Something Was Wrong - S18 Ep14: (2/2) [Jimmy + Andrew + Anthony] It’s From the Heart

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

*Content Warning: misogyny, rape, grooming, sexual assault, suicidal ideation, misogyny, threats of sexual violence involving children, racism, bigotry, white nationalism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, transmia, emotional abuse.  Sources: Die Laughing // BITCH JAGGER IG page and statements: http://www.instagram.com/wearebitchjagger666  BITCH JAGGER on Bandcamp: https://bitchjagger.bandcamp.com/ Andrew Saxena's Podcast, Baywatching: https://www.instagram.com/baywatchingpodcast/ Anthony Kapfer on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonykapfer/ Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources  SWW Merch: merch.cameo.com/store/somethingwaswrong  Follow Something Was Wrong on IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese on IG: instagram.com/lookieboo Artwork by the amazing Sara Stewart: @GreaterThanOkay - Instagram.com/greaterthanokay

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treatment. Thank you so much for listening. Please note at the time of this episode's release, Kevin Elliott could not be reached for comment. That night, we got into a heated argument. All of us, I have to drive everybody back home still. Kevin doesn't say a word to Anthony the entire way home. So that's already awkward. I drop off Anthony and then Kevin starts talking to me. He's going on this weird transphobic rant. Came at me with some weird shit.

I was just really bothered by that whole conversation. This dude knows my brother's gay. He knows all the bands I've been booking for, all the connections I've been making. Drew's wearing dresses to our shows. Drew's been supporting the LGBT queer punk scene since before me. Anthony's super level-headed. It's just this one guy's hatred that's coming out more and more. And it was just really bothering me.

So I drop him off and I noticed immediately that he left his phone in my car. In weird relationships, when you have these red flags and feelings, sometimes people tend to go through other people's phones. I open his phone. And that's when I opened this bombshell of weirder shit. I opened Pandora's box and find out him and this other dude have been going off the rails for the last six to eight months that we've been active as a band or trying to be a band. He's talking to this guy, John Bennett.

He had added me on Instagram, and I knew he was one of Kevin's friends, but I didn't know the extent. I just knew him as an Instagram mutual friend of Kevin's that was supporting us. I immediately seen a message between him and John Bennett, something about how he wants to kill all of us. So I started going through it. I had to go back to when we started a band. I'm going between his text threads and Instagram,

and I just come up on this trove of the most vile shit, weird, rapy, groomy, just all the grossest shit you can think of between him and his friend John Bennett. It's basically him talking shit about all of us and how they want to buck my wife and Anthony's wife and Drew's girlfriend of 20 years, all this gnarly shit.

Plus, he's talking racial shit about all these people that he grew up with that he still talks to today. Just to paint a further picture, I'm looking at some of the screenshots of the messages between him and John Bennett to give people some examples of the kinds of things that they're saying to each other. A lot of it is really racist and really anti-Semitic. He really, really hates Jews and says words that I don't even feel comfortable saying.

Extremely derogatory and racist. And Kevin sends a picture of his niece. It says, quote, the fact that my niece is this hot and still hasn't figured out how to make money is just astonishing, end quote. He had just sent him also. a picture of him with a Hitler mustache with a thumbs up right above that. Then he says about his niece, quote, like bitch, I will, all caps will pay you for sex. You could be fully employed blood relatives even, end quote. And John responds, which of these whores is your niece?

Then Kevin says far left. John says, damn, she needs to be stuffed. Then another conversation between the two of them. Wednesday, May 25th, 7.20 p.m., Kevin says, Hey, I just want to say one thing. Fuck trans people. John responds, man, fuck you fool. Then no response.

They text fuck you back and forth quite a bit. Like they call each other prick quite a bit. Also, John, the school teacher says, quote, I also feel like autistic people don't get enough shit either. Fuck these fools. Learn how to have a damn conversation, end quote. Kevin even says here Tuesday, September 6th, quote, sometimes you got to stop a show, leave your band members on stage,

throw a tantrum, and chastise everyone in the room, then go smoke weed while the band is still on stage, standing there like idiots, end quote. Both of their responses are just terrible. He was invited to my wedding. He was going to be in it. Months before I had invited him, we got married October 22nd.

I'm seeing this shit. in late July, early August. I'm right here in bed, laying next to Lissa, just shaking. It's late at night. She hasn't seen it yet because she was asleep. By the time rehearsal was over and I dropped everyone off and got this phone charge and read through this shit, it's probably past midnight.

I'm definitely feeling betrayed. So taken back, I know I need to bring it up with everybody. I have all this information that I'm just sitting on. I remember not being able to go to bed at all. I stayed up basically watching the clock rereading everything, taking screenshots of everything. At the time, I wasn't taking them to, like, throw him under the bus publicly, but I was smart enough to screenshot this shit from my phone.

I definitely wanted to show Anthony and Drew the real person he was, so we could all really make the best decision on what to do and how to handle it. And that way, like, nobody else got suckered or lured into believing his bullshit, because he was kind of good at that, getting out of shit. I waited to the morning, and then I texted Anthony. I told him, you know, Kevin left his phone in my car, and I went through it. it's real bad, dude, like real, real, real fucking bad. I don't even know how to tell you.

He's like, what do you mean? You got to tell him. I'd like, I'd rather do it face to face with you, me, and Drew. That way you could see. He's like, no, fuck it. Whatever you send me, I know it's real. So I send him all that shit. And the entire day, me and Anthony, you're just like, holy shit, dude.

Here's Andrew. I remember seeing the texts and the emails that Jimmy had shared. Seeing that, I was like, this is extremely toxic. You're offending people and then defending it. by claiming comedy. I feel like something needs to be figured out here, dude. You're hurting people. When I saw all the texts and stuff,

part of me was completely unshooked. This is how this guy talks. It was a bit of an awakening. This is just how he treats people. John was a guitar player in one of Kev's early bands. I knew of John in high school. I never played in a band with him. I think he played guitar one time in the studio

on one of the Kevin projects that I was in. I always thought of him as a more successful musician guy. I didn't really have much of a friendship with him. He was a teacher. Sometimes I'd noticed that these are like very profane things that this guy does and then claims that they're jokes. He found some sort of gross camaraderie there or felt like he could truly be that version of himself

and there was some intimacy perhaps in that. Here's Jimmy. We had the Silver Lake Lounge show. They just wanted to get through the Silver Lake show and then call it quits. And then we had the one that I booked with another great band, Trapp Girl, which is a transfronted band. It's done so much for us when they never had to. They're a bigger band out here in L.A., especially active in the transpunk scene.

I was just going to pay out, trapgirl or book another band in our place. We go into that Silver Lake show, and Kevin doesn't say a word to Anthony. It's a terrible set for us because Kevin doesn't cue anybody in at the right parts. I remember playing and just wanted to get the hell out of there. Here's Anthony. We had a big blowout at one of the rehearsals. Kevin left his phone in Jimmy's car. Jimmy started looking through some text conversations, and there was this one friend that he would

chat with, John. All of the crazy texts that I saw from when Jimmy found them, they were, I think, exclusively with this John guy. He texted this guy, and he was like, yeah, he's refusing to do his job as a drummer. And they were just saying all this crazy racist, misogynistic stuff, comments that he made about our wives that were inappropriate. He said he wanted to murder us. at one point. I ended up chatting with those guys about how mad they were about it. I would relay it to Kevin. He would not accept where we were coming from. This is when it all started falling apart. Kevin never owned up to anything. He always found a way to make himself the victim. It came out somewhat quickly, and once we knew about the text messages, there was no coming back from that.

The gig was coming up soon enough that it couldn't happen if we quit or if he fired us. So I was like, I heard that you said, I'm not doing my job as a drummer. We had a little back and forth. This was actually the last time we spoke. So I was like, okay, I'm going to just tell him everything that I'm upset with and let him know what the rest of the band is upset with. I tried to communicate clearly. I tried not to insult him or curse at him.

I tried to be professional about it because this is. is maybe the last time I'm ever going to try to reason with him. We talked for like about an hour and it was all text. And at one point he goes, you know what? Fuck you. You're fired. You won't be missed. And that was it. And so I sent the screenshot of that to the rest of the band. I believe that was a couple of weeks before we were doing this Halloween gig. Jimmy had a bunch of songs at this point. So we threw a set together last minute that didn't involve Kevin or his music. We had like three or four weeks to put a new set together and we played the gig under a different name without Kevin. And then I never heard from him again. The whole lifespan of the band from the photo shoot

the first night before we actually rehearsed together to the last show we played together was maybe three months. Here's Andrew. We need to like just sit down and talk to each other. And he didn't want to have a band meeting. The last show we ever played, it was kind of a weird experience because the three of us all knew it was going to be the last show. And then we never played again. I'm like, dude, we're trying to do this professionally. I've got these other bands I'm in where nobody has to come to practice loaded. We can understand how to play a show. And when you show up to a show, we all know what we're going to perform and people don't get in random brawls on the street and leave because they're too drunk. This isn't cool, man. Like, I can't do this anymore.

So, like, left again because the band fell apart. I think that's a big reason why Anthony left. He's no nonsense, so he quickly was like, this is not a functional artistic relationship. I'm out. Here's Jimmy. Kevin tried to kick Anthony out. I pretended like I was on Kevin's side. I didn't show my card until all this is over. I could figure out how to pay the other band for the show that was going to be coming up in a couple months.

They were like helping me with that, holding their tempers back, especially Anthony. Kevin tries to once again isolate Anthony and make him the problem. Me and Anthony started talking about other ideas, and he's like, why don't you just take your music and start another? band. I started coming up with the whole bitch Jagger thing. We need to end like this is the last show. That's when I made the decision to go full force with locking Kevin out of the die laughing Instagram account. I changed it to bitch Jagger. The band name bitch Jagger came about partially by Anthony. It was him who they hit on that name and I was like that's fucking awesome. That's a great name. I started doing research for like any tags or handles anybody with that banding. Because this shit is gold.

I couldn't find anything except for one profile that was this old Twitter handle. This girl, Aaron, she used to go by Bitch Jagger on Twitter, and she had this whole crazy story on there that really warranted what we were doing. She was bullied almost to suicide by this dude from another punkish band. The dude had pretty much made her life a living hell, and also was an outright racist. So it was like fate stood for what I thought was a bit of satire mixed with truth because mostly all our songs are true. And it's really just me bitching about shit like gatekeeping, sexual abuse, shit like that. We talk outright about being a deadbeat dad.

You know, a lot of these songs are stories that hold a lot of truth and weight. But they're also meant for satire trolling the whole California beatdown culture at these hardcore punk shows that it's been going on for 20 plus years. That's how Bitch Jagger got started. From Anthony and Aaron's old handle from like 17 years ago, helped us breathe life and get this project going. I didn't talk to Kevin. I just blocked him on every platform and left him in the dark. I don't even think we brought it up to him.

We just had all this info and we just wanted to leave it at that. We just knew who he was. And we just wanted to be out of the toxic shit. Instead of me having to pay like a thousand bucks for this next show that I booked, going to all the other bands, We changed it to pitch Jagger. We rehearsed a set, Drew, Anthony, me, and we got the ex-gatars of Die Laughing, our friend Justin. We didn't take like any of his material.

We wanted nothing to do with it. I would do it again in a heartbeat. If you're serious about growing this new year, what you put into your mind actually matters. And as someone who lives and breeds careers and self-development, even I get overwhelmed trying to do it all. Between work, life, and trying to better yourself, self-care can start. to feel like just another thing on the to-do list. But investing in yourself doesn't have to be complicated. And with Audible, it isn't. It's time to take care of you. And who better to help than the top voices in well-being all in one place? With Audible's Well-Being collection, you can level up your

career, finances, relationships, sleep, parenting, or mindset. Whether you want motivation, clarity, or practical advice, there is something there to support you every step of the way. I listen while I commute, clean, work, or just when I need a little bit of downtime. You'll hear from best-selling authors Brene Brown and Jay Shetty, Chef Jamie Oliver, finance expert Rachel Rogers, and popular parenting guides like Raising Good Humans. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audio book free when you sign up for a 30-day trial at outwable.com. Membership is 1495 a month after 30 days. Cancel any time. There's more to imagine when you listen.

It's not more than a week of him being blocked by all of us and locked out. We start getting all these reports, texts, and DMs sent to us with screenshots of Kevin's Twitter rants and new songs that he's writing and posting on Bandcamp. And his new songs have really racial titles. One song's called Kikes. One of the song titles was The Date of Our Show. It was like Death Date 10, 22, something. And it was the date of the show that we booked as Bitch Jagger without him.

So we knew it was directed towards us. Kevin ramps up his Twitter attacks, trying to spin it as we kicked him out, we stole his amplifier. Any way to make him look like a victim. It got to me so much that I couldn't let it go. So I wrote a song and I recorded it and I put it out. The way I put it out was through Instagram stories. And it was a song all about John and Kevin and all the shit they put us through. They kind of challenged it and so did their friends.

Since I kept Die Laughing's original Instagram, I still had all the followers, which a good portion were friends of Kevin from where he used to live. As I put this song out, people started kind of catching on, and I just started dropping all the text threads. It didn't get the initial reaction, I thought. I thought people would wake the fuck up and be like, these two dudes are pieces of shit, but instead, I immediately just saw the followers drop. People leaving, people questioning it, and then other people verbally attacking me.

Kevin fans coming out saying, like, oh, how dare you? This is victimization. It's just like, man, you all ride for your boy so fucking hard. the people who dip, dip, but they don't, because they still watch my stories every day. They're still there for the tea. They just don't want to give us the satisfaction of being a follower. But also, it was real sensitive shit that I felt like anyone would want to know. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew that they were talking about their wives.

I'm going to expose these motherfuckers for who they are. I had them blocked. He couldn't get a hold of me. The one person who did try to reach out to us was John Bennett, because his name got dropped. Take pity on me type of shit. I'm a man. I made a mistake. It's not like one mistake, dude.

This is like a lifetime of bad behavior, bro. He wanted to quiet me. He wanted his name out of it. One of the worst elements about this story to me is uncovering how this John person is because he's a teacher and he works with kids and he's talking about raping children in these text messages, to be clear. So essentially he begs for mercy, but his name was already outed at that point. Yeah, because he's married and his wife's Asian. but even made that a point, you know, my wife's Asian. I'm not racist. I'm like, no, you're

fucking racist. At this point, I was in a full spy double agent mode, playing good cop, bad cop. I was like, okay, I'm going to hear you out. He was my liaison between Kevin, so I didn't have to talk to him. He basically helped in a way get all of Kevin's hateful music offline, all of his social media offline. I was telling him, if you want me to keep your name out of this, I'll stop posting the segments where I call you out. I'm not going to block your name out, but I'll try to focus more on Kevin than you. He was appreciative of that and backstab Kevin by like working with me to convince him to pull all his music down to get out of L.A.

We got him to get Kevin to wipe everything, band camp, SoundCloud, Apple iTunes store, Amazon. And he did. I don't know if it's because John applied the pressure on him. He's probably like, you know, if you don't do this shit, I'm going to get divorced. It took about a week or two because when you do pull your stuff through your distributor, it does take some time, especially through streaming sites to come down. all of his social media ceased to exist. He, like, deleted his Instagram, deleted most of his shit.

Apparently still has a YouTube up. He does have a social media, but that got hacked. It's just dead in the air. He hasn't had access to it since Die Laughing had started. He hasn't been on it since then. That was a big thing because he had like 4,000 followers and thought he was a god. He got locked out of his Instagram. And he still kept trying to go with this narrative that I stole his band and took everything from him and stole his amp,

that he did nothing to us. And I'm like, all this is right here, this is what you did. And he kept going with his bullshit about my sense of humor. Like, I didn't really mean it. Never apologize for anything. On the Instagram account, I made a bitch Jagger email for booking. How long after you start sharing the screenshots of their text messages before the group of women start emailing you?

I want to say about a month later, I get an email through my booking handle. It's anonymous email from someone who goes by Lucia Rising. She's representing a group of women. She comes to me with how Kevin has over the past, I want to say, like 20 years, been sexually assaulting, stalking, harassing via text, mobile, and social media. He's just been like a plague doing this shit his whole life. There's been numerous previous band members and people that have either slut shamed these women or strong-armed into silence or straight-up scare the shit. get out of them. We end up corresponding for almost a month. Me and this group of women, they want me to share this. The first email, they said,

Hi there, a friend of mine recently showed me some screenshots from Instagram where you blew up Kevin Elliott. He's a garbage human being who doesn't care for anyone other than himself. I'm part of a group of women who have been sexually assaulted by Kevin in the past. And any time we spoke up about it, his friends came to his defense and made us feel like it was game over. Thank you for putting the truth out there. We have some texts if you want them. Thanks again. That's what their initial email to me was.

And I was just like anything I could do to help. If you guys want to remain anonymous, I have no problem carrying this sword for you guys because this has gone to a whole other fucking level where it's not about some band bullshit. We were going back and forth daily through the emails and through setting up their own blog. I believe it was on WordPress.

They didn't get to get too far into it because it was only up for a little bit before it got shut down. It was them just sharing their stories. They were trying to offer a place for other women or survivors of his bullshit to, like, come out and vent or just feel some peace to come together. I remember getting quite a few responses, not just from women, but from other people that he had tried to start bands with. One of them was a drummer. He obviously had a fake handle that said, remember me, the drummer. Through all the email correspondence with that group, it seemed like these were the women of some of Kevin's best friends.

A lot of these women have real trauma, and it's been ignored and pushed on the... under the rug. It seems like this is coming from a much tighter circle. It started like that. And 100 emails later, it turned into this whole story about how he's been sexually assaulting, stalking, abusing via text message, phone stalking. There's for sure been one rape kit or an instance of a rape kit. Two cases that have been filed. It also involves people who are in their group of friends that are married. For sure, he's a sexual predator. They gave me consent. I posted our email correspondence and blacked out the names that they want to black out. They emailed me and then I said my piece on it too. I didn't stay

anonymous. I was all for this is who I am. If you have any questions on one event or share stories, feel free to contact me. My name is Jimmy Imperial. Like I've dealt with this scumbaggack and I want you to know that I'm standing with you guys. Here's Andrew. The band fell apart. I don't know how much later, but Bitch Jagger in terms of my recollection starts up. And Bitch Jagger is loosely the same group of guys from or Jimmy comes into the band. We have a friend of ours, Justin, for a little while, who plays in Bitch Jagger. The last ever show that we were supposed to play with,

Kevin was the first Bitch Jagger show. Still, he would be texting me like, I've got these song ideas, I've got this and that, and I would just not respond. I was still a little bit in communication with him as the band had been dissolving. I was like, dude, all this is going on,

you won't talk to me about anything in terms of our relationship, in terms of what's going on, and you're sending me song ideas. I remember seeing Jimmy had, had taken her Instagram account for the band from Kevin. And we're all like, yeah, Jim's going to use it for his new band. At first, it was showing all of these emails and text messages.

I don't know what to make of this. Jim reached out and was like, hey, these women reached out and they were abused by Kevin. There's this long history of abuse. Here's a bunch of them reaching out their stories. They've asked me to share it. I remember I read one or two of the initial posts. I was like, what is this, Jim? I was kind of glad to be a way.

from the band and everything, because it was consistently toxic and frustrating. At this point, me and Jim, we hadn't come full circle in our friendship yet in terms of understanding what each other had been through in all this. If these are people who are suffering, then I'm glad that these stories are being shared. And I just didn't know what to make of any of it. And then more and more was coming out. I don't think these are made up. By the back of my mind was always that idea that heaven's out there being way more toxic

than he is to me, and he's continuing to be abusive. It seems like people could really have suffered and have suffered because of this guy. He doesn't want to address even the mild suffering he's put us through. It really could be that he's this horrific dude in the rest of his life. Here's Anthony. Jimmy started his band, Bitch Jagger, and on the Instagram account, he's having this saga unfold of outing Kevin. I wasn't sure how involved to get with that.

But it seems there were some women that reached out to him that, Kevin was really terrible too. I think that he found some people that were really happy that the information was getting out there. I didn't have access to these text messages, so I didn't know what the best way to release them would be. He took the lead with that, and by that time, he was looking for a lineup for the band. I was doing my own music. At some point, he had to have given Kevin his phone back, but it just seemed like more texts were coming out every day. I heard that John got really scared when those texts started getting posted and he reached out to Jimmy. He was trying to get Jimmy to stop.

Maybe he thought I was more involved with that than I was, but he reached out to me on Instagram. He sent me a message and he was like, hey, I'm sorry about the things that I said about you and your wife. I didn't even respond to him. I thought it would be better for him to be sweating it out, wondering if I was going to tell people or not. There was some legal pushback somewhere in between us leaving the band and the texts being shared publicly. Kevin's dad died and left him some money, so he was able to kind of get some legal backing. There was a cease and desist or some kind of thing where Jimmy had to maybe show up in court for some of the stuff that he was posting. Talking about the pattern of behavior, that was the main pattern that we were finding was that no matter

what the situation was, he never owned up to anything that he was doing that made other people feel bad. I'd already left. I had no contact with him and I was starting to hear about the legal trouble. I was like, I don't need this. I'm done with him. Jimmy has it under control. Shortly after that, Kevin's dad died and some people had got back to me trying to like tell me to take it easy. But as you go through those emails, I believe you'll see in real time at that time, Kevin was still talking, still messaging women vile shit, calling them whores. I'm like, no, fuck that. This dude's dad died yesterday, and he's still a day later messaging the same type of shit.

And he still has the audacity to do this shit. So I was just like, nah, fuck it. I'm going to keep running it. You're going to put fear into these girls still fuck with them, but you want to be left alone for your dad's funeral so you could fucking mourn? Like, no. Someone had sent me his dad's obituary info to where the funeral was. I posted it on the stories saying,

Hey, Kevin, we'll see you at your dad's funeral. Someone had apparently called in a bomb threat at his dad's funeral, and I got blamed for that. My wife actually did, too. I wouldn't call a bomb threat in ever. Pretty sure it's a federal offense and what's that going to solve? That only messes with his family, not him. I think it was really him who called the bomb threat in.

To generate pity for himself, because that's his MO. He's always done that. Try to get the tension diverted away and for people to feel sorry for him. That way someone else could be the bad guy. I just kept running the stories, posting, which eventually led to him having to take out a restraining order on me. So I got served. And in there, it's like stuff about a bomb threat. And I posted the restraining orders so people could know, like, just how far this shit was going.

He was pushing for me to not be able to, like, post anything on the internet about him anymore. He really was trying to stop me from running his name more and more. I chose to not even go to the hearing. At that point, I wanted nothing to do with him. I made the decision to just say, fuck it. I could have filed, I guess, for an appeal, but I didn't need it. to. This was about a way bigger thing. I'm getting messages at this time from these women, from other people. Now I'm starting to get support, right? I'm getting support from other people

from Rivers that are like, hey, man, I've known Kevin this long and he is a piece of shit. And a lot was people coming about John Bennett saying, like, it was really hard to take in and accept and have known this person for so long and have worked with. He's a colleague of mine. I couldn't imagine him talking like this. It was feeling a lot better than it was a month prior to where people were challenging the truth of it. I got some apologies. Like, sorry for doubting you. just a lot to take in. Once the bomb threat thing came out, the girls shut down their WordPress blog. They got scared through threats of being sued. I think they were just scared in general because they didn't know what was going on. They deleted their email handle. And it just

went dark. All correspondents stopped. This is as far as I got it. The story's out there. I just don't see him ever coming to terms of it. Definitely not about the rape. Have you spoken since? No, but we did run into each other. I didn't say, word to him because I still go to the building he lives in. My bass player lives in the same apartment unit. I go there a lot to record. Yeah, we ran into each other in the lobby and he had a handle of some cheap-ass vodka. It would have been the ideal moment to just light him up. But I just looked at him and he looked at me and gave me this really creepy smile. And I kept walking. I just chose not to do anything. I was able to take away what he loved. He can never be a rock star.

You can never go public. He can't have social media, at least not as wide as he wants. You can't put up music anymore without us finding it. And if we find it, we'll get at him the proper way. It was taken away his ability to harass people on the internet. It was important to me. I'm glad that they were able to reach out to you and at least be validated through that experience.

You offer them nothing but support every step of the way, which I really appreciate. I can't even say thank you. I feel like it's just something I had to do. I was friends with this guy and he heard a lot of people. I felt bad, especially for this group of people, because they were still being bullied. No one believed them. If you go and read through the emails,

he still, to that day, had people hushing these women or, like, threatening them, denying them of their fucking pain and trauma, and that's so fucked up. These women, to this day, don't feel safe. It really seemed like they wanted it to get to the highest plateau so they could feel safe about coming out or sharing their stories. in a sense of the way.

I was listening to your podcast at work, my lonely mechanic job, and it's what got me through the day, and I was thinking like, man, this is the perfect platform for these women. I didn't want to be seen as just another fucking band member who let this abuse go, because it's a toxic circle, and it's a pattern. He's done it for the last 10 years.

Here's Andrew. A band that I was in with Kevin, which was like a 10-plus-year thing, there was a very short period of time where it wasn't a frustration. The people in my life were always like, why do you put up with it? And it was almost like, it was part of my identification of wanting to be an artist, wanting to stay a musician. I'm like, for a long time, it was almost an obligation.

Now, I guess it's been a year and a half, two years we're out of it. We're all doing our own projects and everything is blooming. It makes sense. A lot of the criticism that was told to me in the past. It was never a functional communication and it was always pretty one-sided in terms of getting his needs met. It started with me feeling antagonistic towards Jimmy, continued that way until like the whole fracture happened, but I do want to get on the record that now and after all of the blowup, Jimmy has turned out to be an actual friend and a cool guy that I enjoy supporting and he supports

my shit as much as he can as well. So it's like, in a way, my getting sour on the Kevin relationship clouded my vision a little bit of Jim and made me learn to not be such an asshole. None of us spoke to each other except for in context of the band and we all kind of had a frustration around Kevin that we didn't really communicate to each other. And so I projected shit on Jim Anthony and Jim have been inspirations to me because it's like now we're all able to learn from each other and work together so I'm still working

with Anthony, Jim and I still are creatively going and helping each other. We have some future plans to work together. They're all good guys except for Kevin but it took that asshole to link us together. It's unfortunate that he's not great but some great relationships came out

of it. There's some sort of a Kevin orbit with like a lot of these bands and creators. It seems like They're all flowering much more than they were when they were Kevin-centric. It's my day job. I'm just a substitute teacher right now. I'll have a ukulele. We'll do as much social, art, interactive role play stuff.

I sub to pay the art bills and the rent bills. What do you hope that listeners will get out of hearing this story? This is like the Jiminy Cricket answer. But if I had made a more conscious decision about like some of the things that I was seeing just in my own experience with this guy, If I had taken earlier steps to just set my own boundaries and figure out what I wanted my relationships and communication to look like, I just would have learned lessons maybe quicker than they took for me to learn. Listen to yourself and be as present and aware as you can. And when stuff affects you, don't let it roll off, process it. I suppose that some people can have stories that they felt have been not heard and hidden that I guess need to be heard.

And it's the art scene. It's like the band scene where a bunch of this toxic stuff could have been happening. I feel like these people are my family. And so to like introduce predatory behavior or anything into those situations, into those communities feels like the worst thing I could imagine. If these stories and people's experiences can be heard, then hopefully these spaces where people should be able to express themselves and feel comfortable can be a little more comfortable. Because art's a vulnerable thing.

It sucks to have to mix your vulnerability in an area where they're, there might be predators. Sharing the story, you can eliminate that on some level, creating safer spaces for people to be themselves and to create. Here's Anthony. Hopefully people know to stay away from Kevin Elliott in any capacity, creative or otherwise. Maybe some of the stories we've told will help people pick up on certain patterns

in other people's behavior that maybe are in their lives so they can avoid them. Anyone who had any involvement with Kevin experienced some, some kind of pretty much all negative with him. Other people dealt with worse things than we did, but it seems like there's almost nobody in his life besides this John guy that had a positive image of him. Hopefully they stay away from him and hopefully they take something away from our stories that helps them stay away from similar people. Thank you so much for your time and your willingness to share. I hope that the women who emailed me hear this story and know that I took as far as I could get it.

Really just want them to feel like they have a place now to come to if they want to. I just want them to know that it is from the heart. This was never some kind of like publicity thing if anybody ever thought that. This was really just about trying to set something right, shed light onto what's happening, and it's still going on in our local music scene.

I mean, this is a problem everywhere, not just music. I just want this kind of shit to like open people's eyes and ears. If they see somebody doing some fucked up shit, No matter how good of a friend they are, hold their homies accountable. If you see someone acting a certain way, pull them aside, check them. And if not, hold them accountable. Don't be afraid to do the right thing. When you just turn your cheek, it allows it to keep going.

And this is something that had been going on for like 20 years, not just with die laughing and bitch Jagger and these women. But this is a pattern of behavior that's continued and it has been allowed. I really appreciate you submitting the story and showing up. for the survivors and every email that you sent back trying to support them and share in a way that they requested and still trying to spread the word. And I really appreciate that. I thank you so much for being willing to share. Thank you too for picking up the story. Thank you for raising awareness and giving people a platform to speak on their trauma in a safe spot. I think it's fucking awesome because you're the one really holding the sword for everybody. Next time on something was

wrong. When we were dating, he had two phones, which obviously is a little suspicious. I'm sure I had a lot to do with the drugs and with the cheating. The biggest thing was that I married one of his friends, so I felt obligated to keep the peace. This Twitter account, someone had started it because they were hearing a lot of rumors about him abusing sex workers. People that grew up with him, they don't even know who he is and they're more. a friend that they had who was turned into a complete monster. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends. Something Was Wrong is a broken cycle media production,

created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram, at Something Was Wrong podcast. Our theme song was composed, by Gladrags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.