#1023 - I Prevail - The Trades You Make to Live Your Dreams

Speaker 1 Why did you get deep-throated by confessing

Speaker 1 that is up-to-date research, right there? Yeah, I respect that. Yeah, so um,

Speaker 2 yeah, Gabe uh really crushes it with our content and comes up with some awesome ideas. And we kind of pitch some and throw it into a pot.

Speaker 2 And uh, he came in for a content day and wrote this whole script up. And it was for this giveaway we were doing, and he had written in the script that he was going to get pied in the face.

Speaker 2 And then Dylan shows up, and I don't know, he just changed his mind on the spot. I was like, like, yeah, Dylan's going to get pied.

Speaker 1 I got to be the guy behind the camera. So someone else has got to take the pie.
So we pill, we pied Dylan in the face quite a bit.

Speaker 1 And from that night, Dylan plotted his revenge for pie and confetti in Eric's face.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And I got a, you know, shout out We Came as a Romans because they went along with it.
We get into their trailer and I get a text and they have this ritual before their show. It's whiskey time.

Speaker 2 And they go, you know, have this little ritual and like, get to the trailer now, whiskey time. So I'm walking in, going, whiskey time, whiskey time, pie, pie it again.
And now I can't see.

Speaker 2 And my mouth's open. I'm just like, whiskey time.
And as soon as I said time, I couldn't see anything. I just got a mouthful of, I didn't know what.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, I couldn't breathe for a little bit. And the uvula in the back of my throat turned into a disco ball.
It was like

Speaker 1 title, your autobiography. The uvula.
The mouthful of I don't know what.

Speaker 2 I trademarked that. I'm taking that.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know, know. man.
I feel like having a confetti bukkake is a good way to start a show.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I think it might have to be a ritual, just not on me this time.

Speaker 1 Dylan, you're owed one. There's going to be some behind-the-scenes warfare for sure.

Speaker 1 This will start a two-year war.

Speaker 1 Okay, this is the beginning of a vicious retributive cycle. Yes, definitely.

Speaker 1 I want to know. What you guys make of what's happening with the rock and metal scene at the moment, because a lot of artists are rethinking touring.

Speaker 1 There's some reports that have come out recently that I've read.

Speaker 1 Pop, hip-hop, country,

Speaker 1 little touch and go, some in decline, and certainly if you aggregated a lot in decline. But rock, touring seems to be bigger than ever.
So give me your thoughts.

Speaker 1 Like you guys have been around for a minute. Yeah.
What do you make of the arc of alternative and heavy music and stuff like that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think,

Speaker 2 I think, you know, rock and metal, we'll call it modern metal, is just in such a,

Speaker 2 it feels like a boom right now, a resurgence.

Speaker 2 Just having chats with friends and it's like, you know, I'm 34, but back when I was like 15, 16, 17, I didn't have the funds to go out and see my favorite bands come through Detroit or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 And now that we're of the age and have some disposable income,

Speaker 2 when these bands do these 20-year anniversary shows and, you know, come back around and they have this lineup of all these other bands that you may have grew up listening to on top of having some of these new bands and it kind of just appeals to our generation and then you know I don't have any kids but I can imagine my kids the next generation you know it's like a family affair so they're going out and seeing bands like I mean we just played when we were young and blink 182 and panic at the disco are headlining and then bands like Black Sunday brand new the used um man that that lineup is just stacked but now you go out there and you see kids that are like 15 to 18, and then you see dudes our age and older that are out there all in the crowd.

Speaker 2 And I don't know. I think there's a bit of nostalgia.
I think there's,

Speaker 1 yeah, I don't know. It's not just throwback, right? No, no.
All new bands with new albums, new music coming out all the time, too. I think people are pretty,

Speaker 1 I don't know if desperate is the right word, but... I'll use it.
Desperate for experiences. And I think like pop concerts and all that stuff is like sick.

Speaker 1 You get to see your favorite pop artists, but the reality is how that music is produced is very tracks heavy. Like a lot of these artists go on stage.
It's just them.

Speaker 1 They have no band playing instruments. And I think it's like a combination of like,

Speaker 1 you want to see a little bit of that risk factor of like a band really playing and you might see them mess up. And that's kind of interesting.

Speaker 1 But also like in the rock and the metal community scene in particular,

Speaker 1 I think audience engagement is actually key to the experience, whether that's crowdsurfing, mosh pits, whatever that is, as opposed to if you're going to go see a pop artist or whoever, you're kind of just sitting there and it's fun.

Speaker 1 It's cool. Like, I've been to pop, pop shows, and it's fun, but

Speaker 1 metal and rock, it's a little bit more visceral. And with everyone, you know, behind computers all day, it's fun to get punched in the face and to like scream.

Speaker 1 your favorite songs at the same time uh makes you feel alive a little bit, I think.

Speaker 2 And I think to your point, too, with the pop and everything, it's like

Speaker 2 it just, it sounds just like the record, which is great, but you know, there's something about that like

Speaker 2 push and pull of the live experience of the band all playing together. And

Speaker 2 I think there's a little bit of that on top of that, too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Especially if you love a track, you love a band and they play your favorite track, but there's a twist on it. Oh, maybe there's a longer solo.
Maybe they've added an additional chorus at the end.

Speaker 1 Maybe just the way that the singer that night decides to interpret a way to say the vocals sticks in your mind.

Speaker 1 I remember going seeing bands like Bring Me in Newcastle when they first started doing like moderate sized theaters

Speaker 1 and they played a Halloween show. It was just after Jordan had joined the band.
And

Speaker 1 I'd seen an opportunity, kind of like

Speaker 1 an ex- ugly girl who's just had a glow up. I saw the opportunity to like befriend Jordan because he was brand new to the band and he was having some problem with Ableton.

Speaker 1 I messaged him about it on Twitter. We became friends and he said, Yo, why don't you come to the show that's happening at the O2?

Speaker 1 It was on Halloween, and they came out fully face-painted up as skeletons. They played the whole show as skeletons.

Speaker 1 I remember like watching that show from the back and thinking so many of the songs that I knew really well just had little twists and adaptations that had been made.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that was great because it is a unique experience. And I guess, well, actually, if you were to say that from the pop side,

Speaker 1 who who nearly fucking killed that? Was it Beyonce that nearly got killed by a car that was over the top of a

Speaker 1 flying over the top of the? I swear it was. Beyonce was doing a show, and she's one of those like floating stage things that, you know, goes right over the crowd and everyone gets locked up.

Speaker 1 I'm pretty sure that some shit snapped. And like, imagine if you were the guy that killed Beyonce.

Speaker 1 You put the carabina on wrong or something like that.

Speaker 1 My point being

Speaker 1 you do get to see some stuff at pop shows yeah um i guess sometimes people go upside down when they drum but that's really kind of the pinnacle of it from like a show experience yeah there's a catwalk maybe there's some cool blocking maybe there's not whatever yeah

Speaker 1 it suggests that there's something about rock and heavy music that you get out of that show that you can't recreate with pink flying around a stadium or the Jonas brothers with 20 people on stage or whatever it might be.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think you're right. I think like

Speaker 1 pop you're able to do the spectacle a little bit more. You can have pink, yeah, doing trapeze over the over the audience.
It's sick. Like, I would love if Eric did the trapeze.

Speaker 1 I don't know about that.

Speaker 1 You're built for the trapeze. Am I? Yeah, you have the exact body shape of a trapeze artist.
God.

Speaker 1 I also think, like,

Speaker 1 from a songwriting perspective, like, at least when I was growing up, metal was all about like how heavy can you make it? And I still think that's like part of it. But I think now more than ever,

Speaker 1 metal and pop are fusing in a lot of ways and fusing in a way that's done very well.

Speaker 1 Like I think people have tried it a lot where it's like they'll have these heavy breakdowns and they'll go into a very melodic chorus, but it just never like really meshes.

Speaker 1 But, you know, you've got bands who are kind of taking these sounds and putting them all together, like, you know, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, those, all those bands who are really exploding.

Speaker 1 I mean, my theory is that they're exploding because they've mastered melody so much.

Speaker 1 And at the end of the day, people want to listen to a song that maybe makes them feel a certain way, gives them energy at the gym or whatever.

Speaker 1 But without a melodic chorus, not all the time, but a lot of the time,

Speaker 1 it's not going to get stuck in their head. They're not going to come back to it.
Don't get me wrong. I'm at the gym sometimes listening to.

Speaker 1 ass beaters and I just want to like job for a cowboy yeah yeah I just want to go like super hard and that's really fun too and even those bands are growing too so it's almost like I don't know if these bands all the way at the top are just kind of bringing the whole thing up with them you know yeah definitely the verse chorus kind of pop structure of a song with some melody i mean say what you want about sleep token dude caramel is one of the catchiest dude it's so good fucking hooks

Speaker 1 maybe of all time of that genre yeah it is so sticky yep um and uh it's fun i like that it's just it really you can't get out of your head the first time that you hear that.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I think you're right. And it makes it radio friendly.
It makes it like sort of chart-friendly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's almost like, you know, I just talked about how so many bands are getting better at blending.

Speaker 1 But sometimes when you are like, I don't actually care about blending it, like, that's a perfect example of a song where the first three-fourths of that song is a pop song, really done well.

Speaker 1 And then they're just like, and now we're just going to go into like the heaviest shit we've ever done ever. Right.
And it's like

Speaker 1 sicker because

Speaker 1 it didn't even try to like meld them. It's just like, here's this and then here's this.
And what a fun journey for everyone to be on.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like you're, you're really trying something, I think, more than, I don't know.

Speaker 2 I don't want to be like metal versus other genres, but it's something about too, like, uh, you blows your expectations out. Like what, what you were, you got three-fourths of the way through the song.

Speaker 2 You're like, okay, I kind of get where it's going. And then, oh man, there's this switch up at the end.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I think when bands do that very well, it's like you have the listener on the edge of the seat, you know, you don't know what to expect, and you get halfway through the song, and you're like, Okay, this is cool, and then all of a sudden, the bridge comes, or the breakdown comes, or the outro, whatever it is.

Speaker 2 That there's, I, you know, I don't see that much, and you see that in hip-hop a bit, but I don't really see that in pop.

Speaker 2 I feel like pop in country, it's just like you get 30 seconds of the song, you kind of know what you're gonna get.

Speaker 1 Well, the emotion, the rhyme, very rarely surprised, right? Right.

Speaker 1 The final theory

Speaker 1 is that maybe we're all just getting a little more fucked up and into like these things that just make us feel like viscerally?

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like horror movies, I don't watch horror movies, but like, I feel like those are on the rise also. And like, almost the more messed up they are, the more popular they get.
Like,

Speaker 1 do you think the messaging, the messaging of metal is tapping into an emotion that's difficult for people to find cathosis with elsewhere?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I, yeah, I think so. Um, some of these like

Speaker 2 very heavy metal bands and like just, you know, you look at the lyrics or listen to lyrics, it's just like very fucked up and aggressive.

Speaker 2 And I think it's just a healthy way to, you know, it's, it's human emotion. It's, it's, it's, you know, you're feeling that.

Speaker 2 It's just a healthy way, I feel like, to get that out, especially when you're in a small club with 200 people listening and just ass beater breakdowns over and over and over, just screaming about the most like dark, dark message, dark, dark stuff, you know, like

Speaker 2 the Acacia Strain is one band that had some like hateful lyrics back in the day. And it's just, you know, I don't feel that way.

Speaker 2 I don't feel like, you know, chopping people up or whatever, cannibal corpse or anything like that. But to feel,

Speaker 2 to feel that health in a healthy way, I guess, is

Speaker 2 something I think is special.

Speaker 1 But certainly elevated if you look at like a sleep token or a bad omens now,

Speaker 1 the message is just like poetic emo.

Speaker 1 Right. It's Ohio is for lovers for 2025.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, like, I'm outside of your window. Like, that it's that sad, nicky FM-y type thing that we all grew up listening to.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But just like significantly elevated with much more sophisticated production. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Um, but it still speaks to, huh, I have challenges, and sometimes they're hard, and nobody understands me, and this is difficult, and I don't know what I'm doing, and there is pressure, and I'm growing up, and things are changing.

Speaker 1 It's like these timeless, modern problems.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I feel like I had the gift of reconnecting with the emotion of metal this year in particular, because I'll be honest, like, I've been in this band for eight years and this point I'm 33 years old and I'm like, yeah, you know, like the emotions that I had when I was 14 are different now.

Speaker 1 Right. And I'm kind of like, am I going to sing about being really stressed about work and,

Speaker 1 you know, being married for 11 years or whatever? Messages. Yeah, dude, exactly.
My inbox is a nightmare.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 man, I think for honestly, most of us in the band, we've had one individually, some of the hardest years that, at least that I've ever had in my life of,

Speaker 1 yeah, I mean, I lost, we, we lost our, our manager, our booking agent. He died tragically in a, in a plane accident.
Two days later, I lost my grandpa.

Speaker 1 One week later, someone broke into my house while I was sleeping. And I mean, many many other things that I probably can't really get into, but

Speaker 1 I feel like it took me to low places where I,

Speaker 1 it was more than just like heavy music is fun at the gym. And it's like, I viscerally, my, my emotions are viscerally connecting with this music.
And it

Speaker 1 was a gift in a lot of ways because it, it. allowed me to see through like the fans eyes of what they're experiencing when they're hearing this music.

Speaker 1 Because again, 33, I'm like, yeah, I'm just, hey, I like the song. The song's cool, but I'm, I'm a drummer.
I'm not always listening to lyrics. I'm like connecting.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I feel like I got to do that this year more so. And I do think like metal and rock has a little bit more of that, those themes to connect with.

Speaker 1 Especially if you're getting kicked in the nuts by life, which, you know, if everything's going great and Grammy nominations and we're on the road and ticket sales are going up, you know,

Speaker 1 how much are you connecting with the it's kind of the like um

Speaker 1 golden prison

Speaker 1 like velvet fucking handcuffs thing that podcasters or comedians get accused of.

Speaker 1 You know, if you're a comedian, Whitney Cummings got this great line where she says, In order for art to imitate life, you have to live a life.

Speaker 1 And this is why you can tell when comedians are getting too successful. Yeah.
Because all they talk about are airports, dinners, and shows. Because that's all they know.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, if you're touring 200 days out of the year,

Speaker 1 what life have you got to inject into the art?

Speaker 1 And I guess for you guys as well, if you, this is my problem with fucking Luke Combs, man. Like, I love that guy's music so much.

Speaker 1 He was the person that got me into, he was the soundtrack to 2019, which was the year I decided I wanted to move to America.

Speaker 1 But his music, to me, has got less resonant linearly as his life's got better. Yeah.
I'm like, I fuck it, do some cocaine. I'll like get in a fight or like lose a leg or something.

Speaker 1 Like, I need some you know yeah i just want a little bit of sort of great it's like you know everything's going great and i'm getting a bit older and my dad's older than me but he's really lovely and my wife loves me and my kid loves me i'm like fuck luke come on man yeah and that's not to say that you can't make music from a happy place but that

Speaker 1 i don't know there's something about the friction i think that causes people to dig a little bit deeper.

Speaker 1 Like when you're going against the grain of life, it seems like people tap into emotion a little bit more acutely. 100%.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think on this record for us,

Speaker 2 there's a few songs that

Speaker 2 had to go back and like

Speaker 2 look at these events or these situations or these difficult times I had in the past and

Speaker 2 pick open some scabs that didn't really fully heal.

Speaker 2 That also is finding inspiration and looking back on some difficult times and hard times that I really haven't had

Speaker 2 any therapy to get through and just kind of just let it go for three or four years.

Speaker 2 So that's, you know, it's, it's not, it doesn't always have to be about what's going on in your life right now, but to look back and really, you know, someone put it once, I can't remember how they worded it, but it takes some time to look back and fully have a

Speaker 2 full thought or, you know, fully grasp what you went through.

Speaker 2 And that, that's something too, if I'm not, you know, we're trying to draw from the well of inspiration and looking back on a past failed relationship or, you know, know, past, you know, you want to call it trauma

Speaker 2 to dig at those and really, it's very important for us to write music and every song have come from something that has some real emotion and can be relatable to someone. And yeah, I think, I think.

Speaker 2 That is a big challenge for artists when they start getting bigger and, you know, they're playing arenas and, you know, ticket sales are going through the roof.

Speaker 2 And like you said, Grammy and I was all this stuff. And it's hard to be relatable.
And that's what, you know, growing up, I took a lot out of music and I found, you know, a lot of things to relate to.

Speaker 2 And when I was a, you know, a teenager going through like, oh, the world hates me and no one loves me.

Speaker 2 And, and, uh, you know, once you get to that level, like, how, how do you, how do you still write music to relate to your fans? And, and, uh, yeah, for me,

Speaker 2 specifically, it was like going back and like digging through some things that just didn't work out, you know, and I, I, yeah.

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Speaker 1 That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. What is the

Speaker 1 process of writing records which deal with deeply emotional personal topics like that as a group? Because it's like, well,

Speaker 1 I'm the guy that sings the words, but I'm the guy that makes the melody, but I'm like, I feel sad, but I feel ambivalent, but I'm uncertain. I've got, you know, I'm excited or whatever.

Speaker 1 And you're trying to, I spoke to the guys from Under Oath. I think there's an increasing trend of

Speaker 1 solo acts masquerading as bands or bands that sort of perform publicly as a democracy, but in terms of production, it's much sort of closer to a dictatorship.

Speaker 1 And in some ways, I can see why that is a huge fucking hack. Because you don't have to do any of this diplomacy bullshit.
It's like, this is what the song's about.

Speaker 1 This is how the song's going to sound. If you want to track on the record and help me cut it, brilliant.
If not, I got fucking 50 people that are going to come and do it. Sweet.

Speaker 1 But you often have the opportunity to tap into different people's emotions. So is that tough? You got to watch 10 tracks on a new album.

Speaker 1 You're like, it's not a lot of room for a ton of guys to get their creative, you know,

Speaker 1 presentation out there. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think being with these guys for the last 10, 11, so years,

Speaker 2 that was a huge plus to sit down in a room and be like well okay we started working on an instrumental first song let's say and it's kind of pulling at this emotion and you know pull out some lyric notes and okay this this line that i wrote a while ago this kind of feels like it matches the mood of the instrumental and okay well when i was in this headspace and and there's certain songs we sat down i was like you know what i i think i can really pull from this and you know maybe let's say it's a

Speaker 2 bad relationship I was going through years ago. And,

Speaker 2 you know, they were around me when that was going on. So it's not like super foreign to them and sit down and kind of like write some lyrics telling this is kind of what I was feeling.

Speaker 2 This is kind of what I was, what I was going through. And, and if you can tap into that and you have something similar, like bounce some ideas off each other.

Speaker 2 And kind of like, we all kind of feel there's everyone's got, you know, unique stories, but there's some overlap.

Speaker 2 And if you can tap into that and, and help, you know, generate some lyrics out of that, you know, I'm sure there's going to be something that overlaps.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I'm just thinking one song specifically, but how do you, have you ever contributed any lyrics ever?

Speaker 1 Um, maybe a single word. Yeah.
So we, so we joke that we are business metal. And so that translates to the writing process as well, where it's like, we kind of have these different departments, right?

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 me and John, I would say we're more in the instrumental department because I'm not trying to play in a sandbox that I don't belong in.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm like, hey, I grew up, like, I played in so many bands.

Speaker 1 And even then, it's like, I can write some like cool instrumental parts or like suggest cool things and obviously play drums well and write cool drum parts. I'm not a poet.

Speaker 1 I'm not like, I'm happy to talk about my feelings, but if you're like, now make it like artistic, I'm like, uh,

Speaker 1 I can hit things hard. That's my art.

Speaker 1 Um, and so, yeah, and then Steve and Eric are really good at like, yeah, like to Eric's point, me and John, really all of us in the room too, contribute to the instrumental, but might set a vibe, and that vibe might create an emotion in Steve or Eric of something that that they've been dealing with in the past or recently.

Speaker 1 And the two of them will like, will almost sometimes separate. The two of them will like go in a different part of the room and just go back and forth.

Speaker 1 And sometimes they'll be Eric, like, here's what I'm trying to say.

Speaker 1 And the two of them will try to figure out how do we get to say that in the most artistic way possible or the most authentic way possible. And then meanwhile, me and John will try to.

Speaker 1 Keep laying down like the foundation and come up with parts that we think are cool and then kind of come back together.

Speaker 1 And yeah, there are some times where I'm just sitting there, like watching them do their thing.

Speaker 1 And there are some times where Eric's just sitting there, like watching me be like, okay, move the snare drum over one note and then hit this symbol like that.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like, it can get very tedious, but yeah, it's a departmental for sure. When you

Speaker 1 or when any band creates something deeply emotional and then performs it a few hundred or thousand times, does it

Speaker 1 still

Speaker 1 resonate in the same way? Does that drop over time? Does it heal you? Does it reopen old wounds?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 2 I think there's different songs and different points in my life and different performances, let's say, that, you know, some of these new songs you just started playing, I have been like, oh, God, all right, don't mess up the lyrics.

Speaker 2 Remember, this is the first verse, this is the second. Okay, here's the note you're hitting.
And I lose that for a moment. But

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's a certain point in the in the tour that you start playing that song that I'm like, I'm reconnecting with it.

Speaker 2 And then after, you know, a couple tours, you know, sometimes some of these songs are like

Speaker 2 emotionally disconnected and I'm going through the performance and

Speaker 2 there's been some times where I'm look out and I see, you know, someone sobbing to a song and then I'm like brought back immediately to like the emotion that I was feeling in it.

Speaker 2 And then all of a sudden then I have a new, a new connection to it again. And I'd like to think after that,

Speaker 2 I performed the song a little bit better for the rest of the tour.

Speaker 1 So you feel, this is an interesting one. I was talking to Johnny Frank about this.
So Bill Murray got that new More Than Hate track. And

Speaker 1 they have just started performing it live. I think it only came out maybe six weeks ago, eight weeks ago, something like that.
And I was talking to him last week in Dallas and he said,

Speaker 1 dude, I got to be honest, like when I'm performing the track, I'm so focused on the performance because I've done it live like

Speaker 1 15 times. And that's not a lot.
That sounds like a lot, but that's not a lot.

Speaker 1 So he is still finding new ways to mess up.

Speaker 1 And he doesn't know all of the potential pitfalls and That I never really realized well fuck like even if you've done a bunch of like run-throughs and rehearsals or whatever and even if you added half an hour on sound check so that you can like run new bits a few times over and over the difference of okay and where am I gonna be on the stage and what's gonna go on so yeah I guess when

Speaker 1 this is something I never considered as a an audience member and I hope I don't screw up everybody's ticket sales here

Speaker 1 but if a band is touring a new album and you have the choice between being at the start of the tour and being a little bit deeper into it, I think it's probably a good idea to push your tickets.

Speaker 1 You know, you can choose between what are the Dallas or Houston show, but for some reason, because of the routing, they're coming to Houston four weeks later.

Speaker 1 Like, do you go to the maybe you go to the second one? Maybe they're a bit tighter by then. Maybe they know the tracks a little bit more.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, there's also some excitement to being there in the early shows

Speaker 1 and seeing us like mess up and try to do our best.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think, man, it's like such an interesting balance of like tour life is

Speaker 1 exhausting.

Speaker 1 It's like you might start at 100%. I mean, I'm, you know, this way more than I do, even with all the shit you're dealing with.
But like, you might start at 100%

Speaker 1 and then, okay,

Speaker 1 the shows are very physical and then you're sleeping on a tour bus very poorly and then the shows are more physical and you're sleeping worse.

Speaker 1 And it's like, by the end of the tour, I might have 30% in the tank and I'm working three times as hard to play the same part. So it's kind of this.

Speaker 1 It's the thing that you've got to balance the experience with the set with the level of gas left in the tanks.

Speaker 1 And also what you have in the earlier parts of the tour is adrenaline, which also will just like push you

Speaker 1 to fatigue and resentment and boredom.

Speaker 1 Exactly. Cause yeah, then not only are you more fatigued, but you also are low on adrenaline because you're like, well, I'm kind of bored now.
I know how to play everything. I almost knew.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I want that shot of adrenaline. It would help me get through this physically.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 it's a toss-up a little bit there.

Speaker 1 Going back to the metal world of sort of rock ascendancy that we're seeing at the moment, do you think that you need to be really talented to be a sort of world touring alternative artist now?

Speaker 1 Basically, how much of it is talent and how much can you ride off the back of social media hype and good marketing?

Speaker 2 I had no talent when I was starting this thing. I didn't belong out here, man.

Speaker 2 I just took, like, I feel like every room I was in, I was, I had this mentality to just be a sponge, just soak up as much as you can.

Speaker 2 And I think that got me through the first, you know, years of touring and all that. But

Speaker 2 I do, I do think it takes, you know, you can go in off the hype and off the TikToks and off all that, but you have to quickly figure your shit out real fast. If you're up on stage and

Speaker 2 there's so many variables, you're not just posting a video, you playing. There's so many variables of a live set.

Speaker 2 And I mean, even like the thing where I'm looking out in a crowd and I see up in the front row and someone doesn't know the words to the song and they're just,

Speaker 2 you know, fish mouthing like just random lyrics.

Speaker 2 I fucked up lyrics because I was looking at that guy.

Speaker 1 I was like, what is he saying?

Speaker 2 Oh, shit, what am I saying?

Speaker 1 Oh, what verse am I in? Where am I?

Speaker 2 You know, but

Speaker 2 yeah, yeah. I think there's, man, I think there's a good mix.

Speaker 1 It's unforgiving then in that regard. Like the hype can kind of only carry you so far.
Yeah, I'd argue that you need a good product, right?

Speaker 1 So like you can, first of all, I'd argue that you need a lot of talent to be good at marketing and to, because you're not the labels and all that, like they, they will provide that for you.

Speaker 1 But like, I ultimately think the bands that are doing the best are the ones who understand how to market themselves. So, one, I'd argue that's a skill.
Two,

Speaker 1 if the product is shitty, right?

Speaker 1 Like, Chris, if this podcast sucks, but you're really good at marketing, like sure, you're gonna get it in front of a few more people, but at the end of the day, people aren't gonna come back.

Speaker 1 And now you're working your ass off to just market a shitty product, right? That's not really gonna work. So, like, I do think, especially in today's landscape, like how it used to be is

Speaker 1 bands would get discovered by a label,

Speaker 1 they they explode. Like it's very, it was very gatekept, right?

Speaker 1 And, but if you were through, you were through and you, all you had to do is like show up and play music. And now

Speaker 1 you could upload a song to Spotify right now while we're having this conversation, put it in a prompt into AI and then upload it to Spotify, right?

Speaker 1 So like the landscape is more competitive than ever, which I think means that bands who are not always like, there's plenty of very talented bands who don't get traction, but

Speaker 1 it's very competitive. You need to have like very good songs, very good marketing.
Like you have to be more well-rounded than ever

Speaker 1 as opposed to, hey, I'm just like a good musician. That might not really get you noticed much.
What do you make of the advent of AI artists?

Speaker 2 Oh, man. Don't get me started.

Speaker 2 I,

Speaker 1 it's, it's, it's a little frightening, man.

Speaker 2 Um, you know, just came across a friend of mine went on a rant and posted all these bands on Spotify that were, you know, AI bands.

Speaker 2 And whether it's a band that's feeding prompts and getting it and playing it, or to it's one guy that just used Chat GPT, Grok, whatever, to create everything.

Speaker 2 And then you go look at the monthly listeners and there's 700,000 monthly listeners.

Speaker 2 And it's, it's not the fear that someone's going to go, I'd rather listen to this AI band over, you know, a real human band.

Speaker 2 It's the fact that it's it's just going to get slipped into playlisting and it's just going to be on your playlist and it's just going to just accumulate more and more of all these other fake bands.

Speaker 2 And by the time you go and look through your playlist, you're like, oh, who's this? Who's this? Who's this? And there's no real musicians. But my ultimate worry is that,

Speaker 2 you know, who's to say that someone who owns a streaming platform

Speaker 2 doesn't just start making music off AI himself or herself and feeding it into the playlisting. And now there's even less of the pie.
You know, artists are getting, you know,

Speaker 2 fractions of a penny on the dollar for streams. Well, now that those playlists that these bands are fighting hard for,

Speaker 2 who's to say the CEOs of

Speaker 2 Apple Music, Spotify title, whatever, aren't just making their own music, feeding it into the algorithm, putting in the plays, you know, into the playlisting. And now,

Speaker 2 how are we supposed to fight that?

Speaker 1 It'd be like only fans owning the ai girlfriend generator yeah you've got the distribution and you've got the source material as well 100 yeah it's a tricky balance because

Speaker 1 in one way i'm like you can't

Speaker 1 very difficult to stop a train that's already moving right

Speaker 1 but then also kind of like what i was talking about with concerts i'm like i think people are

Speaker 1 craving more physical experiences or um people to connect with right like

Speaker 1 I think it'll be an interesting balance of like, yeah, an AI song could come on and you might not know it's AI and you might not really care that it's AI because it's like, well, the song's good.

Speaker 1 But I wonder, like, even if that has like a huge boom, that

Speaker 1 it wouldn't end up going to the other side of like, yeah, but I kind of miss connecting with an artist or with a band or like what they actually

Speaker 1 had to say, you know, or like, if it's AI, there's nothing to really, not much to really connect with, you know? Um,

Speaker 1 all that said,

Speaker 1 I don't know. Well, we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 Look, I, I saw, um,

Speaker 1 what about two months ago? There was a bunch of screenshots floating around.

Speaker 1 Maybe it was the new terms and serpent, terms of service that Spotify had that sounded like an adjustment had been made to say that your music can be used in data training sets that can be reproduced in perpetuity with and without

Speaker 1 like credit,

Speaker 1 all of the legalese.

Speaker 1 And then I came across this: Spotify announced a collaboration with major labels, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, Warner Music Group, to build an AI-driven features while protecting artists' rights and ensuring fair compensation.

Speaker 1 Proactive move in the face of rising concerns about generative AI tools using artists' voices and sounds without proper licensing.

Speaker 1 Streaming giant Spotify states it will involve direct licensing and artist permission frameworks. The partnership signals industry acknowledgement of AI is both an opportunity and a threat.
So

Speaker 1 I don't know where it goes. I certainly know that I'm getting delivered more AI bands in my radio.
You press one single. I think I played,

Speaker 1 this is exactly what happened. I played the new bad omens song the day it came out.

Speaker 1 It was on the day we were filming with McConaughey and we'd finished up and I put it on through the system at Stray Vista where we filmed that shit.

Speaker 1 And it came on. And then the next track came on.
And I was like, this is a really interesting sound.

Speaker 1 This is a funny little track. Like, I'll go over and have a little look.
I was like, oh, it's what?

Speaker 1 AI band. Like, the first tra omens,

Speaker 1 next track was them.

Speaker 1 That is

Speaker 1 fucking premier position. Yeah.
Yeah. Algorithmically.
Yeah. And

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 picking up speed. I would say it's but I mean, the obviously the other, and you made a great point that

Speaker 1 if I use AI to enhance my songwriting and then cut the track myself with my bandmates,

Speaker 1 who knows? Yeah. Like, how does anybody know where the initial

Speaker 1 inspiration for this track came from? Yeah. Like, hey, write me 20 number one hits in the style of Sleep Token and Bad Omens, and I prevail.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And then you go, oh, well, maybe there's our next album. Yeah, 100%.
We'll get back to talking in just one second.

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Speaker 1 i i would imagine that music would start to get a bit watered down. Could be wrong, but that would be my theory on it.

Speaker 1 And to your point of what you were reading, I think there's a lot of opportunity for like discoverability. Of like, I think I saw something that ChatGPT and Spotify are coming together.

Speaker 1 So I could just be like, hey, find me an artist who is really heavy and like good for working out. Right.
And then they can feed me real artists.

Speaker 1 Like, that's actually a really cool opportunity where AI can actually support it.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it can be snuck into songwriting. I've, you know, I feel like that's what the whole writer strikes were about a couple of years back in Hollywood is like not using AI for script writing.

Speaker 1 Because I would imagine, I guess I don't really know if they are using it or not, but that everything would just kind of start to get watered down. But also, AI is getting better and better.

Speaker 1 So, will it really get watered down? Yeah, will it enhance everything? I mean, here's another way to look at it:

Speaker 1 everybody gets inspired by something, you know, the way that you construct your particular melodies.

Speaker 1 Well, it's because you grew up listening to Biffy Clyro or Billy Talent or whoever the fuck, like weird My Chemical Romances first style EP or whatever the fuck it is.

Speaker 1 You go, okay, so do they own the inspiration that came through you? Obviously not. I didn't think anybody would say that.
But originality is just undetected plagiarism. Yeah.
Is a kind of way like

Speaker 1 you play the drums. Well, you hold the sticks in a particular way.
You didn't invent the way that you hold the sticks. You didn't invent the way that the drums are put together.

Speaker 1 So do you always need to pass it back up? And I think there's an interesting ethical challenge here of

Speaker 1 how much assistance is too much.

Speaker 1 How much does it sort of feel like it's being

Speaker 1 perverted by AI? And how much is it just, well, it's just another tool.

Speaker 1 It's fucking pro tools or decapitator or whatever the fuck. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's that's an interesting slippery slope you get down because, you know, you like to think that inspiration you hear, you know, like these bands you mentioned.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I loved all those bands and I took influence from them, you know, the style of music we want to play from, from lyrics to melody and all that.

Speaker 2 It's, it's, but it's something, it's something that was, you know, back then there was no AI. So it was something that they were inspired by.

Speaker 2 And then that band was inspired by, and it just waterfalls down, cascades down into our creative process.

Speaker 2 And, and then it's, it's up to us to put it through our filter and use our own words and, and, and generate the same emotion or feel that we're going for that we are inspired by.

Speaker 2 But it all ultimately is through the human experience. And then you have the opposite where it's, you just go to a computer and be like, I'm sad, write a sad song like My Couple Romance.

Speaker 2 And it's like, here's the options. And it's like, well, now I'm just picking and choosing.
Like I'm going down the grocery store and going, I'll take that one.

Speaker 1 I like that brand.

Speaker 2 I'll take that one. I'll take that one.
It's, it's, yeah, I, it's like, where does artistry?

Speaker 2 Where does artistry stop when you start using tools?

Speaker 2 But then at the same time, you know, melodying, you know, pitch correcting on the track or, or, you know, when you're demoing songs and you, you program the drums, you know, bands have done that for the last, you know, 20 years and you program the drums and oh man, actually, let's track the drums.

Speaker 2 Well, the programmed drums, I think, sound better. Well, you run with it.
And well, where's that line? You know, it's so it's it's it's a very blurred line right now.

Speaker 1 It does seem like every time there's been something that's come into the music industry that's like controversial at first,

Speaker 1 the convenience ends up winning out, right? Like, I feel like,

Speaker 1 you know, 50 years ago, the idea of someone writing a song, this is, we'd have to go back a little further, but someone, the idea of writing a song for someone else and that pop artist just taking it and then just singing what you gave me, I think was initially like, artists aren't even writing their own songs now.

Speaker 1 But now no one, when Justin Bieber's singing a song, no one's like. Did he write that? Like, no one cares.
They probably think that he did, but most of the time, it's someone, here's a song.

Speaker 1 You have a good voice. Sing it.
Cool. And

Speaker 1 I can see that, yeah, to your point, of then pitch correcting in the studio, but then pitch correcting live, or then, you know, quantizing to make every the timing of every instrument perfect.

Speaker 1 And then even samples of, oh, well, I can just take this sample and I can mess around with it, but now it's mine and I can like

Speaker 1 play to a click track. We'll have a click in our ears to ensure that everybody's at least on time, even if it's not quantized after the fact.
100%. Rick Bearto was telling me about how

Speaker 1 when digital recording first came in, and it meant that you didn't just have to do things in one take. Yeah.
Tape. Yeah.
You go, well, I mean, that wasn't what they recorded.

Speaker 1 And I know that there's, if you are recording something and your finger just brushes the wrong string, you're like, hey, dude, like whatever, fourth bar in on that second bit there.

Speaker 1 I just corded a little bit wrong. Let me just go in and then bing.
Okay, there we are. Slot that one thing in there.
Okay, so like you could play, and I think you can do this.

Speaker 1 You could play an entire track one note at a time.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Just be like, okay, there's that note.
I've got that right.

Speaker 1 And then I can go in and then we'll do it again and we'll do it again and we'll do it again. You've got this Lego brick building block set.

Speaker 1 And you've constructed a track. So yeah, it's an interesting challenge.
I mean, have you guys, do you guys

Speaker 1 use

Speaker 1 AI tools? Have they assisted at all with anything that you guys do?

Speaker 2 No. Never.

Speaker 1 Fucking medieval. Yeah, yeah, dude.
We're grandpas over here.

Speaker 1 No, the most is we'll be in the back of the bus and we'll think of a really stupid prompt for AI and then we'll just be like, oh, AI write a song about Eric falling down and his pants coming off and poop goes everywhere.

Speaker 1 And like, we'll see, we'll see what the AI spits out. But no, in our actual entertainment tool, nothing else.
Yes. Yes, exactly.
Where do you see it?

Speaker 1 Like, do you feel any type of threat about AI in the podcasting space? Because I know like AI podcasts are. Notebook LM does a really good job of it.

Speaker 1 I mean, you can now go and say, I want, I don't know whether you can say it for people, but you can certainly say, I want to learn about the final week of the fall of Berlin in Nazi Germany, make the podcast 20 minutes long and relatively serious.

Speaker 1 And Nobak LM will spit out a very listenable with breath breaks and ums and R's and laughter and all the rest of it. And it is, it's very listenable.

Speaker 1 My sort of position on this is that ultimately the market is going to choose what's best for it? And that's not always great.

Speaker 1 Ultra-processed, hyper-palatable foods that are calorie-dense, people will tend to choose those over something else. It's very difficult to get them to choose the thing which is better for them.

Speaker 1 But when it comes to this, what's better for them is just what's most accurate, entertaining, educational.

Speaker 1 So it is going to be incumbent on whoever it is, whatever industry you're in, to just be better. Like if you can be defeated by AI or a robot,

Speaker 1 I don't know what the leg is that you have to stand on

Speaker 1 to be able to compete with that. Now, there are certain things that you can do.
For instance, you could go live.

Speaker 1 If you were responding live to messages and comments and stuff from people, that would be the equivalent, my equivalent, of doing a show on stage.

Speaker 1 But even then, AI is just going to get quick enough where it's going to be able to render in real time responses and video and then stream those back to people.

Speaker 1 So all you're doing is kicking the can down the road with regards to that. And I think you guys do have a good moat.
I think all bands have a great moat around

Speaker 1 the main money maker, which is touring and sort of the associated shit that comes along with that.

Speaker 1 Because until the robots get as good as you guys on stage,

Speaker 1 that's not going to happen. I mean, the Chuggy Cheese Band was pretty sick.
That was dope. Those robots were sick.
That is true.

Speaker 1 Maybe your fucking demise is closer than you think.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think there's a moat mode around that. And

Speaker 1 it'll be a fascinating thing for you guys. My

Speaker 1 really unpopular with musicians theory is that musicians believe that

Speaker 1 they should have a special kind of protection around them

Speaker 1 because it's so hard to be able to do the basics of what you guys do. Anybody can sit down with a microphone in front of them and do a podcast.

Speaker 1 I mean, anybody can sit down and try and sing and like make a song, but the barrier to entry is significantly higher. Like you need to learn so much and practice for a very long time.

Speaker 1 And I think that a shortcut to a place which is not very far away doesn't feel like that much of a cheat. A shortcut to a place that's taken a decade or 15 years to get to feels much more unfair.

Speaker 1 And I think that this is one of the reasons that musicians have a particular B in their bonnet around

Speaker 1 why AI needs some sort of restriction on it.

Speaker 1 It feels particularly unfair that the muggles who haven't spent all of their time learning to sing or play drums or guitar or whatever are just able to type some words in and then do something which is comparable.

Speaker 1 Whereas,

Speaker 1 as is being demonstrated right now, any idiot can do a podcast. Right? Like any three idiots, any three idiots can do a podcast.

Speaker 1 So it's about how can you sort of stay ahead and you're not I mean, if you think you're going to slow the

Speaker 1 behemoth leviathan that is AI, it's not going to happen. So it's a case of how are you going to be able to adapt to it.
Yeah, totally. And I try not to just like sit around thinking,

Speaker 1 well, it's unfair and I hope it doesn't do something bad. You know, like that's not, I don't think that's really going to take me to the place that I want to go in life.

Speaker 1 But yeah, to your point, it's like, okay, well, what's in my control? Because I can't control AI.

Speaker 1 I can control how well I show up or what I choose to spend my time focusing on that I think like is the biggest needle mover in my project or my skill set or whatever that is.

Speaker 1 But yeah, to analyze all of those things like is difficult, right? Because at a certain point, what got me in the band is not what's going to get the band bigger, right? If I spend all my time

Speaker 1 10 hours a day just practicing drums, like if I if I get 10 times better at drums right now, the band will grow 0%.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? It's like, I got to a certain point where it's like, cool, I can do the job and I can do it well, and I can be creative and try to stand out in my own ways. But

Speaker 1 now, what's the next thing that I can focus on that will actually

Speaker 1 take me to where I want to go? It got me the audition, which is very cool.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 that's always like a thing I'm trying to think about in my head is like, yeah, what? Now what?

Speaker 1 What are some of the other

Speaker 1 secrets that the music industry should be talking about but isn't?

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 kind of like what I was saying of how competitive things are,

Speaker 1 it's not, for the most part, enough to just be

Speaker 1 a good band anymore. I think you need to be very multifaceted in

Speaker 1 having your departments in the business, right? So like, for example, if we use iPrevail, for example,

Speaker 1 we all do our music thing. We all have our own weird skills.
This guy can yell really loud and that's like a cool skill, right? But

Speaker 1 for me, okay, like my department is cool, I can play drums, but I'm also

Speaker 1 have a ton of experience

Speaker 1 growing in organic content media machine or team or whatever that is and marketing and back-end business and growing the merch sales or whatever that is. Right.

Speaker 1 And then we have our guitar player, Steve, who's very in like the accounting business management world. Yeah, he's a really good lead guitar player, but he's also like a nerd on Excel.
Right.

Speaker 1 And it's like,

Speaker 1 you, you kind of have to have these like

Speaker 1 other

Speaker 1 facets that contribute to the overall project.

Speaker 1 And outside of that, I would just say,

Speaker 1 I used to think that being in a band was like showing up and playing drums and like performing and someone just like hands you a check and it's like, oh, cool. Like, thanks.
I played the show.

Speaker 1 I got paid. See you later.
But it's like, oh, actually, there are these nine different arms of how you can make money.

Speaker 1 But before it comes to you, it's going to go a percent of 10% is going to go over here for the person who booked the tour. 20% is going to go to just.

Speaker 1 the general manager who just handles business stuff.

Speaker 1 Then all of your music is going to get split into three different arms of publishing and then people who try to put it on like freaking video games and stuff and whatever your Spotify cut is and then how much goes to the label as opposed to the people who wrote the songs.

Speaker 1 And it's like this ginormous spider web of money going to a million different people. And then you're here at the bottom and you're just like, oh,

Speaker 1 I try to catch as much as I possibly can.

Speaker 1 That

Speaker 1 is a,

Speaker 1 it's just so complex, right? Like for, I'm, I'm sure it's complex for you too. And I oversimplify it, but I'm like, you do a brand deal and they're like, cool.
Here you go.

Speaker 1 Here's your monthly, your yearly, whatever. It's going to be significantly more simple.
But that is because I've done the equivalent of remaining independent as an artist.

Speaker 1 I'm not signed. I've never ever been signed to any network.
I'm not owned by a media agency. I'm not even signed.
I don't even have an agent. Wow.
So like everything is just me.

Speaker 1 Everything is bootstrapped.

Speaker 1 Everything is bootstrapped. That's crazy.
The tour that we put together, bootstrapped. Team that we put together, bootstrapped, everything.

Speaker 1 Like we booked our own tour manager like this is not yeah so um

Speaker 1 that means that there's a lot more effort that has to go in on the front end but there's so much more control on the back end yes you're like yo the

Speaker 1 something isn't working out with whatever partner this is with whatever member of staff this is whatever contractor we have there's no obligation yeah um beyond loyalty which counts for a lot but you know there's no there's less fuckery and it is it is wild to see people just want to go and hear good music from their band that are happy and healthy and playing a show and hopefully well enough remunerated to keep doing it uh and there's just a lot of holes in the swiss cheese slice uh that you don't get to see and uh i don't know i i i hope that it doesn't seem at the moment at least the genres i'm interested in you guys uh and your cohort doesn't seem like that many people feel like they're eating shit because I think live is going so well for so many people.

Speaker 1 But yeah, if I was a big hip-hop fan of something, maybe I'd feel differently.

Speaker 1 Maybe I'd be worried about the sort of upcoming hip-hop artists and whether or not they can make money like they used to back in the day or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1 And, you know, then

Speaker 1 the tough part about being in a band, too, and I don't want to like complain about money. My, my, I'm not trying to complain about money.

Speaker 1 I'm just trying to say, like, I think it's important to understand how the back end of the business works. And like, yes,

Speaker 1 now you can be independent if you want to. Like you can.
Like, there are plenty of Spotify artists who have, they made a good product.

Speaker 1 Their songs are good.

Speaker 1 And they develop the skill of organic content or. paid ads or more, I mean, probably not paid ads as much, but like, yeah, marketing themselves.

Speaker 1 If you have a good product and you can market yourselves and you can push people to the right, you know, whatever you want that to be,

Speaker 1 buy tickets or go stream the song, like you can simplify the whole process and just get really good at team building, which is what I assume is the skill that you've had to build to do it all independently.

Speaker 1 Torrended at it, but yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But it is like it's, it's this weird, like for me, I look at how my life has gone and it, I grew up, everyone,

Speaker 1 hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to be a drummer. And everyone's like, what you said as a kid? Yeah, oh, yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 What was the response when you said, I want to be a drummer? You're stupid. Like, I grew up in the suburbs of Michigan.

Speaker 1 We're still from there, but yeah, there's no, there's no professional musicians that I knew of coming out of Michigan. There are, but you've got Kid Rock, you've got Eminem.
Like, there's no

Speaker 1 Uncle Cracker. There's some big players.
But yeah, everyone's like, you're stupid. Go to go to school.
Do, you know, go to university.

Speaker 1 For you, I wouldn't say college, but

Speaker 1 go to college college and get a degree in business. And I'm like, I don't care about business.
I want to play drums.

Speaker 1 The ironic thing is that to be able to play drums professionally, I had to learn a lot about business.

Speaker 1 But then, you know, by my own accord, really fell in love with a lot of it. Cause it's like, I think any musician starts to love it because it's very challenging.

Speaker 1 It's very challenging to develop a skill. in songwriting or singing or drumming or whatever that is.
And then at a certain point, it's not you've you've never arrived.

Speaker 1 There's you can always get better, but I think business has that same thing too, right? Where it's like, oh, now there's now it's not just drumming that I have to get better at.

Speaker 1 If I business is an umbrella term, you know, there's accounting, there's marketing, there's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's endless things to

Speaker 1 direct input on the lyrics that you write, the melodies that come out.

Speaker 1 You don't have the same with

Speaker 1 how well the accounts are put together.

Speaker 1 And if you negotiate the margin on the merch 10% off, like I always used to feel bad when I ran nightclubs in my 20s, because I had this sense that my success, I could always excuse my successes away.

Speaker 1 I was like a Velcro for criticism, self-criticism, and Teflon for self-praise.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 your contribution to the success of a business, anything really within the business operations, even if you come up with the best marketing marketing tagline of all time, you're not the one that delivered it, and you're not the one that chose how the audience responded to it, and you're not the one that said that the sales

Speaker 1 created the page that had the conversion rate optimization that did the.

Speaker 1 And it meant that I always was more easily able to ignore

Speaker 1 where I'd done well

Speaker 1 with things like that.

Speaker 1 And I think one of the great things about what you guys do, and what I think everybody needs in their life, is something where a direct, almost one-to-one input to output ratio of

Speaker 1 effort to reward is available. If you write a fucking slamming song individually or as a group, like you have that thing is yours and you made it directly.

Speaker 1 There was no molestation in between you and this thing happening. And I think a lot of the time people feel

Speaker 1 out of control and out of connection with what's going on in their lives because

Speaker 1 there are so many layers of fuckery between them and the shit that is supposed to be the goal on the other side of it. 100%.

Speaker 1 And that's why I think as much as the business stuff has been enjoyable to really dive into and grow, like

Speaker 1 that's why I'm still

Speaker 1 so happy that I'm a musician in a band because you do have these moments. Like with this last album we made, we blocked off eight months.

Speaker 1 We're basically Mondays from 10 to 6, we show up in the studio every day and

Speaker 1 we just walk in. We walk in not knowing what we want to create and we walk out with something.

Speaker 1 And that

Speaker 1 I can't, I just don't have that in any other area of my life where it feels like pure creativity.

Speaker 1 And those short moments are like just just so awesome. Like driving home in your car, listening to this 30-second demo that you just wrapped up five minutes ago.

Speaker 1 And then the next, honestly, the next day on the way to the studio, you listen to it and you're like, actually, it sucks, but the drive home felt so magical. But now we have to improve it.

Speaker 1 And you constantly, yeah, Eric comes in and is like, yeah, that sucks, but let's do this. And then you're like, oh, shit, that's awesome now.
And it's just like, it feels like pure creativity.

Speaker 1 And it's incredible.

Speaker 2 Yeah, crazy to think that you come in with, you know, five dudes coming in a room and have, haven't even talked about what we're going to work on today.

Speaker 2 And we sit down and you find some central meeting point and you just pull things out of thin air. And then you leave eight hours later going, we have a 30-second audio file.

Speaker 2 There's something that came out of nothing, you know, and that, that, that bit of creativity and feeling that reward is, is unlike.

Speaker 2 anything else we have going on in our life. I feel like, you know, you come in with nothing and you leave with something that was created by a group of friends that you're like,

Speaker 2 there was nothing before this, and now we have this piece of art. And

Speaker 2 you feel like you got something off your chest, or you feel excited with the direction this thing is going. And then it starts shaping the record.
And then you're like, okay, well, we did this.

Speaker 2 What should be the counterpart of this song? You know, we did something a little heavier on this. Let's

Speaker 2 just the whole creative process is

Speaker 2 so rewarding

Speaker 2 in that sense.

Speaker 1 What have you learned about navigating a career in an industry that's ripe with burnout and crisis and recovery and stuff like that?

Speaker 2 Oh, man.

Speaker 2 For me personally, being on the road specifically, when we do like, you know, three and a half weeks in Europe and we have two days at home and then we do a six-week tour in the States and then we're home for a month and we go back to Australia for three weeks and then your time zones are all fucked up and

Speaker 2 being lost on tour, just, you know, that burnout feel, you know,

Speaker 2 for me personally, it's like trying to find those days off when we have them

Speaker 2 to feel like a human again. Like I'm big into

Speaker 2 some trading card games, collecting records and, you know, finding bars or coffee shops I've been to when we had a day off in that city prior.

Speaker 2 So to step away off the bus and go explore a city on my own or go meet up with some friends or other people on tour and play cards or, you know, find a bar or record shop, doing doing something that makes you feel like a person again has definitely helped that

Speaker 2 four weeks into a seven-week tour or whatever it is. It's like feeling like a human again is very important.
So, having those hobbies and having those things to distract yourself from the

Speaker 2 mental fatigue has been huge for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, I think like

Speaker 1 being on the road is

Speaker 1 a gift in so many ways and, you know, like a dream come true and also

Speaker 1 right like

Speaker 1 life happens when when you are on the road and you miss it like people die right our our we've all lost family members while being on the road and finding out i mean friends and family members i mean you'll find out a couple hours before you have to go play and you're like okay i just found out that a huge piece of my life was is now gone and now I have to go like in front of thousands of people and

Speaker 1 you know not that we played smiley music so it's not like i have to like put on a smile but man you have to

Speaker 1 you have to get through some

Speaker 1 and that might be in the midst of

Speaker 1 tension in the band or overall fatigue from tour where you're like already you're physically drained you're mentally drained you're in your 30s living with eight other grown men men in a bus the size of this room for months at a time.

Speaker 1 You haven't seen your family for months at a time.

Speaker 1 Tragedy happens. Like, it is

Speaker 1 a lot.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I,

Speaker 1 and also, like,

Speaker 1 on the road,

Speaker 1 there have been so many of like, I think collectively our lowest moments, but it's also coupled with these

Speaker 1 moments that are so unique that I personally could never get. And once it's done, it's done.
Like, for example, like

Speaker 1 the creativity of creating a song. I'm just like,

Speaker 1 I won't, I don't think I'm going to find that somewhere else. Or performing in front of people and being like part of a collective experience.

Speaker 1 Like, sorry, Eric, there have been many moments in my time with the band where I'm like, is this really what I want to do? Like, I am exhausted from the chaos. I miss being home.
I love being home.

Speaker 1 Like, is this really what I want to do? But I think there's

Speaker 1 these

Speaker 1 things where it's like, but once it's done, it's, it's done. And

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 1 yes, like there are times where there's like tension in the band, but also

Speaker 1 you form a trauma bond together as a group, you know, where when people really need it, like you are there for each other.

Speaker 1 And like, there's never another time in my life where I'm going to be able to have sleepovers with my 30-year-old bros. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But on tour, like every night, it's like after the show, I'll see you in the back lounge.

Speaker 2 Silly bus time.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Silly bust time is what we call it.
It's just kind of coming down from the adrenaline, cracking a ton of jokes, and then going right to sleep. It's a sleepover, you know?

Speaker 1 But yeah, it's emotional whiplash. all the time.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And what you're saying about going up and having some kind of loss or turmoil back home and trying to navigate that. And then an hour later, you're going on stage,

Speaker 2 it's important, especially being the performer or singing the words, putting on the show to remember that, you know, this may be the one concert that that kid is going to all year long, or this, uh, these people, these fans, these, this group is trying to escape.

Speaker 2 whatever's going on in their life, whether it's all the political stuff they're fed up with seeing online, whether it's their own family issues, whether it's loss, whatever it may be, this is their moment where they're coming for three, four hours to forget all of that and to have a good time, drink some beers with their friends, shout the lyrics back to us and

Speaker 2 forget everything. So

Speaker 2 it's also keeping that in mind when we go on stage, like this is...

Speaker 2 just as much our moment having fun up here as your moment you know you're once this month or once this year getting to to release or or exercise some demons in the pit or to just forget about all the bullshit that they have going on at home.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, having to remember that when you're going through something yourself to go up there and go, all right, this is for them.

Speaker 2 You know, put the show, we call it putting, getting into our showies. Like

Speaker 1 you've got some severance. It's your innie and your outie.
It's like our normie and our showy.

Speaker 2 So it's time to zip into our showy and get out there and give everyone the show that they want to, they, they deserve.

Speaker 1 You know, that's what's called being a professional. Right.

Speaker 1 Like, you know, if you're a firefighter and you've had a big argument and a sleepless night with the wife last night or arguing or something, it's like, I'm not equating rock stars and firefighters in terms of importance.

Speaker 1 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Thank you. Because you're saying that we're more important, right? Yeah, okay, good, good.
I just wanted to make sure. Significantly.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 they...

Speaker 1 They have to turn up and do a job. And I think it's good to think about it in terms of service.
There's certainly, at least sort of from my side, looking from the outside in,

Speaker 1 because any job that's a lot of fun

Speaker 1 or that has just fun as a part of it

Speaker 1 starts to see anything that isn't fun

Speaker 1 as a

Speaker 1 bug, not a feature. And you go, hey, yeah,

Speaker 1 I know that sometimes shit's hard. But for some people's jobs, all of it's hard.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the fact that, well, you know, I'm tired or this has been long or I'm whining to you about how many flights I've got to do this week and tour for me starts this week. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 but I'm going to go and do this thing with my best friends in cities that I love and get to see. And you go, well,

Speaker 1 I think this is why people have limited sympathy for traveling musicians that whine about how hard it is. because they're complaining that some of the things are difficult.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, most people's jobs, all of the things are difficult. They don't get the positive reinforcement in the way.
It's like, you know, I struggle to sleep because the adrenaline is high.

Speaker 1 You go, well, some people don't ever feel adrenaline. So, like, the reason that you've got that is because of how much positive reinforcement you got earlier in the night.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 1 Something I'm interested in, you mentioned it's like it's a sleepover with your bros in your 30s.

Speaker 1 Everybody's aging, right? Everybody's getting older.

Speaker 1 At least a bunch of you are married or in relationships, and maybe all of you are. So I'm interested in how you navigate that as everybody grows up because people have personal lives

Speaker 1 that aren't going to be as negotiable as they used to be. You don't choose when your kid's born.
Your big band, tons of sperm, means lots of potential road bumps for people to navigate.

Speaker 1 So you're going to have to say, hey, darling, I know that you're really keen on having

Speaker 1 a baby next year.

Speaker 1 The wedding was wonderful. Thank you for allowing us to slot it in in between Australia and the second run on the US tour.

Speaker 1 We're not going to be able to start trying until late July because we've got this new amphitheater

Speaker 1 run that we've got that's lined up. And, you know,

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 surely this is something that's in the back of your guys' minds as you start to plan your personal future and then how does this work with blending the band?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I'm going through right now, planning on a wedding and next spring, and just constantly reminding the guys, like, hey, check the calendar. Uh, we got a tour offer.

Speaker 2 And is that tour offer again? Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, I have a week.

Speaker 1 I can get married, but uh, yeah, that's that's um,

Speaker 2 I think it's something that we don't talk about, but we all feel and know it's in the back of our mind.

Speaker 2 Like, our guitar Steve just had a kid three years ago during when we were recording our, our last record, and he went off and melissa had the baby and then they uh

Speaker 2 we released the record and went on the road shortly after that so you know he missing the the you know early early years of of uh his child's child's life and it's difficult trying to plan around life events major life events like that but you know we we try our best between the the five of us to plan things, the intimate parts of our lives and in our little group.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, if someone's got to fly home for a weekend, we try to slot some time, you know, days off where it's, okay, you can fly home this weekend. All right, cool.

Speaker 2 We'll meet up with you in, you know, three stops from now. And, but

Speaker 2 yeah, it's something that I think, I don't know if we have it mastered, but it's, it's something that we, I don't want to say struggle with, but it's something that is a difficult thing to to have our

Speaker 2 personal lives and those huge moments and, you know, having a kid or getting married or, you know, friends' weddings, standing in weddings, whatever it may be.

Speaker 2 It's a challenge. It definitely is a challenge.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's like

Speaker 1 you're trading sacrifices, right? So in the early days, the sacrifice is I'm going to go out and tour for nine months of the year and make $12, right? That's the sacrifice. And you make it.

Speaker 1 And then that

Speaker 1 stops to be, that stops being the sacrifice. It's like, oh, we're, we're touring less and

Speaker 1 making more than $12. So, okay, cool.
But then, yeah, as you get older, there's more sacrifice in it it in a different way. Your parents are getting older, thinking about having kids.

Speaker 1 How, how do you navigate that? How do you navigate a marriage where it's long distance? That's pretty uncommon. But also in some ways, like

Speaker 1 I think with any

Speaker 1 sacrifice, it's difficult, but also there are gifts inside all of it, right? Because

Speaker 1 what a lot of people experience, kind of like to what you were saying earlier, is of like, oh, their jobs suck all the time. Like

Speaker 1 you

Speaker 1 are, you might always be with your spouse and never kind of have that opportunity to truly miss your spouse.

Speaker 1 Like some people just never have the opportunity to actually miss their spouse, which is interesting. And there is like a gift in that of,

Speaker 1 I'm going to be gone and I'm going to have this opportunity to desperately miss you and to have

Speaker 1 reconnection time, which yes, can sometimes be an adjustment, right? For sure.

Speaker 1 I heard you talk to the under oath guys about this, very relatable of, yeah, you might come home and your spouse is like, I was kind of used to living here by myself, right? And now

Speaker 1 your partner is saying to you, I know that you've come back and you immediately want me to drop into this life that you've imagined. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I've had to create a life where I can cope with the distance of you being away. Yeah.
Like, so yeah, I've walled myself off a little bit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, maybe I'm not as soft or accommodating as you might like me to be

Speaker 1 because you've been playing shows for six weeks in front of a few thousand people and I'm fucking about on the bus with your friend.

Speaker 1 Right. Yeah, totally.
And you, you're both coping in your own ways, right? And I'm coping by laughing my ass off with my friends, right? And in, yeah, this weird way where

Speaker 1 And everything is kind of handed to you on the road, you know?

Speaker 1 But then coming home, it's like those coping mechanisms don't work in a marriage where it's like, yes, I want time and I want this and I want this. It's like, well, this is not really a marriage.

Speaker 1 Like that's not a give and take. That's just a take.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I do think like what that opens up then is more conversations to grow closer and be like, hey, like.

Speaker 1 This isn't actually working when I'm gone or it's actually not working when I come back.

Speaker 1 Like, how can we navigate this together and use it as an opportunity to to grow closer or to create systems in our family or any of my relationships to make this work better

Speaker 1 without completely overstretching both of ourselves?

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Speaker 1 A checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom.
A checkout. Yeah, I understand what you mean.

Speaker 1 The idea of the beauty of being able to miss someone is an interesting one. Yeah.
How many months do you reckon you've been on the road on average for the last few years?

Speaker 1 As we've gotten older, we've tried to bring it down to around four months a year or five yeah um where my first year touring with these guys i think we've gone from nine so you're still talking now about you know three days out of every week so you're only home for maybe four out of seven plus there'll be travel plus there'll be songwriting plus there'll be rehearsals plus there'll be all of the other stuff so you're talking about you know if you if you do a month with five with everything else on top it's probably closer to six sure yeah so you're talking about three and a half days out of every single week that you're apart from friends, family, partner, kid, etc.

Speaker 1 It's tough. Yeah.
It's a, it's a

Speaker 1 fucking.

Speaker 1 You know, that was the fascinating thing speaking to Aaron and Tim.

Speaker 1 Aaron said, did he get married and went on tour or had a kid and went on tour like three days later or something? And just, you know, you got to turn it around because this is what you've got to do.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it's an interesting question.

Speaker 1 Most people, when they're building a project, what they're looking to do is over time,

Speaker 1 do fewer things that they don't want to do. Almost everybody's goal in life is to say, I just don't want to do things I don't want to do anymore, right? That's like where people want to arrive at.

Speaker 1 But there's an interesting challenge that I've been feeling recently, which is what do you do when you start to get close to being able to actually making that a reality?

Speaker 1 Now, what does that look like?

Speaker 1 And it's difficult because you're used to working at this particular rate and you get reward and reinforcement at that same particular rate. But what was the point of touring for nine months,

Speaker 1 every year for five, if you don't then drop it down to doing it at the pace that you want to? And then how do you know what the pace that you want to is?

Speaker 1 Because you're always going to feel a high after you've come offstage, but then what's accumulating in the background? How many ruptures without repair have occurred in the relationship?

Speaker 1 How many missed weddings and degraded friendships and funerals that you haven't been able to deal with and thoughts that you haven't given yourself time to just sit with because you're in the chaos of the show and someone's bringing you cool new food and we're going to go skiing today, we're in Salt Lake, it's going to be great.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 all of these things are these weird hidden costs that you pay kind of out the back here. And

Speaker 1 I see,

Speaker 1 especially especially with the age and this is meant complementarily

Speaker 1 the metal scene is not young yeah it's not young like you guys are a veteran band who are like middle-aged i guess for yeah like metal stars yeah ollie from bring me must be 38 uh i think he's about my age 36 to like 40 or something like that i think he might be my age 37.

Speaker 3 um

Speaker 1 you're talking like i don't know what ronnie radke is. Ronnie's going to be like, you know,

Speaker 1 Ronnie's in his 40s.

Speaker 1 Can you really still crack? You're like 46. We're still cranking it.
Four months on tour. You know, the kids are off to fucking like middle school.
You go, oh,

Speaker 1 if you're not careful, you missed your life. You missed your life.

Speaker 1 You didn't just like do this thing when you were young and had fun. Fucking under oath,

Speaker 1 right? Like the guy, I mean, what was it that Tim said? He's like, I've got a 14-year-old daughter, but I only know her as seven. Oh, yeah.
Missed half a life. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's the illusion that

Speaker 1 it's the ever-growing illusion that one day you'll be done. Yeah.
I'm doing as much as I can right now so that I can retire at 40 and have all that you're doing.

Speaker 1 I know. I know, but I'm saying that's what the illusion is.
It's that I'm going to work really hard right now. I'm going to get it while I can because you never know when it's going to be done.

Speaker 1 You never know when it's going to end. And it's done, the haymaking season thing.
I get it. But it's an illusion in a way, right? Like I.
It's a horizon.

Speaker 1 Every step you take toward it, it gets one step further back. And it's weird because I'm aware of it and I also

Speaker 1 play into it. And I feel like I can't escape it, even though I've been told.
And I see, and I'm like, I see that it's an illusion. In your defense, that's the same with junk food.

Speaker 1 It's the same with overusing your phone on social media. It's the same with staying up late.
Every single night you've ever stayed up late.

Speaker 1 I know I need to go to bed early, but you don't, and you know the lesson, and you can feel it unfolding in front of you. And then the next day, you forget it and redo it again.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, it's the same thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We're just simple creatures, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But yeah, yeah, that is a man. That is something that is a little scary to think about sometimes where it's like

Speaker 2 we've been doing this for 11 years. And I look back and like, man, remember that tour? That was seven years ago.
That was, I was 23. I'm 34.

Speaker 2 Like, where did my wife go but then you're able to look around you know our house like this house i paid for by screaming at people and i have these awesome little trinkets on the wall you know whether they're a gold gold plaque or a photo of us playing at red rocks or or whatever and it's it's

Speaker 2 It's tough to tough to think that, like you're saying, the horizon just keeps going, keeps going.

Speaker 2 When are we going to be content?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I guess the only thing I can hope for is to build this up as big as possible so we can bring our loved ones out on the road more often.

Speaker 2 We can have these shared experiences more often out on the road.

Speaker 1 You're then asking a lot of your loved ones, right? Exactly. You're saying, hey, honey, you know your life.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 How do you feel about not

Speaker 1 having a...

Speaker 1 How do you feel about your life being...

Speaker 1 How about my life is your life? Yeah, it's a difficult balance. And also, like, with what you're saying, of like, you missed your life, I'm thinking about that and I'm like

Speaker 1 Maybe

Speaker 1 I see that point and I think there's something to consider there for sure of missing the people who you love but I also think if I were to flip it

Speaker 1 I think if I were sitting in my house in my office or whatever behind my computer all day which I just do on the road but I I think I might have the same thought of You missed your life.

Speaker 1 I'm missing my life. I'm wasting it in the same place every single day doing the same thing every single day.
Like, I think it's, yeah, this,

Speaker 1 you just want what you don't have. Choose your regrets, dude.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 so true. You've nailed it.

Speaker 1 Everybody assumes the thing that's missing in their life is the thing that they want. Yeah.
And we are like

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 in our ability to be able to wish the grass is greener despite the fact that we were on the other grass only a week ago. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know that it's the fact coming back from tour, you've just finished tour, you're like, thank fuck for that. Oh my God, I'm so tired.

Speaker 1 And I just want to lie in bed and I just want to like cuddle my wife or do whatever. And then seven days later, you're like, I'm bored.
Yeah. This sucks.
I'm bored.

Speaker 1 I want to be like, I'm not doing enough. I should be in more care.
So you're like, you just did a seven-week tour. And I think this is the same.
Everybody feels

Speaker 1 it is sort of part of the human system

Speaker 1 to always feel like you're not doing enough. And that not doing enough can be not doing enough peace and also not doing enough work.
And

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 mark of a good nervous system, I think, is one that can adapt to both without feeling like it's missing the other. Yeah.
And you're like, oh, I'm like, I'm just,

Speaker 1 I'm okay with this. Yeah.
I feel like I'm okay with this. I know

Speaker 1 I've heard Hermozi say like something, I'll paraphrase it, of like,

Speaker 1 the grass is always greener on the other side, but because there's a bunch of shit on my side, but there's also a bunch of shit on the other other side. It's just different shit.

Speaker 1 Like, which shit do you want? Because there's shit on both sides, right? And I think we view other people's life through rose-colored glasses, right? I'm sure, Chris,

Speaker 1 most of your audience would be like, if I could have Chris's life where I'm talking with interesting people all the time, doing big shit, I got this sick drink company called Newtonic. Tasty.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's so good. I don't know which one my camera.
Is this my camera?

Speaker 1 So good. So good.
Yeah, wait. Sorry.
I'll figure it out. Anyway, I'm sure a million people would be like, I want Chris's life.

Speaker 1 Yeah, sure, he's got health problems. Yeah, sure, like it maybe been a couple, a rough couple years, but they kind of just overlook that part.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And they, would they still take that trade? Maybe.

Speaker 1 But I think,

Speaker 1 again, yeah, we, we look at, we look at other people's lives and are like, I would take

Speaker 1 I would take all of it because the good thing seems so good that all the shit with it is worth it. And maybe sometimes that's why that's true.

Speaker 1 People find industries that work for them, right? Like if you're not that much of a touchy-feely affectionate person,

Speaker 1 well, you know, I would be at home, but I wouldn't like the wife's got her thing going on. We might not be hanging all that much in any case.
So I might as well be away. Right.

Speaker 1 And that's where you see,

Speaker 1 I wrote this essay a little while ago about people who have the talent, but not the constitution to become very successful.

Speaker 1 Louis Capaldi was my sort of canonical example of this until he came back and smashed it at Glastonbury this year. I'm really, really happy for him.
Nice.

Speaker 1 Louis Capaldi, great example of phenomenal voice, phenomenal songwriter, but someone who suffered so badly with performance anxiety that he went out on the main stage at Glastonbury not long ago and couldn't get his words out.

Speaker 1 And he's got this, he's developed this sort of Tourette-like nervous tick from how much pressure he's applied to himself. You go, how unfortunate to be someone who's so perfectly constructed.

Speaker 1 It's like having a really fast engine put into a Honda Civic. It's like a V12 engine.
So you have all the power to be able to drive real fast and none of the control to be able to direct it.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 that is a

Speaker 1 unique kind of pain where you go, fuck, like the thing that I want. to be a world-class recording artist, touring musician, or

Speaker 1 fucking soldier or sports star or whatever. I have all of the capability.

Speaker 1 I just don't have the constitution to be able to handle maybe the pressure that comes along with it or the work rate or the travel.

Speaker 1 You could have really sensitive circadian disruption like in your sleeping pattern.

Speaker 1 And that would mean you could not be a touring artist or like it would just take such a toll on your health that your expiry date would be would be pretty snap close.

Speaker 1 And yeah,

Speaker 1 you're right.

Speaker 1 There will be bits of shit on either side of the fence. And what is the price that you want to pay in order to have the life that you admire is a fucking really good question about that? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've heard you say about life on the road and missing funerals, missing friends and birthdays. There's this Keith Urban thing, The Road, on CBS at the moment.
First episode came out this week.

Speaker 1 So during the premiere episode of The Road on CBS, Urban opened up about the difficulties of life on the road as a Turing musician.

Speaker 1 It's a calling and you're born to do it or you're not going to make it, he said.

Speaker 1 When you wake up on a tour bus at 3.30 in the morning and you're sick as a dog, you're in the middle of nowhere and you've got to play your fifth show later that night and you haven't slept and you miss your friends and you're missing your family and you're completely lonely and miserable and sick and you say to yourself, why am I doing this?

Speaker 1 Urban who recently split from estranged wife, Nicole Kidman, continued, the only answer could be because this is what I'm born to do.

Speaker 1 We're going to find out who's made of that stuff and we're going to find out who's made of that stuff is to do with being on the road.

Speaker 1 Really interesting that someone who recently split from his estranged wife is sort of being used as the

Speaker 1 and look

Speaker 1 if you too are sufficiently successful this could be your life also like

Speaker 1 really does show how narrow the aperture is that we perceive success through right like it really is i i i it doesn't sound to me like well i mean it's a

Speaker 1 a public interview. So how would you know it's not quite the place for someone to drop into their emotions?

Speaker 1 It doesn't particularly sound to me like Keith Urban would say, I would rather give up my touring or have not toured at all and still have my marriage to Nicole Kidman. But who knows?

Speaker 1 Maybe in retrospect, he'll think something differently. And yeah, the prices that you pay, the things that you miss in order to do the thing that you love.
It's different with you guys versus

Speaker 1 like some person that works offshore on an oil rig or a soldier, right? Because it's not too dissimilar. They do tours,

Speaker 1 different sorts of venues.

Speaker 3 Um, but

Speaker 1 I think people feel differently about that because that feels like more of a obligation. Yeah, there's a nobility attached to that.

Speaker 1 There's some, there's a, you guys get less sympathy because you're like

Speaker 1 fucking about.

Speaker 2 Yeah, champagne problems, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. I, I do have, um,

Speaker 2 I do have some sense of guilt sometimes where I'm like, how dare I feel so bad right now? Like,

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 I feel like one of the first times I went through something hard on the road was

Speaker 2 one of my best friends and

Speaker 2 living at my place with me took his own life

Speaker 2 right before we walked on stage in Pittsburgh. And that was like the first time that

Speaker 2 I like allowed myself to like feel,

Speaker 2 feel bad about

Speaker 2 missing things. Like when it was a wedding or something, I was like, I was like, oh man, I'm just, is this really, I'm, I'm getting to live my life and my dreams and, and do these things.

Speaker 2 And like, I don't,

Speaker 2 you know, shame on me for, for feeling any type of way. But when, when that happened, that was like the first time that I was like,

Speaker 2 no, it's okay. It's okay to feel bad.
And like, it's, you know,

Speaker 2 man.

Speaker 2 Sorry, I'm getting thinking, thinking about that time. That was really, really tough, man.
But then on the outside, like I said earlier, you just have to suit up and go out there and play and

Speaker 2 remind yourself how lucky and blessed you are to be doing this. And

Speaker 2 yeah, over the last few years, I've tried to balance that like sense of guilt of living my dreams, let's say, over

Speaker 2 missing the funerals and the friendships and playing. And oh, okay, well, I go back.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to have to rebuild that relationship.

Speaker 2 Or they understand, my family understands that I'm out here doing, doing big things and

Speaker 2 trying to live my dreams. But

Speaker 2 it's always a challenge. It's always a challenge going out on the road and being gone for so long and

Speaker 2 looking back at the things you're missing, but then

Speaker 2 reminding yourself, like, this is what you signed up for.

Speaker 2 How lucky are you that a fraction of a percent of people get to do this and

Speaker 2 enjoy it while you can't? Because tomorrow it could just be gone. AI could take over.

Speaker 2 We're just done.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's

Speaker 1 tricky to balance the

Speaker 1 responsibility of

Speaker 1 you have a group of thousands of people who paid

Speaker 1 however much to

Speaker 1 like

Speaker 1 get a release from whatever they're going on in their life. And we are kind of like pioneering that ship in a lot of ways.
Like Michael Jordan

Speaker 1 has that.

Speaker 1 I actually don't remember what the quote is, but there's that like infamous game where he's puking on the sidelines, but he's still playing because he's like, this might be the only time someone gets to see me.

Speaker 1 And like

Speaker 1 this could have been their past two weeks paycheck to be here. So I'm going to play.
I'm going to,

Speaker 1 no matter what, like be here. And so I think it's balancing that responsibility while also not becoming

Speaker 1 not

Speaker 1 valuing their validation in an unhealthy way. So it's like you have a responsibility to them.

Speaker 1 But I think some people, I can't speak for Keith Urban, but like, I think some marriages can fall apart because a lot of artists are desperate for validation.

Speaker 1 I mean, we're putting ourselves on a stage in front of people

Speaker 1 screaming our name, not my name, because I'm the drummer, but screaming your band's name.

Speaker 1 And it's like, yeah, those group of people like probably want a little bit more validation because of X, Y, and Z in our childhood, right?

Speaker 1 But I think that's when when relationships, marriages can fall apart because you're so desperate for the validation from strangers as opposed to the places that it actually matters from.

Speaker 1 Bro, I think so much about

Speaker 1 how sad it is that some people

Speaker 1 got one-shotted with

Speaker 1 status games in high school and never grew out of them.

Speaker 1 Like they just need to be

Speaker 1 accepted by the cool kids, even if the cool kids kids are a bunch of strangers on the internet. Yeah.
And they just, you can see, I think they cycle through

Speaker 1 life

Speaker 1 ignoring or almost feeling an ick or a kind of allergy to anybody who gives them free and available love.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, if you're giving me something, you're offering it to me without withholding it, without there being a price attached. You just, oh, you seem to just like me for me.

Speaker 1 What's wrong with you?

Speaker 1 Like, no, you're supposed to make, you're supposed to reject me or not want me. You're supposed to make me hurt for it or something.

Speaker 1 And that's a pattern that is really unfortunate because it's going to cause you to ignore

Speaker 1 the very thing that you want. You're going to disregard the very thing that you're trying to get, which is someone to just see you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that can also be a good thing, though, because

Speaker 1 some of those people don't actually really see you. You know, know, if you're like dating someone for a long time, yeah, they probably really see you.
But

Speaker 1 if someone who doesn't know you and is like trying to pour this validation your way and you really receive that, which there's a healthy degree, but there's also the other side where it's like, well, you don't actually know me.

Speaker 1 You might be a fan of our songs and our music, which is really cool. But like

Speaker 1 if I take all this praise, that's where I think ego can get really dangerous. And we've seen so many people go down that path

Speaker 1 where you just accept all of this praise from people who don't know you. But then on the on the same side, that's when like

Speaker 1 oftentimes their downfall is because with any

Speaker 1 almost any rise, there's going to be a time where, well, okay, you got big enough. Now the only thing left to do is to turn on you.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 I feel like it's kind of a tale as old as time. And then you have your period of time where people turn on you and you weather that storm.

Speaker 1 And then people get bored of turning on you and they go, okay, well, now they're down. So like, let's lift them back up.
Now they have somewhere to go again, right?

Speaker 1 So I think that's so right. And you can almost see it in these little cycles up and down.
And I think everybody has anybody that gets to a size has to have an ascendancy, right?

Speaker 1 That's why you get to the size. Everybody has to have a moment where they icarus it a little.

Speaker 1 And it is just whether or not they manage to pick back up on that one and after that i mean you can obviously completely like tamikaze yourself if you

Speaker 1 do something wrong but um after that one typically i i see very few people that just keep going up yeah like almost everybody has one dip so it's like okay get ready for the dip yeah um

Speaker 1 i guess with you guys

Speaker 1 how has

Speaker 1 the or how do you define your guys's identity as a band now that the lineup's changed, that the dynamics evolved, that the sounds evolved as well?

Speaker 1 The reason I think about that is

Speaker 1 artists, podcasters, comedians

Speaker 1 get,

Speaker 1 they capture attention for doing a thing well. Yeah.
There is a temptation to just do that thing again.

Speaker 1 And there's been a lot of change from you guys' last album to this one. You're stepping up into full vocalist doing everything mode,

Speaker 1 plus an evolve evolution in terms of sound.

Speaker 1 I'm interested in what, like how you think about sort of identity of the band and not being trapped by what you did before, but staying true to your roots, but not being beholden.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? Like, how do you navigate all of this?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think it's a challenge that we're finding out right now,

Speaker 2 learning as we go.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 I think it's difficult on a personal side because you think

Speaker 2 you haven't changed. Individually, we haven't changed.
The writing is still, we're still writing. And

Speaker 2 from the outside, a lot's changed, but on the inside, maybe not so much. So when you hear and see,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 2 whether it's fans or fair weather fans or whatever that are like, oh, it's a whole different band. It's different.
It's not, it's like, well, we don't feel that. different.

Speaker 2 We know there's a change, but we don't feel that different. So that that's been a very difficult thing for me personally.

Speaker 2 I've been writing in this band since day day one. And now all of a sudden I feel like a stranger to my own band just from the perception of a couple nameless people out there.
And

Speaker 2 it's been a struggle personally, but

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 how do you feel about this?

Speaker 1 I think our identity is,

Speaker 1 it is shifting. Like, I think

Speaker 1 to what you were talking about earlier, you have this,

Speaker 1 you have a, a lot of times there are like these bands with certain dynamics, right? And like, no doubt the dynamics are now different.

Speaker 1 And in a lot of ways,

Speaker 1 with that, with that change, we've kind of leaned into the different. a little bit from the standpoint of like

Speaker 1 how we are trying to interact with each other as a group and trying to

Speaker 1 nourish our relationship with each other as much as possible. But

Speaker 1 in some ways, it's,

Speaker 1 I keep talking about gifts,

Speaker 1 but like

Speaker 1 they're like you said, the thing that got us here, we don't even, in some ways, our sound is naturally now different.

Speaker 1 So we don't even have some of like that option to go back to of like, well, we did this thing. And it's like, well, no, no matter what we do now, it's going to be different.
And so we have to,

Speaker 1 or we get to

Speaker 1 reanalyze like,

Speaker 1 what do we want to be moving forward? What do we want to be to each other? How do we want to be with each other? What do we want a sound to be? It kind of

Speaker 1 breaks open

Speaker 1 your life in a new way. I liken it to, yeah, a relationship where you have a relationship with someone for 10 years.
And

Speaker 1 after a certain period of time, it's like, hey, I actually think you want this and I want this. And we're going to move in those separate directions.
And it is a time of self-discovery.

Speaker 1 You know, the interesting thing about it is that most people in a relationship, they go their separate ways.

Speaker 1 There's pain there for sure, but it's kind of up to you to

Speaker 1 ask yourself, what do you want next?

Speaker 1 In a band situation, it's interesting. It's like, it's almost like you have a big family around you saying, well, I actually liked you better when you were with that person.

Speaker 1 And I actually want you to do this. And it's like, well, okay, like, I appreciate the feedback, like understood.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 I kind of have to go on this journey. I hope that you can come on this journey with me.

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 my family, my fans, you know, the metaphor, you're very important to me and you've been with me this time. I would love to continue in a relationship with you guys also.

Speaker 1 Please have a little bit of trust in me that, like, I'm going to reinvent myself in a way where I'm going to try to grow from this experience and

Speaker 1 do what is authentic to me and us.

Speaker 1 And yeah, that's kind of what the process has been like. And

Speaker 1 yeah, no, no doubt there's been a ton of challenges in it, but damn, do I think we've grown a ton from it? Absolutely. And really excited for

Speaker 1 what that

Speaker 1 path is for us moving forward. I mean, I'm so stoked on this record, Chris.

Speaker 1 I told you to let me know if it's shit and you didn't let me know. So I'm just assuming you made it.

Speaker 1 It's great. I thought we'd.
I'm just insecure. I need more validation.

Speaker 1 Please, strangers on the internet. Tell me that I'm good enough.

Speaker 1 Fucking millions of people a year are not enough.

Speaker 1 What I thought was interesting with what you guys did, and I think

Speaker 1 I'm not convinced that Sleep Token quite did this. It'll be interesting to see what Omen's third track comes out tomorrow, I think.
Oh, does it really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 What you guys did that was really interesting was you chose three very different tracks from the album.

Speaker 1 And I thought that was kind of unique. I would say...
President did a

Speaker 1 not bad job with releasing ahead of of their EP. I thought that was good in terms of the sequence.
I did find a couple of them a little samey, and I might have hot-swapped one of them.

Speaker 1 I thought Conclave was actually maybe a stronger track that was like hidden deep in the EP, and they could have brought that out.

Speaker 1 Omens, both of their tracks have been a little samey, but fucking

Speaker 1 obviously fucking brilliant, which is great. And I thought he was interesting.
I've had this idea in my mind for ages about

Speaker 1 you, as a band, decide that you're going to put out two or three or four singles, and then drop an album.

Speaker 1 So, presumably, you have an idea about what your best foot forward in some regard looks like, or at least your best foot forward as a collective.

Speaker 1 When you take these three, this is an indication of what the longer record's going to be like. But then you put it out on Spotify, and the fucking audience gets to decide.

Speaker 1 And you're like, track eight?

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 1 You motherfuckers, really? The fucking acoustic track.

Speaker 1 Are you kidding me? Yeah. Or whatever, right? They pick the thing.
Well, that's actually the case here. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I checked this. Okay.
I was going to say it's way too specific. Yeah.
No, it's weird. Dude, it's like we,

Speaker 1 like I said, we've been writing this. I mean, man, the writing process was just eight months, but then we recorded it, then we mastered it, then we mixed it, then mastered it.
And I mean, all in.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a year and three months or something like that of just

Speaker 1 pouring our souls out to each other you know a few guys in a room and it's like i think this is sick is this sick i think it is i i don't know is it yeah and uh all about getting lost in the sauce

Speaker 1 yeah a hundred percent and we're like we're removing tracks where like this song actually sucks like that song we we wrote and we're like it's not gonna make the album like it's we it's different like it's just an acoustic song like when are we gonna do that and eric was like

Speaker 1 uh he didn't say this but he felt so he's like guys if this song is not on the album i'm gonna leave like he wasn't really, but

Speaker 1 um, but yeah, so it's weird. It's this weird, like, the insecurity just starts to like build of, like, well, let's just move this one out.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 And then two months later, you're like, let's bring it back in. Like, I haven't listened to that one.
And you're like, oh, it's actually really good.

Speaker 1 But yeah,

Speaker 1 then you get this like

Speaker 1 confidence once you like have written the whole thing. You're like, I see this as a work of art.
I'm really excited to release it. Then

Speaker 1 once you've written it, the insecurity starts creeping up again. Fuck, I knew we should have put track eight.

Speaker 1 What, um, for a normie like me, what is the sort of number of tracks that you've cut that didn't make a 10 album record, a 10 song album?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think we had like three or so maybe that got to a second chorus.

Speaker 1 I think four or five. Four or five, yeah.
But then don't forget the

Speaker 1 seven songs we wrote even before scrapping all of those.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's true. Good point.
I forgot.

Speaker 1 So, probably another 10 songs. Right.
That still seems relatively lean to me. That seems like a pretty good hit rate, right? To write

Speaker 1 one in two songs makes the album makes mastered fucking out there. Yeah.
That seems like, I don't know, is that

Speaker 1 it might be. Yeah, I feel like every band has something a little bit different.

Speaker 1 The interesting thing with us is that, like,

Speaker 1 yes, let's say one in two songs, but the song that you know it now has also taken six different forms where it's like oh well the chorus was actually different and verse two is actually a completely different part we rewrote the bridge three times and so i think

Speaker 1 as long as we have a nugget that we think is good enough mainly we're building it around something yes yes yes yeah if we're like oh this chorus is sick Let's keep going back to it.

Speaker 1 Let's keep going back to it. Let's keep going back to it.
And the nice thing is, like, you get to see if it stands the test of time. Yep.

Speaker 1 That's what I mean about when you put it out out there and the audience gets to choose. Because that's also, in a really hilarious way, kind of going to determine what the live set looks like.

Speaker 1 Because if Song 8, the acoustic song, Eat Shit, and you go, wow, I mean, there's fucking no chance that we're playing that live.

Speaker 1 But if there's the prospect of, oh, fuck, like, this is, it's our most played track on Spotify ranked at the moment or whatever.

Speaker 1 We have to do that. Fuck, we have to do this.
No, like, oh yeah, or whatever, right? But it's cool. Yeah, it's cool because you've had this idea.
Look how clever I am.

Speaker 1 I know my, my release in advance. I'm going to do my little singles.
I'm going to make them come out and make me in the right order. And then you put the fucking thing out, and then

Speaker 1 all of your fans just go, fuck you, dude. I'm going to choose what I want.
Yeah. I think it's so cool.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And it's, uh, it's,

Speaker 2 I don't know, it's a challenge, but it's like when we start writing the record, I think you start fantasizing about the future like a year or a year and a half from now.

Speaker 2 You start, okay, well, when we do the headliner, you know, we're going to open with this song.

Speaker 2 Imagine the set opening like this and we roll on this song we pull this deep cut out from two records going that goes third and then we've learned quickly after the last record we were like this opening track is going to be the opening track to the show and then the album's been out for a couple months and maybe less than that a month and you go out there people are excited to see you and they're excited to see some of the new stuff but they want to see that that record that they grew up on or whatever it may be and then you go out and you play that first song and you're looking in the crowd and no one's singing it because they don't know the words and you're like oh god this is going to be a rough four minutes you got to educate the next one so so now it's like you know

Speaker 2 we have these little nuggets of ideas of like how the set's going to be you know when we go out and tour it out you tour this new record again but

Speaker 2 you know you got to let the fans pick the songs you get and then you see the okay these songs are popping off hell yeah we get to play these well where in the set should we play them we don't want to blow our load early and play all the cool stuff from the first half and everyone's sitting like you know it's building the sets like you know, taking that emotional roller coaster.

Speaker 2 You know, we have so many different sounds and different emotions through our lyrics and moods and all that.

Speaker 2 And you don't want to put all the heavy stuff right up front, you don't want to save all the energetic stuff till the end, you know, so it's building that dynamic roller coaster.

Speaker 1 What does the journey feel like to go on? So, let me give you this, right? For

Speaker 1 just in case you guys thought that you had it hard, the way that I have to put together a live show,

Speaker 1 I come up with ideas in the most sterile environment environment possible,

Speaker 1 just on my own. Maybe it gets clipped and put on the internet.
I have an indication that some people think it's cool, or maybe not. Who knows? Then when I go and test it live,

Speaker 1 there's no sound, right? Because the single best thing that can happen at a,

Speaker 1 unless it's stand-up, and there's some bits of stand-up, but that's not the meat and potatoes of my live show.

Speaker 1 If I'm going to go and do this, like the best thing that I can have is pin pin drop silence. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 So I'm inverting what every live artist throughout history has ever tried to go for. I want the most silent, I want deathly quiet.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then like hanging on what the next bit of the story or the word is going to be. I'm like,

Speaker 1 was that more quiet than the other bit? Like, I have no fucking idea.

Speaker 1 And then people finish up and they go, I love the bit about the man that fell over on the, on the street, or whatever the fuck it is that someone comes up with. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 trying trying to aggregate that is, uh, for me, you know, a

Speaker 1 real interesting challenge. I've loved the live element.
I've loved being able to put together a set, not too dissimilar to the way that you guys do.

Speaker 1 I've got like tracks, I've got insights and ideas, and I can piece these together in an interesting manner that hopefully takes people on a journey.

Speaker 1 And I don't want to have all of the funny stuff up front, and I don't want to have all of the sad boy stuff at the end. And, you know, so on and so forth.
You'll see on Sunday in Toronto.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 the fucking feedback mechanism, dude. Yeah.
It's like, I don't know. I feel like a MI6 agent, like Sherlock Holmes,

Speaker 1 trying to reverse engineer what it is that the audience is thinking about.

Speaker 1 Are you enjoying this? Do you like it more than the last bit? Who fucking knows?

Speaker 1 What does the silence represent to you? Attention.

Speaker 1 Presence. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like real.

Speaker 1 Like, there's bits that happen. I haven't got enough of them in this one, but the next show, which is Australia and New Zealand in March,

Speaker 1 and then Bali.

Speaker 1 There's a couple of bits where people catch their breath, where you hear like a,

Speaker 1 like that, and I'm like, oh, that's fucking cool. That's sick.

Speaker 1 Like, especially given that the room is fucking pin drop silent, and then you hear this like collective depressurization of the whole room as everyone just gasps a little bit.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh, that's fucking cool.

Speaker 1 And then there's like laughy bits, and I've got some new,

Speaker 1 I tested, I did the final work in progress show last night and I tested some new stand-up bits and they fucking destroyed they were so much fun they're like there's some of them that are way too spicy for me to feel comfortable saying in like

Speaker 1 I tested some Canada stuff and I'm like I can't do that in Canada and I tested some America stuff and I can't do that in America either stuff

Speaker 1 flip them yeah but it's it's real interesting and I've I've very much appreciated getting to watch

Speaker 1 you guys and everyone else

Speaker 1 like how much attention gets paid to constructing a set i I was with fucking Sam and Dan from Architects.

Speaker 1 Jesus fucking Christ, dude. Like, they pay so much attention to like every little bit, transitions, bits in between songs.
And

Speaker 1 yeah, you're just some fucking dude in the crowd bopping away, having a good time. And you don't realize, oh, they played, like, they played the song from the old album or whatever.
And you go, yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you realize how many conversations and like tens of hours were had just about that one bit

Speaker 1 of that one section of that show that you went to it's crazy it's so cool it's like it's it doesn't just effortlessly happen it's kind of like a comedy set right like there's all of this work that goes into it to make it seem effortless on the front end yeah i mean we're already talking about you know this this winter uh getting together and you know just you know doing some creative stuff, whether it's like demoing or whatever it may be, but it's a live show.

Speaker 2 We're planning our live show and we're planning on, okay, well, if we're going to play this song, what's the kind of cool interlude, or how does it go from this song to this song?

Speaker 2 Okay, there's a guitar change, so we need to eat up some time.

Speaker 1 Well, maybe I'll talk over that part.

Speaker 2 Is it going to be dead silent? There's going to be music under it. Is it going to be, you know, and then start talking, like, well, how can we spice up these old songs?

Speaker 2 Are we going to extend the bridge?

Speaker 1 Am I going to try and get great jokes about America and Canada if you need to throw something?

Speaker 2 But yeah, it's, yeah, a lot of

Speaker 2 thought goes into that. And I think that's what makes these shows even more special.
I've seen Architects a handful of times, and

Speaker 2 if I wasn't in the shoes I am now, I probably wouldn't have realized all the little details. But yeah, you can tell.

Speaker 2 If you're looking for it or you're paying attention to the whole set, you can tell that they've put in a lot of work.

Speaker 1 Based on your experience, who do you think has got the greatest attention to detail in the world of alternative music as a member of a band or a collective overall.

Speaker 2 Bring the horizon. I think.
I was going to say Ollie as well.

Speaker 1 Ollie's level of attention to detail is like a fucking universe-warping thing.

Speaker 2 It's insane.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think that's the game. You know, I think like

Speaker 1 paying attention to

Speaker 1 those 1%

Speaker 1 details and like nailing them,

Speaker 1 it's the difference between being Bring Me the Horizon, right?

Speaker 1 Like one of the biggest rock bands right now and i guess anyone else right it's like roger federer has said you know one of the greatest tennis players ever like has only won like 50 55 of his points says someone that reads the newsletter fucking knew that i liked you man

Speaker 1 knew that i liked you i also like tennis so like yeah yeah in order to win 80 of his games he's only won 52 of his points yeah and that that's and we don't get me wrong like we try to we try to play that game.

Speaker 1 Like, I think, right, like, yeah, if you're at a, if you're in the audience eating a corn dog, being like, oh, I'm having a lot of fun with this, like, you don't realize that not only, like, we,

Speaker 1 uh, have

Speaker 1 carefully and painstakingly built the live set. Like, we, there have been

Speaker 1 half the video footage from one of our tours. I filmed in my basement with these dudes, like,

Speaker 1 and we just like paint because we had someone else do it. And we're like, it's just not right.
Like, we're just going to have to do it ourselves. What do you mean you filmed it? Filmed what?

Speaker 1 So like video content in the, uh, in, behind us on, on stage, we've on the iMacs. Yeah.
Or the equivalent. Well, the iMacs would be like following.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's the screen that it's in between the iMacs and bullshit.

Speaker 2 We had like a character like narrate in between every couple songs. And so that character was sweating.

Speaker 1 That's cool. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But then even, I mean, yeah, going back to the songwriting process, like, I was joking about being like, hey guys, what do you think if I add this one note where I'm I'm playing at 30% velocity on the snare drum?

Speaker 1 Most people will never even hear it, but I think that they'll feel that it's there, and you that might make a difference.

Speaker 1 And it's like paying attention to those little things or like, yeah, and bring these case, like, what is the thing that builds the lore of this whole outfit, social posts, and then you take it a step further, I suppose, with somebody like Sleep Token, but you also remove things, right?

Speaker 1 Which allows you to suck in that speculation. 100%.
That vacuum. Yeah, I mean, I've been thinking an awful lot recently about

Speaker 1 attention to detail and obsession.

Speaker 1 I have a conflicted relationship with obsession.

Speaker 1 Quite an obsessive person,

Speaker 1 which is good. And the attention to detail also good.
But it comes with quite a high price. And I think you see this with

Speaker 1 any of my artist friends that are at that kind of a level.

Speaker 1 I think it's almost impossible to not have chronic self-doubt and a high attention to detail. I think that the two things are the same thing.

Speaker 1 I think the reason that you're pushing so much and that you're paying attention is like, can this be better? Let me give an example.

Speaker 1 Depending on how old the kind of Newtonic, oh, okay, this is interesting. So this is a slightly older badge.
I can tell that this is an older badge from the back here.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, okay. So

Speaker 1 do you see the Instagram logo there? So it's slightly offset outside of the follow us. Yep.
To the left. It might not be on that one.
That'll be centralized. That should be centralized.

Speaker 1 So mine and yours will be off to one side. Yep.
And yours should be in the middle. Do you see how mine's offset?

Speaker 1 To the left of the F? Yep. Guess who picked that up? You.
Yes. Like, and this is like millions of cans deep, right? This run's been going for ages.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh, somebody left like half a point to the left. They left aligned it inside of the margin.
They They didn't center align it inside of the space. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Great. We now have a can that's got this 1%, not even like no point, not

Speaker 1 1%

Speaker 1 improvement.

Speaker 1 Fantastic when I'm trying to refine the question

Speaker 1 idea that I've got for Matthew McConaughey or the way I'm going to word this new, oh, the Atlas complex that I'm going to come up with on a newsletter.

Speaker 1 Not so fantastic in my personal life. Yeah.
Right? And it's like, hey, obsession, obsession.

Speaker 1 You're great at work. Can I turn you off when, like, you know, I want to fucking chill out on a nighttime? Yeah.
You don't get to do that. It permeates all of you.

Speaker 1 And I think this is one of the reasons that artists get conflicted a lot of the time. And

Speaker 1 Ollie is a good

Speaker 1 example of that. He is a fucking good friend.
I've known him for like over a decade and a lovely, lovely, lovely guy.

Speaker 1 But you pay a high price. If you want to be Ollie Sykes, you pay a high price.
If you want to be vessel from Sleep Token,

Speaker 1 you pay a high price.

Speaker 1 You don't get extraordinary outcomes with ordinary inputs. And these guys have got extraordinary inputs, but they're not all good.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm convinced that you can't achieve anything

Speaker 1 great without having high levels of obsession. And it is, I think it's just, yeah.
Like,

Speaker 1 what pain do you want? Do you want the pain of not achieving the big thing that you really want to achieve?

Speaker 1 Or do you want the pain of doing that while knowing that what takes you there also can be an internal struggle every step of the way? Just which pain do you want?

Speaker 2 And had a healthy dash of imposter syndrome over it.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Mark Manson has this idea. He says,

Speaker 1 what are you willing to, what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to suffer and struggle for? Any

Speaker 1 pursuit, even the most existentially aligned, will regularly feel like work.

Speaker 1 So if you're oriented toward the pain, you're more likely going to be aligned with what you can do over the long term as opposed to if you're just oriented toward the pleasure.

Speaker 1 So everybody says, find what looks like work to everyone else, but feels like play to you. as a

Speaker 1 good piece of advice for a competitive advantage, which is unique and N of one.

Speaker 1 But that disregards the fact that even the best pursuits regularly feel like labor,

Speaker 1 right? Like being on the bus and sleepless nights and chaos and being away from the family and all the rest of this stuff. Like that

Speaker 1 is the price that you pay.

Speaker 1 If all it was was pleasure, you'd be like, I have no real desire to play a musical instrument, but it would be fun to get the pleasure of just like playing on stage, but I don't want to have to spend a decade learning to play an instrument.

Speaker 1 So orienting yourself toward the prices is better than orienting yourself toward the profits because people get kicked out. It's the exact same with relationships.

Speaker 1 It's the exact same with relationships. Relationships don't end because insufficient good times.
They end because of too many sufficient bad times.

Speaker 1 It's not that you're connecting at too shallow of a level, typically. It's that your disconnections are occurring at too deep of a level.

Speaker 1 And the way that you handle arguments is the best predictor.

Speaker 1 How many people break up because they say, you know, the exciting times, they just weren't that exciting. No, it's because we kept arguing all the time.
It's because things were going wrong.

Speaker 1 It's because we couldn't connect. It's because, you know, it was like

Speaker 1 an overabundance of problems,

Speaker 1 not a scarcity

Speaker 1 of praises, let's say, if that makes sense. Yeah.
And

Speaker 1 I think that you see the same thing with people's pursuits. And it's like, you want to be fucking Vessel? You want to be Ollie Sykes? It's like, okay, this is the mindset that you need to have.

Speaker 1 And this is the sort of life that you're going to have to lead.

Speaker 1 You want to be Louis Capaldi.

Speaker 1 Because you can't separate his anxiety attacks from his songwriting ability.

Speaker 1 His anxiety attacks are his songwriting ability. It's like just this huge fucker.
It's a onesie, right? It's not an outfit. It's not something that you get to piece together.

Speaker 1 This huge, big onesie, and you just zip the fucker up. And you're like, okay, I guess I'm just him now.
100%. Yeah.
I mean, yeah, I think about like Bo Burnham comes to mind where I'm like,

Speaker 1 great example. A genius.
I'm like, you are a genius comedian.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 also

Speaker 1 to be that genius, you have panic attacks on stage. And I mean, God, I have no idea what he's just gone.
He's gone. Yeah, where the fuck is Bo Burnham? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's, I think, you know, or like Michael Jordan, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you want to be the greatest basketball player, but to be that, you have to, what a large percentage of people who interact with him would maybe say he's an asshole. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 And still now, the last dance thing seems, no, like still conflicted. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's interesting.

Speaker 1 I find, I find it interesting that we are like typically so pain averse as a collective. Well,

Speaker 1 also,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 standard way of life is, I'm going to get in a relationship, which means there's going to be a lot of pain in there, like what, with what you were saying.

Speaker 1 And then I'm going to have children, which is probably one of the, I'm not a parent, but like one of the greatest challenges. And you just accept, you're like, oh, I just don't sleep for years.

Speaker 1 And, but like the idea, like, it's the same principle that like, I'm going to sacrifice my life for X period of time for this longer, greater vision that I think it's going to make my life better in the long run.

Speaker 1 If I'm not, again, I'm not a parent. I think that's what they think.
I don't, I don't know.

Speaker 1 But it's interesting to me that for a lot of people, that doesn't necessarily apply to other aspects of their life either.

Speaker 1 Which is, yeah, for me, it's kind of like flipped on the reverse though, too, where I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm, I'm willing to give the, the sacrifice for the career and all that type of stuff.

Speaker 1 And then you throw a kid in my face and I'm like, I don't know if I'm willing to do that right now. You know what I mean? So I don't know.
Maybe it's just one or the other.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I don't have a kid either, dude.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 The obsession thing, one final point on that. I'd love to get your opinion on.

Speaker 1 So people talk about sort of the relationship between discipline, motivation, obsession. And I think the reason obsession is kind of having a moment.

Speaker 1 Right now, Zach Pogrob is a friend of mine who lives in New York, does a lot of running. He's like...
Mr. Obsession.
And

Speaker 1 I think he's fantastic at what he does. I think his new running app is great, and everyone should go and download it.
I've always been a little conflicted about the obsession thing

Speaker 1 because I'm trying to detox myself at least a little bit from obsession. I'm trying to become more of a lifestyle maxi than like a

Speaker 1 progress maxi, let's say. And

Speaker 1 the reason that I think people love obsession so much is

Speaker 1 it's the freest motivation that you're ever going to get.

Speaker 1 Like if you say that sort of motivation is, I kind of want to do this thing, and discipline is I have to do this thing, obsession is I can't not do this thing.

Speaker 1 So if you think about sort of

Speaker 1 discipline is you forcing yourself through something, and motivation is you encouraging yourself through something. Obsession is you getting like ripped, like pulled forward by the thing.

Speaker 1 Does that make sense? It's like,

Speaker 1 like being pulled by it. And in some ways, that's great.
But in other ways, I think it's really dangerous because

Speaker 1 at least with motivation and discipline, largely you at least get to tolerate the gas pedal. But with obsession, you never get to turn it off.
It's like, oh, I have to, like, I am compelled.

Speaker 1 I can't not do this thing. Well, what if there's a time when you do want to not do that thing? What if you need a weekend off?

Speaker 1 What if you have had somebody close in your life pass away and you need to think about that? You could probably could

Speaker 1 do dealing with your emotions for a couple of couple of weeks or something. And you go, no, no, no, I must do more tracks.
I give songs to play and I get shows to do. And

Speaker 1 hmm I

Speaker 1 I wonder

Speaker 1 I worry that

Speaker 1 the profits that are very obvious from obsession,

Speaker 1 free motivation, free discipline, consistency without effort, basically,

Speaker 1 because you're being pulled.

Speaker 1 I wonder how many people will look back and realize that that was

Speaker 1 like just chronic imbalance

Speaker 1 that

Speaker 1 felt easy at the time. And in retrospect, they're like, oh, fuck.

Speaker 1 I don't know whether that was the best decision. And I didn't really have that much choice.
So like a little bit more scrutiny around obsession might be worthwhile.

Speaker 1 Like this is very wet clay fucking bro science at the moment. All right.
So like it might be, it might be largely bullshit. What's making you rethink?

Speaker 1 What's making you want to step back from obsession?

Speaker 1 I've done basically the same thing for nearly two decades now, which is just completely bury myself at working hard. And that's great.

Speaker 1 But it can cause you to become

Speaker 1 myopic and laser focused and blinkered about other things that you could do with your life. And that's not even necessarily other things outside of the project.
It's other things within the project.

Speaker 1 So for instance for me to go and do the live shows it makes my life harder um

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 financially it's a horrendous decision um

Speaker 1 there it's in there for sure it's i mean even you know we we're gonna do

Speaker 1 shows between 1500 and 750-ish caps so they are

Speaker 1 perfectly profitable and and and apart from the fact that i've got to fly a fucking ton of people out um

Speaker 1 uh

Speaker 1 it's fine. But if I was making a business decision, I would just continue to do the show.
If I was making a platform decision, I'd just continue to do the show.

Speaker 1 If I was making a lifestyle decision, I'd just continue. Like all of the

Speaker 1 elements of obsession would point me away from variation, be like, do more of the thing.

Speaker 1 But that doesn't necessarily lead you to a varied, well-lived, adventurous life.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 yeah, I'm thinking much more about what do I sort of want to look back?

Speaker 1 What are the memory dividends that I want to give myself in future?

Speaker 1 And maybe that means letting go of some modes of validation and positive reinforcement that I know work and rolling the dice on some.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, huh, I'll see if this, I'll see how this makes me feel. Maybe this would just be different or interesting.
Maybe this will contribute to

Speaker 1 longevity, consistency, like

Speaker 1 stick-with-it-ness over time, because I'm not going to just continue to grind away and grind away and grind away.

Speaker 1 I've just done, I've done business and like hard lots of time in front of a laptop or walking and talking on the phone, coming up with ideas, or writing, or doing whatever.

Speaker 1 I've done that for a long time. I'm like, I think

Speaker 1 maybe trying to remove the blinkers a little bit is a bit of a good idea. The equivalent of an acoustic track, I guess, on an album.
Track 8 in particular. Track 8.
Yeah. Yeah.
Do you,

Speaker 1 in the back of your head, do you think at all of like, well,

Speaker 1 like, if the obsession is still like chirping at you, like, do you still think like, okay, well, yeah, like, obviously, like, I would keep doing the thing, but also knowing that if I'm going to keep doing the thing, like, sticking with the main format and repeating what works is really important.

Speaker 1 But there also has to be room for

Speaker 1 that. 20% experimentation knowing that 18% of those experiments will flop, but those 2% might be a new format that I can now use and build.

Speaker 1 Like, do you find the obsession kind of sneaking in that way? Or is it purely like, I just want to do this for me because I think it's like a cool thing? Yeah, that's, it's a really great question.

Speaker 1 I guess this is the same as, you know, the second album, third album syndrome that bands have where they go. We got famous for doing that thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Should we just do it again? We could just do it again. Right.
We could just run it back. Like, people want more.
They loved that last one. They just want more of the same, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, the opportunity to experiment. One of the slight difficulties that you have with this is that there's no such thing as practicing in private.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Every single.

Speaker 1 We didn't go through this. We didn't dry run this in a rehearsal space yesterday.
Oh, when you say that, I'm going to make a dick joke. And when you do that, you know, we'll do silly bust time.
Like,

Speaker 1 nice, it's stuck. Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's in.

Speaker 3 Um

Speaker 1 you don't get to do that. So everybody gets to watch you fail in public.

Speaker 1 Um you sort of learn out loud over and over again. And that's great because you get to track the journey and it's like, oh, how interesting is this?

Speaker 1 You know, it would be like if every demo,

Speaker 1 in fact, no, it would be like if every practice session on the drums was published on the internet. Oh my god.
Right. Because there's no such thing as practicing.
There's no such thing as

Speaker 1 like you can perform in private.

Speaker 1 You can't do that here. And you can't even practice in private.
Yeah. I mean, I could do a

Speaker 1 pod with someone that was just a friend that I wouldn't ever publish, but the stakes aren't there, which means that no one's going to take it as seriously as you need to because you don't have the scrutiny and the fear of the audience.

Speaker 1 So yeah,

Speaker 1 it's an interesting one, man. It's a very unique

Speaker 1 position. to be in and uh experimentation new studio which is just right now being built a couple of miles miles away from here.
That'll be exciting. Awesome.

Speaker 1 Trying to do stuff like the McConaughey thing, running that back.

Speaker 1 Yeah, just, okay,

Speaker 1 what's new? What's different? Trying to integrate music into the next live show, like the Australia Canada, Australia, New Zealand one next year. That'll be interesting.
Okay,

Speaker 1 what are some areas where that 20% exists, where I might be able to find the two?

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 1 yeah, it'll be...

Speaker 1 It'll be exciting.

Speaker 1 But that being said, when I see the degrees of freedom and the amount of experimentation that somebody like an Ollie or a Noah or whatever is able to play with, or you guys, like, fuck.

Speaker 1 Like, it feels.

Speaker 1 I want to embrace more of that. I think it's very admirable.
I think you guys are very fortunate that you have so much artistic freedom.

Speaker 1 I think that's something that you shouldn't take lightly because there are much more constricted

Speaker 1 modes of putting your ideas and your thoughts and your emotions out there. And you guys have one of the ones that's the freest,

Speaker 1 like, as is shown by the fact that you can release a fucking acoustic track and

Speaker 1 not just release it, release it and it'd be received like unbelievably well.

Speaker 1 Yeah, trying to

Speaker 1 embrace that opportunity to be, all right, we can be a bit more experimental.

Speaker 1 Like, what, what do you wish?

Speaker 1 When you sort of think about

Speaker 1 the next few years for the band,

Speaker 1 what would you love to experiment a little bit more with? Like, have you got ideas for how you want the live show to look? Ideas for how you want new sounds to come through?

Speaker 1 Like, what are you working toward?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 All of it. I mean,

Speaker 2 from the, you know, now with this sonic change that we have,

Speaker 2 still

Speaker 2 rediscovering what the next chapter iteration is going to be. This is just the beginning, you know, what we get into.
Now we get to see what

Speaker 2 works and what may not work and just with the music alone, but then going to the live shows and,

Speaker 2 you know, we've done practical stage setups. We had a tour where there was a wrestling ring and it was rage on the stage.

Speaker 2 And then we went and did the thing where it was just video content and as crazy as video content we could to incorporate with the songs, whether it was lyrics or just these crazy scenes that we're standing in front of.

Speaker 2 And now how do we incorporate the two to have this massive look? And how do we keep making the live show better? How do we transition from this song to the next song and make this memorable moment?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, it's just

Speaker 2 like you said, I think we're very lucky to be in this position,

Speaker 2 as challenging as it is, also lucky to have all this open ground. It's a little daunting and scary to look at the big picture of it and go, okay, what do we do first? Where do we go from here?

Speaker 2 What is the best move?

Speaker 2 Because like you're saying, it's like you're trying things and you're trying them in front of a million people, you know, and they're, you know, failure is going to feel bad, but if you crush it, it's going to feel so rewarding.

Speaker 2 But we, if you look at all these different things, you know, in categories, it's uh, it's exciting to, to look and see, you know, I'm, I'm ready to get back in the studio and start writing.

Speaker 2 I'm ready to get with the guys in this off time and start playing out the live show, which songs are going to be in or what's going to be the encore, what's going to be the first song, what, what, what's going to be to the, to the merchandise, to the the stock you know everything it's um

Speaker 2 there's a big open road and it's it's exciting to see

Speaker 2 it's just exciting to think about what's going to come from our creative hive mind here yeah man yeah i think like

Speaker 1 i'm thinking about the obsession piece and i think like for myself

Speaker 1 probably for a lot of artists across music or whatever

Speaker 1 i feel like obsession comes from scarcity of like, I have to be obsessed about this because

Speaker 1 I, I, this could end at any time. We could put out, again, this is, I don't think this is true, but like, I think the insecurity on our part is

Speaker 1 with everything being an experiment or fully creative,

Speaker 1 it's, we don't have that format we can keep coming back to because then people go, like.

Speaker 1 Let me put it this way. If you put out the podcast format, you've got the three cameras, you go back and forth, you can bring in a new new guest, ask good questions.
People are going to be like,

Speaker 1 I'm so sick of you sitting in a room, asking people good questions and hearing thoughtful responses. You don't hear that as much, at least is my assumption.
Right. But if we keep it.

Speaker 1 I prefer the old question.

Speaker 1 Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
But if we, yeah, if we keep trying to recreate the same song, people are like, well, I just like the original song. Stop trying to do the same thing.

Speaker 1 I want to hear something new. And so we're constantly in this state of like, okay, let's try to balance these people who like our old music.

Speaker 1 They might say that they want the same shit, but they don't want the same shit. But then if we give them the new shit, they're like, I don't like it because it's new.
And so it's like,

Speaker 1 it feels like

Speaker 1 your whole career is balanced on like, we release one bad song and everyone rejects us and hates us. It's not true, but that's the insecurity.
And that's like. the scarcity of that.

Speaker 1 This whole thing could end like that at any time.

Speaker 1 And so I'm going to obsess obsess to try to build as strong of a foundation as possible so that if an experiment goes wrong, meaning a song is not received well or a tour doesn't sell the way you want it to, that

Speaker 1 we're still okay. Like we got the next thing coming up and we got the next song.
And, you know, so it's a bit.

Speaker 1 Well, yes, I agree, like the creativity of it is great. As a fellow YouTuber, I know what it's like to be like, this format works.
We're just going to swap this word in the title.

Speaker 1 Boom, we got a video. We're good to go.
Thumbnail, we know exactly what it's gonna be. But yeah, in the world of like creating a song, it's like, what do we think is cool?

Speaker 1 I would really struggle, I think, with the pressure of getting it right. Yeah.
Because, yeah, you're right. I'd put an episode out.

Speaker 1 You know, some people liked it, but everybody liked it. Sure.
Doesn't matter. It's one of a thousand.
Right. Exactly.
Literally one of a thousand. You got many more coming that week.
People already.

Speaker 1 Right. You don't like it on a Thursday.
Wait two days. Yeah.
There's another one on Saturday. Wait two more days.
There's another one on Monday. Yep.

Speaker 1 The

Speaker 1 fucking sphincter tensing

Speaker 1 concern of album release morning. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What are people going to say? What are the reviews going to be like? What's Reddit going to say about it? What's you know, like fucking are people going to download it?

Speaker 1 Are people going to stream or what are they going to do?

Speaker 1 Like, that's a lot. And you've spent all of this time and you've poured bits of yourself into it and you've second-guessed it.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 1 yeah, that would be, that must be a, that's a real, a real, real challenge. I I think I'd very much struggle with that.
It is. I think we had,

Speaker 1 we had one experience this year I mentioned that I think kind of put that in perspective.

Speaker 1 So, you know, we've, we've had this whole situation of like, okay, we're coming out as a band with a new lineup and

Speaker 1 releasing

Speaker 1 our first song as like the new lineup

Speaker 1 the day before our manager dies in a plane crash. And it's like

Speaker 1 perspective just dawns on you so fast.

Speaker 1 I mean, we've been working, right? Like I said, for

Speaker 1 14, 15 months on this, this one moment of like, we can't fuck this part up. This is our coming out party of

Speaker 1 new song, new lineup. And for all of that buildup to then have like the tragic event happen the day before,

Speaker 1 it was

Speaker 1 a perspective shift of like dude i don't

Speaker 1 i don't care like

Speaker 1 we yes we put this out but like

Speaker 1 we

Speaker 1 lost one of our guys like to put it out

Speaker 1 without him like just felt

Speaker 1 wrong in itself.

Speaker 1 So I think like,

Speaker 1 I don't know, I, it, it's a helpful reshift of, man,

Speaker 1 we are just so

Speaker 1 self-centered, I think, as, as people and just like thinking about like, what are people going to think about this? What are people going to think about this?

Speaker 1 What are people going to think about this? But like,

Speaker 1 in that moment, it's just like, oh, dude, none of this, none of this actually matters. I enjoy doing it.
I want people to connect with it. That is still my goal.

Speaker 1 I still do have the, you know, with, with the following singles, like, I still had that thought, but it's like, oh, but

Speaker 1 in the grand scheme of things, like, this is

Speaker 1 this is a two and a half minute song.

Speaker 1 And if people don't like it, okay. And if people like it, that's super cool.
But yeah, kind of like what you were talking about earlier, man. Like,

Speaker 1 I'm not.

Speaker 1 My

Speaker 1 I'm not going to miss my life because of this one song because something just tragic happened in my life.

Speaker 1 I'm going to make sure that like I'm with my people, like seeing how you guys are doing, seeing how everyone affected is doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Perspective can dawn on you real in a single moment pretty quickly. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Man,

Speaker 2 that was

Speaker 1 very,

Speaker 2 very tough and conflicting time and emotions. You're building up for this like

Speaker 2 excitement. Here we go.
Here we go. About to pull the trigger.
Here we go. Countdown begins.
You know, two weeks away, a week away.

Speaker 2 We're getting the video back a couple days before and lining up the artwork, getting the single, all this stuff, doing the press the week of to have it all drop the days following.

Speaker 2 And then waking up 24 hours before the song comes out. I don't even think it was 24 hours.
I think it was that night it was coming out, I believe.

Speaker 1 Yeah, technically at midnight.

Speaker 2 So, you know, waking up to the worst

Speaker 2 man, waking up to the worst fucking phone call.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 then it's

Speaker 1 all of that, all of that's gone.

Speaker 2 All that, that, the excitement, all the pressure, all the, the unanswered, the unknown is, it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter.
And

Speaker 2 yeah, it's been a really, really eye-opening, really

Speaker 2 difficult release just with all of that happening on top of the change, the lineup change, the, the, the uncertainty, the unknowns, and then

Speaker 2 having that guy that you just call and text anytime. If, you know,

Speaker 2 oh man, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 Having that rock that you're like, oh man, I'm going to call him if, you know, we're freaking out about this release or the, you know, what are the comments going to be? Oh, I got Dave.

Speaker 2 I can just hit up and he'll ease my mind over it. And

Speaker 2 you kind of realize

Speaker 2 what's most important in life. All this, it doesn't matter.
Take a shot on something and

Speaker 2 it flops.

Speaker 2 It's not the end of the world. You know,

Speaker 2 there's going to be more opportunity to come, you know? And

Speaker 2 yeah, it's been a

Speaker 2 crazy time. It's been a crazy time in the High Prevail camp.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, it's weird because I feel like we were talking about it earlier, almost in the opposite sense of like, well, I want to like, I want to live life.
And like.

Speaker 1 doing exciting things is like, that is living life. But then

Speaker 1 it does always kind of come back to like, yeah, but who is with you? Yeah, like, who are the relationships? Like, it,

Speaker 1 I, my perspective is, I, I don't know that unless they're bad relationships, it's, it's worth losing relationships over. You know, I don't know what Keith Urban thinks.

Speaker 1 Um, you know, maybe that's that, that was an even trade for him. And God, no, I don't fucking know what his, what his

Speaker 1 situation was. I can't even begin to comment on it.
But, like, yeah, I think what, what's,

Speaker 1 what's the sacrifice? What's the cost? And like, I think it's fair to ask, like, is it worth it or not? Um,

Speaker 1 a lot of the times, I think that answer can be yes, but I think it starts to get dicey when it's relationships. Like, if that, if that's the cost of losing good relationships, like, I don't know,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 dude, it is a

Speaker 1 it sounds like it's been a

Speaker 1 series of being kicked in the dick

Speaker 1 months so far this year.

Speaker 1 I'm sorry that you guys have had to go through that. I'm really sorry.

Speaker 2 We appreciate it, man. Yeah, it's been

Speaker 2 tough.

Speaker 2 It's honestly, you know, in a point where you're supposed to be like, all right, this is the most exciting thing that's going to happen in the next couple of months, getting to see what people say and have new music and material.

Speaker 2 And then, you know, that happens. And we each all have personal things going on at the same time.
And it's been tough. But

Speaker 2 I think you find strength through the struggle. And I think our relationship relationship within each other, within the band, has only gotten stronger.
I think

Speaker 2 relationships just outside our inner circle have gotten stronger.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I've always been

Speaker 2 someone that's tried to keep that mentality of like positive mental attitude and strength through struggle. You know, you go through something.

Speaker 2 Okay, what am I going to learn right now from this to

Speaker 1 carry and

Speaker 2 learn a lesson from or

Speaker 2 whatever it may be? But

Speaker 2 yeah, it's been tough, but I've learned a lot and I think we've all learned a lot. And I think

Speaker 2 that's all you can really do is

Speaker 2 grow from it and

Speaker 2 learn life lessons the hard way and implement them down the road and try to be a better person or a better friend or a better family member, whatever it may be, better bandmate.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 try not try not to dwell on it and just take the lessons as they come.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, you're going to have one hell of an amount of deep emotional well to tap into when it comes to writing the next record.

Speaker 1 And, you know, what better of a tribute to somebody that's a huge part of the band than to just keep doing the thing that they wanted you to crush at? You know, I think you see this with architects.

Speaker 1 Oh, absolutely. That was, oh man, tragic, tragic.

Speaker 2 And then hearing the record, I've been a fan of them for a while. So like hearing the records leading up to his passing and then going back and

Speaker 2 really understanding the lyrics and context.

Speaker 1 They won't play that tribute song live anymore. They refuse to.

Speaker 1 I think that's Track 8 as well on their album, interestingly enough.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they'll play.

Speaker 1 On this most recent tour, they played the

Speaker 1 sort of like interlude and then they play an intro.

Speaker 1 They play like a bridge in the intro thing, and then just as the lyrics are about to start, they just kill it

Speaker 1 and they just go into the next track. Yeah, um,

Speaker 1 and yeah, they were like, it's just too fucking heavy to play live, yeah.

Speaker 3 Um,

Speaker 1 but yeah, man, I'm sure that he's feeling real proud of what you guys have done. I really think he will be.
Thanks, man.

Speaker 2 I appreciate that, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah, it's uh man

Speaker 1 just grateful, grateful to like

Speaker 1 have

Speaker 1 have other people that like

Speaker 1 we can be

Speaker 1 open about it with, you know? Like, not not everyone has that fucked dude. Imagine if you were a solo artist, 100%.
Oh, yeah, you're just some bloke on a bus

Speaker 1 with a new manager. Yeah.
With with the same, or maybe the lighting guy.

Speaker 1 Maybe you've got like, maybe it's maybe like your fucking, yeah, your ld or like your tm or something is like kind of cool yeah and you have a bit of a chat with them

Speaker 1 but no one else really knows what you're going through or the pressure of the performance or anything else so yeah when you say like the relationships and the camaraderie that you have in the band um

Speaker 1 yeah sure would it be great if you didn't have to split the

Speaker 1 measly tiny amount of money that the record labels drip feed to you the fucking end of the human centipede

Speaker 1 Would it be nice if it didn't have to go like four other ways on top of your way? Maybe, but then how much harder would it be? Like it would be more than five times harder. Oh yeah.
You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 So bandmates are expensive, but when you look at them in terms of like motivation fuel, they're probably pretty cheap. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think like

Speaker 1 we all are

Speaker 1 trying to impress each other in a certain way, which like grows all of what we do. Cause I think a lot of the guys in the band are very impressive individuals and impressive people.

Speaker 1 So it's like, okay, well, if I'm going to, if I'm going to stay in this, I got to really show up.

Speaker 1 So that's one, that's one thing that I've noticed, at least since spending a bit of time around bands.

Speaker 1 There is this odd balance between the need to keep morale high, especially on tour,

Speaker 1 and the understanding that if you suppress your emotions for too long, that it's going to fuck you up. Yep.
Because if you're moping, like I know for a fact that there are

Speaker 1 ancillary, maybe not quite central. In fact, no, I know, I know for a fact too, we all know

Speaker 1 that there are

Speaker 1 people that are part of band constructs

Speaker 1 who are more

Speaker 1 talented than they need to be,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 a sufficiently difficult hang.

Speaker 1 that they actually can't survive

Speaker 1 in the world of being on the road with the other people that are there. It's like, love the video girl, thought she was brilliant.
Fuck me, she did my head in.

Speaker 1 She can't stay. But we're not going to get someone better at video.
I would happily have someone half as good at video who is

Speaker 1 like fucking 90% less annoying.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or whatever it might be, right? It's just clash of personalities, class of culture, whatever.

Speaker 1 And one of the things I think that's in the back of the mind of lots of artists that are spending time on the road is must keep morale high.

Speaker 1 If I'm struggling and I steam into the fucking back lounge at 11 a.m. and go, today sucks, everything's hard, I'm tired, my back hurts, and you know, you just unload all of this.

Speaker 1 Well, now everybody else is feeling that way

Speaker 1 and you don't want to be the guy that brings the vibe down. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But also,

Speaker 1 if you're in this permanent, like constant state of denial,

Speaker 1 at what point are you allowed to actually have,

Speaker 1 I'm struggling, man.

Speaker 1 I miss whoever it is.

Speaker 1 I miss this person, or I've been thinking about this, or me and the misses are like, we had a tough conversation last night.

Speaker 1 You don't have any room for that. So you've got this weird, I got to perform on stage,

Speaker 1 and then I also kind of have to fucking perform to my bandmates

Speaker 1 to an amount. And I got to sort of tolerate,

Speaker 1 temper the fucking dose.

Speaker 1 Right. We're going to like dilute down, triage this fucking sadness, the realness, or maybe go, can like, I can, I can talk to the playback tech.
Like, he's good.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm all right to talk to him about how sad I am or whatever, but like, I can't unload it on the band because I want to make sure that like Eric's got a big night tonight.

Speaker 1 His family's all coming. He's going to be a bit more nervous than me.
Like, whatever the fuck.

Speaker 1 Like, it permeates everything.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's something we've, we've had.

Speaker 2 I think every band's had, like, whether it's crew or band member or something that's, that's just going through something and, and

Speaker 2 doesn't know the best time time to dump. And

Speaker 2 over the years, the crew that we've had that return for multiple years,

Speaker 2 we have strong relationships with them. The guys within the band and the crew that are on the bus with us

Speaker 2 have been doing it for long enough. I feel like we have our own little, I don't want to say cliques, but you know, Gabe and Steve have a lot of things in common.

Speaker 2 Dylan and our other guitarists and I have a lot of things in common. John and I have in common things.
So there's different types of like days that were, you know, a day off or something.

Speaker 2 Us two are going to go hang. And, and, uh, if I'm having one of those days, I really need to talk, sometimes, like, if I, if I bring it up, it's, I just gotta, I gotta vent about something.

Speaker 2 Like, are you emotionally available right now for me to like dump on the dump on you real quick?

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. But I think we've been doing this so long that

Speaker 2 I could just,

Speaker 2 I don't know. I feel like

Speaker 2 I feel like I was going through it on this last year up tour pretty heavy. And I didn't say shit.

Speaker 2 And I, because I know everyone's going through it with Dave and everything else going on around the camp. And I just,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 kind of bit my tongue and kind of stayed shut in. And I'm usually one of the guys that's like, well, I'm going to go check out this band.
We're on this fest today.

Speaker 2 I'm going to hop from this stage to this stage, go have some beers with them and do this. And I just didn't do any of it.
And

Speaker 2 I'm grateful to have these guys

Speaker 1 be

Speaker 2 so in tune with each other that they see something going on.

Speaker 2 They know, they know. And before I even know, sometimes that

Speaker 2 I'm falling off the wagon emotionally or doing it. And

Speaker 2 they step in and like, hey, let's, dude, come have a beer with me. We're going to the bar tonight.

Speaker 1 Like, come on,

Speaker 2 come out. And

Speaker 2 it just gets brought up in conversation. I talk it out and it's like, damn, I really fucking needed that.

Speaker 1 I really needed it. Being in tune.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But again, the fucking solo artist thing, dude. And I mean, this is another, another challenge, like something else that people don't realize with their favorite band.

Speaker 1 As soon as you move from mid-level to just beyond where you guys are, as opposed to being on the bus, you'll probably be able to get hotels every night. Yeah.
And wouldn't that be wonderful?

Speaker 1 God, so much better. Oh, I'm on my own.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'm in a room on

Speaker 1 my own. I'm in a room on my own.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And that, again, velvet handcuff. Do you know how few fucking bat you remember being in the fucking transit thing, sleeping on the roof, whatever the fuck?

Speaker 2 Walmart parking lots, man.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And you're like, okay, now we've got a bus.
Wouldn't it be great if it was, wouldn't it be great if we had hotels? And

Speaker 1 for every level, there's a devil is a way to look at it.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, yeah, do you, is Taylor Swift getting a ton of sympathy? You know, not really.
No.

Speaker 1 But yeah, like someone who's on her own on. on our private jet, but also alone.
Really lonely. Yeah.
Would it be better? I mean, my tour,

Speaker 1 we get to fly, me and the guys, we can pick a row. Like, hey, we get to pick our seats.
Yeah. Like, that's kind of nice.
Like, you know, you've got it bored together. You're in the airport.

Speaker 1 Maybe you get yourself some fucking like tacos or something. Yeah.
And

Speaker 1 there is this weird

Speaker 1 isolation that comes with

Speaker 1 not that comes with success because that sounds like it's like the ethos of being successful or something. There is a type of isolation that is afforded by luxury, like structurally afforded.

Speaker 1 Well, you know, you don't need to get the bus, you can get an Uber. Or you don't need to get the Uber, you can get a driver.

Speaker 1 So you don't even, it's the same guy and he knows that you don't want to talk or whatever.

Speaker 1 Like you don't need to be in the van, you can be in the bus. You don't need to be in the bus, you can be in the hotel.

Speaker 1 You don't need to be in the hotel, you can be each in your own bus and then on your jet, you know, and you become increasingly isolated. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, this can even happen to people at home too, right? It's like, oh, I just want a cool house with like, I'm sick of going to the gym. I want a gym in my house.
That'd be cool. Okay, cool.

Speaker 1 You get a gym in your house. And then you're like, I'm sick of always having to like go out for meals.
I'm just going to DoorDash everything. And oh, I'm sick of going out to the pool.

Speaker 1 I just want a pool in my own house. And before you know it, it's like you just build, this is not from experience, by the way.

Speaker 1 But like, you know, for people who are successful at home, it's just like, yeah, cool. Now I have this place where I don't have to go anywhere.
And that actually kind of sucks. Yeah, I'm sick.

Speaker 1 I'm sick of having to, I'm sick of getting complained at by my wife when I want to play video games. I just want a video game room.

Speaker 1 You have a video game room and you spend two hours less per day with your wife. Yeah.
Yeah. 100%.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And yeah, it's, I'm grateful for

Speaker 1 the complexities

Speaker 1 of living with a bunch of smelly men. And we have a system for this.
So

Speaker 1 yes, there's navigating like our own emotional internal struggle with each other. And yeah, those I think are done typically through like one-on-ones.
You're like, oh, let's go grab lunch or whatever.

Speaker 1 And hey, man, my whole life fucking sucks. And then you talk about that.
right? But then

Speaker 1 how do we all work together and not build resentment together?

Speaker 1 A lot of testosterone, you know, we're artists, so there's maybe a lot on the lower side, but

Speaker 1 we've built a system called Sunday SmackDowns. So every Sunday on the road, we will just kind of group together and it's kind of like, hey, this is the time.
Like,

Speaker 1 how, how's everything gone this past week? Are we good? Is there any

Speaker 1 brief? Yeah, and I mean, it can either be personal of like, hey, that thing you said the other day actually like really pissed me off. Like, can we kind of talk about that a little bit? Or,

Speaker 1 hey, dude, I think like

Speaker 1 what you're saying during this part of the set is not landing. Like, or Gabe, your timing on this song is actually not great.
Or your wardrobe is like pretty lame, actually, right?

Speaker 1 Like, kind of the just an opportunity for us to come together. And it's like creating the umbrella of

Speaker 1 we are open

Speaker 1 for criticism and we are open or constructive feedback, whatever you want to say. Fearless feedback.
Fearless feedback. Yeah.
And also able to give it. And it kind of

Speaker 1 it disintegrates this awkward thing that I think a lot of us experience in relationships

Speaker 1 where

Speaker 1 Let's say your girlfriend thinks like, you know, hey, everything's all good.

Speaker 1 Then you kind of have to have this awkward moment. You're like, hey, I want to bring something up.

Speaker 1 And now it's like, oh, she wasn't expecting you to bring something up. And now it's kind of like, well, hey, I was just kind of like wanting to have a nice little Sunday afternoon.

Speaker 1 And now you're coming to me with this thing that I did yesterday. I don't really feel like talking about it, but it's important to you.
So we'll talk about it.

Speaker 1 But I'm kind of on, like, now I'm on edge. But I think honestly, just literally having, hey, this is a thing that we do.
And hey, if we sit down, we're like, all good? Yes. Okay, cool.

Speaker 1 Let's see you later.

Speaker 2 But it just creates an environment to be able to like open up about it and like not have that like butting of heads in a non-judgmental way it's really smart yeah that's really walking off stage if something frustrated you or you bumped into like we don't do like much blocking but it's like oh dude i was i was going to step up on the riser with the the spotlight and at that point or like you know whatever whatever it may be it's like don't have to walk off stage and it's still burning in my brain and it's the other guy doesn't even know he did it and now I have to bring this up.

Speaker 2 And well, now you just look back on that show. They're like, it sucked.
And then it's going to roll into your next show and all that.

Speaker 2 So to have that where it's like, yeah, like a week ago, I've been thinking about it. Honestly, it didn't even really bother me that much.

Speaker 2 I'm just going to say right now, but I've cooled off over it too.

Speaker 2 But then you're not ruining someone's show the next time. Then you're, when you go to perform, you just, you're thinking about that and you're not thinking about being in the moment of performing.

Speaker 2 And yeah, I think it's very helpful. We started doing that.

Speaker 1 Dale Carnegie wrote a lesser-known second book that's called How to Stop Worrying and Start Living. And in it, he advocates for something called worry time.

Speaker 1 And that's basically what you guys have got, which is

Speaker 1 if your brain knows when it's going to be able to ruminate about something, it's able to release at least a little bit of the need to ruminate right now, as opposed to you like

Speaker 1 getting just... a tiny bit of sand flicked at you every second.

Speaker 1 You just pick this big rock up at the end of the week. And

Speaker 1 I think that's really smart. There's this fucking wonderful idea from Neil Strauss.
He says, unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.

Speaker 1 Whoa, wow.

Speaker 1 That's shit. Yeah.
It's a fucking, it's a real like, oh, that's so true. Yeah.
That's so true. I didn't tell you that I wanted you to do this thing and then you didn't do it and I got mad at you.

Speaker 1 Or I didn't tell you that this thing pissed me off and I wanted you to stop and then you kept doing it and I got mad at you.

Speaker 1 Unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. And what you're doing is you're allowing yourselves to have a free, non-judgmental forum where people are able to bring up any of the

Speaker 1 spoken expectations, right? And they're able to get away from those metastasizing into resentments.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 it's fucking

Speaker 1 clever. I wonder how many bands would have

Speaker 1 improved their longevity if they'd implemented, what's it, SmackDown Sundays? Yeah.

Speaker 1 SmackDown Sundays. Sunday SmackDown, yeah, I think.
I wonder how many. We're licensing it right right now.
Silly bus.

Speaker 1 Silly bus time.

Speaker 2 I got it tattooed on my finger already, so you can't take it.

Speaker 1 That's a good team, baby. That's exactly the same as registering it with the fucking trademark office.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 As soon as you get it tattooed, first person to get it tattooed, and you'd say, sorry, Nike.

Speaker 1 Someone got it tattooed on them in 1940 or some bullshit.

Speaker 1 Gabe and Eric, I appreciate the fuck out of both of you. I think the new record's fantastic.
Everyone should go and stream it. Are you touring? When are you touring next?

Speaker 1 Or have you not released that?

Speaker 1 Haven't released it at the moment. We're playing Warp Tour in November.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Really busy next year that people will see. We're in Europe

Speaker 1 in October. That's announced.
September, October? Yeah, something like that. And then, yeah,

Speaker 1 to be determined. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Lots of stuff coming, though, so keep an eye.

Speaker 2 We'll be touring. We were just saying we're going to be touring like, you know, like four or five months a year.
It's a lot more than that this year, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would also just like to sign off by saying, Chris, your calves are magnificent.

Speaker 1 So jealous. I did not know this about you.
It has not been addressed, at least from what I've seen. And

Speaker 1 damn. Thanks, man.
I wondered why you were looking at that angle. I thought it was something else.

Speaker 1 I would say sort of the forearm and calf, the extremities. Oh, yeah.
I do well at the extremities. As you get more toward the middle,

Speaker 1 less conditioned. You get out toward the end,

Speaker 1 very lean and very well conditioned. Boys, you're great.
The new record fucking slaps. I'm so happy to see you.
I thought you crushed it when I saw you at Summer of Loud as well.

Speaker 1 And I'm looking forward to the tour. I'll be there.

Speaker 2 Nice. Thanks for having us.

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