if it was just knocked loose in Code Orange, I understand those are big bands. They're probably not playing amphitheaters. And if it's just suicide boys and ski masks and stuff, they might play a big room. They might play a huge club. They might play hard rock. I don't know they're still on 10,000 tickets, right? But combining forces, there's that force multiplier. We can't not do this. That's amazing. Not glues. Quote of orange.

Fuck yeah, dude, that is sick. Also, did you see that Limp Biscuit just played shows with Snot? I saw that. One of the rapper?

Yeah, that's dope. I'm seeing more and more of it. Slipknot brought out horror, the H.O.999-band. I honestly never heard of their music at all. Are they sick?

So I'm not familiar. I only know because I'm friends with the, the drummer on Facebook. Yeah. But I understand it to be like more of a hip hop influence. I see. With rock.

And I'm like, I'm all about like, I watched this video the other day of Rage Against a Machine playing in 1991. Oh my goodness. Which was a year before I was born. And they were playing at like some school talent show. And they're like jamming and the dude's rapping and stuff.

And I'm just like 30 years later, this is still what people want. They just don't know it exists. Wow. And this is an opportunity to share that with a whole new generation. There really could be a whole new group of people coming and we don't even know. I totally believe it, dude. Wow, dude.

That is unbelievable, dude. Wait, wait, something real quick. So you're on Facebook still? Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Why? I, um, well, on one hand, I need it for work for, for, for Coke note stuff.

Yeah. On another hand, I need it for speaking stuff. You're for a lot of like, you know, I'm signed to an agency, so like you're supposed to have a social presence on those things. But then beyond that, I use Facebook personally for groups. I'm in a few groups on Facebook that I, it's like the only reason that I use Facebook for, like that's not work related, where it's like a tech founder group or an entrepreneur group or a health group or I'm really into. watches and sneakers and exotic cars and stuff. So there's like groups in there where I actually met my current roommate in an exotic car group.

So I love groups. I'm not wild about, you know, I'm not in love with Facebook as a whole. I don't spend a ton of time on it. But when I do go on, I go in groups. I've learned so much and met so many awesome people through it. Wow. Well, it sounds like it's still alive and well. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. I, I, it does. certainly doesn't seem like it's thriving if I scroll through like my regular news feed, but if I go into my group, so I'm like, yeah. This is nice. So there's still, I guess, but I'm trying to say there's still like positivity in there, correct? I mean, depends on where you look.

I think we need to be more proactive about like, you know, I was talking to Alan from Black Dahlia recently. So right after Trevor had passed, and I was talking to him, and he was saying, this is what makes it difficult to, like, be in a genre that is so, like, dark and gloomy and, like, glorifies, like, violence and blood and death and stuff, because then when you face something like this in real life, it's like, oh, shoot, I don't want to glorify that stuff. I don't want to, you know, it feels like it clashes with what we all really want as human beings, which is, like, you know, none of us. even when I was super, super negative, and I would say, like, I want to be negative. I was, like, married to it. Deep down underneath that, I really wanted, like,

to feel loved. I wanted to feel like I liked my life. I wanted to feel like I deserved to live. And I had a talk with Alan about it, and we were like, shoot, like a lot of bands forget that being constantly surrounded by negativity. And that could be, like, if you scroll through Facebook all day,

or you watch the news all day, or even if you listen to a really negative music all day, it will change the way that you think and feel. Like, we got to be more proactive about cutting that stuff out. 100%. You know, I mean, who knew what could have saved Trevor, you know? Could have been a simple, maybe a text from a friend, could have been a phone call, maybe not reading some comments.

Who knows? You know, you're right. It's like with the genre we're in, it's like the complete opposite, like, thought process. Oh, I should probably seek help. I should probably just talk, talk to a friend, be vulnerable. Talk about my

thoughts and feelings I'm having right now. But it's like the stigma. Dude, I've seen, especially recently, I've seen, you know, I've seen you guys,

I've seen after the burial, I've seen Acacia Strain, like bands are saying like, hey, like talk to people, take care of yourself, and that, like, that, the more bands that we see,

just mentioning it, you don't have to launch into a huge speech and it has to take up half your set, but if every concert that people go to, someone on a stage says,

take good care of your mental and emotional health, reach out to a friend if you're having problems, or even, I think it was Vincent from Acacia said, like, there's nothing wrong with going to therapy. There's nothing wrong with getting help for stuff. That's, like, mature. That's responsible.

Like, that's what you should do. And I'm like, dude, if every, like, our scene has needed that type of message for 20-something years. I don't know a single person who goes to concerts who hasn't lost a friend or family member to overdose or suicide. Wow.

It's our whole freaking subculture. It is, huh? Man, you just think about, man, could it be prevented? You know what? When we were texting and we confirmed that, oh, you're going to fly down here a day early

and we're actually going to get to do the podcast and make it happen. As the questions are, popping in my head as the day comes it's crazy and the first thing that popped in my head without just no like me like sitting down doing work i'm like yeah just going to gym or something i'm walking around just a question pop so i what should ask johnny and then it fuck it hit me can when you think about suicide can that thought process stop loaded question loaded question but that was honest with the first thing that popped. So I'm really knowing and you're the person that I can ask.

Yeah. I, so I always preface this by saying like, yes, I work in mental health, but I am not a doctor. I'm not Dr. Crowder. So I'm going to preface it by saying a lot of what I do is just from my lived experience and what I've learned in school, what I've learned through recovery and talking to people in recovery. It is not medical advice for anybody, but I will say that, any thought process. So if you think about OCD, for example, part of OCD, a lot of people think OCD is just being germophobic. And I promise this is an answer to your question.

It's just a way to explain it. Got it. But OCD stands for obsessive, compulsive disorder. So the way I view OCD is you have the obsession, which is the unwanted intrusive thought. And then you have the compulsion, which is the action associated with the thought.

So an obsession might be, my hands are dirty. I need to wash them. And then a compulsion would be actually washing your hands. So the way that I view suicide is that there is, kind of in a similar way.

There is an obsession, so a thought that like I'm worthless, I shouldn't be alive. I know when I was, I dealt with suicidal ideation for a majority of my, life and I remember feeling like I was a burden on people that everyone else's life would be better if I wasn't around and that I was hurting so much that death felt like it would be a relief.

Like finally I don't have to feel that same pain anymore. So the obsession might center around some of those things, whether it's the I'm worthless thoughts, whether it's the I don't want to feel this pain anymore, whether I don't want to be a burden to other people, like any of those obsessions, in my mind, the compulsion and the action associated with that is self-harm. So in my opinion, we can affect obsessive thoughts because that's part of what treatment is designed to do, cognitive restructuring. So it's reframing thoughts that we think. It's challenging thoughts that we think, learning to call out a thought like I'm worthless and say, well, what's your evidence for that.

Like, where are you getting that information? Where are you, how are you backing that up? Like, show me exhibit A, B, and C, like we're in a courtroom. Like, back that up. I'm worthless. Okay. Give me specific examples that demonstrate that I'm worthless. And then I'll give you specific examples that demonstrate that I'm not worthless.

And this internal dialogue can be taught. And if that thought process is interrupted, if we can learn to challenge those negative thoughts, then ideally, we never get to the compulsion part because it stops before action is taken. Wow. And it's not easy. It's not like, well, just don't want to kill yourself and then you won't die. Like it's, it is difficult.

It is hard work. Just like you have to train a muscle, like when you're doing bench press, you have to go up just 2.5 pounds at a time, five pounds at a time. It is hard. It takes a long time. And you might go a month, six, six, six. weeks without raising your weight at all. And you're like, what the heck is going on? That same thing happens with your brain. So I think if we focus on a lot of times we focus on the compulsion.

We focus on the action. Like stop smoking. Just stop smoking. We focus on the action. We forget to address the thought process that is driving the action in the first place. Like, I feel really anxious. So I smoke to calm myself down or something like that. Attack the anxiety. Like focus there. And the compulsion will i mean the plan is if you attack the the the the obsession then the compulsion will become less pervasive wow that's you you learn that that's crazy well i'm fascinating with you johnny because you could put words you you you could turn feelings and how do i do it into words and then put that into a sentence. I can't do that. Dude, I appreciate it. It's amazing, man. Thank you for that. A lot of people actually don't know that I used to have

difficulty speaking because I had really, really debilitating schizophrenia. And I had trouble forming complete sentences and making eye contact. And for a while, I couldn't, I couldn't understand speech. I couldn't understand like the inflection in someone's voice. Like if someone was being sarcastic or something, I wouldn't understand it. Because my brain was under so much duress. I was taking heavy medication, dealing with really significant illness. And now to have the ability to form

complete sentences is like such a blessing. Because I know that for a long time, it was like really challenging to do that. Wow. I mean, that's what you call it doing the work. Jesus. I would practice talking in the mirror. I would practice saying words in the mirror.

it works dude thinking about practicing doing your words I saw a speech you know teacher I guess you could say and you know they gave me a little program and I do it every drive on the way to do a podcast that's awesome takes about like 50 minutes

saying you know you're just talking sometimes I'll do it in a mirror as well what is what are some of the exercises that are or is it proprietary like secret sauce no no no it's like I learn a lot diaphragm breathing so learning how to breathe this in general i just try to like do that like get that that subconscious not even thinking about it but you're breathing from your yeah diaphragm i know this has

helped me you know uh basic stuff like ah z z e oh cool yeah it's just doing that just getting the because as you said i mean your vocal calls are are a muscle yeah and i you realize when there's that when you first are doing something it's very like it makes you feel worse because you realize how far away you are. Yep. And then when you start practicing, I'm like, I mean, and I can't talk after that. I realize, oh, my vocal cords, where I speak is very weak. Oh, weird. Yeah, it's weird. So, like, you have, like, like, this opposite. Or the first time I'm going to gym. Oh, you can't, like, you're, like, doing, like, you're trying to push the bar open. It's like a hot chick next to you. And, like, it's just like, it's really, like, embarrassing, you know? You realize how far away you

are. Yeah. You know, still, I do it. And I'm my vocal cords for really weak. I'm like, man, I'm so far away. But just, it's like you don't, don't watch, don't watch the plant grow. Just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep learning. And sure enough, I mean, then you have like a, you're crawling to, you're just crawling to you as Prince. Yeah, I think it's also going to require, like, with this new generation of musicians, like I'm, if you go by, like, decades, for example, so, like, you started in the decade

previous to me, and I'm starting in the decade previous to people who are coming in to the scene now. And I think of each, it's going to require all of us to be honest about how much work we've done to get here because I would see a guitarist play, especially when I was young, I'd see a guitarist play and I'd be like, I could never do that. And what I needed that guitarist to say to me was, dude, I couldn't do this. And I spent so much time in my room by myself, watching YouTube videos, printing out tabs on my mom's computer and doing scales, just practicing scales all the time and learning fluency and phrasing and tone and like educating myself, reading books, watching videos for years. And a year into that, I still sucked. A couple years

into that. I was still not very good. It took a long time. Like, I think if we're all honest with each other about how much work we're doing, like we want to make stuff look easy. And I think then we trick people into feeling like failures if it's not easy for them. And we need to be straight up. Like, it's really hard to learn an instrument. It's really hard to learn to speak well. It's really hard to lift heavy weights. And all of it takes time. And I think if we're just straight up with people about how much effort it requires, then they won't feel so stupid if it doesn't come overnight for them. Totally. It takes time, man. It just takes time. And one thing you can't force is time. You know, just got to do it. God, it sucks. But it's worth it. I mean, it sucks. But God,

you got you got to do it you know because there's something there's something worse it's not doing it yeah i was talking to um i'm trying to shout out as many friends as possible because i'm not i would not be i would not have any of the stories or knowledge that i have without all of these conversations so that's why i'm mentioning as many of them as possible to give them credit for things that they've taught me and helped me think through and um there's a band called body snatcher who's also from florida sick and kyle is their vocalist and i had a conversation with him recently about how it feels frustrating that prison, you know, I was like, oh, I can't believe that prison isn't further.

This was like maybe a year ago or something, a couple years ago. And I was like, oh, you know, I wish that prison was further. And he was like, Johnny. No, it was a couple years ago, actually, because this was two years after we did your tour. And he said, Johnny, your band has been touring for two years. and I was like, I immediately was like, that's not true. Like, because in my head, I think Dark Sermon, right? I think like, oh, I started playing shows when I was 16 and, you know, I signed a nuclear blast and E1.

I had Whitechapel's manager and all this stuff. And I, I, there's this part of me that thinks like I'm so angry that I'm not further because of how much time I put in. He's like, Johnny, people outside of your band don't know that. you've only existed in the minds of most of these people for like two years like basically since suicide silence and he was like and your first tour was bigger than your last tour with dark sermon like you started out ahead of where you were in your last band he was like for two years being billed where you are having the fans that you have that's a blessing so many bands do not have that after two years and i was like well i don't know if that's true and then he told i think Body Snatcher's been playing for eight years. Lauren has been playing for 10 or over. Yes. Yes. And you're showing me, so listeners don't know this,

but before we started recording, you were showing me ad mats from 2006, 2008, of suicide science playing these massive tours. And this is, we're talking 15 years ago, you were playing bigger shows than I've ever played in my entire life of 15 years of playing music. Like, we lose that. sense of scale if we don't have gratitude for what we're what we've already been able to experience and like

talking to kyle showed me like like you said you can't speed up time and kyle was like you can't fast forward through the time it will take to build your current band and you can't use your old band as credit you can't like they're completely and he didn't say it in a mean way he was helping me understand like no one looks at prison and goes well but all those guys were in other bands before so So they deserve to be bigger. They're like, no, prison is its own separate unit. It's like the fact that you are where you are after only two years of touring is like most bands would kill for that. And it just made me think differently about time and how this is a natural process that you can't force, but also gratitude.

Gratitude, man. It's huge because it could all go away, dude. It's a hard lesson when you learn it. Like people don't only care about how long you've been around as far as like pre Pre-prison no no one cares I was having this conversation with with Ernie our new drummer yesterday And I was talking about time So you know I've been in a suicide song for 20 years And you know you know you know but the funny thing is you know what that means nothing

Who cares? People don't care and I don't care That's so freaking funny I don't care because it because it's because it Because the thing is, when you do that, there is like, why, you know, it just doesn't matter. Dude, there's, I think what it is inside of me at least is there's this component of ego. Yes. That's like, I deserve credit for all the work I've done.

And I needed Kyle to say, no, you don't. He didn't say it like that. Yeah, that would be cool, though. But he, that perspective helped me. me realize like I'm just frustrated that I have to start over. I'm frustrated that this can't be a continuation of dark sermon that I can't be on like year 14 with dark sermon or whatever. It's like you don't have control over that and Kyle had a very, he had a very unique way of basically saying like don't make it that your band has only done this after spending all this time because it was the same

amount of time but a different perspective. So I was saying how come I'm not further after over a decade of playing music and he said can you believe how far you are in only two years so we were just looking at different slices of time that's it that's crazy huh and look at lorna dude again not to make this whole podcast about lorna but lorna has been playing shows for a long long long time and if you look at that trajectory over a long period of time you might have someone say oh i can't believe they're only X-Far after playing for that many years. But if you zoom in on the timeline a little bit and you go, can you believe Lorna Shores has gotten this much bigger and only this amount of time? You just shift your perspective. And then you use the decade of existing

discography before that to back up the hype that they're having now. It keeps it from making it this like, I think a lot of musicians, including myself, we feel sorry for ourselves because of everything we've had to sacrifice. Yes. But my therapist said, he said, nobody made you do that. Like, I'm like, I've given up jobs and I left school and I've like missed funerals and birthdays and weddings and births and I've been fired for it before and I've gotten kicked out in my living situation, my financial situation.

And my therapist was like, nobody forced you to do that. Like you gave all those things because you cared. And you can stop giving those things anytime you want. That's so true, man. And I was like, shoot, that's where my indignance is coming from, is I felt like music robbed me. And he goes, music didn't rob you of anything. You gave stuff that you didn't have to give,

that you could have held on to. You could have said, I don't want to take this two and a half week, or I don't want to take this two and a half month tour, because my niece is being born. And I don't want to miss that. You could have said that at any point, but you didn't. and I'm like, shoot, I forgot I had that power. And it made me less angry and less frustrated.

I felt less hurt by music and more like, I have a choice. Like we could get offered a tour tomorrow and we can say no. We can also say yes. And no one's forcing us to do anything. That's true. We just talked about that yesterday. We're going to stop saying yes to tours. You have to.

Yesterday, just yesterday. Just yesterday, literally just yesterday. It's crazy. yeah, we have the choice, man. It's nuts. And so, actually, this is related to speaking. When I first started speaking, I was doing it for free. So, like, you know, a lot of bands start out, and they're doing that for free.

They'll, like, you know, make a couple bucks selling tickets here and there. Maybe they get, like, $50 or $100 or something. Yeah. And so when I started speaking, speaking for free, and then I remember when I first started charging to speak, like asking for. for a fee to speak. And I was nervous because I was like, what if I get less gigs?

And I knew this speaker who was like, would you rather do one day of work paid or 11 days of work unpaid? And I was like, shoot, I never thought about it that way, but I guess that makes sense. So then as we raised our fee, or as I raised my speaking fee, I was like, okay, I understand that having a higher speaking fee,

means I'll be booked less, but it also means I could make, I could either work 40 days for X dollars or 20 days for X dollars. And if it's the same amount at the end of the day, why am I worried about getting less gigs? And I think as a band, we've, not only in prison and dark, not only in prison, but also dark sermon, I've taken tours because I've thought, what if we just have to stay home for summer if we don't take this? So it's a scarcity. mindset. It's not coming from abundance, like you said. It's coming from, if we don't take this, then we're going to be home. And it's like, that's okay. That's okay. It's better to stay home than to do a bad tour. Yeah. It's true. It doesn't sound like rocket science, but it

feels mind-blowing because I haven't been steering my career that way. Just a simple mental switch. It's tough. And that's why we have good friends. We need a day. We need a day. We need a different perspective constantly. Constantly. You need like a someone that's fucking told you, hey, this is what you're doing. Yeah. You know, it's someone that's like someone either on a text or a phone call or someone like someone looking you in the face, hey, this is what you're doing.

You're like, oh yeah, I forgot. Dude, someone, so by, um, at Cope notes, we have a director of operations, Molly and she asked me a question earlier today. We were talking about how, um, easy it is to take things personally and how if we have like a big news feature that comes out. Actually, now this media, like now this news, put out a feature of us this morning. And one of the comments was like, said something like, oh, your magical Jesus man in the sky didn't like help you with your mental health or some kind of like taunting thing. And she was like, why do people say stuff like that? And I said, people have literally told me to

kill myself in the comments of press features. Yeah. that we've done like, oh, I wish you succeeded when you tried to kill yourself and stuff. Like I've seen that stuff in comments. Yeah. And she asked, how do you not take that personally? And I literally said talking to friends. Like, I need to have mentors and friends who are like in similar situations,

friends who are further along to me that I can call and be like, am I taking this personally? Am I overreacting? Am I being immature? Like, if you don't have people like that to bounce your ideas off of and to like cross-reference to make sure you're being mature, then you act out. And I always want to have someone to call first

before I respond to something like that. Because now I understand that people who are saying those things. And this is something that my mentors have helped me understand. Like people who are further than me, they say like, these people are hurt, dude. You know how hurt you have to be to tell someone to end their own life?

Like these people are hurting. These people are in trouble. And they're taking it out on you because they feel safe because they're online. They're at home on their computer. And they feel that they say something harmful you that it somehow is a way of like processing their anger and you don't have to feed them because if they do that and nobody responds over time they'll stop because they

realize it's not effective and I'm just like wow you're so right I'm so glad I didn't comment back like we need to be able to call people to ask them for feedback because the odds are whatever you're going through you know someone who has gone through the same thing you just haven't talked about it yet that's true yeah you got to keep that open dialogue Oh man So you should probably stop reading comments Dude Is that too?

I actually I do not watch Press features So this was the first one I watched in a long time Because we did like I remember we did We did CNN

And I watched it And I was like I was so critical of myself When this came out I'm like Oh I can't believe You know I just started picking out

Like oh why did I word it like that And oh my My hair looks weird Or whatever And I'm like Yeah I get so critical So now

I I've actually been trying to learn to like, like right now I can watch my TED talks and not judge myself because I understand like that's the best I could do at that time. Yes. And if I see something that I could have done differently

on that talk, I'll just do it differently for my next talk. Yeah. That's it. But in the meantime, while I was trying to heal that, I couldn't read comments because it would hurt me too much.

I'd be like, oh, they're right. They're right. I did mess that up. Or they're right. I do look a certain way or whatever. And now I'm learning to be more objective about it and not let it get under my skin. I think a big part of it is therapy and a big part of it is talking to people who, like, let's use Slipknot as an example. Do you remember when on YouTube they would show the thumbs up and thumbs down meter?

So like it would kind of stretch. I remember going to see the psychosocial music video when it first came out and they had that like like meter. And I saw the music video. I thought it was so freaking epic, dude. and the song itself is so catchy and I was just like, this is freaking amazing. And then I get out of full screen,

I X out of full screen so I can see the bar and add a ton of dislikes. It was like tens of thousands of dislikes or something. And I was like, holy crap, even one of the biggest bands in the entire world cannot make these 10 or 20,000 people happy enough to click the thumbs up.

Like if they can't make them happy, who do I think I am? Like I need to divorce this. I said to my director of ops this morning, I said we can't please everyone, but we can help someone. True. And we're there for the second part,

not for the first part. Wow. Snuts, thank God that YouTube took away those thumbs down publicly. Yeah. I don't need that, dude. You don't. Because you can see it privately, though, if you actually have the channel you see.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I suck. And it's so funny, you'll put out a music video and there will be, you know, in the first hour, there will be like, let's say just for easy math, there's a, there's 99 likes and one dislike. You go, who's that freaking guy? Yeah. Why didn't, what didn't we do right? In fact, the new prison song that we just, I mean, it's not out yet, but we just tracked vocals for it a couple weeks ago. And it's called Out of My Head.

And it's about how it's so easy to focus on one critical thing that somebody says and how easy it is to spiral into like, you know, if only I would have done this thing differently. If only I could just change myself in this way or that way. And there's a line in the song that says, what should I change? And it's me like having this weird moment of mental groveling where like imagine me putting out of a song and seeing 99 likes and one dislike and I see that one dislike and I think like how can I be different to make that stranger like me more and I think most creative people have had that subconscious urge to like change and contort ourselves to make those critics happy but the thing is if we change something to make that person happy we would upset somebody else forever there's no way to make

everybody happy it's impossible man it is impossible possible to make at least a majority of people happy. Yeah. Yeah, even that, dude. Think about basic things, like the color red. Do you know that, like, most people don't like the color red? You think you're going to be more popular than the color red? Yeah.

You're not going to have a higher approval rating than a color, right? Like, it's, you're not going to, I think a lot of times we try. This comes back to knowing who you are, like what you said. It always does. Knowing exactly who you are, knowing what your band is. is what your band stands for. And if you put it out and you say, this band is this band and this song is representative of who this band is,

and I put myself, my own identity into creating this, that has to be enough. Even if it's 99 dislikes and one like, we have to be like, I'm proud of what I did. I can sleep at night because I was honest. Honestly, man.

You got to do it. I'm a 90s new metal kid. Always, always happy. Always, but we'll be a wonderful fucking cold chamber. Sure, dude. It's it. Just know who you are, man.

You know, and if we're lucky, we'll be on the road to figure out that answer, you know. It's crazy, which you are and have. Johnny, I'm very proud of you, man. Thank you so much. Hearing you talk is a trip, man. You are extremely intelligent, man. I appreciate that. It's crazy.

A ton. I really like nerding out, so this is a fun way to do that. Talking to you makes me feel smarter. that's a cool compliment. I don't think anyone's ever said that to me. No, I was like, dude,

man, I have smart friends, man, yeah, I'm, I'm fucking cool. Thank you, dude.

I really think the metal community is full of, like, some of the smartest and hardest working people I've ever met. Like, I joked with my, my photographer, Gene Ramirez,

um, he, we had a conversation about how like, during COVID, we said that if every metal musician and hardcore musician, uh, went to work in like the corporate world, we would run it in like two or three years.

Crazy. Because think about it. Think about how much initiative it requires for just let's take, let's say a smaller touring band, you're designing your own merch, some of them are booking their own tours. They're coordinating with local promoters. They're pitching themselves to playlist. They're doing album art and putting out pre-orders and shipping stuff. Like that level of initiative for that little pay, literally nothing take home.

for most of these bands. And if you said, hey, can you work 40 hours a week doing data entry and we'll pay you $40,000 a year? They'd be like, $40,000 a year? I will run the entire corporation for $40,000 a year. And I'll do it better than the person who's sitting at the top right now. Oh, my goodness. Touring band members, and this is kind of a generalization, I know it's not necessarily true

of everybody, but we work hard. We work long hours. We apply ourselves. We're creative. We're dedicated. were reliable. Like if you put someone like that into a non-metal setting,

we would outshine everybody because most people don't have to work as hard as creative people have to work when they're starting out. It's true. Especially when I mean you experienced it, I mean, a few times with bands,

with prison, with cop notes, we start something from scratch. Starting cove notes was freaking brutal, dude. I remember I was talking to another friend who helped me sort through this stuff. Danny from Upon a Burning Body. Oh, cool. And he said, I was talking about cop notes and I was like, dude, you know, it's so tough. Like everybody knows me for music. And it's

really hard to get them to wrap their head around, like the people who follow me to wrap their head around like, I'm doing a new thing. I'm doing cope notes. Yeah. And he was like, Johnny, I've been posting about golf for like a year. And still, most people don't know I play golf. Most people don't care about my golf stuff. It's like, he's like, I know it's going to take years to, like, build this up, the golf side of my life. It's a huge passion of mine. I care so much about it. And his patience inspired me to be like, okay, if year one, cope notes, it doesn't make sense to people or it's not what people know me for.

Maybe year two, maybe year two. Maybe you're three. And now when I go to shows, I'm not joking. More people stop me to talk to me about cope notes than about prison. Oh, my. And I never thought that would happen. Wow. that's crazy and that's at shows that's like at you know when I was at after the burial I was like during after

the barrel someone came up to me and they're like hey man and they introduced themselves they're like you're johnny right and I'm like yeah and I figured they wanted they like knew me from prison and they're like oh yeah I saw cope notes on the news and I used cope notes and I got a subscription for my mom and you know we're both feeling a lot better and I just want to say thanks for making it I'm like freaking what because for the first however many years Nobody would even care. In fact, I have outbound messages in my messenger. Like when people message me, I'll look, like someone will message me, like,

congratulations on some, like, Cope Notes thing. And I'll look back at the most previous message. And it was a message from me in February 2018 asking them to check out the Cope Notes website. I'm like, wow, it took four and a half years for this person to see one feature. and be like, hey, cool stuff. Whoa. It takes a long, long time. It does.

But so worth it. It is, man. All that time you put into the years and time and like, and the growing pains, which that's a whole other conversation. And for someone just about, oh, dude, it's awesome. It's cool. Do I actually sign up for it? Yeah.

That's the cool thing about people coming up to me. I don't know if people know this. like people know that cope notes is anonymous but I think they forget that like I don't know who's using it like there are tens of thousands of people all over the world who use cope notes right now and I don't know who so when someone walks up to me and says like I use it I'm like no freaking way like it's like meeting somebody in the wild right like I because if they didn't tell me I would have no way of knowing and I feel so fortunate to be able to be able to. to like get to put a face to the name because when you play a concert for example yeah um you see kids

having fun and for me the the only thing i care about when i'm playing a concert the only thing my eyes are looking at is like are people having fun are people enjoying themselves are people feeling free for this little 30 minutes slice of life separate from all of their problems out there like are they feeling heard and seen and valued and safe like is this their 30 minutes that kept me alive when I was going to shows. But with Cope Notes, it's anonymous. I don't get to see faces. I don't get to see names.

I don't get to see any of that. So I see our numbers on a little statistics counter, a little odometer. So like today, 100 people might sign up for Cope Notes, and I won't get to see them or talk to them or get to have a connection with them the same way that if I played a certain 100 people were there. And I get to have that conversation with them and see them have fun and interact with them. So it has been honestly very lonely to build Cope Notes because when you're building a band,

you're with your friends, you're with your brothers, you're with like people who you can share that with. But before I had employees, it was just me. And even now, like, I'm the only executive. Like, I'm the CEO and I have employees. and that does get lonely because when I play on stage, I feel like I'm with my equals.

Yeah. Right? Like you have everybody on the same page. Everyone's bought in. Yeah. But a company isn't always like that. Wow. Damn.

Yeah, it's like, because you do it for human connection. So it's hard to like when you're just to see like number. You know, but now it's another reason for you. You'll go on tour. You're going to be approached by people that, you know, I'm on,

send out for Coke Notes. Yeah. Yeah, we're finally touring again. Great. So we've been home for a long time. So we're, I don't know, when is this coming out? Monday. Oh, really soon.

Okay, so check our page this week, I guess, the week that this comes out, because we'll have tour dates posted. Cool. We're switching our MO, kind of like what you said, we need to be able to say no. Yes. And I think our mentality is like, how do we have the greatest amount of impact? Yes. while making the wisest use of our time. Yes.

Like if we can spend more time writing music and less time, like here's a thing, I love performing. I think that sometimes we, as musicians, we cling to performing because of the scarcity mindset, we think, oh, if I don't perform, then I'll disappear or my band will become irrelevant. In my opinion, that's a bad, reason to perform. Yes. If you perform because you love it,

you perform because you're stoked about the bands you're on tour with, you're stoked about the people in the audience, you love the music and stuff, that's a great reason to tour. And it's kind of like, if you've ever been to the studio and you're not feeling it,

and you're like, I need to get up, take a break, you know, I'm going to get something to eat, I'm going to stretch, and I'm going to sit back down and try to retract that. Yeah. I feel like bands don't do that.

And COVID made everybody do that. So now we're like, man, I need to be smart about the way that I apply my time and talent. So with prison, we're like, we want to continue touring, but at least my dream is not to be a road dog for the rest of my life. Yeah. It's not to grind and to play show after show after show after show after show because of the

self-care thing we talked about earlier, compassion fatigue. If you play 10 months a year, you could get really good. But what happens to your personal life? What happens to your mental and emotional health? happens to your relationships. And then if those things go south, you will be bad at performing because you won't be present anymore. So as we get back into touring, we're like, we want a tour, but we want to do it in a way

that's healthy for us so that we can sustain this band. Because I want to be able to say what you just said earlier in this podcast, I've been in prison for 20 years. Oh, prison. That sounded terrible. But you know what I mean? Yeah. I want to be able to say, like, I've been in this band prison for 20 years.

and if you burn yourself out by doing eight, ten months a year, you don't get to say that. You get to say, I've been in my band for three years, and then I just got a job at Amazon because I was done. And I see that happen with some of the most talented musicians I've ever met get burnt out, and they drop their instrument because they're too fatigued to pick it back up. And we can't let that happen ourselves.

Like, I think I want prison to leave a legacy, and I think suicide silence is a band that has done that and not every band from your era in fact almost none of the bands from when you were coming up have been able to make that kind of long-term impact and that's my dream not flash in the pan yeah I want to change the genre the way that you guys have wow it's cool because you have

you have people to talk to you about it it's cool that maybe it's what you know talk about their experiences and they can share them with you It might help, I might not, you know. It's cool. Just keep doing it, man. Just keep sucking.

I still, I still suck at my instrument. I feel that way. I feel that way, you know. Practice, just fucking look down. I just like, well,

it's still horrible. There you go. Is that why you lit your guitar on fire? Yeah. I was like, you fucking piece of shit. That's another formative memory. Yeah.

Oh, that's, that was a good one. We have the video somewhere. Really? Yeah, did we not send that to you? I don't think I got it. We can send it to you. We have it.

Yeah, please send it. I'll probably play it. But man, that was a fun tour, man. Thank you for doing it. We had a great time with you guys. I think it was really cool. I remember, which I told you, like, years ago. Sometimes I'll just sit, I'll lay down in my bunk and this list.

You guys get pumped up. and then play a show. It's cool like when the tour is over, you have like these little memories. Oh, man, it was cool. It was fun. Dude, I also, I remember talking to Eddie, and actually all of you guys,

so this was at the Korn tour that we met at. And this was, so I had, I've made friends with Brian from Korn. And so the reason why that connects to this story is I remember asking Ed, Eddie, why he was so nice to us, why the band was so nice to us, like why suicide silence was so nice to prison on tour. It was crazy. Like, you guys not only brought us out on our first tour, but also, I remember you shared towels for when there were venue bathrooms and venue showers.

You shared catering. Like, you made sure that we had good parking. Like, you went so far out of your way to accommodate us and be kind of us. Now, remember asking Eddie, like, why are you like this? and he said it's because corn was like this to us. Corn was accommodating. Corn would share their catering and stuff and wanted to be supportive. And I'm just like, if we can keep passing that down, like I'm not joking.

After, even since we toured with you, you're still in my perspective, I won't speak for the whole band, but I'm sure they would agree that you're the best headliner we've ever toured with because of how you treated the support bands. and I think if like corn could do that for you, show you that same respect and courtesy

and kindness and accommodation, and then you could do that for us. Right when that tour finished, we said in the van driving back home, like we're going to be that type of headliner. Wow. To do that so that when we're headlining and we bring out bands,

we want people to say, wow, I want to be kind and accommodating and encouraging. Like if every band chose to be that type of headliner, we'd be bringing up a whole new generation of bands where it's like, no egos, no bad attitudes. It's like people who are doing what you said,

like working together and supporting each other. Because you guys went out of your way to support, to stand side stage, to share things with us, that it melted our brain. Like until that, I had never toured with a headliner who was as conscious about showing kindness and support to support bands.

Whoa. Dude. And I've heard other bands say that about you too. And so I just, can't help but think like, you know, if corn does it for suicide, and suicide does it for prison and prison does it for blah, blah, blah, blah, forever. like all of these new generations of bands are going to be in a healthier culture

because of that pay it forward mindset. Wow. Well, dude, I mean, yeah, just pay it forward. And unfortunately, that kind of comes from, you do a tour and a headline of treat you're like fucking shit. He's done a lot of this. That's where, I mean, that's what came up from us. We're like, we'll never going to do that.

Yeah. It was one band. God, it was terrible. They fucking took all the money. They took all the food, the catering. It was us faceless. A band called Unexpect. So if you do that research, you'll find out who the headliner was.

So I'm not going to say the band name, but man, they took everything. I saw, you literally see egos and treat us like shit. That's so, actually, we recently, you know, Dyerda's Murder, for example. Yes. There's a story of them, and I don't even know that I'm the one to tell it. but there's a story of them being extremely generous to a band that was not compensated fairly and Thy Art was generous for the entire duration of the tour.

They like made up for a discrepancy and pay for a band for the entire tour. Wow. To support them. Like, and Attila has done similar stuff like that. Like sometimes you see these bands and they're not going to go out bragging. Like Thy Art and Attila aren't going to be like,

we're so nice and we did this thing. But like people who are on the other side, of the fence who like can see stuff and know that that's happening like we appreciate it because they're setting a precedent for other young bands coming up to be like we got to be generous because the bands who are taking us out are behaving that way and it's inspiring dude it is it is man we're always trying to have a fucking good time dude geez because everyone's having a good time that the show's sick oh yeah it's just like duh right everyone's having good time show sick one of one of those like common sense things that people don't think about they think like

scarcity mine oh yeah you know but what i did to overcombinate uh i was a massive fan of the band then and that was the year we did mayhem 2008 the that that flyer and i still wore the fucking band t-shirt on stage or putting up our biggest tour in our our our career just because wow i'm a guy that separates the art from from the artist i am i am that that guy i will completely separate it yeah it was like had this sour taste in my soul and but no matter well you know i I still went home. I went to Bucke of Wild Wings. I wore, I wore the T-shirt, eight wings, and I still wore it live.

Again, you'll partner with the band in. We just go look up my state shirt. You'll know exactly who it is. Yeah, it's like, it's like feelings. You got to go do something shitty to fucking change. You know, we went through that and I'm like, all right, well, never would do that. You know? Dude, also like letting go, like, it sounds like you at a certain point, we're just like,

I'm not going to burn time and attention and energy on being upset. about this anymore. Yeah, yeah. Like, I feel like we allow people to take our energy easily. Yeah. Like, there's this,

um, there's this awesome parable. I'll give you the short version. Just do it. But I absolutely love this. I try to, my therapist told it to me and I, it's been like ringing in my head ever since.

He said, yeah, um, it's this parable of these two monks that are like walking along a trail. And, um, neither monk is allowed to touch women. Oh,

um, they're like taking a vow of celibacy. Yes. And so they're, walking all the way to this monastery and they cross, they get to like this river and there's this woman who can't cross the river. So, oh, and they're like in a, yeah, I guess I'm going to leave out a lot of details. But basically, she can't cross. So the older, more seasoned monk picks her up and carries her across the river. And the other monk is like, what the heck? Like, this guy's

supposed to be my mentor, my teacher, and then he totally broke his vow, like he just touched a woman. So they walk and walk and walk for days to get to this monastery. They finally get there. And the younger monk is like, hey, are you going to like tell on yourself, basically? Like when you go in there, are you going to confess that you, like, broke your vow? And the older monk says, I carried her across a river for a couple minutes. but you've been carrying her for days. Oh, wow. All the way to the monastery for miles and miles. And I think, like, that was such a beautiful representation of, like, how we can choose to not,

we can just choose to, like, quote, set that person down. Like, when we carry grudges and we get frustrated, like, oh, I can't believe this person didn't do this thing for me or this person mistreated me. Oh, yeah. If they mistreat you in a moment and you're frustrated, you, quote, carry them across the river. You have to touch them for a minute to deal with that. Yeah. That's okay.

But in the days and weeks and months and years afterwards, don't carry them anymore, dude. Yeah. You don't have to do that. They don't deserve any more of your time and attention. Yeah, you're right. It causes illness aside your body, dude, and the resentment. And you'll be, like, going out for a walk and be like, I'll be like, fuck that guy. The guy fucking did this.

And it took me a whole life to learn that. Dude, let it go. If you can't have a conversation with them, have the conversation. and I just it's the cliche you get this fucking wave it's like lifted okay

then you feel way better it's like oh wow and the time too like I remember you know I've been sort of screwed over by a number of people in the music industry before

and it would like eat at me it would like I couldn't let it go and then just recently I just thought like I'm devoting time and attention

and energy to being frustrated about this. Kind of like when my therapist said, no one made you give up your apartment. No one made you give up your degree. No one made you give up your relationship. Like you did that.

I was like, shoot, I'm giving that person being frustrated. And I've felt a lot lighter and even like reached out to people to be like, hey, I don't know like exactly where things went wrong, but I don't have a problem with you. Like I'm not upset. I'm happy to start.

fresh if you don't if you still don't want to chat that's fine with me but i just want to let you know i'm not carrying anything anymore i'm cool with you i'm not saying you have to be cool with me but that freedom like forgiveness does not take two parties yes like you can forgive someone for wronging you and they can still be sure upset with you or whatever and you still feel like because you're like wow i set that person down on the other side of the river wow that's true man holy shit well i think we should and this one on a high note. That was very positive. Yeah.

Well, Johnny, thank you for flying here for just doing the podcast. I did fly here early for the podcast. I did move my flight to make it happen. What? I was going to ask you, we just got it in this two-hour conversation. What are you in town for? So, um, Coke Notes has some government meetings out here. So like part of the vision for what we're doing is like, of course, individual people can

pay for cope notes. subscriptions. Yeah. And it's like 10 bucks a month or something, even less if you get like a year. But the vision for us is like not only to serve people who do have $10, but to serve like foster youth and homeless communities and like people who don't have $10. So part of what we do is we contract with governments, like city and county governments, to provide free subscriptions for people who don't have money. So basically a municipality will pay, like, the government will pay for subscriptions, like a big batch of them, and then hand them out for free through agencies and providers. So like women's shelters or veterans organizations, like all of

these local organizations who are seeing people who might not have $10. So that's a big reason why we're out here is like to connect with some government folks to see if we could get some free subscriptions into the hands of L.A. County residents. Whoa. That's amazing, man. Yeah, we've done it in other like in orange county florida we've done it hillsborough county florida um we've done it in iowa we've done it in kansas like i mean this is something that we do so la county is like the largest county in the u.s i think it's like absolutely gargantuan so um this is like has always been a dream for us is like how do we get this out there and because it's anonymous this the last thing i'll say because i know it's like we're going over time but like la county is very

diverse, right? You have people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. You have people who have, maybe they have accents, or maybe they have body modifications, or maybe they identify as a different gender, they have a different, quote, different sexual orientation. And these things are barriers to care. Like, a doctor might treat them differently, or a therapist might hear what they say through the lens of like their hairstyle or the way their nails look or something like that. So because Cope Notes is anonymous and we don't collect personal health information, it's a way to get the same level of care to a really diverse population, regardless of any of those factors that might interfere with the way that you're treated

in a traditional care setting. So that's why L.A. County has been really heavy on our heart is like, this is such a diverse population of all sorts of different people. And I know that some of these people are not treated fairly in care settings. Wow. That's fucking crazy, dude. You are a psychopath. I love it, I know. I know. Recovering. But that is our main ingredient, dude, it's crazy. Well, dude, it's great seeing you and where can people find you? Copenodes.com has all the cool, interesting stuff about copenotes. Johnny Crowder.com has all the Johnny Crowder stuff. I'm on Instagram at Johnny Crowder.com. I'm on Instagram at Johnny Crowder loves you because I do. I'm on Facebook. I love you. Johnny Crowder. I actually use LinkedIn a lot now for Cope Note stuff. I'm not sure how many of your listeners are like big

LinkedIn people, but I am on there. And then what I'd really encourage you to do is if you're a podcast person, the Cope Notes podcast. We've interviewed actually Austin from Lorna. We've interviewed Vincent from Acacia. We've interviewed Brian from Corn. Like a lot of musicians. about how they handle their mental and emotional health while they're toying, while they're recording, while they're home. So the Cope Notes podcast, and the last thing I'll say is, if you have time, if you can carve 15 minutes out to watch just one of my TED talks, you can pick whichever one you want. If you go to YouTube and search Johnny Crowder, the reason why I put six months into writing

each of those talks is so that I could have a 15-minute conversation with a million people. so like please take the time to watch at least one if not both there's one called how to grow as a person and why it sucks and that's like more about neuroscience and why it's hard how to basically teach your brain to think in healthier patterns but then the other one is called why i don't want to die anymore and if there's anyone listening right now anyone anyone listening who is even remotely considering suicide as a viable option stop what you are doing right now watch why I don't want to die anymore. My second TED talk. And then if you still are considering suicide in that moment, actually even before you watch the TED talk, if you're serious and you have plans and you've thought about it and you're really considering suicide,

first thing to do is text home to 741, 741, which is a crisis text line. Do that yesterday. Do it like literally right now. And then after someone has held. helped you. I encourage you to watch that TED talk because I talk about some of the flawed logic behind suicidal ideation and how the reasons why I wanted to end my own life actually didn't make a lot of sense. So please, whatever you do, you don't have to follow me on any of the things.

You don't have to watch any of my talks. If you take nothing else from this, just know that you can text. And I don't own the crisis text line. We're not affiliated in any way, but it is a free resource that you can use 24-7. So if you text home to 741-741, you can chat with a trained crisis counselor in real time. So everything that I do is not for crisis response. This is for people who are trying to feel healthier, trying to take care of themselves. If you are in a crisis, do not turn to me because I won't be able to help you the same way that the crisis text line can. Wow. Well, we got it.

Dude, love you. I can't believe you flew literally across the country to hang out, dude. Yeah, buddy. Pump, man. So worth it. Well, good luck with your meeting and I had a great combo. I didn't expect to do this for over two hours. I'm fucking pumped.

It's sick. It's sick. It's time to pee. I've been holding it. I've been holding the pee and apart. Well, on that note, everyone, again, thank you. And yeah, I'll see you soon. Later.