Modern Wisdom - #959 - Underoath - The Hidden Struggles Of Mental Health In Music
Episode Date: June 26, 2025Aaron Gillespie is the drummer, vocalist, and songwriter for Underoath. Tim McTague is the lead guitarist, backing vocalist, and songwriter for Underoath. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll, the dream eve...ry young man grows up hearing about. But is it all it’s made out to be? Aaron and Tim, from one of Metal’s most legendary bands, Underoath, have lived that life. The shows, the parties, the chaos, but also the sleepless nights, the fractured relationships, & the moments of wondering if it’s all worth it. Behind the noise & fame, what does the rockstar life actually cost? Expect to learn the origins of Underoath and what life is like on the road, how touring in a band affects your relationships with the ones you love and how it takes a toll on your mental health, what the rollercoaster of success is like and how the guys were able to deal with fame, the top 5 deathbed regrets of rockstars, what the songwriting scene is like In Nashville at the moment, how men can age peacefully & well, and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - (00:00) Longevity Of The Band & Life On The Road (07:17) How Touring Affects Relationships (19:55) How Touring Affects Mental Health (29:55) How Touring Affects Your Loved Ones (36:49) The Emotional Rollercoaster of Success (50:57) The Reality Of Fame (1:14:23) The Price Of Precision In Any Art Form (1:39:58) How To Know Your Priorities Are Grounded (1:44:53 )The Top Five Deathbed Regrets Of Fallen Rockstars (1:55:35) The Current Songwriting Scene In Nashville (2:17:02) Manhood & Aging Well (2:28:12) The Dynamics Of Aaron & Tim’s Relationship Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us.
It's an honor, man.
How long have you guys been playing together as a band?
I've been in the band for 24 years.
And it was like a, it was a local band two years before that, so 26 years.
Yeah.
Right.
We've been playing together for 24 years though.
Yeah.
Have you got any idea how many shows you've done?
No.
I don't.
Do you?
2,500 maybe.
Where'd you get that number from?
24 years, 100 shows a year, something like that. There's been years where we've done 06 though,500 maybe. Where did you get that number from? 24 years, 100 shows a year, something like that.
There's been years where we've done 06 though, I remember.
Probably more.
I got married the first time in 06, and we did, that year we did over 300 shows.
Holy fuck.
Because I remember I got married in Salt Lake City, and no honeymoon, anything.
72 hours later, you know.
Back on the road. Back on the road with taken back Sunday
I remember that tour specifically so it was us taking back Sunday in a band called armor for sleep
I remember they were the opener. Yeah, so I we started that two or three days after I got married
So yeah, I bet you it's more than a hundred a year. Yeah, we played over a hundred last year
So at least two thousand maybe three thousand I'd say three to four thousand shows.
Yeah.
I'd say 30.
You realize that's insane.
It is.
It's, I mean, I think it's weird to think about doing something for a quarter of a
century, like you hear people like, oh, I've been married for 30 years.
You're like, wow, that's impressive.
And then it's like, yeah, we've been in a band for 25 years, like the same band
playing some of the same songs.
Something that I was going to say, how many times have you played
their only Chasing Safety?
I mean, literally-
Every single show, probably 2005.
Yeah, Boy Brush Red, like those, like the bigger
quotation finger songs off that record.
Yep.
Like, something I think about a lot, as you were just saying that, I think about
this so much, is the people I love the most in the world, like my wife and children.
I have spent more time with him than them. Do you know what I mean? And I don't know why it does it
does a number on my head sometimes. If I really, if I really like, if I get introspective about it,
it fucks me up for some reason. And I don't know why. I think there's a piece of like,
there's a piece of guilt or something about that to me. And I never really talked about that.
But it's, and I don't know if guilt is the right word, but there's like a thing.
Like if I think about the fact that like, I love you and I love spending time with you,
but like if I think, if I think about it, it's strange.
And I don't know, you know.
What do you think the emotion is?
The one that keeps coming into my mouth right now, just looking at you as guilt because
you spend X amount of time all the time away from your
wife and children with someone else. And what we do is fun. And I'm cognizant enough to
know that I shouldn't be guilty. That doesn't make any sense, like technically. But for
some reason, I feel that sometimes.
Yeah, it's an interesting emotion when you love what you do. So it's kind of, it's, I think if we were oil rigors and we had to leave for seven
or eight months and we were in like the middle of the ocean, like eating shit,
it'd be different.
Cause there's a sense of nobility and sacrifice that doesn't happen when you're
fuck, like there's a type of intimacy I have with my bandmates
that I'm never gonna have with my wife.
Like there's a type of intimacy that you have...
Like if you're dating a musician, there's a type of intimacy that that person has
with a fucking random keyboardist playing in an airport
that you as a non-musician will never ever know.
A non-spoken synergy.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, doing something you love,
it can almost creep in personally on both sides,
like the wife, you know, our partner side and ours.
It's like, oh, we have, you know,
we've got to go to Austin and do all these things.
And it's like, oh, you know, it's very easy to go,
oh, it must be so difficult hanging out with like Chris
or hanging out with your friends
and going to the comedy mothership and all this stuff.
And it's like, it's weird that this is our job.
It's weird that talking to you is something
that I would do for fun,
because I'm a big fan of you and what you've done
and the kind of journey you've been on.
And then for that to be a priority,
because we happen to be in this weird
public figure business thing is just, yeah, it's not work.
It's like a velvet prison in a way. It's a very strange kind of sort of like golden handcuff type
thing. And I got sent this the other day. I wanted to read you guys this and get your thoughts on
this. It's an essay called the raw truth about touring and mental health. Touring breaks people
in ways that most don't talk about and the industry rarely admits.
At its core, touring is chronic displacement.
You're always somewhere else.
No routine, no grounding, no permanence.
Your nervous system never lands.
You live in fight or flight, travel delays,
high pressure shows, interpersonal tension,
constant overstimulation.
There's no decompression and no off switch.
And emotionally, touring swings between extremes one night
It's 1,500 people screaming the next is a silent hotel room
You go from deep connection to total isolation over and over again
That kind of cycle burns out even the most resilient people but the culture of touring rewards stoicism and punishes vulnerability
You're expected to power through joke about it drink through it it, and the deeper you go the harder it becomes to admit you're unraveling because your whole identity is
tied to the road.
Your worth becomes about being needed, useful, reliable, so when your body screams, I can't,
your mind says, you have to.
There's no roadmap for recovery, no built-in support, no decompression protocol, and when
you finally make it home, you don't feel home. You feel disoriented and numb, out of place.
No one around you quite understands what you've been through.
And honestly, you don't either.
The truth is touring is beautiful, but it can also dismantle you.
And pretending it doesn't is why so many are suffering in silence.
Admitting the toll doesn't make you weak.
It makes you honest.
And that honesty is where real change begins.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Did you, that's, did you write that? No. That, that is- I saw it on Instagram. I got it sent to me. Yeah. Yeah. Did you? That's, did you write that?
No.
That is-
I saw it on Instagram.
I got it sent to me.
Yeah.
I mean, I think all of that rings true to me.
In a lot of ways, I think there's an arrested development that happens in
touring where you have to make a conscious decision to grow up because
it's very feasible and almost encouraged to not.
What does not growing up look like?
I mean, we've all done it.
We grew up in public, unfortunately for us.
I think having a tour manager, having an agent, having writers.
The sheet tells you what to do every day, your food's brought to you.
Having shoppers, runners. You need anything, drop of a hat, it's taken care of.
You lose value of substances, you lose value of money and value of time because it's just
excess all the time.
It's not like this massive toxic thing all the time.
It could just be, we always get a loaf of bread and five things of deli meat
and nobody touches them and we just throw it out.
Like things that in a normal construct, you would be like, what are you doing?
But in touring, it's like, how are you not doing that?
You know?
And then that's the very baseline all the way up to love, commitment,
how like relationships are really hard.
I mean, we know a lot of people in the industry that don't know themselves
and don't know how to co-exist with a partner.
Why? What does it do to relationships and intimacy?
Well, I don't know because I've been with the same woman my whole life, but my perception
is that it displaces purpose and replaces that idea with other things like instant gratification.
Like, the same way, we were just talking about this earlier, but the same way like pornography
is not positive for anyone, the people doing it, the people consuming it, it kind of just
stretches out something that should be this one way into something that it never should
have been.
And I think that happens a lot on tour.
I'll take one of those as well.
Mine's lost its flavor.
Oh, you just, that's when you know that you need another one.
Take some of those suckers.
Thank you. The people that are listening were powering ourselves
with nicotine via Wood's delivery system, dude.
Sucking on a cricket bat.
I think a big, yeah, like a big answer to the thing is,
the obvious thing with love is absence,
but the biggest piece of it, I know in my own life,
and we could talk about this for three hours
because that just fucked me up, in ways that I can't understand
to you and I want to talk about something.
We'll go back into it.
I want to talk about something specifically in there, but I want to get to this.
We can go back through it.
We've got all the time in the world.
I want to get to this love bit for a second.
We go to work and we play in front of thousands of people.
And like he said, everything is disposable in a sense.
You know what I mean?
Like you can have whatever you want, truly.
Like I can, if I wanted to, I could ask a tour manager to get me cocaine.
I can do that.
I want a new Gameboy at every show.
Literally.
I want my tech rider.
Oh, I'm not joking.
Whatever you want.
Like whatever you want.
Whatever you want.
And when you get home, you're through various stages of life, obviously.
But where I'm at in my life now, I'm 42.
I'll be 42 next month.
And I have two children.
And I get home, and my wife has said this to me in colorful words sometimes,
is we haven't stopped living.
Like, we haven't.
So I get home and expect like, time, time, time, give me time, give me time,
give me time, and not only give me time,
but give me this deep, bright level of intimacy
that I need and crave and feel like I have been
out here working so I don't get that.
And it's impossible.
I've been hungry for that, I've been hunched.
Parched, and it feels impossible to get on the road,
you know, in a certain way like well
There's no physical as long as you're being faithful. We are we and we all are so yeah
So you get home and she always says to me she goes Aaron
Give me a couple days
to like get used to having you here even to like
Hear your footsteps in the house, you know and to like
To see you with our daughter and it's emotional for me because it's my reality.
You know what I mean?
And it hurts.
I, because I want her to just be like, you know, in not so
many words, like come here, let me fuck you and love you and
like, let's do the whole thing.
And that's not reality for anybody.
Well, it's, it's too intermittent for that.
You know, you do a normal nine to five.
You leave on the morning, you come back in, maybe wife runs up and jumps
and gives you a hug when you walk through the door.
Hooray.
Yep.
You're away for six weeks at a time.
What's the, what's like an average medium length tour?
Like a six weeks, six weeks, six weeks, something like that.
We did one last year that was 12 weeks.
Motherfucker.
Yeah.
And that's across time zones.
That's the intermittent contact.
That's all the rest of this stuff.
Yep.
And, um, if you have been away for that long, that's not, I missed you today.
That's, I got used to life without you.
I got used to a type of life that you were not in.
And I'm aware that you went away from one peak experience of deep connection
with your family to another peak experience of deep connection with your family to another peak experience of deep connection
with your art form.
But I kind of went through this insane acceleration,
deceleration process.
I've had to develop all of these coping mechanisms
emotionally to work out how to like split
or like compartmentalize my heart
so that I can open it up when you're here.
But so that I'm able to silo it off when you're not.
Because if I still have it open when you're not here,
then it fucking tears me up and you're up until
three in the morning, four in the morning on the tour bus.
I don't know what you're doing and I don't know who you're with.
There's all of these screaming fans and you've got
this like crazy set, but like, fuck.
Yeah. I used to come home and we just,
you end tours on weekends, like, you know,
your last show is Sunday or Monday or whatever it is. And I just come home on a Tuesday and I'd get
off the plane, Uber home, and the house would just be empty. And it's like, you know, the kids are at
school, you know, and that's why. Welcome back, Doug. But to your point, like, your kids are at
school, your kids have, you know, extracurricular
activities, your wife has a doctor's appointment, and it was that.
It was like, yo, I'm home, and you expect, like, this big parade very selfishly.
Like I'm back from war.
Where is it?
Also, like, the tour continues, because you start the tour, and I imagine opening show,
you know, like, let's have a beer, let's do the whatever.
It's like, hey, where's the fanfare and the banners?
And it's like, no, you're not, you don't get the special treatment.
No more.
You're not, you're not fucking guitarist singer, fucking drummer guy.
You're dad.
And like, frankly, you're kind of like new dad or like absent dad that's now come back.
Yeah.
There's a, there's a-
You need to make it up to us, not us making it up to you.
Yeah.
It's a weird thing to have a 15-year-old
and realize I've only been physically in her life
for maybe seven years.
If you actually chop it up.
Yep.
You know, if I'm gone half the year,
then if my 10-year-old is 10, I've only
seen that child grow up for five of those 10 years.
Which is, that's a vacuum that you can't let yourself get sucked into because it will destroy
you and it makes you-
You mean that kind of reflection, that kind of thought process?
Yeah.
It's good to reflect on it.
And I think that kind of goes back to the Arrested Development.
You have to see those things and look them in the eyes and not try to cope them away
or forget them, but it has to come from a place of self-reflection to
then inform your next step, which is how do you treat this person?
And when you're going on tour and you have all these people waiting on you hand and foot,
and then you get home after 10 weeks, and it's the first time you've had to do a dish.
It's the first time you've had to take out a literal trash bag.
And so I think a lot of people,
thankfully for us, we do a good job
of keeping each other in check,
but I've seen a lot of people almost feel like home
is the least valuable place,
because it's the only place that you have responsibility.
So you go from, you know, screaming fans and girls and you
can't go to a bar within two miles of the club without getting recognized and it's wow,
wow, wow, wow, wow. And then you come home and it's like, take out the trash, pick up,
can you pick up those socks? Can you fold that laundry? And it almost feels like the
domesticated home life is the least exciting, like that feels like work. Real, real work.
And you work is when you're at home and it's like work. Real, real work. And you expect.
Work is when you're at home.
And it's meaningful work, if you view it that way.
It's an honor to serve my wife and kids,
but if I view it.
Like a labor.
The opposite way, it could tear you apart.
And you expect it to be grounding.
I think that's the biggest problem is,
when you're on the road, you are,
like I can say for me, and I can probably speak for you,
but what you do, probably speak for you, but
What you do you in this sounds cliche, but what you do you do for them
You know I mean like you you're making a living for your family And you work hard for your family and in the way that we do and then you get home and you have felt ungrounded or unmoored
Forever many six eight twelve whatever fuck it is and you get home and you expect
To feel grounded, you know, I mean you expect that and you expect to feel grounded. You know what I mean?
You expect that you're going to feel grounded
because it's the person you love.
It's your offspring.
And you expect to feel grounded.
But what they need to feel grounded
is you to pick up the fucking socks.
You to whatever.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
And make it up to me.
Like you've just been away for two months.
Totally.
Make it up to me.
I think if you can get out of your head space and make it less about you, which is the point
of life in general, is to be of service to others.
And the more you do that, the more you find the true purpose of being a human.
But it's intimately attached to your wife and kids in a way that I don't think it could
be replicated.
Like it's almost like if you've never been on tour or if you're on tour but you just have a
girlfriend, you don't understand what we're saying right now. Like there's something else that like
heightens it. It's all the same subset. It's all the same data sets. They're just infused with-
Volumes louder.
Yeah. It just, it turns everything up a notch.
And I think it's important for all of us to recognize that and then also recognize what
tour is capable of doing and then avoiding those things at all costs.
What like, hmm.
Like I think it's probably a rarity that I've been with my wife for 18 years and have only been with my wife for 18 years on tour.
You know what I mean? I think that's a rarity.
You're an outlier.
It should be standard protocol, but it's not.
It's also socially accepted that somebody who is a rock star or anything.
Yeah. I've had people be like, yeah, you're married, but you're in Milwaukee.
Like this is how this works.
Because we know that marriage laws
don't apply in Milwaukee.
Milwaukee is the place, brother.
No, but literally there's like,
there's women that know we're married
and there's women that still try to disrupt
that functioning, flourishing relationship.
And I'm like, it's so easy to fall into those traps.
And then what's interesting too, is one of the hardest things for me is watching
people fall in love theoretically with people that love what they do.
Like there is no better feeling than having a partner who thinks you're the sickest.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, you fucking rule.
So if you bounce around with fangirls, a regular woman who's her own individual person,
who wants different things in life, almost feels boring.
See, you're not impressed by it.
Like, look at this fucking riff that I just wrote.
That's nice, but this sock. Yeah. That's nice, but what about dinner date tonight? That's nice, but like, look at this fucking riff that I just wrote. That's nice, but this sock.
That's nice, but what about dinner date tonight?
That's nice, but like, let me tell you about the wheels on the bus go round and round that I did with the kids that I teach today.
Yep.
And you have to lean into them as much as they lean into you.
And I think for me, growing up, I met my wife when we were possibly at our biggest or when we became what we are.
What year?
2005.
Yeah, so right in the middle of it.
And I had seen that pattern flipping around and my friend's like,
dude, you got to meet my girlfriend's sister. I am not interested in women right now.
Like, it's too sticky. It's like, I don't know why they like me.
Is it because of this or is it because of who I am and vice versa?
The verse reasoning, yeah.
Yeah, and my wife is like, I don't listen to your music and I don't listen to like this style at all.
And I was like, check, like, let's go get a coffee.
Like, let's go try this out.
And then here we are.
Your complete uninterest in my career is the most attractive thing you could have said to me.
It was attractive to me, yeah.
But then there's other people who literally view it
the complete opposite.
And that's what I mean by like the Arrested Development.
Like literally what you just read is the path.
And you just have to read that before you go on the journey
to look out for potholes.
So you don't become that.
But if you do it the typical way,
if you come up in touring in a typical way,
let's say we met 20 years ago
and we sat across from one another with these cricket bats filled with nicotine
and you read that to me,
there's no world where that would have been anything that would have grabbed me in any way.
There's sentences I could have gleaned information from.
My energy sometimes goes up and down.
Sometimes I feel lonely in a hotel room.
But I guess at the beginning, it's like,
we sleep on a bus.
Or-
We sleep away, for us, we did it the old fashioned way
where you go to Buffalo and there's four people
and you go back a year later and there's 15,
you go back 10 years later and there's 3000.
Like we did a van, shitty van, nicer van, you know, RV bus. Like we did it that
traditional way. And I just wish that, I wish that there was, that somebody told me, could
have succinctly told me that and made sense to me.
Have you guys heard me do my bit about unteachable lessons?
I have.
Yeah, so it's just there's certain things that we can't learn through explanation only through experience. Yes. And, uh, I get the
sense that the raw truth about touring and mental health is, is one of those
things that you can warn people. And it's the same, um, you're not in love
with that girl. She's just hot and difficult to get money. Won't make you
happy. Fame. Won't fill your self worth problem. You should probably speak to
your parents more. You shouldn't work as hard.
You need to spend more time in a hammock.
Like all of these things are lessons that we disregard
because they sound either cliche
or purposefully like paradoxical.
It's like, oh yeah, being a rock star is hard.
Like you have to say that.
That's like you paying your due in a way.
We say it all the time,
oh, I gotta go work for now or boo hoo.
We say, yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like you making the normies feel okay.
And in many ways when people can see all of the beauty, like a billionaire saying
that their money made them feel empty inside.
Will Smith, Will Smith said, when I was poor and miserable, I had hope.
When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent.
Like, cause he thought that money was going to fix his self-worth problem. But it didn't.
I heard him talk about that.
Yeah.
And when you have achieved the thing that you think was going to be the thing that
was going to fix the problem, you're like, oh fuck.
And now the solution's gone.
Yeah.
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So I think that this is one of those, a little bit of one of those unteachable
lessons and let me fucking roll this for you as difficult as almost everybody in
the industry has it, imagine how much harder it is if you're a woman.
Oh yeah.
If you're a female rock star.
Yep.
Now what? Now how are you navigating
that? I saw it firsthand when Under oath broke up for a period of years. I left in 2010.
I quit. And then Under oath broke up from 2012 to 11. 16. And in that time I played
drums for Paramore. Oh, fuck Hayley Williams. Yeah. So I spent almost five years or whatever
on the road with her. And they sell out like fucking Madison Square Garden.
Twice in a row.
Yeah.
But what you're talking about, I saw firsthand.
And she's-
Is she a mom?
No.
No.
She wasn't then.
I don't think she is now, is she?
No.
But she would kind of, like hearing you say that,
imagine how much harder I would see.
I got a glimpse of seeing that.
And she didn't distance herself much from us, you know,
from the band, but she distanced herself a bit.
And I, at the time I was 29 or 30 or whatever,
and I would think like, why does she distance herself from us?
You know, she had her own dressing room,
and there's the obvious reasons why,
but like, I think even more so,
she felt a different type of isolation,
a different type of like unmooring,
a different type of unsettling, you know
Why do you think that's coming from? I don't know. I mean I can imagine it's hard to be a female in rock and roll music
Which is a predominantly male
centered and fronted thing but also for her
She came up and it's so young
Like when Paramore signed their first record deal, I think she was when we met her she was 14
Yeah a child the drummer was the drummer was I think she was, when we met her. She was 14. Yeah, a child.
The drummer was 11.
Like the original drummer.
When we met them, we played at a place called Blue Sky Court in Nashville.
I remember, remember this show?
Yeah.
It was hotter than the devil's butt.
And she, she was 15 years old.
Fuck.
You know what I mean?
She was on Taste of Chaos Tour opening.
It was before Paramore.
It was just Hayley Williams.
And it was her in an acoustic.
She was like 14 or 15.
Is Paramore a like pseudo solo project?
How much is it solo?
She, something she says a lot,
and me spending time there is she would always scribble.
Like probably once every 10 shows,
she would put a white tank top on
and scribble Paramore as a band on it.
Like that's her, she is vehemently like,
this is a band. This is not the Hayley Williams.
But I think that's her, she is vehemently like, this is a bandit. This is not the Hayley Willingham. This is, but I think that, I think that she feels,
and I don't wanna speak out of turn,
but I think she feels heavy pressure the other direction.
Because if you were her, and you look like she does,
and you dance like she does,
and you have this great talent that she does,
the back, I can see how the suits would be like the back.
So you need to push.
Yeah, her, and then the out of focus guys to push. Yeah. Her, the suit ready out of the outer disguise.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And she doesn't want that.
They're all a band.
They all write the music together.
Um, but by nature.
Yeah.
That's something that only in the last 12 to six months, I've listened to this
music for over 20 years now.
I actually spent, it's a cool story about you guys.
So I spent when I was 21 years old,
I spent my final 10 pounds to drive from Edinburgh,
where I was doing my placement year,
to go and see you guys playing Glasgow,
to put fuel in the car.
Really?
To drive.
Then I came back and I had the choice between being
able to afford food that night.
I was a uni student running a huge events company.
What year is this?
2008? 2008 in Glasgow.
I think that would have been just after Define the Great Line came out.
It's a brick building, I remember the show.
Yeah, on the main strip.
So I drove to go and see you guys.
That's wild.
And then went back.
So anyway, I've been around this sort of world for a very long time.
And it's only within the last six to 12 months
that I've realized how many bands that ostensibly bands out
with Lee are solo projects in with Lee.
We actually talked about that a while ago
More and more now than they're ever had. Yeah real bands like full-on groups that all have
equal
contribution and or veto power or
Dwindling it's not even hiding though. I mean it is if you just look at hey
This is called a band and yeah a person's name
But anybody can go and work this out.
And, you know, it's not, it's not to say that anything is better or worse in terms of the way that you put things together,
but it's certainly a much more, a much different kind of dynamic.
But for anybody that listens to any kind of music, if it's a group, go on Spotify, go on a track,
and just press on the song credit.
Look at the song credits and see how many people are credited.
It's like, huh, those two people aren't,
they don't seem to be in the band.
It's like, yeah, that's a producer.
And that's maybe like some session songwriter,
drummery type person.
But yeah, that's a whole, I'm like, what the fuck?
Kind of like Ronnie Radke or something like that.
You go, okay, like kind of evidently,
like that's a fucking insane project type thing.
But you go, the rabbit hole of that stuff goes pretty deep.
It's pretty interesting.
It does.
It's deeper than you even realize.
A lot of it is not just, you're talking about the creativity of it all.
Like, you know, producer A wrote this song and songwriter B wrote this song.
But there's a lot of it, wholeheartedly is a solo project, like business-wise.
Like the other four guys don't get to say,
can we have this kind of bus? Can we have this on the right or even?
It's uncouth to speak about and I never would,
but if I told you all of them that are that way,
you'd be very surprised.
I can't count them on my fingers and toes.
Is that a function of bands struggling to get coordination
Is that a function of bands struggling to get coordination from a creative standpoint and power struggles happening?
Yeah, I think something I've observed is this new, it's me, I'm calling it this, and then
you guys work for me kind of structure is from people who have already been in bands.
Like, it's like the next evolution, I think.
Like, for us, it's like a marriage, right?
It's hard enough being married to one person.
We're actually married to five people.
And we have to manage everyone's mental health
and physical health and who's getting sick
and who's kids coming when and all of these things.
And it would be so much easier if it was just my band.
I pick when we go on tour based on my schedule.
I tell you who you're allowed to have out.
We can't go on tour at that point.
It's our anniversary.
We can't go on tour at that point.
It's the wife's birthday, the kid's birthday.
I mean, I'm playing a show on my wife's birthday
this summer.
Like, literally, I'm going to be in Canada.
And I have to look at these guys and then look at my wife and go,
I'm screwed here either way.
So that's the fucked up Gillett part.
But it's true. And then I have to literally weigh,
like, do I tell five people in our band
and then all the surrounding people, like our crew, manager, agent,
even though you did your job and got us this opportunity to make some money,
I'm gonna say nobody here gets to eat because it's my wife's birthday.
That must be difficult to do.
Yeah, and we've done a really good job of navigating it,
but there was a time where it's like, we're not doing this ever. That doesn't work.
And then there was a time we said yes to everything
That's not sustainable and you only arrive at this place
I think after to your point an unteachable lesson lesson over decades
I forget who it was, but you had someone on your podcast
Talking about something about falling in love and staying in love really brilliant guy Arthur Brooks
Brilliant old dude who sat there.
Oh, cool. Yeah. And he was talking about stage one, two, three, and four.
And like stage one is where people get stuck in relationships and that's where people get stuck
in a lot of things. And then you kind of push through to stage four where it's like,
that's my brother. He's crazy. I'm crazy. We don't do the same things at all, but we're past that.
But you know how you get to stage four was eye contact and touch.
It's oxytocin bonding to push you through the serotonin dump.
You get to come out on the other side, which is precisely the thing
that being apart from your partner stops you from being able to develop.
Yeah, burns the newness off. I have to imagine that the,
there is a lot of sort of cyclical,
I mean, it seems like not for you,
but there has to be a lot of cyclical dating
when someone, maybe even somebody who,
I really want a partner, I want a long-term relationship,
I want to make this work.
And you go, you can never progress.
You're in this permanent like holiday romance thing.
Always.
Where you're back home two weeks.
It's a fling.
It's not a relief.
We have someone very close to us who's been in a fling for 20 years.
I mean, different people, you know what I mean?
But it's just...
Strength and repeat.
Yeah.
And I think, I honestly think with this individual, and I, not hyperbole, I really believe
that he craves and needs deep, real intimacy,
connection, reality and he keeps rinsing and repeating,
trying to find it because he's chasing
that oxytocin feeling, you know?
Yeah, and it's really interesting to like unpack
all of that with one person, let alone five at the same time.
I mean, Aaron's probably walked me through the hardest times of my life
more than anyone in my family has.
Like my dad died, we were just on tour.
He saw me melt down, you know, passed out in the front lounge for a whole tour,
dad has cancer, but I gotta go work and what do I do? Literally, you reading that, I'm like,
oh, I am in there. I'm not there now, but I've been everything you just read. And I think the
easiest thing to do is, well, my next project, that was so, that was so tough. I don't want to
do that again. It's almost like if my wife left me, I wouldn't want to get married again.
Because to have a good marriage is so much pain and work and it's worth every
cent of it and every second of the time spent crying together, fighting together,
working through things together to get to that other side, but it's not easy.
And everyone also not worth it.
If the end result is you falling just before the finish line.
Or if the race ends up finishing.
Yeah.
And it's like, I think that's where solo projects
with other guys come in.
It's like, I was in a band for 20 years.
I don't want to be in another band.
I would never start another band.
I would literally start my thing.
But you take all of that.
We've both been all of those things.
And I did do a side project. I remember.
Yeah. And I brought all of this to the side project.
And I thought the whole time, here I have, I have, here, here, here.
I thought the whole time.
They might have dried out.
You might have started something with this.
The whole time I thought I have a severe, I have a severe anxiety issue
and the fight or flight thing is I've been in fight or flight for, in varying degrees, for 25 years
and the work that I do around that is life-giving and life-altering and I've probably been to the
ER 250 times in the last 20 years with anxiety.
And we can get into that later if you want.
But the whole, what I'm saying is I took all that with me, all this baggage, if you want to call it baggage, whatever you want to put on it.
Like I just took it with me to this high project.
And it was worse.
And I think that's why, you know, when we started this conversation of how many bands are actually solo project, there is a, there's a modicum of like, this isn't a great thing.
When you said it, like, I don't know exactly what you meant, but I had this feeling that you're, there's some dis earnestness or something about it when you hear about a band that, you know, whatever.
And I think that's because that individual was in a band once, like he said, and they
take it to the next thing and it doesn't fix anything.
If you're broken, if you're broken and you're out of sorts and your priorities are
out of whack, changing the room does what?
We'll get back to talking in one second, but first this episode is brought to you by
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Getting all of the veto voting power makes no difference.
That being said, but on paper, it feels great.
But also on the flip side of that, if you have great vision, wonderful songwriter, all
of the contacts, you're a healthy person in a well-regulated relationship, you now get
to do exactly what you want and your creative output is completely unbounded.
That's a dream.
I just wonder how many people are able to reach that.
Yeah.
Didn't work for me.
I mean, I don't know if we've reached it.
I think in varying degrees we have.
I don't know if we ever will.
And maybe that's the whole point is like you just keep trying and you're never going to
get it right, you know?
I'll never have a perfect show.
I will never be able to take my wife on the perfect date.
And I think that life is designed that way on purpose.
Because to your point, like when you have the perfect show and you have the perfect
date and there's nowhere else to go but down from here, what's the point of doing it?
What about if you have played the perfect show 300 times, but you refuse to let yourself
actually believe that?
Because if you did, then there would be this unreasonable next level.
So I think about it with regards to my show.
Every time that we hit a new launch velocity on plays,
let's say we do a million plays in a day.
It's like, holy fuck, that's insane.
Million plays in a day. Immediately,
two things come into my mind.
The first one is, that's fucking great.
And the second one is, holy shit.
The minimum bar for acceptable performance
has just been taken up like double.
So every time that you reach a new level of performance,
not only is it a cause for celebration,
but it's a cause for anxiety because anything
less than that becomes a sense of insufficiency moving forward.
Dude, I think.
So launch of an album.
I really wanted to get into this as well.
Yeah.
The analyticalization of music.
The fact that you guys have got Spotify for Artists dashboards on the back end
and you know exactly track on track where we were at, how many plays,
what's the month these are, this album we're counting down,
or will Waterfall release all of the singles so that we can get,
we can like bump the plays back up again.
It's gamesmanship.
It used to be tangible. So there used to be, it used to be tangible.
So there used to be this thing called SoundScan.
So like SoundScan was literally like a big calculator
that counted records sold.
It still exists.
It still exists. But it's now it's not the main,
the main metric now is what you're talking about.
It used to be you'd have your merch guy or whatever had piece of paper
and however many CDs or albums you sold on that
They would just tick a box and you would send it in and the tangibility of it for me made it easier to process
I don't know how to explain why and we could get into it
but like it's so weird now because people will say numbers to me about an album release or
How many how many times something is streaming and I'll be like?
Okay, is that good and the number will be, and I'll be like, okay, is that good?
And the number will be large, and I'll think it's great.
And then I'll open my phone and band X or Y will have,
you know, quadrillion plays first week.
And I'm like, well, fuck.
I guess that means I'm a piece of shit.
But one of the ways that behaviorism gets reinforced
is the speed of the feedback loop.
So the tie to the feedback loop.
That's one of the reasons why I have
massive envy over guys that get to do stuff live.
Comedian friends of mine, musician friends of mine,
that first off you have feedback that happens in person.
Yeah.
That's very positive, very reinforcing.
It happens instantly.
You play a fucking cool riff,
you sing a great note,
the crowd reacts immediately.
You can feel it.
You put a good podcast out on the internet and it's like two weeks later,
some people that you never see, maybe press the thumbs up button.
And it's this totally sterile, arbitrary number that has no emotional salience
to it at all.
And in some ways that's good because you think,
okay, I'm less at the mercy of some of the emotional fluctuations.
You get your stability elsewhere.
You do.
But on the flip side, you go, fuck,
like that's a lot of work to not get
the requisite equivalent amount of positive reinforcement that you want.
So you have to find your motivation from elsewhere too.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, I think it's to answer your first question, to circle back to that.
I think it is, I think it's really toxic, um, without contentment.
Like, I think it was really easy for us.
I'll give you an example. I think when we, for, I don't, is there a more,
is there a better word than blew up?
When we, when our band-
Popped off, bro.
When our band came out and we were whatever,
number two on Billboard.
We had our moment.
We were selling out everything and we were in theory,
at least in our little scene,
the biggest band for a few years.
You have this like, we're on top,
how do we help everyone below us?
And then you fast forward,
and it's really easy to be a positive,
community-focused person when you're at the top.
You know, it's like, you're a Rogan.
You know, a bank account, it's very easy to be charitable.
Yeah, if you're a Rogan, you wanna give give everyone a thing because you're at the top and you're
in a super position and it's almost natural.
It's not even a sacrifice.
And then you fast forward and we take out Spirit Box and we take out Bad Omens and they're
opening for us three years ago.
And now they're selling out arenas and we're playing the exact same room that they opened
for us.
We have not moved and they have gone nuclear.
And it's interesting because you really see the person you are
if when that happens, you're happy for them
or if you're jealous of them, you know?
And I think it's, we've seen it in our small circles of like,
as soon as that band pops, it's,
oh, it's because they have a mask or it'll be that,
like you start making excuses
because you're feeling not validated.
And it's like, there are bands
that are 10 times bigger than us that suck.
And there are bands that are 10 times better than us
that will never leave their small town.
And that's just how the universe works.
And you may never have 50 million, but you may have five.
And is it worth stressing over how to get to six?
Or can you just go, dude, look at me.
I'm reasonably wealthy, I'm in great shape,
I have a very successful podcast.
I have nothing to complain about.
But then there's always a North Star.
As soon as you ratchet down, your aim gets higher and higher and higher.
Well, this is a habituation problem, right?
That you play a show, that's your new minimum baseline.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, does that mean that anything that isn't that becomes failure?
Yeah.
So, um...
For some people, yes.
Well, it does feel that way.
Let me give you this from a different industry to yours.
Books, authors.
So, Mark Manson, good friend of mine.
His first book actually is from 2013. It's called Models.
It's one of the best books for guys that want to
learn how to be more attractive to women.
It came out of the, I guess,
elevated pick-up artist world where it wasn't icky.
Yeah, I've seen the book.
I just want to improve myself and find a good woman.
But then he writes The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck in like 2018, something like that.
And this thing's been on the New York Times bestseller list for like 250 weeks.
Every airport has like 18,000 copies.
Yeah, Atomic Habits by James Clear.
Morgan House, all the psychology of money.
I've spoken to each of these guys individually.
Mark said to me, it's like the worst thing that I could have done was have a book that went that big.
Because every book after that's going to feel like a failure.
Every single book that I write will never be as big as that one.
How do you, how do you, but we deal with that.
It's like we, we go on tour and we have a new record out.
And you know, it's the place after this one and it's
all about that and then the songs do well and then we play a 20-year-old song and the
place explodes. And you have a choice in that moment. You can be grateful and be like, holy
crap, we wrote this song in my mom's living room or our local church when we were 19 and
now we're 40.
And there's 2000 people screaming every single word this song again.
Or same data set.
We peaked when we were 19.
Everything we've done since then has been dog shit.
How do you know?
Nobody, nobody cares about my band.
They just care about this one stupid record I wrote 20 years ago.
It's like the author. Nobody cares about my band. They just care about this one stupid record I wrote 20 years ago.
Those internal dialogues are all getting a drink at the same bar all the time.
How do you navigate that emotionally?
Man, honestly, I think for all the shit that we give it,
growing up Christian really helped. Like having something, whether it's real or not, we debate to this day.
We've shed all of it pretty much.
But from a young age being baked in with your life is not your life.
This is not the Tim or the Chris or the Aaron show.
We are small pieces of sand and our job is to make the most beautiful beach out
of this and we're a small part and just the, almost the forceful humility and the
forceful like what is, what is life and it's, it's never about us and all of
those things, which can be overexposed.
It can be toxic.
And toxic.
You literally.
And they have been, but I think once you back out of that and you balance it and
you kind of get all the, the levers right.
And everything's kind of balancing on a very thin edge.
Uh, it just turns, it's almost like, how can you not just be grateful?
Like there's, there is no other option.
You know, I'm proud of Beartooth.
I'm proud of Bad Omens.
It's such a drain to try to listen to bands that are bigger than you and listen to a new
song and pick it apart.
It's not good for anyone and it's not helping you become better. It's just making you more.
Violent in turmoil inside, you know?
Um, and I, yeah, I don't know.
For me, I always go back to all I ever wanted to do was sell out the
state theater in St.
Pete.
Which holds like 500 people.
All I ever wanted to do was play there, which we did.
One of my first shows was opening for a band called Moss Feaster with Under Oath,
which is named after a funeral home, pre-mortuary.
I thought about that so much.
My first show at the band was playing state theater.
We played first to nobody.
To 40 people or whatever.
I was like, man, how sick would it be if we were like the last band?
We didn't know about Headliner and Direct Support.
We didn't know anything. She's like, what if we sick would it be if we were like the last band? We didn't know about Headliner and Direct Support and two, if we didn't know anything.
She's like, what if we played late when people are here and then we sold that out
and then everything else is just kind of unfolded.
And if you can remember where you came from and why you did it in the first place.
This is all a blessing.
It is not a game.
I think you're really good at optimization and you have a lot of guests talking about, It is all a blessing. It is not a game.
I think you're really good at optimization
and you have a lot of guests talking about,
if you wanna go from here, do here, and then IPOs,
and everyone's always trying to ratchet, ratchet,
ratchet, ratchet, ratchet in a good way.
But for us, we didn't set out for this to be our career.
And you can see the bands that do.
And if it's your career, then it's different. We happened to be our career, you know, and you can see the bands that do. And if it's your career, then it's different.
We happened to be here.
Like, I don't know what I'm saying exactly.
I have a theory.
How many friends do you talk to, I've been thinking about this for the last 15 minutes,
how many friends do you talk to that say this, oh, I loved their first album?
When you're talking about an artist, you're talking about artist X, Y, Z.
And they go, oh, I loved their first album. And I think-
Lewis Capaldi is a good example of that.
Yeah. And I think with our band, we're an example of that. And it hurts me to say it
sometimes because I do think that we, I know we work so hard on our new music and we work
so hard on optimizing the way we run our
business and how much stuff can we bring in-house and what can we purchase versus
rent all this stuff but I think that people like why is bad omens bigger and
why is this that why is this that and the other thing I don't know the answer
but I think I know a piece of the answer and I think when you make your first
thing you know like this the subtle art of not
giving a fuck wasn't his first thing, but it was like, it was basically, basically.
And I think that, and I started thinking about this when you said that our first album, it
was, it was honest.
There was no reason we did it other than the fact that we wanted to.
We weren't following something.
We weren't thinking about what was next.
We weren't even thinking about being big or popular or cool or any of those things.
So now everything we do is like you said, it's, it's harkening back to that.
But I think the first album syndrome theory is because the public feels that earnestness and that
honestness and a word that I hate and awesome that authenticity you know what I
mean like when we wrote they're only chasing safety there was a never a
moment I promise I can say this with with glee in my heart we never thought a
bunch of people are saying this in time I never ever for any reason had that thought. I love the word
earnest. It's one of my favorite ones. The bravery to take your emotions
seriously. Yeah. Yeah. I mean you're not worrying about sucking and you're not
worrying about failing and I think that that's this whole thing. That's why
people start side projects. That's why people chase the rabbit, the dragon, whatever it is. So if you will with this business, with this
art form, is because you're chasing something. And this is
a huge generalization and assumption, but that you'll never get again. Like no
matter how hard Lewis Capaldi tries, I don't think you're gonna get that record
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When you mentioned about some of the challenges you've had with anxiety nervous system regulation coming back down
Did you see? How I feeling now, the documentary about Lewis?
Uh-uh.
Dude, it's on Netflix.
No.
It is like-
I know he's had struggles with it.
It is fucking canon if you're a musician to watch this thing.
Really?
So I must talk about this every month.
He writes his first album.
I mean, he blows up from a song video that was him
playing in some random pub in the arse end of Scotland,
singing this song that he'd written when he was 16.
And then he'd sort of slowly builds up this album.
I think he releases it maybe when he's 19,
something like that.
And then it's billions, billions of streams,
everything, every single everything.
And he's got this really interesting way of presenting.
He's very self-deprecating.
He's very sort of British in that way.
He doesn't take himself too seriously.
He's not glamorous, you know.
Yeah.
He like very self-facing in the way that he shows up.
And then COVID happens and the documentary starts in COVID.
And it's him in his mom and dad's old house in Scotland.
And he's in this back shed thing, which is very nice, right?
Recording studio.
And it's like the wall is just platinum record, platinum record, gold record,
platinum record, platinum record, award, award, award, like da, da, da, da, da.
And his day-to-day life is him having had his entire childhood,
adolescence, and early adulthood to write his first album,
and then the pressure of the biggest record labels on the planet saying,
hey, how are we going with anything?
We need to follow up.
How's anything?
He develops this nervous Twitch over time,
that it turns out is Tourette's.
So he's got this predisposition for Tourette's,
but it's 100 percent brought on by this.
Yeah.
And then what you want is for there to be
some wonderful conclusions,
some sort of victorious hero moment at the end.
And one of the final shows of the entire documentary,
he steps out on stage and his son oversees,
can't sing the songs.
And his dad and his mom are in the crowd and his dad
sprints from the seat to like be backstage to like hold his son.
And it like tears them up.
And he went out and did Glastonbury.
I think he might have done Glastonbury two years in a row and not
being able to perform, like got to stage.
And then shut down.
Wow.
Like multiple times.
And, uh, that, that was, that's like, it's still, it's one of the
most formative things I've ever watched.
And it taught me two lessons.
First one, there's this bit partway through and he's
explaining about this sort of wild trajectory of what's happened.
He turns straight to the camera and he goes,
people think that fame changes you.
Fame doesn't change you, just changes everybody around you.
I was like, holy fuck, that's deep.
Yeah.
Then the second thing it made me realize is that there are
some people who have the skill set to be unbelievably famous and successful, but a disposition that is not very comfortable
with it.
Or you could say there are some people that are built to be so talented that they would
be famous, but they can't deal with the fame.
And that'd be an introvert or whatever.
I mean, I think fame in general is not healthy.
I mean, I think with technology and everything being everywhere,
like now I can hear about a girl who was kidnapped
and beaten up in Iowa, and now I'm wearing that.
And it's like the world got so short and so small
in our lifetime.
Like we used to tour with Sam's Club payphone cards to call home.
No cell phones.
We had an Atlas, no GPS.
The Atlas.
It's a map.
TomTom.
Oh.
No, a company called Rand McNally in the nineties and early 2000s would make this
like binder book. Right. Okay. Yeah, no, a company called Rand McNally in the 90s and early 2000s would make this like binder book
Right. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, higher United States. Yeah, yeah highways and roads
We've got we've got that in the yeah, and then every there's like 65 pages
So then you get into like per state and we would navigate literally by now fucking orienteering your way to the next
Yeah, I don't know how we did and then and then when we got lost just an additional fucking we would have a burden
Yeah, then you get lost so you have to go find a payphone you type in your minutes to the next show. I don't know how we did. And then when we got lost. Just an additional fucking burden.
Yeah, then you get lost.
So you have to go find a payphone.
You type in your minutes.
It says you have 120 minutes left
and I'm calling this promoter being like,
I think we're close.
And then fast forward and we have Instagram
and your podcast is being listened to
in probably 75 countries.
That was not possible.
And I think that acceleration of information has just accelerated the kind of the fame
engine a bit.
And I don't think anyone knows how to deal with it.
I think we were meant to be in a community, you know?
Of 100 people.
We were meant to be in our neighborhood. I should know Of 100 people. We were meant to be in our neighborhood.
I should know my neighbor's name,
and he shouldn't have to buy a lawnmower
because he could borrow mine.
Like, that is what we have done literally
until about 20 years ago as people.
And the ones that did it before us
were like these mythical outliers.
The Beatles, obviously, yeah, worldwide successes, of course.
But on a day-to-day life,
our kids are the first generation just being born into this is the way life is.
I think probably everyone that's listening to this podcast right now
will have one friend that they know personally from earlier in their life
or that they've spent some sort of a time with
that's got a million followers on some platform.
Yep. For... Probably more than that. from earlier in their life or that they've spent some sort of a time with that's got a million followers on some platform.
Yep.
And for, uh, probably more than that, a variety of, um, like justified
and unjustified reasons, you know what I mean?
Like someone might know Bonnie blue.
Someone might know like a great fucking poet or some shit.
Yeah.
Um, and not that Bonnie blue is not a poet.
That speed of ascendancy feedback loop, like how fast,
and you mentioned about sort of tribe, ancestral setup,
what's typical.
Yeah.
The problem that we have is our previous comparison group
would have been, so you've got your Dunbar number
of about 150, but within the 150 tribe, that wasn't one big tribe.
It was a little pods typically of about 30 within that.
It would break off.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They'd sort of be like moderately tightly affiliated, but not totally,
totally tight together.
And then you would have this, this sort of wider group.
You didn't have that many people to compare yourself to.
Correct. Because out of 150, 75 a male, fucking like of the 75, maybe 15 or 20 are under the
age of 14, right?
Cause everybody fucking dies early.
It's like, well, I'm kind of not competing with the 14 year old.
So, you know, there's such a small group of people that you end up actually competing
with.
The issue is that in the modern world, we don't know where the boundary of what our
competition comparison group is.
You can compare yourself to everybody in a different, it's like you guys in some way
are comparable with Sabrina Carpenter, despite having, you could not find a person that's
more different than you, other than the fact that she makes notes come out of her face.
Right?
Yeah. Right? Yikes. Hmm. And yeah, I think with that, knowing that,
I'm not surprised by that documentary.
And honestly, if we were filming our lives the whole time,
we would have those moments too.
I have a version of that.
Even, like, I intentionally don't go on Instagram,
and I intentionally don't look at other bands Spotify numbers
I don't look at that because all it does is lead to comparison and
You know, even if I'm looking at it and looking at smaller bands to make myself feel better still comparison
It's a it's the binary still there. I'm I need a dopamine hit. I need to feel valid
I don't so let me find something to feel valid. I don't.
So let me find something to be like, at least I'm not as bad as that guy, which
is never the way anything progresses, you know?
And I think fame is just an unfortunate thing, to be honest.
Would you tell me that story?
Your Lewis Capaldi equivalent?
Yeah. In 2004, I guess we probably wrote Chasing Safety in 03, right?
We did.
So in 2004, we started touring on it. And we were still touring as a pre-, there was MySpace,
so there was some evidence of how things, big things were getting or not.
But that year we did the Warp Tour
and we were playing on a stage called the Smart Punk Stage,
which was like...
Like...
Out of the seven stages, it was the worst one.
Like, like, literally like a truck with a flat surface.
Like, the opening band from the stage
had to build it every day to...
To suck.
To gain their access to play it.
Yeah, okay.
Some of those guys we're still friends with.
One of those guys plays in Paramore now.
Sick.
Underminded, Joey Mullin.
Yeah.
So, we started out playing that summer in front of 100 and 150 people, people that were
niche enough to know the underground hardcore scene, they would come see us on Warped Tour.
And by the end of that summer, it had blown up.
I'll never forget it.
We played in Boston and we played during the used.
There was a lot of crossover during the Warped Tour.
So there's this big blow up thing in the middle of the stage
and you didn't know when you, what time you were playing
until that morning, every day, 10.30 in the morning.
There was no set set times on Warped Tour.
Jesus Christ.
So if you're in Milwaukee, like you might play at 8 p.m.
and the next day you're in Chicago
and you play it 11.45 a.m.
So we were woken up a lot, going year on and 40,
and we're like, shit.
A lot.
So that particular day was the final day of the tour.
And we get told when we're playing,
and then we go look at the blow up, the blow up thing.
And the used is playing during us.
And I'm like, well, there's that.
You know, we're fucked.
Like, no one's gonna watch us play.
And we got on stage and there was two or 3000 people.
Like-
In front of the flat truck.
In front of the flat truck to see us play.
Because chasing safety unbeknownst to us had,
I hate this word and you said it now, I hate it worse.
Like blown up, right?
But no one had a phone to be able to keep track
of what the fuck was going on.
No, there was no way to know.
And then that fall, we toured with a band called Stretch Armstrong.
And we had to play twice every day.
So many people showed up to the shows.
So you did a matinee to try and keep up?
No, no, no.
We wouldn't know because, again, the metrics were so messed up and there was no phones,
so we'd show up at a 800 capacity club and we'd play
and there'd be 900 people outside still.
And so we would just go run it back.
I don't even know if we got paid for it half the time.
Yeah.
We would just run it, do it again.
And in the middle of that, I started having chest pains.
Like, and I had experienced them a little before,
like searing sharp chest pains.
And my hand would go numb, and my jaw hurt,
and I would get real nauseous.
And there was days on that tour I don't know if if I can, I don't know if I can.
And I would always muscle through it and just play.
Meanwhile, I'm going to the hospital every third day.
I'm having a heart attack.
I'm having a heart attack.
I would walk in crying and saying that.
I'm having a heart attack.
And they would go, you're 21 years old.
You're not having a heart attack.
You gotta find, I gotta find out you gotta do the work,
you know, any blood work and
the metropone levels and I know it's a jargon because I've done it so many.
I probably had 300 EKGs in my lifetime, you know.
I need an EKG, I need a metropone, you know.
And there was days where I remember the opening band one day,
particularly this guy, Chris, telling me like,
this is just in your head.
And I'm like, how?
I feel it, it's real. I feel it, it's real. And it got
progressively worse through the years. The band got more popular. And then in 2010, I
quit. And I put it under the guise of like, at the time, we were all pretty religious.
And I put it under the guise of like, I to you know I got to do something else for God I got to you know and the reality was I just didn't deal with my nervous system
and my anxiety and if you ask me today gun to head like what caused it you know what
caused the onset of it I have a bunch of theories but I don't really have any. What are the theories? I grew up in a super, super Christian home, like he said a little bit ago.
And my family talked like this, like I grew up in, you know, my family's from Georgia and they talk like this.
And all I ever heard growing up was about medical things.
To this day, like my mother, to this day, if I call my mom right now, right now, and I love my mother
and I'm not, I don't want this to come off if she hears this like, mom, you fucked me.
We love you, mom.
Yeah, but she would, yeah, so and so, you know, sister, in the churches they call you
sister, whoever, sister Gina, whatever, you know, sister Gina's got like a, they had to
do something to her aorta.
You can believe that.
You can believe that. And growing up, the whole time it was like that. It was like that the whole time. And my parents,
my dad had a mistress and I caught him with his mistress and kicked him out of my house when I
was 18. I think that probably aids and abets to it. And both of my parents had this anxious
disposition as well. His health anxiety. His health anxiety disposition. Fed into you.
My whole life. My whole life.
My whole life.
To this day, if I call my mom right now, I promise Chris, she would tell me something
about her physical body.
I promise.
Like, I know my name.
Like, she would say, so it was put into me that way.
And then the pressures of, oh, there's not only one show that sold out, there's another
one that sold out.
Are we getting paid?
I don't know.
And Tim and I are very different and we're very alike in some ways,
but we're very different and Tim is the most punk rock person I know.
I mean, like, we'll do anything.
Like, if there was 500 people out on the street and you were like,
can you guys play? He'd be like, yeah, for sure.
And I'm just, I have a hard time with that.
I'm getting better with that, you know, by being able to be more, you know,
spontaneous and but at the time I wasn't and it aided me and aided me and aided me and if I'm honest with you
Which I think this format doesn't work and our conversation doesn't work
I deal with it today not to the extent that I did then but
something I deal with every day and it's
really difficult and skate to be honest,
it's scary sometimes.
The fact that I have to say this to you,
I hate a lot, because I'm a fan of your show
and I'm a fan of a lot of the people on your show.
So to come here and say what I'm saying
about my own life and my struggles,
it feels a little bit like those Spotify numbers
where I'm like, I want modern wisdom
and I'm talking about this.
Don't forget, I mean, I appreciate you saying that.
And that must've been hard to deal with.
That's tough to be a young kid
thrusting at the limelight and to be,
fuck, like this is my dream.
Yeah. It's my artistic outlet.
And like my fucking nervous system is betraying me.
Hey, this is my shot. This is my shot.
This is my thing.
Yeah.
And my fucking, I'm, that must be what it feels like to be Lewis Capaldi.
It's like, this is what everything I've ever dreamed of.
I'm on Glastonbury, the biggest festival in the world.
All the flags.
Yeah, man.
Yeah.
And my fucking body is betraying me.
So I'm sorry that you went through that, man.
Yeah.
That's really tough.
No, thank you for saying that.
It's something that, and on the flip side, I was thinking about this the whole time about Lewis to
Is all the struggles that I've been through with my mental health and my nervous system and the whole thing it directly
has affected him like
Indirectly and directly and that is something that I feel
actual guilt for heavy guilt
Because I really think about it like when I really think about it, like when I left,
I've never said this, when I left,
there was a large decline in their career.
They did a record without me when I left.
And there was a large decline in their career.
And I know that was directly correlated to me leaving.
And I left because I couldn't,
in layman's terms, get my shit together, you know?
I'm sorry that happened. Thank you. Yeah
But that kind of goes back to like
How do you do that for 23 years and then like
Feel like you can be close with like your mom
You know like that. Let me pick the kids up. Yeah that exactly that exact thing is like there you can be close with like your mom, you know?
Let me pick the kids up. Yeah, that exact thing is like there,
and I'm grateful for it.
I'm glad that me and my wife will never have stuff
like what we've been through.
But once you go through it or still deal with it,
it does do something to a bond in your brain
that is not better or worse or closer or more distant.
It is just an, it's a unique bond.
It's not-
That's what I meant about it.
It's not-
It's a different type of intimacy.
Yeah.
It's not brotherhood.
Music and then other ones through tour.
Yeah.
It's like not brotherhood.
It's not family.
It's not best friends.
It's not business partners.
It's like all of it, all the friends, it's not business partners, it's like all of it,
all the time, which is interesting.
And I mean, I talked to him a lot about his stuff.
Like, I mean, the last fight we got into was in Europe.
We were having like the oldest beer or something,
and you were going to the hospital
like three times that tour.
And I told him straight up.
I don't remember what the ailment was.
I just told him, like, dude, you're going to have a lot
of regrets at the end of this whole thing
because you're either choosing to or being captured by,
I don't know which, because I'm not in your head.
And sometimes it feels like it swings different ways, as we all do.
But to have this beautiful kind of thing happen and this random career that none of us ask for,
and for you to just be sitting in it in misery rather than going to the pub and grabbing pints with the boys or...
We were drinking the oldest beer ever made.
Popping out.
The oldest recipe ever made. Somewhere in Munich.
Yeah. But he was in a state and we were all in a...
A manic spiral.
And we were all drinking. So when I drink, I'm a very direct talker anyway. Unlike him,
I'm from New York and my New York family is like,
say what, what the fuck you on about?
Like say what you need to say.
Um, very loving, but just very direct.
And so I was just like, yeah.
And I was just like, you're just gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna have a lot of regrets when all this is over, cause you're wasting this thing, you know?
And he got really mad, we all disbanded.
You said it differently.
And he came, what did I say?
I have to say this, I'm sorry, Chris, I'm sorry.
No, I'm not trying.
You said, when you die,
you say at the end of this thing,
which is very podcast-edited,
you say, when you die, you will regret so many things.
There, I said it.
On your deathbed.
Yes, on your deathbed.
Yeah, because that's when you get
full perspective and reflection.
And the goal is not to look at like,
Steve Jobs' last 10 things he wrote,
money doesn't matter.
I wish I would have spent more time with my family.
To your point, these unteachable lessons,
it's like, we're being taught these lessons now, man.
Like, we've had this, we've lost it, you left, you're back. Like, we all have done the good, the
bad, the biggest, the smallest, biggest man in the world, this tour's eating shit, and
we're making no money. We've done all of it now. So it's like, how many more lessons are
there left to learn? And to his point, he's like like I don't choose it just happens and
kind of like you know the dude with the tick like
Ken is it just do you just live here now and is there anything you can or can't do
and Yeah, as far as that goes like I think his his stuff specifically does directly affect us
but I think if I'm being honest,
it's more like I can tune him out.
If he's going to the hospital,
I'm like, if for this period or episode,
I just need to reduce you to a coworker,
as long as you get on stage for the hour I need you,
and we make our money,
and we can have enough gas in the tank
to get to the next show, you can
melt down for the other 23 hours by yourself in your bunk.
You know, and that's not a loving or true, but you have to in those states figure out
a way to cope.
He can't cope.
I can't cope.
What are we going to do?
Blow up the whole tour?
No.
So you then start putting in these protections and sometimes they're not healthy.
And so we've been through, again, so much that it's kind of like you go home and somebody's
having a bad day and it's like, what do you want about, like you haven't had a bad day
in your life, you know?
You've never been through certain things that we have, therefore I can't expect you to have the same
perspective, but it's hard when your perspective gets shifted so much.
I imagine you used a couple of times soldiers coming back from war as an example.
Which is a terrible example.
I'm not trying to church up.
Of course.
Fucking people.
I had Jocker Welling going out today.
That was the guy that did the Battle of Ramadi.
Oh, yeah. So he's a Navy SEAL. I Willink went out today. Like that was the guy that did the Battle of Ramadi.
Oh, yeah.
So he's a Navy SEAL.
I saw that go up today.
Yeah, who is maybe one of the scariest men I've ever seen in my entire life.
But is it comparable in terms of kinetic danger?
No.
Is it comparable in terms of emotional intensity?
Yeah, probably.
And I would like, I really appreciate you opening up like
that one slight perspective that might be useful here.
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your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to www.drinklmnt.com Most of the things I think that you're, the, the shames that you have in your life, the
ones that are the worst that you have about yourself, if you look at them, they're usually
the dark side of the stuff that you're the most proud of as well.
So I have to assume that when it comes to writing a record or mastering a track
or like dialing in a particular sound or working on the new melody, the new lead, the new drums
fill, whatever it might be, that that is an area where your obsessiveness gets deployed
in a really productive manner because you're able to go like, no, it's not there. It's
not that I'm going to play it again. I'm going. It's not that I'm going to play it again.
I'm going to play it again.
I'm going to play it again.
You look at the fucking timeline.
It's just like 60 takes, a hundred takes, 200 takes all the way down.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
So if you want that, like, do you appreciate that about yourself?
The fact that you have this level of precision in your art form?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, guess what the price is that you have to pay for that.
The price that you have to pay in order to have that level of precision in your art form
is that you don't get to switch it off in other areas.
You don't get to turn that off.
You don't get to turn it off.
You're not going to turn it off with your partner.
If your partner makes you feel unsafe, like your nervous system is going to go like, okay,
what did they say?
Why did they say that thing?
There was no kiss at the end of that text.
That's what that meant.
Ruminate, think, obsess.
Okay.
You don't want it then.
You do want it when you're writing a record.
Choose.
Oh, you don't get to choose.
You don't.
So what do I love about this?
Well, I love my attention to detail.
I love the fact that, and this is something as well that you can sort of
find, I think, between each other where you go, fuck, like, dude, the way that
Aaron shows up, like he's the first person in Aaron shows up, like, he's the first person
in the studio on the morning, he's the last person out at night, he will not
give up at, or whatever it is, right?
Whatever, however it is that you like, that obsessiveness sort of shows up in
the process, I can't really fucking love that about him.
And would it be cool if he didn't have this like, like demon that he's
got to battle in other areas?
he didn't have this like, like demon that he's got to battle in other areas.
But would it be fucking total dog shit if we didn't get this level of performance out of him when the rubber meets the road?
You know, it scares me the most.
Sorry.
What scares me the most in what I, I've seen a lot of therapists for this stuff and I've taken a bunch of pills for it and
I've talked to a million people about it and nobody, nobody has ever said that.
It's always been, so thank you number one, but number two, it's always been, you'll get better if.
Like you'll stop being obsessive about your health symptoms
or whatever if you do X, if you do Y, if you do Z,
if you change this habit you have.
No one's ever just said it like that.
And that, my friend, is the essence of what it is.
To pump your tires up as high as they'll go.
Let me do that.
Because you're absolutely right.
And it's scary to hear, to know that like, that pill, that conversation, that thing isn't
going to fix it because it's connected in that other way.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah, well it's who you are, dude.
It's, I think so much of it is in the resistance.
You know, if you ever have something that you're really struggling with.
And, uh, I've had a rough 12 months, Jesus Christ, I've been kicked in the nuts so
many times over the last 12 months.
And, uh, maybe 20% of it, 30% of it is like what you're dealing with.
And the vast majority of it is the resistance to the thing happening.
It shouldn't be this way. I don't want it to be this way.
This isn't what it would like. If only it could be different.
This is my fault. This is someone else's fault.
What caused it? What did it? Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. How can I change it? What can I do moving forward?
I'm wasting my life. I'm killing myself. I'm doing this thing. I can't do this thing. Like all of that, right?
You have the first emotion, anxiety.
Then you have resentment to your anxiety.
Then you have bitterness about your resentment, about your anxiety.
And then you have frustration about your bitterness, about your resentment,
about your anxiety, of this infinite regress of second order emotions.
Mark Manson calls them meta emotions.
It's like, you don't get to control the first one,
but you do have choice over the second one.
And the problem with that is, oh, I have choice over it.
That means that I am bad
if I don't control my meta emotions.
And if someone says you'll get better when,
that's a denial of you.
That's them saying, you are not enough as who you are.
And when you're that way, you're less you,
and you need to fix the thing that's happening because your
behavior makes me feel uncomfortable.
You being that makes me feel uncomfortable.
You not being okay makes me not okay.
So I need you to make yourself okay so that I can be okay now too.
And that's just a denial of whatever it is that you're going through and that's rough, man.
So again, I'm sorry that you've had to.
No, thanks for saying that.
I think that I've never heard it put that way
and I've always felt that way.
And I've never heard it put like that because.
But that is it.
It's more, we talk about that a lot as a band.
Like even like with people are like,
how do you stay faithful on the road?
Or how do you stay faithful on the road? How do you stay diligent or not diligent?
And it's just that.
It's like, we're all sexual beings.
I can't change the first thought.
You know, if there's a really pretty girl somewhere,
I'm not gonna not notice.
And then it's like, great, I'm not looking for it.
I have no interest, but I can't change that first spark. And I it's like, great, that I'm not looking for it. I have no interest,
but I can't change that first spark and I'm going to throw sand on it or I'm going to
throw gasoline on it.
There's a really cool story. David Buss, grandfather of evolutionary psychology here at University
of Texas. And he wrote a book called The Evolution of Desire. And in it, he explains how men
have an area of our brains, which give us reward if we look
at something that's sexual.
Like guys will happily look at a pair of rocks that look like boobs and be like, like kind
of fucking hot.
And this guy wrote in and he said, Dr. Busse, I just want to thank you for saving my marriage
because I was finding, I'm happily married.
I love my wife, I love my kids.
I was happily married, but I found
myself finding other women attractive.
I thought I was unhappy with my partner.
I thought there was something wrong with me.
I thought there was something broken and your book taught me that,
no, it's fine for me to see
a hot woman and be like, that's a hot woman.
In the same way, it's like, those clouds look gray or whatever.
It's a thing.
Is it the thing that you tell your wife?
Probably not.
It's like, hey, honey, there's a beautiful cloud outside.
Like, yes.
Hey, honey, there's like a hot Latina walking past.
No, but the inside voice.
But the sense that you have with that and that same dynamic there, I think, is a good
part of what we're talking about here, which is like, huh, I have this thing.
There's some good in it.
There's some bad in it.
It is me.
What happens if I'm like just okay with that?
What happens if I'm not trying to fix it?
Just put it on a shelf and let it be there.
It's just a part of it.
It's just like, here it is.
We're not going to deny it.
We're also not going to exacerbate it.
It just is.
I mean, the question that I've been the most
fascinated with over the last few years,
one of them has been the price
that people pay to be someone that you admire.
And Elon Musk, he does
this episode with Lex Friedman a couple of years ago.
And Lex asks him some question along the lines of,
how are you really?
Or something.
Oh yeah.
And Elon says, my mind is a storm.
People think they want to be me.
They don't want to be me.
They don't know.
They don't understand.
You're like, this is the richest guy in the world.
Read the biography that was done on him.
And it's like, there was this day where his COO found him laid down in his office,
just like staring at the ceiling,
unable to sleep next to his desk.
Yeah.
They're like, you need to come and do this shareholder meeting.
He's like, I'm not doing it. I can't stand up.
He's like, no, you need to come and do this meeting.
It was one of those Tesla's about to go under and we need to
raise more money or fix the shareholders or do whatever.
He's like, I can't stand up.
He's like, no, you need to. It took 15 minutes, like coaxing, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing, co is. I can't stand up. He's like, no, you need to.
It took 15 minutes, like cokes and cokes
and cokes and cokes and cokes.
Finally get him up.
It's like, all right, do you want to be Elon Musk?
No.
Do you want to fucking be that guy?
Cause that's the price that you need to pay
to be Elon Musk.
And unfortunately, man, that's the price
that you need to pay to be Aaron Gillespie.
Like to be you, that's the price that you need to pay.
You want to fucking do the, you want to do that?
Like you got to deal with the other thing too.
It's, it's, it's just so it's staggering.
It's staggering to hear an acknowledgement of that.
You just don't, you don't hear that.
You don't hear that when you're rehabbing through it.
Not from your friends, not from professionals.
Do you hear, like I said before, 20 minutes ago minutes ago if you do X you'll get Y
You know what I mean?
I don't have any incentive and I think that that's one of the problems that even the best meaning guys even the guys in your
band they want you to get better
Because I understand it. I'm not I'm not I'm not sour grapes about it. No, it's it's it comes from a really well-meaning place, but
Yeah, this is an area Joe Hudson who does who does the art of accomplishment, has taught me so
fucking much about this.
And he has a framework of view, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy and wonder.
And that's like a heart opening, heart opening communication, especially.
And impartiality is a really interesting one, which is sitting with somebody without wanting to change them impartiality.
And I think a lot of the time when we see somebody going through something difficult,
we want to help them. Of course you want to help them. Is that not the good thing to do?
Is that not the empathetic, caring thing to do? Of course it is. Care about your friend,
you see them in pain, you want to fix it. It's like, but in that fixing is a denial
of what they're experiencing.
You aren't right as you are.
You're not good enough as you are.
This isn't okay.
You need to change.
And a lot of the time that is a transference of you saying,
your discomfort is making me uncomfortable.
Stop your discomfort so that I can feel okay again.
And that's where codependency comes from.
If you see somebody and you think,
I'm not okay if you're not okay.
And roll that forward and all of you guys have got this,
which is, I'm not, what's the Jimmy Carrism,
which is, as he's talking about,
comedians' relationships with audiences.
He says, if you don't love me, I don't love me.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's maybe more complicated than that, but yeah, at
its essence, yeah, for sure.
I mean, I think.
It's significantly more complicated than that.
Yeah.
Um, I would argue not even just nuance, but yeah, it's deep, but yeah, it's like,
I think, I think overall it's just a matter of trying to find common ground where you can't and just being okay with things not being okay.
Yes.
And that's, that's hard, but it's not as hard as we're not leaving this room until you're fixed.
You know, Tim, you're doing this.
We're not leaving this room until you're fixed. You know, Tim, you're doing this. We're not leaving this room until you stop doing this.
Like that, those ultimatums, which don't happen,
but I'm saying that's the other side of that.
If it's not this, then it's on its way to be that.
And I think there's a lot of like,
I don't even know.
Like everything's so bite-sized now,
it's like hard to even know what like truth is
anymore.
You know?
That's a good point.
Like music, same thing.
Like music and stoicism, I think, are like the same thing in the sense that like you
have these stoics, quote unquote, that just put up like a little blurb, like a Bible verse
a day, tear away calendar.
And you're missing
the context.
You know, there's like 14 hours of Marcus Aurelius on Audible, and then you pick out
like your favorite scripture and just pop it out and everyone's like this.
You don't know how much I needed this.
And it's like something like, if it doesn't bring you peace, be confident enough to walk
away.
That without the surrounding context results in friendships dissolving,
people walking away from relationships
because this just doesn't bring me peace.
It's like music,
all of those things are just going in that way,
where it's like TikTok movements,
nobody listens to albums anymore.
We used to write albums that were like 1-12.
We don't listen to songs anymore.
We would literally put this song as the fifth song on purpose in a linear sense.
And now it's waterfall singles, it's waterfall stoicism, it's pop, pop, pop, pop.
Waterfall stoicism is a funny way to put it.
Yeah. And it's, I think it does more.
I don't think it's all net positive, I'd say.
I don't know if it does more bad than good, but I think it does a lot more confusing than it does helping.
Because even to your point with Aaron, it's like,
if you really zoom out, everything you said I agree with,
and a lot of the talks we've had I agree with,
but it's so much more complicated than that.
Everything is. And I think, yeah, just the ten-sided die of life,
it's not just, oh, women are complicated.
Men are complicated.
It's the whole fucking ride is so complex
that it could have been walking in on your dad.
It could be when my girlfriend left me.
It's a trauma response.
It could be anything. It's like so deep.
Like the cavern is like, you know,
you could throw a flashlight into it
and it just disappears in the dark.
I've been thinking a lot lately about is,
is he who wins the one that uncomplicates it enough.
And what I mean by that is, for an example,
one of my favorite episodes of your show is,
is Dry
Creek Dwayne.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was texting him this week.
And what I love about that episode is his story is crazy.
My favorite part of the episode is at the very end.
And I think you asked him this question, or somehow I gathered that you asked him this
question.
What's a good day to you, Dwayne?
And he said, well, you know like yesterday I woke up
Yeah, I'm upset with my friend's wife and then he came home and I had a cigar and then I had another one and I'm like
if I could
I'm not I'm not trying to make him sound like Forrest Gump. That's not what I'm saying. But like that is that is pure
That's not what I'm saying. But like that is that is pure
Peace to me when he's when he outlines that day when you ask him what kind of day what's you know? What's what's a good day to you doing?
and he says all that and
Then we're talking about all this and you're saying that and all I can think of is the one who wins is the one
Who can decouple I'm not saying to become
ignorant of the complications of things and to become ignorant of the feelings of things and become ignorant of the idioms of grief or whatever, but is the one who wins
the one who can decouple the two and I had two cigars and talked to my friend's wife
and we ate some supper at Longhorn or whatever the fuck he says.
Do you know what I mean?
Like is that, is that?
Well, I imagine simple life is very, is highly underrated and I would argue more valuable than most things.
And it's becoming harder and harder to do.
But this is one of the curses I think of being introspective deep person.
If you're someone that's sensitive, if you like to do the reflecting thing, if you like
to ask the question why, why do I feel that way?
Yeah.
It's like, well, I mean, this is an endless portal that you can tumble into of thinking
about yourself.
And it's very interesting.
I take an awful lot of pleasure from asking the why question.
Like the entire reason for this podcast is understand the world and understand yourself
and the world around you.
That was, that was what I wanted to do.
I didn't understand myself and I didn't understand the world.
So I wanted to speak to 950 people or whatever that maybe that would, that would maybe be
able to tell me.
But the problem with that is that, as you alluded to earlier on, there's like a sort
of beauty and simplicity, like the guy that's just like, yeah, fucking 500
person show, pull it.
Yeah, let's go.
Like that don't overthink it thing.
Yeah.
When arrived at, I have to assume more naturally as opposed to curate, that must
be part of your nature that you've maybe sort of enhanced a little bit as opposed to Aaron with you in order to get
yourself to that stage.
It's like 10,000 hours of meditation.
Um, but to think, okay, well, what if it's not about unpacking more of my stuff?
What if it's trying to like just be okay with whatever's going on and just like
the letting go and that's one of the things again to give
some props to the guys that are in bands.
And also, I think this show is the kind of thing
that's listened to by people who are in a lonely chapter.
You know, they're people who are struggling to find conversations,
stimulus, support in their immediate surroundings.
So they find it in other people who they can listen to.
They have this, this sense of community.
Yeah.
Like, fuck, like that's that, that guy went through that stuff and that's real
harm, like I went through something like that.
Holy shit.
I thought I was broken by having health anxiety.
And that's the first time I've ever heard anybody talk about it online.
I'm not broken.
Like this is part of the human condition.
This isn't a personal curse that's been fired at me from above.
And you know, the problem with that is that the lonely chapter by design is lonely, right?
You're so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friends, but you're not
yet sufficiently developed that you've got your new set of friends and you're trying
to do all of these things and you're developing your life and you're changing the way that
you think and the stuff that you're trying to do all of these things and you're developing your life and you're changing the way that you think and the stuff that you're into.
And you're like, I don't know anyone that I can talk to about this.
And I have two choices.
I can either regress back and go to like this old version of me, which I know
that I can't, shouldn't do this, but where is the net?
I haven't found my next tribe yet in that regard.
And the problem that you have there, and again, this is what I mean around the band.
The one thing that you guys have is that there is always someone with you.
And I imagine that if you want some introversion time, the fact that there
is 16 people on a fucking tour bus, double-decker tour bus and the support
bands upstairs and the front lounge is full and the back lounge is full and
someone's partying and someone's not.
Yeah.
And you're like, fuck, like all I do is pack and unpack and get into go to airport or whatever it is.
Yeah.
But being around other people is a really lovely way
to pull yourself out of that.
And I think it's at least for me now, uh, just yesterday
we, uh, signed, I bought my first office studio
space here in Austin.
Oh, sick.
Congrats.
Thank you.
That's gonna be real special.
That for me is because I have exhausted. first office studio space here in Austin. Oh, sick. Congrats. Thank you. That's going to be real special.
That for me is because I have exhausted, I have close to exhausted my solo sigma male, like D gen work energy tank.
Like that fuel I'm on fucking fumes from that.
I like COVID happened.
I started working from home and I just never grew out.
I never graduated out of it because I'm like classic introvert,
all I want to do is get my head down and crack on.
And I just never stopped.
I was like, oh, well, this is good.
So more of it must be better.
So I'll just keep going and keep going and keep going.
This thing's growing, growing, growing.
Yeah, you're like, oh, well, this is, this is,
and then after a while you go, eh.
How did I get?
I kinda like, yeah, I kinda like miss people, I think.
So that's the solution that I've had to have. I kind of like, yeah, I kind of like miss people, I think. Yeah.
So that's the solution that I've had to have.
And it must be tough when you want to have your own space and you can't.
But on the flip side, the fact that you've got this camaraderie, this sort of brotherhood,
this group of people that know everything that you've been through.
Yeah.
I mean, imagine how much, again, imagine how hard it is for male artists, make them female.
Imagine how hard it is for bands, make it a fucking solo artist.
Holy fuck, you are on the road and you don't even have your boys with you.
You don't have anyone that you can turn around and go,
dude, when we did that thing on stage, it's like,
who the fuck is session guitarist number three?
Like, who the fuck is that guy?
Like, he wasn't here last week or last year.
You see it, you people up like Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson.
I mean, these stories are not, they're almost not even
documentary-worthy anymore because they're just so normal.
It's almost like, yeah, we were talking about this earlier,
but it's like back in the day, like, the guys with tattoos
were like the wild ones.
And now it's just everywhere that if you don't have tattoos,
you're like the weird kind of oblong out of,
out of sync with the culture kind of vibe.
And I think it's just,
it's a story that keeps telling the truth every time.
And I think as humans,
we have a really interesting knack to go,
yeah, but not me.
You know?
And that makes, that gives you juice too.
I literally, I literally talk about like being rich.
And it's like, if you win the lottery
and you have a hundred million dollars,
I don't care if you worked your ass off
and built a company, blood, sweat, and tears
and come from a poor family and you know,
the cycle stops with me and that whole thing, or you sweat, and tears, and come from a poor family, and the cycle stops with me, and that whole thing,
or you just find a winning lottery ticket.
There's a certain amount of money that will destroy you.
And everyone goes,
yeah, but I think I would do it different.
I'd buy all my friends' houses.
I wouldn't do this, I wouldn't it different. I'd buy all my friends houses. I wouldn't do this.
I wouldn't do that.
And even for me, it's like, I know that it would destroy me.
And then if you said, well, here's the lottery ticket.
It's worth $100 million, tear it up.
I'd literally probably not tear it up
and think that I can do it better.
Do you know that is the Unteachable Lessons essay?
That's a part of it.
No.
And it's watch me dance through this minefield
and avoid all of the other trip wires
that everybody else kicked.
Absolutely.
Some solipsistic narcissistic version
of that might be true for them.
But not for me.
And I think that that's it.
Like you, we are attracted to a dry creek,
dry creek Dwayne type guy.
Fucking impossible to say that motherfucking thing.
Honestly, dude.
I feel like I'm insane.
My Dwight weak way.
I had to practice before.
On the way in you're like dry creek Dwayne.
Yeah, because I start every episode typically
by going like dry creek Dwayne, welcome to the,
say Drain, dry creek fucking.
Dry creek Dwayne. Welcome to the show. And I was like Creek fucking. Dry Creek Gawain.
Welcome to the show.
And I was like practicing it on the way in.
Got all of these things to think about.
I'm trying to work out the motherfucker's name.
Yeah, but I think the reason why he's inspiring
is because he's just like,
it's not about telling you what to do
and how to get better.
He almost solves his problems by just saying,
I just get up every day and try not to break something.
A day I don't break something is a good day.
And it's so simple.
Yet it's more powerful than being like,
well, your monochromatic antibodies when you're tired,
after you get seven hours of sleep versus seven and a half
with the wrong bed with UV light.
And like all that's so overwhelming. And then you just see a guy come up he's like man just get up and don't
break nothing. I didn't break anything today I mean that was my favorite story from him where
he was saying you know I got up I looked at this horse he was trying to ride it or discipline it
in some way and he just looked at it for an hour. He sat down and had a cigar then I sat down and
had another one.
Yep. And he's like, I went home.
It's a good day. I didn't break anything.
Yeah. What did you do today?
Not much. Did you have a good day?
Yeah, I didn't break nothing.
Like that is more powerful than how do I scale 10X here and there and there.
And then when you get there to your point, your ratchet changes, your happiness doesn't.
And I think there's, I don't know what study it was, but there's like a psychological study
that came out that talked about gratification and then satisfaction and the temporary stay
of said satisfaction. Meaning I make a hundred thousand dollars a year. You call me in and say,
Tim, you've been such a good job. I'm going to give you 140,000 a year, you call me in and say, Tim, you've been such a good job.
I'm going to give you $140,000 a year.
My happiness meter goes up about 15% for about 30 to 60 days.
And then it recalibrates back to, all right.
I need them $180,000.
And it's not even about, oh, now I'm spending $40,000 more
and not living below my means.
That's a whole financial question that I think is adjacent,
but not the point.
It's that we keep thinking more stuff and more achievements
are going to fill a hole that only contentment
and peace that you find on your own can fill.
Oh, it's not the clubs, it's the theaters.
It's not the theaters, it's the arenas.
It's not the arenas, it's the stadiums. It's not the arenas, it's the stadiums.
It's not the stadiums, it's the global tour.
It's...
Yeah.
It's crazy that you're even saying those words
because if you skinny it way down,
for us, before you were here, it started like this.
It started, let's go real micro for just two minutes.
It started with me at 15, going,
I just want to be in a band. I played drums at my at 15 going, I just want to be in a band.
I played drums in my parents' church.
I just want to be in a band.
Literally, I just want to play music with other people
that aren't like the nerdy church people, right?
And then I just want us to write one song, right?
And then I just want us to play one show.
I just want us to play one show where people are at it.
I just want to play one show where people are at it. I just want us to play one show where people are at it
and know the words.
And now you just at stadium.
And that's the most interesting thing to me
about the whole thing is we never talk about how micro it is
before it gets to this macro place.
Oh, me and Chris talk, our keyboard player,
we talk all the time.
Oh, I know you two do, but I...
Like that is, this podcast, by the way,
I'm not trying to be a fanboy, like, this is my shit.
Like, I love digging in and like, yeah, Chris and I
are a keyboard player, talk a lot about it.
And to your point, like, how do you know you're grounded?
You know, is it natural?
Is it my predisposition or is it work?
And I think it, it's probably all of it, but like...
A really interesting way to stress test
like your priorities and where your head's at is like,
the band breaks up today.
How do you feel?
Aaron quits, I die of a heart attack, whatever.
Make up anything, under oath is no longer.
The best years of my life are over.
I'll never do anything as meaningful as that again.
Now I just work at FedEx as if that's some like prison sentence.
I have to get a real job, God forbid, all these things.
Or same exact data set.
I can't believe you made it 23 years.
What a blessing.
All we want to do is write one song. Like, which one is it? Because both are true. It just tells you
who you are inside. You know? Like, if this doesn't work, or we break up in a week, or
10 years, or 100 years, I don't need this again. It's not part of me.
It's informed who I am, obviously, and afforded me amazing experiences like the one we're
doing right now.
But if all of this goes away and you're just a quote unquote regular person with a regular
job, like, are you okay with that?
Or do you need this? What part of this is you?
And have you become the thing that you just did?
You know, we would just do music
and now have I become Tim from Under Oath?
You know?
That was the, I think he said at the very beginning,
do people love me for who I am or for what I do?
We're talking about women.
And do I love me for who I am or just what I do. We're talking about women. And do I love me for who I am or just what I do?
Yeah, 100%.
And you have to ask your question.
You've been talking like this,
and I think in the early days,
especially when it blew up, I keep saying that,
there's gotta be another way to say the band got popular.
I think it's the way that everybody knows.
Yeah, yeah, but he has talked like this.
I'm not telling you anything you don't know.
You've talked like this since you were 21 years old.
Like there was a time when the, when the band first, fuck, here it is again.
When the band first blew up where he would ride.
And I don't think you might be talking about this.
No, he would ride with like the opening bands in vans.
Like he would-
Was this like your stoic hair shirt equivalent?
Like you purposefully putting the fucking uncomfortable
clothing on just to remind yourself of where you came from?
Honestly, it was...
I think at the time it was immature.
Looking back, like would I do that now?
No, but I think it was a response to exactly
what we've been talking about.
But it came, that's the point I'm making,
it came from the same place.
It came from fame and money and me going,
this is all gross.
And it scared us to death.
The reason I brought it up,
the reason I brought it up,
because I think it's pertinent to say,
is that self-actualization and that realization of like,
FedEx isn't a prison.
Like, let's switch the data set to same data set.
Let's switch the perspective to say, we had 23 beautiful years.
It scared us to death.
Some of us, some of the rest of us hearing that reflection.
Like, it sounds like the person's less bought in or it sounds like they would be okay
with a thing happening that you wouldn't be okay with happening.
It's like, holy fuck, is Tim half out?
Yeah.
Like maybe he's not, maybe he's just going to pull the fucking pin one day.
But especially in, and I thought that, and if you hold things open-handed, it's
not about making sure I never let it go or intentionally throwing it, you just
hold it like this and it doesn't matter.
Like when you realize it doesn't actually matter and And not to say that under oath doesn't matter.
I think we, I mean, we know we've saved people's lives
and they have tattoos and this got me through brain surgery
and whatever we've heard all the stories and the impact
that we've had on life and culture is noticeable
and palpable, but outside of that, if it wasn't us
it would have been someone else.
And it's more about, it really doesn't matter.
I'm always thinking about deathbed, always.
And then everything that comes out, Steve Jobs' last things, I've already mentioned
that.
All these people's last things.
We asked 85 people in a nursing home, their top 10 things they changed.
You see it all day long and it's all the same shit.
So why wait until we're dying to deploy that?
Question for you on that.
Question for you on that.
The top five regrets of the dying, the deathbed thing that we had a very famous survey that
was done.
What do you think of the top five deathbed regrets of ex-rockstars?
What do you think they would have in there?
Ooh, I think it all depends on where they end up.
Or why they're exes, I think is my question.
I think the first time you have an actual relationship with a woman, you probably regret
wasting 20 years just having sex with random women.
I think when your kids grow up,
and we'll see, and me and Chris talk about this,
our keyboard player a lot,
I know I'm doing my best and I also know I'm breaking something.
I just don't know yet what it is.
My kids could turn on me and say you were never there,
and they're technically correct.
I FaceTime them. We have a great relationship.
My daughter's in a band,
but she comes to all the shows.
She loves it.
And I check in with my kids.
I'm like, do you guys, is this okay?
So for me, it's hard to tell.
But then you have people like dying,
like drugs, the whole thing.
Like it's almost like what's like drugs, the whole thing.
Like it's almost like what's good about being in a band.
I think that's a lot easier to quantify.
You can count those way quicker than what's bad.
And you do feel like, like the other night,
I was dead asleep, like two weeks ago on Monday,
like very asleep, like I've been so busy
and I work like a nine to
five in Nashville as a song, as a staffing songwriter.
I've heard, yeah.
And so I just, so when I get home...
You're in the cold phase of songwriting in the moment.
Yes. So just tired, tired, tired. And this is something that I...
Regrets the wrong word, but my daughter wakes up and vomits, has to vomit, sorry, sick, stomach virus, you know, kids,
whatever she's for.
Yep.
And you know what the first thing she said was?
She's scared to throw up, you know, that feeling when you're trying to fight vomiting.
She goes, somebody please take me to the doctor.
And my brain went, oh, fuck, Because for years with the health anxiety thing,
I've always, that's the first thing I do.
Oh, this hurts or this, I gotta go get a scan.
You know what I mean?
And my brain went, I've passed the curse.
I've passed the curse.
And that to me is the biggest regrets
of 50 dying rock stars.
It's like, will I pass on the habits that I picked up touring
and doing this?
Will I pass that on to my offspring?
And you will.
I know.
And I will.
And I think that's kind of the thing of like,
we're all breaking something.
And I think to make your top five list regrets
or top five best things, like it has to be, it has to be in the construct of like,
we're not there yet, the story is still being written.
But we have, I have a pretty good idea,
but I won't know until I'm 60.
And I look back and go, huh.
When you're triple D and you can say, well, that's a good day.
I quit the band in my head probably four times a year.
And it's like, and it's, it is palpable.
And it's always on a plane, always during turbulence.
And it's not real, but I'm like, what if I were to die?
And it's all about me going to play in front of 3,500 people in Australia.
How selfish was I to think that this was the only way that I can make money.
I'm the only thing that's going to make me happy.
And now my kids don't have a dad, you know, which is absurd.
But like, when you have these moments of like clarity and peace, and you see what really matters,
nothing matters more than
a very few people that you've committed to raise and provide for and protect.
Well, also on top of that,
obviously, it certainly seems like you guys have been through a tumultuous past,
people coming and going, challenges.
We really haven't. Twenty-three years with the same lineup for the most part.
Except for the...
I mean, emotionally turbulent, would I say?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Between you, everybody, right?
Absolutely.
Six people?
Copy.
Five people?
Yeah, well, it was six.
It was six, now it's five to your point.
But the gamut, you're right, addiction, this thing.
The funny thing, people's lost parents, people have had kids,
people have been in marriages, people have got divorced,
people have fucking been tempted to cheat on white,
people have, you fucking, dude, you're coming home,
you've had too much to do with all that stuff.
The full works of that.
I think about, I mean, this is the most like,
maybe it was the friends we made along the way,
like is the most fucking that thing ever.
But I'm interested to just dig
into the art form thing for a second because I think,
audience capture is something that's talked about a lot in my world.
Yeah.
Allowing you create an avatar of what you think your audience wants,
and then you continue to throw red meat to them in an attempt
to appease what it is that they want.
Interesting.
As opposed to doing what to you feels tasteful, earnest, artistically pure,
being led by curiosity and wonder and awe and intrigue and sort of genuine bravery to say the thing that you mean and feel the thing that you do and not rush through
this stuff, like sit with the awkward, whatever it is.
that you mean and feel the thing that you do and not rush through the stuff. Like sit with the awkward, whatever it is.
And, um, I have to assume as well that looking back on a body of work, uh, you
guys will have had, I don't know, but I have to assume that there was periods
where you would have been like, fuck.
Okay.
So what do we need to write to be popular?
What do we, what do we need to write to be able to get like, they're only
chasing safety numbers again.
And do we need to do that?
Or do we need to do what we, and fuck, like, how do I even separate that out in my mind?
Because there is this analyticalization of the music industry immediately.
So what's my metric for success?
Is it how hard the fucking crowd goes when we play it live?
Well, what if the crowd's a little bit smaller?
Is it how much I love the song? Well, what if somebody else in the little bit smaller? Well, is it how much I love the song?
Well, what if somebody else in the band doesn't love the song quite so much?
Maybe I'm wrong.
You have all of this self-doubt that starts to come through.
And I have to assume that looking back on a library of work that you feel proud in
has got to be one of the most dividend paying ways to spend a career that is in an artistic outlet.
Because it's one of the things that you can always feel proud about.
You're like, dude, I fucking love that song.
I fucking adore that track.
That was really, really fucking meaningful to me.
And I know that we shouldn't have made it.
And I know that the label fucking hated it. And know that and it really fucking meant a lot to me and like that's something that I really feel really fucking
proud of it's been cyclical for me and
I I
think I'm
There's been times in our career where I've been like if
We do this we will we will and I've believed it if we do this, we will, we will,
and I've believed it, if we do this,
if we make this type of song in this key
with this type of vocal arrangement,
it will become Chasing Stacey.
Like I thought that, I thought that like 15 times.
And then there's this other side of me where it's like,
let's write a seven minute song about his father's death
that I think is one of the most beautiful pieces
of music I've ever written that no one listens to.
Which strikes up.
It's called pneumonia.
It's on our second to last record.
So not our newest one, but the one before.
It's the final, is it the last song?
Yeah.
Like I think about that song and I'm like,
oh, that's everything I've ever wanted to do in this band.
You know, and then you have, and I have been cyclical
like this the whole time, looking
back at that, going, that's what I wanted then.
And I think you are probably the person in the band who has been the most steady with
what, with how you want it to be.
Meaning you're the first person, you're the first person, you're the first person I ever
heard refer to music as art.
Yeah.
When we were young, you know?
Yeah, never, for me personally,
and it built a lot of tension in the band.
I think, well, looking back, I didn't know.
Yeah, always.
Uncompromising.
Fuck the label.
Like literally. Sorry, Columbia. Our manager'sising. Fuck the label. Like literally.
Sorry, Columbia. Our manager is not allowed in the studio.
Nobody's allowed in the studio.
To this day, he's.
Ever.
You are not, you are not allowed in the studio because you are an outside influence.
It's just us.
And you'll, your eyes will light up or your eyes won't.
Yep.
And then dude, Chris told me he came over for beers.
He's like, dude, the third track, like maybe we should do all of it.
And maybe that's like a protection, a protective, um, coping mechanism.
Um, because I am impressionable.
I don't know why it's so sacred or maybe so hardline, but it's never ever.
What's successful.
Like to the point where I've literally hit them
and I'm like, I want to, our last record,
the one we just did, I was like, I want to go to the cabin
and I don't even want anyone to be on iTunes.
I don't want to hear what,
Beartooth or Bad Omens or Rob Zombie,
I don't want to hear anything about anything.
I don't want any outside influence.
I want it to be two ingredients, us and inspiration.
That's it.
And if you let the song drive, it will drive, you know?
And I've always been that way.
Like chasing safety.
They're like, dude, if you do this again, we're going to get you on K-Rock and you're
going to be the next fallout boy.
And so we wrote To Find the Great Line instead.
Just the heaviest thing that we've ever done.
I fucking love that album.
And that was in direct response, in my opinion, to you guys trying to make me do this thing.
Go fuck yourself.
I love the album too, but at the time,
just to be frank, I was like, what?
But why?
You know what I mean?
Because I am the polar opposite of him
and where I have now learned with Under Oath
that I want it to be just us.
And I think it's correct.
I think it's the correct, but on a day-to-day basis.
I want to work with somebody different every day.
Well, you do.
I do.
And you've found yourself in your fucking Batman Bruce Wayne new lifestyle. You've
found yourself.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, can you explain for the people who don't understand what the sort of velocity
of Nashville songwriting at the moment, please?
For me, I write five songs a week, up to seven.
So like, I get up, I go to the gym, I go to the studio, someone shows up, I've ever met
them before and written with them before or not, and you spend about an hour like this.
You know, a lot of this stuff does come up.
Same stuff we've talked about today.
And the artists now are so different than they used to be because they're dealing with Like this? You know, a lot of this stuff does come up. Same stuff we've talked about today.
And the artists now are so different than they used to be because they're dealing with
like algorithmic issues like we kind of talked about earlier.
And they're dealing with like, like a couple months ago, I saw a girl's $250,000 album
get shelved because she hadn't had a viral moment.
And she cried on my couch about what am I going to do?
You know, because so it's a different song every day
and it's usually written and demo tracked in four hours.
Right?
And the Under Oath Machine is,
it's a slog for me.
And I don't mean that in a derogatory way,
but sometimes, like what I've learned to do with Under Oath,
this is what I do.
Tim and I typically begin every song and sometimes
Chris will bring something but we typically begin every song and for me
songs begin with like a thought sometimes a title but most of the time a
thought. Like I want this to be like like like fast and double time and at the end
it'll really sprawl out and do this thing like really edge theory like that's
how it works on my brain and Tim and I have such a close relationship that we can do that together
very quickly and then I like to leave.
And then he will brood and ruminate four days over that three minutes that I
shit out with him 72 hours prior.
And then I'll come back at the end and go, Oh, he was right.
And then I'll deal, we'll do the right. And then we'll do the lyric thing,
and then we'll do the vocal thing.
But that's the way that I...
But Nashville is like the fucking Ford production line.
When you start to spread it out,
I've only recently begun to understand...
First off, I've only recently begun to understand
how many ex-scene kids are running the country scene.
Crazy.
What the fuck? All of Crazy. What the fuck?
All of them.
What the fuck?
Our very first tour manager, a guy that we met in Virginia,
it was in a shitty club called Alley Cats,
his Jelly Rolls tour manager, Anzal guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And scene kids run everything.
Dan and Shay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm good friends.
Seeing kids.
They do.
I mean, the guitar player for 18 Visions is Zed's tour manager.
And I think,
that I can think of at scale that has to do everything themselves.
Has to book your first show yourself.
You have to carry around a diary, a freaking atlas,
a notebook full of addresses,
who's getting what in rap, in country, and everything.
A national jazz musician.
It's built in a machine.
It's built at EDM. It's built in a machine. It's built at EDM.
It's built in a vacuum on SoundCloud
until your first show's in front of 10,000 people.
And then you're like, what the hell?
How do I get t-shirts made?
Like, oh, we all own merch companies, bro.
Like, we got you.
Like, it's literally just a skill set
that maybe is not even virtuous.
It's just what you have to do.
But once you've done it, that's valuable.
You realize how rare it is.
And yeah, you're a dime a dozen here and you realize our scene
literally is baby and everyone else in the major world.
Who knew that the fucking sad emo kids from school
were going to grow up and do it?
Dude, I work with artists on a regular basis.
I don't know.
I have sick.
I don't know.
On a regular basis, I work with artists that have a label deal, fucking brand deals, an
agent, a lawyer, a merch deal, and they've never played a show.
And then they come to Aaron to write their songs for him.
That's not art.
That's a business.
I mean, we're seeing this a lot at the moment, right? Uh, Benson Boone copying a lot of fucking stick at the moment for, and I think
somebody about that last night.
Everybody is, and it's not too dissimilar in, uh, in the world of content creation.
Hey, how much truth is this person saying?
Like how much, how much is, how much is this person saying what they believe?
And how much is this person saying something which is politically or
culturally popular or expedient or useful or strategic or molested perverted in
order to be able to get the outcome that they want to align themselves with a
particular person, how much are they causing sucking up to this or that or the other? And how much
authenticity is in here?
I love your use of the word molested. I've heard you use that a couple of times and it's
so jarring because that only triggers in at least in the States is like weird stuff with
kids and you're right. It's like taking something and just distorting it
and fucking with it.
And yeah, I don't know.
I think...
I try, I really try and this is,
I'm earnestly saying this like,
with all these people that I get sent to me,
I really try to like inject and I learned that from him.
I try to inject that art into song in a box.
You know what I mean?
And that's why we've got four hours.
Let's try and come up with something that's not totally meaningless.
Yeah, because you know, so good at it.
Like he's good at it.
Like, and when I say that's not art, that's a business.
Everything about that is about trying to find the right product
to sell the most units.
But in, in that vacuum, there are actual artists doing the work.
You know?
So I mean, also let's not forget-
I don't think what he's doing is factory work.
Let's not forget with the fucking scene kids,
whatever you want to say, Renaissance,
revolution perhaps,
the level of talent that you have
to be able to play those sorts of riffs
and to be able to play those particular drum pieces.
Like that's got to be one of the contributing factors that it's technically quite a difficult
music and then you go up and you go like, hey man, like you're fucking C-A-D-C.
But it's back to what he was saying though, like, when people come to me and they can't
believe and I'm not pumping my own tires, but they can't believe that I'll just do it
all right now. They're like, what do you mean? You don't have to hire someone. I'm not pumping my own tires, but they can't believe that I'll just do it all right now.
They're like, what do you mean?
You don't have to hire someone?
I'm like, for what?
Because we had to do it all ourselves.
That's the scene kid renaissance
and why the scene kids are running Nashville.
He can record, he can sing, he could play bass,
play guitar and drums and get you a full song.
Oh, by the way, I'll give it like a little bit
of a master as well.
I'll be able to like just bounce it.
Like it's demo, but like it'll be fucking.
Throw some samples on there.
The label will sound good.
Like you could fucking, you can sense them.
I got a job.
I got gainful employment in Nashville
and I'm successful in Nashville because of what you just said.
Because Nashville became such a song shop in the sense
where you go to a songwriter, then you go to a producer,
the producer would hire a band.
I'll write a song with you
and I'll give you a demo that slaps.
Then you'll call me in two weeks and say,
can I have that demo?
I'll go, for this number you can have.
Do you know what I'm saying? But that's how we've done it.
I'm interested. This very much is like
kind of the whatever Batman to your Bruce Wayne thing,
that you've got a lot of pressure, creative tension,
working at a pace that sometimes can be artistically challenging for you.
But you've got now this other part of your life.
What sort of fulfillment do you get out of this other bit?
Is the how much ick versus fulfillment versus artistic expression.
Are you ever conflicted about that stuff?
Mm-mm. Unwrothed to me is like, um...
This is gonna sound so cheesy.
It's the feeling of musical home to me.
Um, I can suck so bad in front of Tim and just say, I have this idea.
Like, for instance, Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door, you know,
the time is running. I had this, the original idea for that song was insane.
I wanted it to be about different languages and people groups. I wanted to say,
they say they're French, they do this. It was ridiculous like the most ridiculous
like but to me
Like that's free. That's the purest form of home and music is where you can go and dare to suck in front of someone
Like really anything like really dare to suck. I can say anything to him and he won't be surprised
I could promise you if there's a studio over here and you're like guys write a song, I go to
Tim and I go, I've been listening to this one rap artist and he's got, he'll go, I got
these samples, you want to try them? And we would try to make a rap song and it
would come out as an under oath song somehow in the end, but that it's the
true freedom that, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.
Yeah, the freedom to be able to suck is...
Because without it I would implode.
Yeah, I mean even going back to the question you just asked about, like, the authenticity and
who's spinning things and who's in a position of, like, this is hot right now, let's cover
that.
Like, we were talking about this earlier, but, like, rock music specifically to me is
very uninspired.
Right?
And yeah.
And you know, to Aaron's point, to use his words, he's like, it's all sounds
the same.
It's all made by the same five people.
And somebody's just waiting for the next Nirvana, you know, and there is the turnstiles and
they're all these and then you zoom out and you're like, oh, but those are the biggest
bands, but they've all been bands for like 10 years, 15 years.
They're not, they're more our peers than like, oh, the new crop are gonna do it right. And then I think about the comedy scene here.
And I think that's the most punk thing happening in culture.
It's like Dave Chappelle, Tony, all those guys, Gillis.
Like, they are unhinged.
And you can feel that they're not pulling punches.
And I think people gravitate towards that even if it's like, yikes, like, whoa, he said
that.
You believe them.
And I think that goes back to what Aaron was talking about.
Everyone believes our first three albums because they're true.
Like, well, how hard is it to get back there after you've spent such a long two
and a half decades not knowing what real life is like?
Oh, I don't think, I don't think you do.
I think that's the beauty.
Like that's the beauty of the ride is like, you can ride a roller coaster
once and have your mind blown.
Tell me you can recreate that.
If you got a free pass, you could just write it 10 times. Like you only get the ride once.
We did a, we did Matt Edgar's podcast this morning and it's in this like,
it's a little studio room, but it's on the back of a, I guess it looks underground comedy club.
Okay.
Literally underground black cement, dirty as fuck.
Call like black sheep
There was a spew in the bathroom when I went to pee like like the place feels like a like the places like the places
We grew up playing. Yeah, and
Matt is like guy. I I do set here once a month. I
Like damn, it's pretty sick. What's that? Like because at this point like and then he's going on work tour
It's like I saw like I literally thought about it today
because we were talking about music
and I literally saw myself in that guy.
I was like, oh, you get to like,
you get to become like a Nirvana right now.
You're the front of the scene.
Yeah. Yeah.
In the basement of some shit ass building over here.
And it's like, that's the coolest part,
is like just seeing people go and go and go.
And I think a big part of it too is like success.
I think not that we were ever starving
or we needed to make it,
cause that was never the point,
but there is something that's different
about being our age now and being married and having kids
and having other commitments where, I mean, I remember writing writing on the walls.
We all lived in a like a commune apartment.
Not all of us, but I lived in a two bedroom house with seven people and we had three people
per room and one person in the living room is the best.
But like, if we weren't just hanging out,
it was just all music.
Had no girlfriend, had no mom.
Our friends weren't fucking dying all the time
like they are now.
Like we didn't have any of the,
it was just excitement and limitless ceilings.
I remember writing, writing on the walls.
I still have the computer
cause I'm trying to get the hard drive out of it.
In GarageBand programming all of the drums.
You know, bam, bam, bam.
Like the worst.
But like I had everything, DI modelers, all of it.
And I just wrote the song.
It wasn't like, yeah, we're in the studio.
We have all this gear.
And it was just me just sitting.
Everyone's downstairs playing Halo. And I'm just upstairs like, where's this go?
How's this go?
And like, we don't have that anymore.
We have to literally like check with five people's spouses to see if these three weeks
work for everyone and then consciously go away from our homes and
then go somewhere and try to simulate the isolation and the freedom that you
had. When you weren't isolated you just didn't have anything to do. So now we
need isolation to try to mimic the freedom that we have. And the synthesized
isolation is so different than... Yeah. It's, yeah.
Well, it's because you know,
do you ever remember when Tim Kennedy got waterboarded?
Do you ever remember that?
No.
You know, Tim Kennedy?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, so Tim Kennedy wanted to show.
On purpose.
Yes.
Okay.
So he, I can't remember, this is a while ago now,
he, I think was making a point
about enhanced interrogation techniques.
Yeah. And basically said, I'm gonna to let someone waterboard me and they can
waterboard me for as long as you want.
So towel over face, boring, whole things.
I'm pretty sure the whole thing's video is on the internet somewhere.
And a lot of people gave him stick for the fact, well, yeah, you know, you're
getting waterboarded, but you know that at some point it's going to stop.
You're in control.
Yes.
So there's this degree of, I'm sure that it was still
fucking awful and uncomfortable.
And I'm pretty sure Tim said like, go for as long as you want, keep going, like
do it again, hit me again, hit me again, hit me again.
But there is something about the lack of authenticity that I think was the reason
that people tried to poke holes in it and said, Hey, like fucking you.
Like, let's be honest here.
Like it's these, it's his usual laughing.
Your laughing has enhanced interrogation
as opposed to that.
And who's to say that the fake version of it
that he went through didn't last longer
than some of the real versions of whatever, whatever.
But the emotional of like,
oh, these people don't have my best interests at heart
is kind of the same as what you guys are trying to create
when you go to the cabin in the woods.
You went like three times, right?
For this last one.
Yeah, three, yeah, four times.
Went up, went back up.
And then went back for the next one.
Different producers, second time, et cetera.
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
You did your research.
I like it.
So I think it's an odd realization that the start of something, the liberation that you
have there, you know, if people are to look back on any,
whatever career it is that they've got now,
go back to university or go back to college or whatever and think about,
what was it like? When was it really, really good?
Dude, we had to hand that project in and it was midnight on the Sunday and we
all did dominoes and everyone slept under their desks and then we got up the next day
and we did it and we fucking made it, man. That was what was cool.
Yeah.
Again, this is an unteachable lesson that
luxury becomes as much of a prison
as it is an enabler.
Absolutely.
Like, you know, you guys on a fucking double-decker tour,
but like Dan and Shay, I went to go and hang with them
after they played in Austin.
And they've got like two, and I'm sure you know,
like the most fucking insects.
Five star.
Oh, well, you know, the way that we've actually done
this bed is if you put it at the very
back because no one has to walk past it, you can have like an additional queen size thing
and it's over the back wheel, which means that there's more dampening and whatever,
whatever, like all of this stuff.
And, you know, it's cool as fuck to see it, but there's something about the like rough
and ready story of you having to get the fucking orienteering out.
And we say it all the time.
We say it all the time.
The shit you remember, the shit that impresses upon you
and the shit that makes you you is like, bro,
in the last six months we've played the forum,
crazy arenas, all these places.
I remember like, I can tell you the way that a place in 2003 smelled.
You know what I mean?
Like, sleeping in the van in the gully.
Well, I think you dive into this a lot,
but I know it's like kind of very,
I don't know if like Rogan-esque is a good thing
and you can edit that out, but like,
the idea of like the Goggins
and these kinds of people where they're like,
similar to Tim Kennedy, like suffering
is where growth comes from.
So choose suffering, choose something,
whether it be a cold plunge or-
This is where you're world end and modern end.
A run or anything, sauna, like do things
that are uncomfortable intentionally to then allow
everything else to kind of feel a bit normal.
And I think that's what, that's the difference with your Tim Kennedy analogy.
It's like me going in to a cold plunge is me setting a timer for four, three to five
minutes.
I'm in control.
It's 33 degrees.
I want to die.
And it's not the same as me falling through ice.
As me being in the Titanic.
Fully clothed in 33 degree weather.
And I'm maybe I'm only in there for two minutes.
That two minutes would scar me compared to the five minutes that I
willingly do upon myself.
Although the environment's exactly the same
as far as physically.
And I think in a weird way, like,
we try to recreate stuff like that,
but like when it actually happens naturally by life,
like that's what forms you.
You know, you could try to heat up metal
and try to distill it and try to purify it and do this.
And like, yeah, like let's go do something hard again.
Let's go to a cabin and act like we're single and alone
and maybe even try to go crazy a little bit
to see what comes out.
Like we're doing an experiment on ourselves
but we're really just attempting to set ourselves up
in the closest form that resembles something that came natural so that we can receive transmission.
You're laughing as an older version of you.
Yeah.
Eating five times a day.
Or a younger version, yeah.
Yeah, of course.
You know what I mean?
Having fucking Elon's fucking Skynet global link.
Of course.
That's what it's called. Yeah. Puppy Van Winkle whiskey, global ink. Of course, yeah.
Happy Van Winkle whiskey, the whole thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Now it's the same as when we were doing it
in an old storage space, except for there's a movie theater,
a hot tub, a grill, and he brings 15 bottles of whiskey,
and we make old fashions every night.
And by the way, and by the way, and by the day,
and we have a car, and we have three cars actually.
I bought my first car when I was 24. I drove the band van around as my person,
because we were just,
like literally I did not own a vehicle,
or pay car insurance until 24 years old.
One guy had a cell phone until we were all 22.
So one guy had a college fund that we depleted.
We spent all of his fucking money.
Yeah. And we used his phone.
Thank you, Dave and Karen Brandell.
But yeah, and you want to recreate it, but you can't.
And I think I've heard you talk about this
or someone was talking to you about it,
but talking about slumps and like almost how,
year three, four or five of doing this podcast or whenever it was,
something in that realm, it's like,
that's where it started to get stale.
And like, how do I excite it?
And like, that seems to be everyone's real question
and possibly the most important answer
that nobody can answer.
I mean, even today, I forget who it was that asked it,
but they're like, you've been with the same woman for 18 years.
I'm like, yeah, I'm actually, I've only ever been with my wife.
I've only seen one human being naked ever in the physical, obviously.
And he's like kind of dumbfounded and then goes, so what do you,
how do you make that like special?
And just kind of like, how do you spice it up?
I think was the bigger question.
And-
Or what is it like over time?
Yeah, and because I think we all think about things
in like a, it's constantly degrading.
And the first six months of a relationship,
step one is always the best, the infatuation,
the romance is there, there were flowers and infatuation, the romances there.
There were flowers and fresh cooked meals and the sex was great.
And now 10 years in, you got a couple of kids like, and that's how everyone views it.
And in a weird way, like I'd rather just age gracefully,
then try to recreate being a horny teenager.
Well, that's a really interesting question that I've thought about a lot.
That there isn't, I don't think there's a particularly healthy conversation around how
to age gracefully as a man.
There's not, and I mean, not for anyone.
Well, no, that would be true.
I think the reason that it's particularly interesting, it's tiny little bit like maybe
novel, is just that the conversation around women aging, because the world places an awful lot of value on women's youth,
and the way that they look in terms of youth,
and that's why cosmetic surgery and makeup and face lifts and all this stuff exists,
in order to hold on to that, right?
To not grow into it, to go back.
And that has to be tough for chicks to deal with.
But I don't think that there is a,
I simply don't think there's a conversation
around what it's like to age as a guy,
physically, mentally, emotionally.
Like what does that mean to transcend?
It's like, you know, we understand what it's like
to have the super arrested development
of like the adult manchild, you know,
like the 35 year old infant.
Yeah.
There was a movie about it where some,
so a couple hires some woman to break their son out of that.
It's a 40 year old guy living in his house and I can't remember what it's called.
Okay.
It's going to drive me crazy.
But yeah, so go on though.
I think I know where you're going next.
It's just not a particularly well trodden path.
And I don't think that there are very good archetypes for, you know, I'm 37.
And the first time I think I
noticed age was probably about 34.
And I was like, huh, workouts actually take a little bit longer to, it's
a fucking gray hair in my beard.
Like it's one, I mean, that's kind of cool, I guess, like, but you know what I mean?
And you think, huh, I'm, I'm really ever heard.
And then when you start to roll in, okay, what does it mean about relationships?
What does it mean about your role in the world?
What, how are you supposed to show up?
Because like, am I going to be the fucking like leanest, most
jacked, strongest, coolest, newest guy, band, fucking singer, songwriter thing?
I'm not hot shit anymore.
Okay.
So what does that mean?
Am I supposed to try and recreate that old thing?
Because we valorize success, especially first time success and
descendancy and trajectory so much.
Correct.
Okay.
Well, what does it mean?
What does it mean to sort of graduate?
What does it mean?
What does it mean to, to move on from that?
Well, that's why I think a lot of men, older men, like, don't have, to your point, like,
there's no archetype, there's no mentors, and it's like these people retire and then
they go back to work.
Like, men don't even know how to stop being this one thing.
You've been doing it for 50 years, like, you know, what is next?
What is the next chapter?
And it's, there isn't one.
And that's why, I think that's why, you know,
episodes like the dry creek, Dwayne.
Yes.
Nailed it, dude.
I said triple D earlier.
Is, is, is cool because he's an old guy.
And he almost feels like he's so different than me
that it feels like my's so different than me
that it feels like my grandpa or my dad talking to me
about how to go about life versus, you know, peers,
people that are my age, your age, our age.
And it's like, okay, what happens at 50?
What happens at 60?
Like, what do you do with that?
And it's like, there's such an emphasis on,
to your point, recreating that.
It's like TRT therapy and this and this and this and all the things.
And all we're doing is kicking and screaming, being dragged towards death.
Raging against entropy.
And doing the best we can to stave it off rather than walking with the
current and going here we, here we sit.
Well, having no examples too is, I think is the biggest,
like Dry Creek Dwayne.
Fucking two feet.
Is really, it really appeals to me.
But to you.
I could see you in Wyoming, fucking.
Ranglinaholes.
But to you that might not appeal.
You know what I mean?
Like you might want to age and go out a different way.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like with, and I'm not saying like, with women, you can see it in television and in media.
Like you have the woman who's like the gardening lady
and she ages that way.
The yoga lady, like hat lady.
Some of the wives in our band,
some of the, they're like,
they're getting in their mid forties
and they're becoming yoga teachers and stuff.
And it's a beautiful thing to watch.
But men, like, because there's archetypes,
like it's either dry
quick drain, you play golf and rot.
Or you-
Or becoming Elon Musk or die trying.
Or you go back to work.
You do the permanent management.
Yeah.
Those are, those are the three options, you know?
Um, and I, I think what helps me is having, have anything that can take me out
of thinking of me is a good thing.
Yeah.
That was what we were talking about.
And I think having kids and having, knowing that I'm going to be a grandfather
one day, like they're, my path has already been laid out and so it's, I don't know
how I'm going to get there and I hope I'm valuable and can contribute when that time
comes, I'd love to be the grandpa that's fit enough to be able to throw the
football with his grandkids.
Think about this, I know that you both have got challenges to do with.
Fuck, we nailed it.
We made the world a better place.
We gave songs that brought people out of themselves.
We helped them to understand bits of their life.
We created collective effervescence for
like millions of people across a huge, huge, huge fucking career.
Yeah.
But I missed some of my kids upbringing and all the rest of it.
But think about what it's gonna be like when your kids have got grandkids
and granddad has got the sickest stories.
Like granddad's cool.
Yeah.
Granddad knows the world.
He can tell you about Delhi and he can tell you about fucking Jakarta
and he can tell you about what it's like in Adelaide in the winter and he can tell you
about what it's like to go to Dublin Island and have, I've been to Guinness, let me tell
you about the Guinness factory, you know, fucking dude, that is a worldly patriarch
in a family is like, that's where fucking like druids come from. You know what I mean? Like that anchor of why you're there.
That's a big hopeful piece rather than being the dad
who rots in the chair.
Yeah.
And I mean, I think, yeah, it's always,
we're breaking something.
Every day we're breaking something.
We just don't know what we're breaking yet, you know?
And I think that's the exciting part of life,
is it's not color in these lines
and then beautiful picture comes out,
color in these lines, another beautiful picture comes out,
everything's in its right place.
Like, there are things that I've probably done
or will do or am still doing
that are hurting someone somewhere.
My goal is to make sure that I do less of them
and recognize them as they come.
And then I think by the end of it all,
you just look back and go, we all did our best.
You know, that's all you can do.
I think another way to look at that,
the Breaking Things is an interesting way to frame it.
Another way to frame it might be,
there's a price that you have to pay.
Yeah.
In order to do things, there's a price.
Yeah.
There's a barrier to entry to be this.
There's a cost of doing business.
Yes, correct.
There's a cost of doing business for this thing.
You wanna be, you wanna fucking make music
that changes a portion of the world?
Okay, cool. I have to go to a portion of the world. There's a fucking price that you have to fucking make music that changes a portion of the world? Okay, cool.
I have to go to a portion of the world.
That's a fucking price that you pay for it.
Yep.
And I think that's fine.
And for me personally, I don't know if the price necessarily is
as valuable as the outcome.
I don't, I don't know that those correlate.
Like if we had to start over and
someone said, here's a crystal ball, you're going to start now. And if you do what you just did for
the last 25 years again, by the time you're 75, you're going to be sitting down with a very old
Chris Williamson. You could have the whole ride over again. I would say, no, I'm good. Like I like
I would say, no, I'm good.
Like, I like the beauty of things being temporary.
And it's like, and the contentment of just going, yeah,
we've, there's two ways to look at it.
We're playing fucking the Norva again.
We played the Norva in 2003, 2004, and now it's 2025.
I'm still at the fuck in Norva.
Or, holy shit, the Norva sold out again, 20 years later?
The Norva is sick, by the way.
No, I know.
And yeah, for me, it's always the second one.
It's like 2018, whatever,
these people are still coming to see us?
But it's all the same.
And what I'm not interested in doing
is trying to be that like sad 55 year old
rocker who can't let it go and be a career musician.
Like that doesn't interest me.
I don't, if, if we happen to be here in 10 years talking to you and still playing shows,
I will gladly do it.
I'm not intentionally sabotaging anything, but I think the open-handedness of just like,
whenever this is ready to go, I've had more than my fill.
I've been beyond blessed.
I've had more memories and lifetimes than I ever thought would be provided if it all
goes away.
I try to remember how blessed and fortunate we are to put, like the Norva thing, I was...
Where is Norva?
It's in Virginia Beach, Virginia. My't Norfolk Norfolk. Yes, my
My ex-father-in-law. I I've been blessed enough to to co-parent my first child with my ex-wife and
I'm still close with her family. I was there just there this weekend and
They live on the other side of the country my ex-father-in-law
Who I'm close with he's he's dying of emphysema.
He's in his 70s and he smoked cigarettes for like 50-some-odd years and he carries around
an oxygen tank.
And these guys all know this, but he's like, he's an amazing guitar player.
And he played in bands all growing up.
That's what he did.
Bar bands, you know, like gigging.
And he never made it.
And he was never in anything that blew up
or sold records or was a real living.
Had a conversation with him on Saturday afternoon
outside at a barbecue at a family member's house.
And he goes, I put it down, I did it.
I stopped and I'm happy about it.
And I'm like, I had stopped playing cause I can't breathe.
He's like, I put it down, I finally did it.
Cause when you saw him a few months ago,
he was still lugging gear to venues in 70.
With a fucking oxygen tank.
I mean, yeah.
Holy fuck.
But what was beautiful, I got emotional about it
because he's like, I did it.
Closure.
He's like, my time is over.
He's been graceful.
And you know what he said? And I thought, like, I literally, when he started the conversation, I was like, oh fuck. He's like, my time is over. He's been graceful. And you know what he said?
And I thought, like, I literally,
when he started the conversation, I was like,
oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck, oh, fuck.
He's going to be like, I never made it,
none of this ever amount.
Yep, yep, yep, yep.
And he literally was like, it was so fun.
And I'm so glad I got to do it.
And it fucked me up, because I was like,
we're over here bitching about the Norva, you know,
or whatever.
Yeah.
In a theoretical manga, by the way, I love you, Norva.
We all love the Norva. But he,
he never played for more than four or 500 people ever.
Do you find it difficult? It seems like Tim's got
a very balanced, that open-handed,
impermanence sort of approach to things.
But I get the sense that you're a little bit more conflicted, not
necessarily about that precisely.
But generally, what does this mean?
Sense of purpose, where's it coming from?
Given that you've got someone who is kind of like a purist in no one else in the
fucking recording studio, but also with regards to this, that's kind of a little
bit like being with the LeBron James of impermanence a bit.
You've got this like,
but it, but it, you know, this Buddhist guy sat next to you.
And that's your first tattoo.
In one, in one form.
Is that, fuck, like maybe I should be like that.
Maybe it would be easier if I could let go.
Does that cause a little?
More so when I was younger,
because like I told you an hour ago,
this motherfucker has been bent like that since the beginning. cause a little more so when I was younger. Because like I told you an hour ago,
this motherfucker has been bent like that
since the beginning.
Like been like this since 2003.
It happens.
2003 when 2004, when it was like,
I grew up in a trailer on food stamps.
2004, someone, we literally started making like real money,
like buying house money.
And he is over here like, well, you know,
if like, whatever.
And there's been times where,
to answer your question more directly,
I've wished I was like that.
And there's been times where I've gone,
he's a fucking idiot.
He doesn't know what he's got,
and he's squandering it with his psyche.
And then now, where we're at now,
we're both 42 years old, and where we're at
now is I look at him and I go, that's a beautiful thing. And I'm glad that he's able to do it. I'm
glad that he can hold everything with a greased hand, you know? And I hold on a little tighter.
And I think the reasons I hold on tighter are irrelevant. But maybe they are relevant, but
it's just an acceptance that I...
If you don't... it's like being, like you said earlier, it's like being married to four other people.
And if you don't accept some of their quirks, you're really on the breaks.
You're in trouble. You know what I mean? Like your relation... this doesn't work.
And it's a constant... marriage is hard. It's work. It's beautiful work.
It's one of the most beautiful works you can do, in my opinion. But it is labor. It is a labor that you do. You get up every
day and as cliche as it sounds, you choose to love that person and you choose to love
the things about them that you don't agree with, number one, and that you can't see eye
to eye with in any facet. And that's just what it is. And there's things about the greased
hands thing, the open hands thing that I'm like,
do you even care about what you're doing?
And then I'll, you circle back around and go, I get it.
And some days, I wish I, I wish, yeah.
I think, I mean, that's a rational question,
but to your point even earlier about, you know,
you pop in and get all the ideas out
and then I'm the ones stuck for three days, like, truiting.
It's like, I think I earn the right to qualify that statement with the fact that I am, if not the,
one of the hardest working people in the band.
Oh, you're the finisher.
So for someone who, quote-unquote, can easily get painted as like,
oh, he doesn't care, he's squandering it. Like, why am I working so fucking hard?
And it's because this has meaning yet it does not define me.
And that's a difference.
You've got a really beautiful mindset when it comes to that.
It's very impressive.
Um, you know, as a fellow, uh, obsessive, it's, uh, it's difficult to find that
level of equanimity, right?
To be able to deploy everything,
but to have it come from a place of just,
I want this to be really good, as opposed to,
if I don't, this defines me,
and it is indicative of my self-worth.
And if I can't make this fucking melody,
this track, this fucking fill, this whatever,
this part, this vocal, if I can't make this a success,
as beautiful as whatever it might be,
then I am dot, dot, dot.
Then it means this about me.
Then I'm going to be homeless and alone
and under a bridge with a gluten intolerant.
You know what I mean?
Like all of these things are going to fucking happen.
I learned about this thing the other day
that was pretty interesting, Hedging your identity.
So the healthiest and happiest people in the world,
apparently have multiple different places
that they take their sense of self-worth from.
Yours might be a musician, father, husband,
friend, bandmate, leader, confidant,
you know what I mean? All of these different things.
If it's someone else might be a Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappler, but also
they're a salesperson, also they're a pool player, also they're, you know,
whatever the fuck, and I think I was thinking about this literally on the way
in, I wrote a huge message on the way in about this, that the price that you need to pay to be the best in the world is to probably
sacrifice absolutely everything else in order to be able to get there.
Now this is the best in the world under a very, very narrow domain, right?
It's a very narrow window, which is you will perform in your chosen pursuit
to the best of your ability.
And the reason that you have to sacrifice all of these other things is that if you don't,
you will be beaten by a person who's prepared to sacrifice all of those other things.
Yeah.
Like make no mistake, if none of you guys had got married,
none of you guys had ever decided to have kids, done all the rest of this stuff.
I mean, who's to say that it hasn't informed you artistically?
It's kind of the weird leverage thing.
Yeah.
How art works that sometimes stuff which is suboptimal
actually ends up giving you a step change in terms of insight.
But let's say that it's something a little bit more linear like
football, right, or powerlifting or some shit like that.
I always use this example, but Eddie Hall, World's Strongest Man,
2018, 19, British guy, and he's stood there on the winner's podium and he's got this trophy
and he's throwing it in the air and he's saying, no, no, this is for you.
His grandma died like not long ago.
No, no, this is for you.
Tears streaming down his face.
And, uh, he does this interview afterwards and he says, if I hadn't won, I would be
dead, divorced with no relationship to my daughter because he was six foot two,
divorced with no relationship to my daughter because he was six foot two, 200 and like fucking
like 400 pounds, 400 plus pounds. He was on so many performance enhancing drugs. His blood pressure was through the roof, all of these different things, spending all of his time training and
being obsessive. So his wife and his marriage fucking falling apart, wasn't seeing his daughter
at all because he spent all his time in the gym obsessing over winning this thing. And you go,
okay, that's the price to be Eddie Hall.
Yep.
Do you want to be Eddie Hall?
Do you want to be Eddie Hall?
Cause that's the fucking price that you need to pay in order to be that.
Right.
And this is where this is kind of the lesson that I keep drilling into myself.
It's largely like this whole body of work for me has been like a thinly veiled
autobiography, um, and, uh, like what I'm trying to drill into myself is, okay, what is the
metric of success? Like what is it that you consider to be success? Because if
it's the most plays, the most money, the most followers, the most whatever on the
show, being known or validated or liked by the most people, that's going to
pervert your direction and it's going to pervert your direction.
And it's going to cause you to, like, you can end up, if you do that, you can
end up at a place in life, not only that you don't want to be, but one that you
literally didn't even mean to get to.
Yeah.
And you can turn around and go, Holy fuck.
Like I got to the top of this huge mountain.
I was supposed to be on that meadow over the far side.
Yeah.
I was supposed to be down there.
And, uh, you're trying to shortcut that.
But, and here's the question that has kind of been in the back of my
mind for all this conversation.
I wonder how much, and it speaks to your ex-father, ex-father-in-law's point,
which is what you thought he was going to say too, which is this unrequited,
unfulfilled level of success.
I wonder how easy it is for,
how much easier it is for you guys
to be able to talk about, you know, like the ease,
the open-handedness, all the rest of it,
because you, like, they're only chasing safety
in many ways, created a sound that 20 years later
is now the ascendant,
or partly an ascendant sound that's coming back around, right?
That is like, how much did it shape the next fucking however many decades
of rock in lots of different ways?
And to be able to, I mean, we've played, like, is there a fucking country
on the planet that's not at war that you guys haven't played in?
Probably not. Like, you know, every single place of every single show,
every single tour, every single everyone, anybody that's not at war that you guys haven't played in? Probably not. Like, you know, every single place, of every single show,
of every single tour, of every single everyone, anybody that's in the rock
industry knows the name of that.
It's okay.
So it's all well and good going, you know, like I just, I'm open handed with it, man.
And like, it's easy, but how the real rubber meets the road when you go, you
never played to more than 400 people in your entire career and you were never
recognized and you never got a record label deal. And I think that that, again, this is an unteachable lesson being said by people who
have got to some form of success within their industry to be able to tell people further down,
hey man, you can, you can chase it, but I'm telling you, your problems are still going to be your
problems when you get to the top and they're going to say, fuck you, watch me dance through this minefield.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. It didn't work for all of you.
Watch me do it.
I'll be different. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that's true.
I mean, that's all life is,
is us looking at celebrities,
overdosing and all these people and rock stars,
never being good dads or good moms or good partners and cheating.
And even Dave Grohl, that came out.
Fuck, yeah, I know.
What a hero fallen from the top.
And literally like, and that's kind of like-
That felt impossible.
That's kind of-
That broke people.
That's my thing though, is like,
why are we making these people our heroes?
This is not new.
Like, and I don't know.
Like, it's just a weird thing to be like,
I look up to musicians that inspire me musically, you know?
Run the Jules is one of my favorite bands or groups.
And like, I listen to a lot of hip hop
and then a lot of like weird stuff that is, you know,
down here.
Like bullshit.
Yeah well there's a band like Howdy.
H-O-V-V-D-Y.
You've probably never heard of them.
I think they're from here.
They're in Nashville now.
I love them.
They're great.
Porches.
Shit like that.
And like they're not my heroes.
They inspire me but like to put someone in, especially for musicians, to have someone
that you idolize that is just doing what you're doing at a 10x scale and not recognizing that
it's just 10 times more fucked up.
What's the price they had to pay to get that?
Yeah. It's just like, you don't want to be that guy. And if you could be that guy,
you'd be miserable.
Just fucking hate it.
And I think every, I think the universe, if there is a God or an energy or a spirit, it's
trying to tell all of us all of the time, go grab a cigar with your friend and don't
break nothing and stop trying to be on Musk.
There's nothing logically in my brain or heart, which is more important,
or my spirit, whatever you call that, that says the opposite. There's just nothing.
And it just, it kind of just ends there. I mean, three and a half hours later, you can end it on
like this poetic, like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like, if you can synthesize all of it down,
like that's what it is.
I don't wanna be in Nashville writing more songs
for more people.
I don't want that.
You know, I don't want to be more famous than I am.
I love going to Target with my kids
and just being a guy nobody knows.
You know, like it's not about climbing the ladder,
next, next, next, next, next.
And I'm not saying he is either.
I'm just saying I'm just naturally wired to just be like, man, the simple, next, next, next, next, next. And I'm not saying he is either. I'm just saying I'm just naturally wired
to just be like, man, the simple, the peaceful.
You know, we used to take fishing poles out.
Like, maybe we just get out of the concrete jungle
and just go to any lake and just fish, pack some beers.
Let's get out of here.
Like the nature, the mountains, the cabin,
like everything that we're doing even collectively,
I might be maybe trying to
forcefully do that and some people are like I guess we'll go to the mountains
but man like when you're there it's like different. It's then being in LA. It's the
beauty of enough right? Oh contentment that should be a whole other podcast.
Even I you know I was listening to a podcast the other day, I think we listened
same one with Bono and Bono's polarizing a lot of people you know. I don't know much with Bono. And Bono's polarizing for a lot of people, you know, like.
I don't know much about him.
For music people, he's polarizing because.
Are you serious?
I don't know much.
I mean, I know he's like, I know his music, but I don't know much about it.
Yeah, yeah.
Got it.
Oh yeah.
I've, yeah, I've never read an interview with him.
He's polarizing for a lot of people because a lot of people hate modern
YouTube, but something that was really in, in he's.
Play your old stuff, just like us.
Yeah.
He's been involved in a lot of causes, you know, um, but with enough being enough,
like something that really got me that he, that he said was he, and he seems to
have this huge ego with the glasses and he's fucking bono.
And he says, our band, like we started this conversation, I thought it was so cool.
He says, our band is a democracy.
And he's like, that's one of my biggest pride things that I have about what we do.
You know what I mean? And for me, like the fishing, the cabin, the contentment.
Like if you put something on under oaths gravestone, for me it will be that we did our own shit
our own way democratically, even when it was impossible.
Even when it seemed impossible for us to do it in a democratic way.
And even sometimes at our demise.
Like if we would have made Chasing Safety part two would I be richer?
Probably. But I'm glad that we did. Would you be happier? That's exactly it.
And I think Bono, the vibe I got is I think he's happy because those
other three guys in his band and him agree. And they fight to do it like we do.
But they can say yeah this song should be this way or whatever.
Ultimately, you're going to know, right?
At the end of the day, maybe there's a certain level, very low level of self
reflection where people are able to kind of continue to masquerade as a thing
while being a different thing in private and continue to do things ostensibly
out front for one
cause whilst secretly believing something different or wanting something different privately.
But ultimately, I think you're going to know.
You're going to know whether or not you fooled yourself.
You're going to know whether or not you lied about this thing.
And that's cool.
Like you can look back on a string of miserable successes or inauthentic successes, right?
That were crafted in a manner that kind of fugazied people
into believing that it was you.
Yeah.
And, you know, again.
You unpack that a lot though, right?
Cause you have like imposter syndrome.
I hear that come up a lot.
Like just, are you wise?
Are you this driven? Are you fit
because you know people? Why is it coming from? Yeah. But I think, I think at scale, over time,
you will be found out, you know? Naval's got this wonderful line. He says,
you don't need karma to deliver spiritual justice. All that karma is, is people repeating their patterns,
virtues and flaws until they finally get what they deserve.
If you roll the dice enough times, eventually, the thing, the thing
that is coming for you will come for you.
And sure, some people, some people can dance through the
minefield and not kick it, right?
Yeah.
But there are people in your industry.
There are people in my industry.
There are people in my old industry. Yeah. I know I'm like, Hey man, like and not kick it. Right. But there are people in your industry. There are people in my industry. There are people in my old industry.
Yeah.
I know I'm like, Hey man, like I get it.
You might be making it work, but you're a piece of shit.
Yeah.
Or you're, um, self deceptive or you're obfuscatory or you're, you're, um,
unfair or whatever, right?
You're mean, you're mean, you're a mean person.
And sure. Maybe you're, you're, um, unfair or whatever, right? You're mean, you're mean, you're a mean person. And sure, maybe you're hot now, maybe you'll be hot forever, but like,
unless you have a fucking half inch deep level of self-reflection, at some
point it's going to come back around.
It's going to come back around in your fucking nervous system.
It's going to come back around in an existential crisis, or you're going to
roll the dice one too many times and snake eyes is going to come up and
your wife's going to catch you fucking cheating or your bandmates are going to
realize that you've actually been doing this thing all along.
You've been like, you've been fucking skimming transaction fees off the top of
every bit of merch that we've done for the last fucking however long, like
whatever it is that you do, you'll repeat your patterns.
And I think the goal is it's what Dwayne says.
He's like, I like me.
I'd buy me a beer.
And you're like, you want to be a person that you can fucking buy a beer?
Triple D maybe.
Well, this has been fucking unbelievable.
We've been three hours.
Hell yeah.
It was an honor to do it, man.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Thank you.
For real.
Appreciate it.
Sick.
Appreciate it very much.
Well, let's go and eat some steak.
Fuck.
Let us go.