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

44:49I mean, the Chuggy Cheese band was pretty sick. That was dope. Those robots were sick. That is true. Maybe your fucking demise is closer than you think. But yeah, I think there's a mode around that. And it'll be a fascinating few guys. My really unpopular with musicians theory is that musicians believe that they have a, they should have a special kind of protection around them 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. I mean, anybody can sit down and try and sing and like make a song, but the barrier to entry is significantly higher.

45:30Like you need to learn so much in practice for a very long time. 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. And I think that this is one of the reasons that musicians have a particular bee in their bonnet around why AI needs some sort of restriction on it. 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.

46:08Whereas as is being demonstrated right now any idiot can do a podcast right like you got any three idiots any three idiots can do a podcast um 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 uh behemoth leviathan that is ai it's not going to happen yeah so it's a case of how you're going to be able to adapt to it yeah totally and i try not to just like sit around thinking 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 um but yeah to your point it's like okay well what's in my control because i can't control ai 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 but yeah to to analyze all of those things like is 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 10 hours a day just practicing drums like if i if i get 10 times better at drums right now the band will grow zero percent 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 my own ways but now what's the next thing that I can focus on that will actually take me to where I want to go it got me the audition which is very cool but yeah it's it's always that's always like a thing I'm trying to think about in my head is like, yeah, what?

47:55Now what? What are some of the other secrets that the music industry should be talking about but isn't? I think that, kind of like what I was saying of how competitive things are, it's not, for the most part, enough to just be a good band anymore. I think you need to be very multifaceted in having your departments in the business right so like for example if we use i prevail for example 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 for me okay like my department is cool I can play drums but I'm also have a ton of experience uh growing in organic content media machine or team or whatever that is and marketing and back in business and growing the merch sales or whatever that is right 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 and it's like you you kind of have to have these like other facets that contribute to the overall project and outside of that i would just say 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 i got paid see you later but it's like oh actually there are these nine different arms of how you can make money but before it comes to you it's going to go uh percent at 10 is going to go over here for the person who booked the tour 20 is going to go to just the general manager who just handles business stuff 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.

50:07And 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, ah, I'll try to catch as much as I possibly can. That, uh, is a, 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. Here's your monthly or yearly, whatever. Significantly more simple. But that is because I've done the equivalent of remaining independent as an artist. I'm not signed. I've never, ever been signed to any network. I'm not owned by a media agency.

50:47I'm not even signed. I don't even have an agent. So like everything is just me. Everything is bootstrapped. Everything is bootstrapped. The tour that we put together, bootstrapped. The team that we put together, bootstrapped. Everything. Like we booked our on tour manager like this is not yeah so um 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 oh the something isn't working out with whatever partner this is we would have a 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 i don't know i i hope that it doesn't seem at the moment at least the genres I'm interested in, you guys 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.

51:59But yeah, if I was a big hip hop fan or something, maybe I'd feel differently. 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. Before we continue, I've been drinking AG1 every morning for as long as I can remember now, because it is the simplest way I've found to cover my bases and not overthink nutrition, and that is why I partnered with them. Just one scoop gives you 75 vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and whole food ingredients in a single drink. Now, they've taken it a step further with AG1 NextGen, the same one scoop, once a day ritual, but this time backed by four clinical trials.

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53:13That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. And, you know, then 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. 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, 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. Their song, their songs are good. and they develop the skill of organic content or paid ads or marketing. I mean, probably not paid ads as much, but like, yeah, marketing themselves.

53:53If 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, 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 independent. Get horrendous at it, but yeah. Yeah. 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 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 um 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 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 there's some big yeah 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 uh for you i wouldn't say college but um go you know go to college and get a degree in business And I'm like, I don't care about business.

55:03I want to play drums. The ironic thing is that to be able to play drums professionally, I had to learn a lot about business. But then, you know, by my own accord, really fell in love with a lot of it because it's like, I think any musician starts to love it because it's very challenging. 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 never arrived. You can always get better, but I think business has that same thing too, right? Where it's like, oh, now it's not just drumming that I have to get better at.

55:39Business is an umbrella term. There's accounting, there's marketing, there's blah, blah, blah, blah. So there's endless things to calendars. You have direct input on the lyrics that you write, the melodies that come out. You don't have the same with how well the accounts are put together. 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. I was like a Velcro for criticism, self-criticism and Teflon for self-praise because your contribution to the success of a business, anything really within the business operations, even if you come up with the best marketing tagline of all time you're not the one that delivered it you're not the one that chose how the audience responded to it and you're not the one that said that the sales whatever created the page that had the conversion rate optimization that did the um and it meant that i always was more easily able to ignore where i'd done well with things like that 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, it's almost one-to-one input-to-output ratio of effort to reward is available.

57:07If you write a fucking slamming song, individually or as a group, that thing is yours and you made it directly. There was no molestation in between you and this thing happening. And I think a lot of the time people feel out of control and out of connection with what's going on in their lives because there are so many layers of fuckery between them and the shit that is supposed to be the goal on the other side of the other side of the shit that's going to be a hundred and the shit that's going to be a hundred and that's going to be a hundred and that's going to be a hundred and that's band because you do have these moments like with this last album we made we blocked off eight months we're basically mondays from 10 to 6 we show up in the studio every day and we just walk in we walk in not knowing what we want to create and we walk out with something and that i i can't I just don't have that in any other area of my life where it feels like pure creativity.

58:25And those short moments are like just so awesome. Like driving home in your car, listening to this 30 second demo that you just wrapped up five minutes ago. And then the next, honestly, the next day on the way to the studio, you listen to it. You're like, actually, it sucks. But the drive home felt so magical. But now we have to improve it. And you constantly, yeah. Eric comes in is like yeah that sucks but let's do this and then you're like oh shit that's awesome now and every it's just like it feels like pure creativity and it's yeah crazy to think that you come in with you know five dudes come in a room and have having talked about what we're going to work on today 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 there's something that came out of nothing you know and that that bit of creativity and feeling that reward is is unlike 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 group of friends that you're like there there was nothing before this and now we have this this piece of art and if and 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 what what should what should be the counterpart of this song you know what what we did something a little heavier on this let's uh just the whole creative process is is so rewarding you know in that in that sense what have you learned about navigating a career in an industry that's ripe with burnout and crisis and recovery and stuff like that oh man um for me personally being on the road specifically uh 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 your time zones are all fucked up and and being lost on on tour just you know that that burnout feel you know um for me personally it's like trying to find those days off when we have them, uh, to feel like a human again.

1:00:39Like I'm, I'm big into, uh, 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. So to, 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 record shop, doing something that makes you feel like a person again has definitely helped that that you know four weeks into a you know 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 to distract yourself from the the the mental fatigue has uh been huge for me yeah i mean i think like being on the road is a gift in so many ways and you know like a dream come true and also, right?

1:01:33Like, life happens when you are on the road and you miss it. Like, people die, right? 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 is now gone. And now I have to go, like, in front of thousands of people and 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 you have to get through some shit and that might be in the midst of 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 you haven't seen your family for months at a time uh tragedy happens like it is a lot and i and also like on the road there have been so many of like I think collectively our lowest moments but it's also coupled with these moments that are so unique that I personally could never get and once it's done it's done like for example like the the creativity of creating a song I'm just like I won't I don't think I'm gonna find that somewhere else or performing in front of people and being like part of a collective experience It's like, sorry, Eric, I, there have been many moments in my time with the band where I'm like, is this really what I want to do?

1:03:23Like, I am exhausted from the chaos. I miss being home. I love being home. Uh, like, is this really what I want to do? But I think there's these things where it's like, but once it's done, it's, it's done. and also yes like there are times where there's like tension in the band but also you form you trauma bond together as a group you know where when people really need it like you are there for each other and like there's never another time in my life where I'm gonna be able to have sleepovers with my 30 year old bros you know what I mean but on tour like every night it's like after the show I'll see you in the back lounge Silly bus time.

1:04:39words 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 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 lost, 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, to us and, and, and forget everything. So it's also keeping that in mind when we go on stage, like this is just as much our moment having fun up here as your moment, you know, your once this month or once this year getting to, to release or, or exercising demons in the pit, or to just forget about all the the bullshit that they have going on at home 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 you know put put the show we call putting getting into our show he's like you're you've got severance it's your indy and your audi it's like our normie and our showy yeah so it's time to zip into our showy and get out there and give give everyone the show that they want to they they deserve you know Well, that's what's called being a professional, right?

1:06:00Like, you know, if you're a firefighter and you've had a big argument in a sleepless night with the wife last night or arguing or something, I'm not equating rock stars and firefighters in terms of importance. Thank you. Please, thank you. Because you're saying that we're more important, right? Yeah, okay, good, good. I just wanted to make sure. Significantly. But 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, because any job that's a lot of fun or that has just fun as a part of it, starts to see anything that isn't fun as a bug, not a feature.

1:06:48And you go, hey, yeah, I know that sometimes shit's hard, but for some people's jobs, all of it's hard. yeah yeah 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 tour for me starts this week and i'm like yeah 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 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 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 you go well some people don't ever feel adrenaline like the reason that you've got that is because of how much positive reinforcement you got earlier in the night.

1:07:47Yeah. Um, yeah, I guess there's something I'm interested in. You mentioned it's like, it's a sleepover with your bros in your thirties. Everybody's aging, right? Everybody's getting older. Uh, 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 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. So you're going to have to say, hey, darling, I know that you're really keen on having a baby next year.

1:08:33The wedding was wonderful. Thank you for allowing us to slot it in in between Australia and the second run on the US tour. But we're not going to be able to start trying until late July because we've got this new amphitheater run that we've got that's lined up. And, you know, like, 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? Yeah, I mean, I'm going through it right now, planning a wedding next spring and just constantly reminding the guys like, hey, check the calendar. We got a tour offer.

1:09:09And is that tour offer again? Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, I have a week. I can get married. But yeah, that's, 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. And like our guitar, Steve just had a kid three years ago during when we were recording our last record and he went off and Melissa had the baby. And then they we released the record and went on the road shortly after that. So, you know, missing the early, early years of his child's child's life. And it's difficult trying to plan around life events, major life events like that.

1:09:48But, you know, we, we try our best between the five of us to plan things, uh, the intimate parts of our lives and, and our, our little group. And, and, uh, you know, if someone's got to fly home for a weekend, we try to slot some, some times, you know, days off where it's okay. You can fly home this weekend. All right, cool. We'll meet up with you in, you know, three stops from now. And, but yeah, it's something that I think, I don't know if we haven't 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 have our personal lives and those huge moments and having a kid or getting married or friends' weddings, standing in weddings, whatever it may be.

1:10:28It's a challenge. It definitely is a challenge. Yeah, I think it's like 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. and then that that stops to be that stops being the sacrifice it's like oh we're we're touring touring less and making more than twelve dollars so okay cool but then yeah as you get older there's more sacrifice in it in a different way your parents are getting older thinking about having kids how how do you navigate that how do you navigate a marriage where it's long distance That's pretty uncommon.

1:11:10But also in some ways, like, I think with any sacrifice, it's difficult, but also there are gifts inside all of it, right? Because 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. I'm like, you might always be with your spouse and never kind of have that opportunity to truly miss your spouse. 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, I'm going to be gone and I'm going to have this opportunity to desperately miss you and to have reconnection time, which yes, can sometimes be an adjustment, right?

1:12:01For sure. 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 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. But I've had to create a life where I can cope with the distance of you being away. So yeah, I've walled myself off a little bit. Yeah, maybe I'm not as soft or accommodating as you might like me to be. 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.

1:12:39Yeah, totally. And you're both coping in your own ways, right? And I'm coping by laughing my ass off with my friends. Right. And, uh, in, yeah, this weird way where, and everything is kind of handed to you on the road, you know? Um, 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, that's just not really a marriage. Like that's not a give and take that's just a take um but yeah i do think like what that opens up then is more conversations to grow closer and be like hey like this isn't actually working when i'm gone or it's actually not working when i come back like how can we navigate this together and use it as an opportunity to grow closer or to create systems in our family or any of my relationships to make this work better without completely overstretching both of ourselves.

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1:14:15And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it completely risk-free, use it for 29 nights, and if you do not love it for any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35 % off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. Yeah, I understand what you mean.

1:14:46The 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? 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're gone for 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 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 it's tough yeah it's a it's a fucking i you know that was the fascinating thing speaking to aaron and tim uh 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 and um it's an interesting question most people when they're building a project what they're looking to do is over time do fewer things that they don't want to do like 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 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 reality.

1:16:22Now, what does that look like? 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 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 because you're always going to feel high after you've come off stage. But then what's accumulating in the background? How many ruptures without repair have occurred in the relationship? 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.

1:17:16We're in salt lake it's gonna be great like all of these things are these weird hidden costs that you pay kind of out the back here and um i see especially with the age and this is meant complementarily 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 like metal stars. Yeah. Ollie from Bring Me must be 38. I think he's about my age, 36 to like 40 or something like that. I think he might be my age, 37. You're talking like, I don't know what Ronnie Radke is. Ronnie's going to be like, you know. He's in his 40s, I think. Ronnie's in his 40s.

1:18:05Can you really still, 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, if you're not careful, you missed your life. You missed your life. You didn't just like do this thing when you were young and had fun. Fucking under oath. 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. It's, it's the illusion that 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 the time.

1:18:51I 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. You never know when it's going to end. It's done the haymaking season thing. I get it. But it's an illusion in a way, right? It's a horizon. Every step you take toward it, It gets one step further away. And it's weird because I'm aware of it. And I also 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.

1:19:22It'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. 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? Like, it's the same thing. Yeah. We're just simple creatures, man. Yeah. But yeah, yeah, that is a, man, that is something that is a little scary to think about sometimes where it's like, we've been doing this for 11 years. And I look back, I'm like, man, I remember that tour.

1:19:54That was seven years ago. That was, I was 23. I'm 34. Like, where did my life 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, it's tough to, tough to think that, like you're saying, it's the horizon just keeps going, keeps going. When, when, when are we going to be content? And I don't, I don't know. I guess the only thing I can hope for is to build this up as, as big as possible.

1:20:33So we can bring our loved ones out on the road more often. We can have these shared experiences more often out on the road. You're then asking a lot of your loved ones, right? Exactly. Because you're saying, hey, honey, you know your life? Exactly. How do you feel about not having that? How do you feel about your life being, 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, maybe. I see that point and I think there's something to consider there for sure of missing the people who you love.

1:21:10But I also think if I were to flip it, 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 think I might have the same thought of. You missed your life. 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, you just want what you don't have. Choose your regrets, dude. Yeah. So, so true. You've nailed it. Everybody assumes the thing that's missing in their life is the thing that they want. Yeah. And we are like that in our ability to be able to wish.

1:21:51The grass is greener, despite the fact that we were on the other grass only a week ago. Yeah. 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. 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. I want to be like, I'm not doing enough. I should be in more chaos. You're like, you just did a seven week tour. And I think this is the same. everybody feels it is sort of part of the human system 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 uh yeah 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 i'm okay with this yeah i feel like i'm okay with this i know um i've heard her mosey say like something i'll paraphrase it of like 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 side it's just different shit 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 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 new tonic tasty yeah it's so good I don't know which one my camera is this my camera so 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 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 And would they still take that trade?

1:23:44Maybe. But I think, again, yeah, we look at other people's lives and are like, 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 true. People find industries that work for them, right? Like if you're not that much of a touchy-feely affectionate person, 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. I might as well be away. Right. And that's where you see. I wrote this essay a little while ago about people who have the talent, but not the constitution to become very successful.

1:24:33uh lewis 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 um lewis 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 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 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 yeah and um that is a a unique kind of pain where you go fuck like the thing that i want to be a world-class recording artist, touring musician, or fucking soldier or sports star or whatever.

1:25:32I have all of the capability. 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. You could have really sensitive circadian disruption in your sleeping pattern, and that would mean you could not be a touring artist. It would just take such a toll on your health that your expiry date would be would be pretty snap close yeah and um yeah yeah you're right the 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 yeah i've heard you say about life on the road and missing uh funerals missing friends and birthdays there's this keith urban thing, The Road on CBS at the moment.

1:26:19First episode came out this week. 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. It's a calling and you're born to do it or you're not going to make it, he said. 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, 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? Urban, who recently split from a strange wife, Nicole Kidman, continued, the only answer could be, because this is what I'm born to do, we're going to find out who's made of that stuff.

1:26:52And we're going to find out who's made of that stuff is to do with being on the road. Really interesting that someone who recently split from his estranged wife is sort of being used as the, and look, if you too are sufficiently successful, this could be your life also. Like, really does show how narrow the aperture is that we perceive success through, right? It really is. It doesn't sound to me like, well, I mean, it's a public interview. So how would you know? It's not quite the place for someone to drop into their emotions. 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.

1:27:37But who knows? 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 like some person that works offshore on an oil rig or a soldier, right? Because it's not too dissimilar. They do tours, different sorts of venues. But I think people feel differently about that because that feels like more of a obligation. Yeah. There's a nobility attached to that. there's some there's a you guys get less sympathy because you're like fucking about yeah champagne problems man yeah yeah yeah yeah i i do have um i do have some sense of guilt sometimes where i'm like how dare i feel so bad right now like um i feel like one of the first times i went through something hard on the road was uh one of my best friends and uh living at living at my place with me um took his own life um right before we uh walked on stage in pittsburgh and that was like the first time that i i like allowed myself to like feel feel bad about missing things like when it was a wedding or something i was like it's like oh man i'm just is this really i'm i'm getting to live my life and my dreams and do these things and like I don't 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 no it's okay it's okay to feel bad and like it's you know man 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, and, uh, remind yourself how, how lucky and blessed you are to be doing this.

1:29:38And, um, yeah, over, over the last few years, I've tried to balance that, like sense of guilt of, uh, living my dreams, let's say over, you know, missing the funerals and the friendships and planning, oh, okay. Well, I go back. I'm just gonna have to rebuild that relationship or they understand my, my family understands that I'm, I'm out here doing, doing big things and, and trying to live my dreams, but it's always a challenge. It's always a challenge going out on the road and being gone for so long and looking back at the things you're missing, but then reminding yourself, this is what you signed up for.

1:30:13How lucky are you that a fraction of a percent of people get to do this and enjoy it while you can't because tomorrow it could just be gone. AI could take over. We're just done. Yeah, I think it's tricky to balance the responsibility of you have a group of thousands of people who paid, you know, however much to like, 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, you know, has that 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 and like this could have been their past two weeks paycheck to be here so i'm going to play i'm going to to no matter what like be here and so i think it's balancing that responsibility while also not becoming um not uh valuing their validation in an unhealthy way so it's like you have a responsibility to them 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 i mean we're putting ourselves on a stage in front of people uh screaming our our name not my name because i'm the drummer but screaming your band's name 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 but i think that's 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.

1:32:10I think so much about how sad it is that some people got one-shotted with status games in high school and never grew out of them. Like they just need to be accepted by the cool kids, even if the cool kids are a bunch of strangers on the internet. and they just you can see I think they cycle through life ignoring almost feeling an ick or a kind of allergy to anybody who gives them free and available love 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 what's wrong with you no you're supposed to make You're supposed to reject me or not want me.

1:33:03You're supposed to make me hurt for it or something. And that's a pattern that is really unfortunate because it's going to cause you to ignore 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. Yeah. And that can also be a good thing though, because some of those people don't actually really see you. You know, if you're like dating someone for a long time, yeah, they probably really see you. But 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.

1:33:48You might be a fan of our songs, our music, which is really cool. But like, if I 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 where you just accept all of this praise from people who don't know you. But then on the same side, that's when like oftentimes their downfall is because with any, 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? 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 and then people get bored of turning on you and they go, okay, well now they're down so let's lift them back up.

1:34:37Now they have somewhere to go again, right? I think that's so right. You can almost see it in these little cycles up and down. I think anybody that gets to a size has to have an ascendancy, right? That's where you get to the size. Everybody has to have a moment where they Icarus it a little. And it is just whether or not they managed to pick back up on that one. And after that, I mean, you can obviously completely like tamikaze yourself if you do something wrong. But after that one, typically, I see very few people that just keep going up. Like almost everybody has one dip. So it's like, okay, get ready for the dip.

1:35:17Yeah. I guess with you guys, how has the, how do you define your guys' identity as a band now that the lineups changed, that the dynamics evolved, that the sounds evolved as well. The reason I think about that is artists, podcasters, comedians, get, they capture attention for doing a thing well. Yeah. there is a temptation to just do that thing again uh 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 uh plus an evolution in terms of sound 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 behold you know what i mean like how do you navigate all of this yeah i think it's a it's a a challenge that we're we're finding out right now um learning as we go but yeah i i think it's difficult on a personal side because you you think you haven't changed individually we haven't changed the writing is still we're still writing and not from the outside a lot's changed but on the inside maybe not so much so when you hear and see out you know whether it's fans or fairweather fans or whatever that are are like oh that's it's a whole different band it's different it's not it's like well we we don't feel that different 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 is like you know i i've been writing in this band since day day one and now all of a sudden i i feel like a stranger to my my own band just from the perception of of a couple nameless people out there you know and it's um it's been it's been a struggle personally but yeah how how do you feel about this i think our identity is it is shifting like i think to what you were talking about earlier you have this um 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 um and in a lot of ways with that change, we've kind of leaned into the different a little bit from the standpoint of like how we are trying to interact with each other as a group and trying to nourish our relationship with each other as much as possible.

1:38:07But in some ways, it's... I keep talking about gifts. but like they're like you said the thing that got us here we don't even in some ways our sound is naturally now different 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 matter what we do now it's going to be different and so we have to or we get to reanalyze like 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 breaks open your life in a new way. I liken it to, yeah, a relationship where you have a relationship with someone for 10 years.

1:39:05And 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. You know, the interesting thing about it is that most people in a relationship, they go their separate ways and there's pain there for sure. But it's kind of up to you to ask yourself, what do you want next? 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. And I actually want you to do this.

1:39:43And it's like, well, okay. Like I appreciate the feedback, like understood, but I kind of have to go on this journey. I hope that you can come on this journey with me. Um, because my, my family, my fans, you know, the, 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, 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 do what is authentic to me and us. And yeah, that's kind of what the process has been like. And yeah, no doubt there's been a ton of challenges in it.

1:40:29But damn, do I think we've grown a ton from it? Absolutely. And really excited for what the path is for us moving forward. I mean, I'm so stoked on this record. Chris, 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. It's great. I'm just insecure. I need more validation. Please, strangers on the internet, tell me that I'm good enough. Fucking millions of people a year are not enough. what I thought was interesting with what you guys did and I think 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?

1:41:12yeah what you guys did that was really interesting was you chose three very different tracks from the album and I thought that was kind of unique I would say President did a not bad job with releasing ahead 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. I thought Conclave was actually maybe a stronger track that was like hidden deep in the EP and they could have brought that out. Omens, both of their tracks have been a little samey, but fucking like obviously fucking brilliant. Yeah. Which is great.

1:41:49And I thought it was interesting. I've had this idea in my mind for ages about you as a band decide that you're going to put out two or three or four singles and then you drop an album. 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. When you take these three, this is an indication of what the longer record is going to be like. But then you put it out on Spotify and the fucking audience gets to decide. And you're like, track eight really you motherfuckers really the fucking acoustic track are you are you kidding me yeah or whatever right they pick the thing well that's actually the case here yeah yeah yeah yeah i checked this okay i was gonna say it's way too specific yeah no it's weird dude it's like we 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 yeah a year and three months or something like that of just pouring our 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 and uh all that getting lost in the sauce 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 uh he didn't say this but he felt so he's like guys this song's not on the album i'm gonna leave like he wasn't really but um but yeah so it's weird it's just weird like the insecurity just starts to like build of like well let's just let's move this one out i don't know and then two months later you're like let's bring it back in like I haven't listened to that one.

1:43:41And you're like, oh, it's actually really good. But yeah, then you get this like 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 once you've written it, the insecurity starts creeping up again. Fuck, I knew we should have put track eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What, 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. Yeah, I think we had like three or so. Maybe that got to a second chorus. I think four or five. Four or five, yeah.

1:44:23But then don't forget the seven songs we wrote even before scrapping all of those. Yeah, true. Good point. So probably another 10 songs. Right. That still seems relatively lean to me. That seems like a pretty good hit rate, right? to write one in two songs makes the album makes mastered fucking out there yeah that seems like i don't know is that it might be yeah i feel like every band has something a little bit different the the interesting thing with thing with us is that like 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 as long as we have a nugget that we think is good enough mainly we're building it around something yes yes yeah if we're like oh this course is sick let's keep going back to it 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 like that's what i mean about when you put it 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 because if song eight the acoustic song eats shit and you go wow i mean there's fucking no chance that we're playing that live but if there's the prospect of oh fuck like this is it's a most played track on spotify ranked at the moment or whatever we have to do that fuck we have to do this no like oh yeah whatever right but it's cool yeah it's cool because you've had this idea look how clever i am i know my my release in advance i'm gonna do my little singles and then you put the fucking thing out and then all of your fans just go fuck you dude i'm gonna choose what i want yeah i think it's so cool yeah and it's uh it's i don't want to say challenge but it's like when we start writing the record and then you start fantasizing about the future like a year year and a half from now you start okay when we do the headliner you know we're going to open with this song imagine the set opening like this and we roll on this song we pull this deep cut out from two records ago and 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 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 we have these little nuggets ideas 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 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 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 you know we have so many different sounds and different emotions through through our lyrics and moods and all that and you don't want to put all the heavy stuff right up front you want to save all the energetic stuff till the end you know it's building that dynamic roller journey feel like to go on so let me give you this right for But just in case you guys thought that you had it hard, the way that I have to put together a live show, I come up with ideas in the most sterile environment possible, just on my own.

1:48:03Maybe 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, there's no sound, right? Because the single best thing that can happen, 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. If I'm going to go and do this, the best thing that I can have is pin drop silence. 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. and then like hanging on what the next bit of the story or the word is going to be.

1:48:46I'm like, was that more quiet than the other bit? Like, I have no fucking idea. And then people finish up and they go, I love the bit about the man that fell over on the street or whatever the fuck it is that someone comes up with. And I'm like, trying to aggregate that is, for me, you know, a 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. 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 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.

1:49:21Yeah. You know, so on and so forth. You'll see on Sunday in Toronto. Yeah. But the fucking feedback mechanism, dude. Yeah. Is like, I don't know, I feel like a MI6H, Sherlock Holmes, trying to reverse engineer what it is that the audience is thinking about are you enjoying this? Do you like it more than the last bit? Who fucking knows? What does the silence represent to you? Tension. Presence. Yeah. Like real 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 and then Bali there's a couple of bits where people catch their breath where you hear like a like that and i'm like oh that's fucking cool that's sick 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 and i'm like oh that's fucking cool yeah um and then there's like laughy bits and i've got some new uh i tested i did the final work in progress show last night and i tested some new stand-up bits and they fucking destroyed there was so much fun nice they're like there's some of them that are way too spicy for me to feel comfortable saying in like 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 so yeah but it's it's real interesting and I've I've very much appreciated getting to watch you guys and everyone else like how much attention gets paid to constructing a set I was with fucking Sam and Dan from Architects Jesus fucking Christ dude like they pay so much attention to like every little bit transitions bits in between songs and uh 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 do you realize how many conversations and like tens of hours were had just about that one bit of that one section of that show that you went to.

1:51:35It's crazy. It's so cool. It's like, 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 winter 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. 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? Okay, there's a guitar change, so we need to eat up some time.

1:52:08Well, maybe I'll talk over that part. Is it going to be dead silent? Is there 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? Are we going to extend the bridge? Am I going to try and get it? I've got some great jokes about America and Canada if you need to throw something.

1:52:24But yeah, it's, yeah, a lot of 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 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. If you're looking for it or you're paying attention to the whole set, you can tell that they put in a lot of work. 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 bring to the horizon i was gonna say yeah yeah all these level of attention to detail is like a fucking universe warping thing it's insane yeah yeah i i think that's the game you know i think like paying attention to those one percent details and like nailing them it's it's the difference between being bring me the horizon right 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 percent of his points say someone that reads the newsletter fucking knew that I liked you man I fucking 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's and we don't get me wrong like we try to play that game 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 have carefully and painstakingly built the live set.

1:54:16There have been half the video footage from one of our tours I filmed in my basement with these dudes and we just because we had someone else do it and we're like, this is not right. We're just going to have to do it ourselves. What do you mean you filmed it? Filmed what? So video content behind us on stage. On the iMags? yeah well the iMAX would be like following right yeah but it's the screen that it's in between the iMAX bullshit we had like a character like narrate in between every couple songs and so that character was yeah that's cool yeah yeah 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 playing at 30 percent velocity on the snare drum 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 and it's like paying attention to those little things or like yeah and bring me this case like what is the thing that builds the lore of this whole the outfit or social posts and then you take it a step further i suppose with somebody like sleep token but you also remove things right which allows you to suck in that speculation 100 that vacuum yeah i mean i've been thinking an awful lot recently about attention to detail and obsession.

1:55:37I have a conflicted relationship with obsession, quite an obsessive person, 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 any of my artist friends that are at that kind of a level. 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. 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. Depending on how old the can of Newtronic... Oh, okay. This is interesting.

1:56:20So this is a slightly older badge. I can tell that this is an older badge from the back here uh yeah yeah okay so 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 so mine and yours will be off to one side yeah and yours should be in the middle do you see how mine's offset to the left of the f yeah guess who picked that up. Yes. Like, and this is like millions of cans deep, right? This, this runs been going for ages. And I'm like, oh, somebody left like half a point to the left.

1:56:58They left aligned it inside of the margin. They didn't central line it inside of the space. Yeah. Great. We now have a can that's got this 1%, not even like 0.001%, uh, improvement. Fantastic. When I'm trying to refine the question idea that I've got for Matthew McConaughey or the way I'm going to word this new, oh, the Atlas complex I'm going to come up with on a newsletter. not so fantastic in my personal life. yeah yeah right and it's like hey obsession you're great it would work can i turn you off when like you know i want to fucking chill out on a night time yeah you don't get to do that it permeates all of you and i think this is one of the reasons that artists get conflicted a lot of the time and um ollie is a good example of that he is a fucking good friend i've known for like over a decade and a lovely, lovely, lovely guy.

1:57:57But 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, you pay a high price. You don't get extraordinary outcomes with ordinary inputs. And these guys have got extraordinary inputs, but they're not all good. Yeah. I'm convinced that you can't achieve anything great without having high levels of obsession and it is i think it's just yeah like what pain do you want do you want the pain of not achieving the big thing that you really want to achieve 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.

1:58:45Just which pain do you want? And had a healthy dash of imposter syndrome over it. It's great. Mark Manson has this idea. He says, what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to suffer and struggle for? Any pursuit, even the most existentially aligned, will regularly feel like work. 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 so everybody says find what looks like work to everyone else but feels like play to you as a good piece of advice for a competitive advantage which is unique and n of one but that disregards the fact that even the best pursuits regularly feel like labor right like being on the bus and these sleepless nights and chaos and being away from the family and all the rest of this stuff like that is the price that you pay everybody if all it was was pleasure 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 so orienting yourself toward the prices is better than orienting yourself toward the profits because people get kicked out.

2:00:08It's the exact same with relationships. It's the exact same with relationships. Relationships don't end because insufficient good times. They end because of too many sufficient bad times. 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. And the way that you handle arguments is the best predictor. 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 it's because we couldn't connect it's because you know it was like an overabundance of problems not a scarcity of of praises let's say if that makes sense yeah and uh i i think that i think that you see the same thing with people's pursuits.

2:00:59And it's like, you want to be fucking Vessel? You want to be Olly Sykes? It's like, okay, this is the mindset that you need to have. And this is the sort of life that you're going to have to lead. You want to be Lewis Capaldi? Because you can't separate his anxiety attacks from his songwriting ability. His anxiety attacks are his songwriting ability. It's like just this huge fuck. It's a onesie, right? It's not an outfit. It's not something that you get to piece together. It's 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, like a genius.

2:01:35I'm like, you are a genius comedian. And also 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. It's, I think, you know, or like Michael Jordan, right? 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? And still now, the last dance thing seems still conflicted. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting. I find it interesting that we are typically so pain averse as a collective, while also the 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 with what you were saying.

2:02:35And 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. 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. And if I'm not, again, I'm not a parent. I think that's what they think. I don't, I don't know. But it's interesting to me that for a lot of people that doesn't necessarily apply to other aspects of their life either.

2:03:14Which is, yeah, for me, it's kind of like flipped on the reverse though, too, where I'm like, oh yeah, well, I'm, I'm willing to give the sacrifice for the career and all that type of stuff. 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 I don't know I don't have a kid either dude yeah yeah I the obsession thing one final point on that I'd love to get your opinion on so people talk about sort of the relationship between discipline motivation obsession and I think the reason obsession's kind of having a moment right now Zach Pogarub is a friend of mine lives in New York does a lot of running he's like Mr.

2:03:54Obsession and I 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 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 progress maxi, let's say. And the reason that I think people love obsession so much is it's the freest motivation that you're ever going to get. 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.

2:04:38So if you think about sort of, uh, 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. That makes sense. It's like, like being pulled by it and in some ways that's great but in other ways i think it's really dangerous because 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 like i am compelled i can't not do this thing well what what if there's a time when you do want to not do that thing what if you need a weekend off what if you have had somebody close in your life pass away and you need to think about that.

2:05:23You probably could do dealing with your emotions for a couple of weeks or something and you go, no, no, no, I must do more tracks. There's songs to play and I get shows to do. I worry that the profits that are very obvious from obsession,

2:05:46free motivation, free discipline, consistency without effort basically because you're being pulled. I wonder how many people will look back and realize that that was like just chronic imbalance that felt easy at the time and in retrospect they're like, oh, fuck. I don't know whether that was the best decision. I didn't really have that much choice. So like a little bit more scrutiny around obsession might be worthwhile. 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, what's making you want to step back from obsession?

2:06:33I've done basically the same thing for nearly two decades now, which is just completely bury myself at working hard. And that's great. but it can cause you to become 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 so for instance for me to go and do the live shows it makes my life harder and financially it's a horrendous decision um it's been there for sure it's I mean even you know we're gonna do shows between 1500 and 750 ish caps so they are perfectly profitable and apart from the fact that I've got to fly a fucking ton of people out um uh 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 I was making a lifestyle style decision.

2:07:39I just continue. Like all of the elements of obsession would point me away from variation. Be like, do more of the thing. But that doesn't necessarily live, lead you to a varied, well-lived, adventurous life. And yeah, I'm thinking much more about what do I sort of want to look back? What are the memory dividends that I want to give myself in future and maybe that means letting go of some modes of validation and and positive reinforcement that i know work and rolling the dice on some 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 um longevity consistency like uh stick with itness uh over time because i'm not going to just like continue to grind away and grind away and grind away but 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 i've done that for a long time i'm like i think maybe trying to remove the blinkers a little bit is a bit of a good idea the equivalent of an acoustic track i guess i don't know of them track eight in particular track eight yeah yeah do you um um in the back of your head do you think at all of like well 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 but there also has to be room for 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.

2:09:33Like, 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 a really great question. 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 we just do it again we just do it again right we just run it back like people want more they love that last one they just want more of the same right 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 every single we didn't go through this We didn't dry run this in a rehearsal space yesterday.

2:10:22Oh, when you say that, I'm going to make a dick joke. And when you do that, you know, we'll do silly bus time. Nice, it's stuck. Yeah, it's in. You don't get to do that. So everybody gets to watch you fail in public. 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? It would be like if every demo, in fact, no, it would be like, if every practice session on the drums was published on the internet. Oh my God, dude. Because there's no such thing as practicing. There's no such thing as, like, you can perform in private.

2:11:01You can't do that here. And you can't even practice in private. When I could do a 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. yeah so yeah it's just it's it's an interesting one man it's a a very unique um position to be in and uh experimentation new studio which is just right now being built a couple of miles away from here that'll be exciting awesome um trying to do stuff like the mcconaughey thing running that back uh yeah just okay what what what's new what's different um trying to integrate music into the next live show like the australia canada australia new zealand one next year that'll be interesting okay what what are some areas where that 20 % exists where I might be able to find the two and um yeah it'll be it'll be exciting 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 is able to play with or you guys like fuck like it feels I want to embrace more of that I think it's very admirable i think you you guys are very fortunate that you have so much artistic freedom i think that's something that you shouldn't take lightly because there are much more constricted uh modes of putting your ideas and your thoughts and your emotions out there and uh you guys have one of the ones that's the freest um like as is shown by the fact that you can release a fucking acoustic track uh and and and it not just release it release it and it'd be received like unbelievably well um yeah, trying to trying to embrace that opportunity to be, all right, we can be a bit more experimental.

2:12:50What do you wish when you sort of think about the next few years for the band? 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? Like, what are you working toward? Yeah. um all of it i mean from from the you know now with with this sonic change we have uh still rediscovering what the next chapter iteration is going to be this is just the beginning you know what we get into now get to see what what works and what may not work and just with the music alone but then going to the live shows and you know we've done practical stage setups with we had a tour where there's a wrestling ring and it was rage on the stage and then we went and did the thing where it was just video content and as crazy as video content we could incorporate with the songs whether it was lyrics or just these crazy scenes that we're standing in front of and now how do we incorporate the two to have this massive look and how do we how do we keep making the the live show better how do we uh transition from this song to the next song and make this memorable moment and and uh yeah it's just like you said i think we're very lucky to be in this position as 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 what what is the best move because like you were 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 but we if you look at all these different things you know in 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 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 there's a big open road and it's it's exciting to see it's just exciting to think about what's gonna come from our creative hive mind here yeah yeah i think like i'm thinking about the obsession piece and i think like for myself probably for a lot of artists across music or whatever, I feel like obsession comes from scarcity.

2:15:30Like, I have to be obsessed about this because this could end at any time. We could put out, again, I don't think this is true, but I think the insecurity on our part is with everything being an experiment or fully creative, we don't have that format we can keep coming back to because then people go, like let me put it this way if you put out the the podcast format you've got the three cameras you go back and forth you can bring in a new guest ask good questions people aren't going to be like 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 yeah right but if we come back the old question yeah exactly exactly but if we yeah if we keep trying to recreate the same song people are like, I just like the original song.

2:16:21Stop trying to do the same thing. 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. 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 it feels like your whole career is balanced on like, we released 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. This whole thing could end like that at any time.

2:16:58And so I'm going to 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 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 while yes I agree like the creativity of it is great as a as a fellow youtuber I know what it's like to be like this format works we're just gonna put swap this word in the title 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 I would really struggle I think with the pressure of getting it right yeah because yeah you're right I put an episode out but some people liked it, but nobody really liked it.

2:17:47Sure. Doesn't matter. It's one of a thousand. Exactly. Literally one of a thousand. You got many more coming that week. People already... Correct. 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.

2:18:02The fucking sphincter tensing concern of album release morning. Yeah. What are people going to say? What are the reviews going to be like? Like, what's Reddit going to say about it? What's, you know, like fucking are people going to download it? People going to stream it? What are they going to say? 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. And yeah, that would be, that must be a, that's a real, a real, real challenge. I think I'd very much struggle with that. It is. I think we had, we had one experience this year I mentioned that I think kind of put that in perspective.

2:18:40So, you know, we've had this whole situation of like, okay, we're coming out as a band with a new lineup and releasing our first song as like the new lineup the day before our manager dies in a plane crash. and it's like perspective just dawns on you so fast of I mean we've been working right like I said for 14-15 months on this this one moment of like we can't fuck this part up this is our coming out party of new song new lineup and for all of that build up to then have like the tragic event happen the day before it was a perspective shift of like dude i don't i don't care like we yes we put this out but like we lost one of our guys like to put it out without him like just felt wrong in itself so I think like I don't know it's a helpful reshift of man we are just so self-centered I think as people and just like thinking about like what are people going to think about this what are people going to think about this what are people going to think about this but like in that moment it's just like oh dude none of this actually matters I enjoy doing it I want people to connect with it that is still my goal I still do have the you know with the following singles like I still had that thought but it's like oh but in the grand scheme of things like this is this is a two and a half minute song and if people don't like it okay and if people like it that's super cool but yeah kind of like what what you were talking about earlier man like I'm not my i'm not gonna miss my life because of this one song because something just tragic happened in my life i'm gonna make sure that like i'm with my people like seeing how you guys are doing seeing how everyone affected is doing um yeah perspective can dawn on you real in a single moment pretty quickly yeah yeah man that was uh very very tough and conflicting time and emotions you're building up for this like 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 we're getting the video back a couple days before and lining up the artwork getting the single all this stuff doing the the press the the week of to have it all drop the you know days following and and then waking up 24 hours before the song comes out i think it was 24 hours i think it was that that night it was coming out i believe yeah technically at midnight so you know waking up to the worst uh man waking up to the worst fucking phone call and and then it's all of that all that's gone all that that the excitement all the the pressure all the the unanswered the unknown is it doesn't matter anymore it doesn't matter and uh yeah it's been a really really eye-opening really uh difficult release just with all that happening on top of the change the lineup change the the uncertainty the unknowns and then um having that guy that you just call and text anytime time if you know oh man i'm sorry just having that rock that you're like oh man i'm gonna call him if you know we're freaking out about this release or the you know what are the comments gonna be oh i got dave i can just hit up and he'll ease my mind over it and kind of realize uh what's what's most important in life all this it doesn't matter take a shot on something and it it flops it's not the end of the world you know it there's there's gonna be more opportunity to come you know and yeah it's been a crazy time it's been a crazy time in the hyperville camp yeah 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 doing exciting things it's like that is living life but then it does always kind of come back to like yeah but who was with you like who are the relationships like it 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 um you know maybe that's that that was a even trade for him and i god no i don't fucking know what his what his uh situation was i can't even begin to comment on it but like yeah i think what what's 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 a lot of the times i think that answer can be yes but i think 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 yeah dude it is a it sounds like it's been a series of being kicked in the dick months so far this year i'm sorry that you guys have had to go through that i'm really sorry uh we appreciate it man yeah it's been um it's been tough 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 months getting to see what people say and have new music and material 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 um i think uh you find strength through the struggle and i think our relationship within each other within within the band has only gotten stronger i think um relationships just outside our inner circle have gotten stronger um yeah i've i've always been um someone that's tried to keep that mentality of like positive mental attitude and strength through struggle you know you go through something okay what am i going to learn right now from this to carry and, and learn a lesson from or, or whatever, whatever it may be.

2:25:34But, um, yeah, it's been tough, but I've learned a lot and I think we've all learned a lot. And I think, uh, it, it, you know, that's all you can really do is, is grow from it and, and, uh, learn life lessons the hard way and, and implement them down the road and be, try to be a better person or a better friend or a better you know family member whatever it may be better bandmate and uh yeah yeah it's it you know try not try not to dwell on it and just take the lessons as they come well i mean you're gonna have one hell of an amount of uh deep emotional well to tap into when it comes to writing the next record 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 I think you see this with architects.

2:26:23Oh, absolutely. That was, oh man, tragic. Tragic. And then hearing the record, I've been a fan of them for a while, so hearing the records leading up to his passing and then going back and really understanding the lyrics. In context. They won't play that tribute song live anymore. They refuse to. I think that's track eight as well on their album, interestingly enough. and uh they'll play on this most recent tour they play the sort of like interlude and then they play an intro they play like a bridge in the intro thing and then just as the lyrics are about to start they just kill it and they just go into the next track and yeah they were like it's just too fucking heavy to play live but yeah man I'm sure that he's feeling real proud of what you guys have done.

2:27:21I really think he will be. Thanks, man. I appreciate that, man. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, man, just grateful. Grateful to have other people that we can be open about it with. Not everyone has that. Fuck, dude, imagine if you were a solo artist. 100%. Oh, yeah. You're just some bloke on a bus. Yeah. With a new manager. Yeah. With the same, or maybe the lighting guy. Maybe you've got, 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. But no one else really knows what you're going through or the pressure of the performance or anything else.

2:28:11So, yeah, when you say like the relationships and the camaraderie that you have in the band, yeah sure would it be great if you didn't have to split the measly tiny amount of money that the record labels drip feed to you the fucking end of the human centipede 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 yeah oh You know? Yeah. So bandmates are expensive, but when you look at them in terms of like motivation fuel, they're probably pretty cheap. Yeah. I think like we all are trying to impress each other in a certain way, which like grows all of what we do because I think a lot of the guys in the band are very impressive individuals and impressive people.

2:29:01So it's like, okay, well, if I'm going to stay in this, I got to really show up. Game up. So that's one thing that I've noticed, at least since spending a bit of time around bands. There is this odd balance between the need to keep morale high, especially on tour, 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 ancillary, maybe not quite central. Well, in fact, no, I know for a fact too, we all know that there are people that are part of band constructs who are more talented than they need to be, but a sufficiently difficult hang that they actually can't survive in the world of being on the road with the other people that are there.

2:30:02it's like loved the video girl thought she was brilliant fuck me she did my head in she can't stay well we're not going to get someone better at video i would happily have someone half as good at video who is like fucking 90 less annoying yeah um or whatever it might be right it's just clash of personalities class of culture whatever 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. If I'm struggling and I steam into the fucking back lounge at 11 AM and go, today sucks. Everything's hard. I'm tired. My back hurts.

2:30:40You know, you just unload all of this. Well, now everybody else is feeling that way. And you don't want to be the guy that brings the vibe down. But also if you're in this permanent, like constant state of denial, at what point are you allowed to actually have i'm struggling man i i miss whoever it is i miss i miss this person or i've been thinking about this or me and the missus are like we had a tough conversation last night uh you don't have any room for that so you've got this weird i got to perform on stage and then i also kind of have to fucking perform to my bandmates to an amount and i got to sort of tolerate they temper the fucking dose right we're gonna like dilute down triage this fucking sadness the realness or maybe got like i can i can talk to the playback tech like he's good 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 got a big night tonight his family's all coming he's going to be a bit more nervous than you like whatever the fuck like it permeates everything yeah yeah that's something we've we've had 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 uh doesn't know the best time to dump and um over the years uh the crew that we've we've had that return for multiple years uh we have strong relationships with them the guys in the within the band and the the crew that are on the bus with us um been doing it for long enough i feel like we have our own little uh i don't want to say cliques but you know uh gabe and steve have a lot of things in common 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 like days that were you know a day off or something 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 find about something like are you emotionally available right now for me to like dump on the dump on you real quick oh yeah yeah sure but I think we've been doing this so long that I could just I don't know I feel like um I feel like I was going through it on this last Europe tour pretty heavy and I didn't say shit and I because I know everyone's going through it with with Dave and everything else going on around the camp and i just you know kind of bit my tongue and kind of stayed shut in and i'm usually one of the guys that's like i'm gonna go check out this band we're on this fest today i'm gonna 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 i uh i'm grateful to have these guys be so in tune with each other that they see something go on they they they know they know and before i even know sometimes that i'm i'm falling off the wagon emotionally or doing stepped in they stopped in like hey let's dude come have a beer with me we're going to the bar tonight like come on come out and and it just gets brought up in conversation i talk it out and it's like damn i really fucking needed that i really need being in tune yeah 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 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.

2:34:15Yeah. And wouldn't that be wonderful? God, I have so much better sleep. Oh, I'm on my own. Yeah. I'm in a room on my own. I'm in a room on my own. Yeah. And that, again, Velvet Handcuff. Do you know how few fucking bad you remember being in the fucking transit thing, sleeping on the roof, whatever the fuck? Walmart parking lots man yeah and you're like okay now we've got a bus wouldn't it be great wouldn't it be great if we had hotels and it for every level there's a devil is a way to look at it yeah I mean yeah do you is Taylor Swift getting a ton of sympathy you know not really but yeah like someone who's on her own on her private jet but also alone very lonely yeah would it be better I mean my tour 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 maybe you get yourself some fucking like tacos or something yeah and there is this weird isolation that comes with not that comes with success because that sounds like it's like the ethos of being successful yeah or something there is a type of isolation that is afforded by luxury like structurally afforded well you know you don't need to get the bus you can get an uber but you don't need to get the uber you can get a driver so you don't even you it's the same guy and he knows that you don't want to talk or whatever yeah 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 don't need to be in the hotel you can be each in your own bus and then on your you know and you become increasingly isolated yeah 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 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 gonna door dash everything and i'm sick of going out to the pool i just want to pull my own house and before you know it's like you just build this is not from experience by the way but but like you know for people who are successful at home it's 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 i'm sick of having to i'm sick of getting complained out by my wife when i want to play video games i just want a video game room yeah you have a video game room and you spend two hours less per day with your wife yeah yeah yeah and yeah it's i'm grateful for the complexities of living with a bunch of smelly men and we have a system for this so 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-one.

2:36:55So you're like, oh, let's go grab lunch or whatever. And hey man, my whole life fucking sucks. And then you talk about that, right? But then how do we all work together and not build resentment together? A lot of testosterone, you know? Oh, we're artists. So there's maybe a lot in the lower side, but 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? How's everything gone this past week? Are we good? Is there anything? Let's have a debrief. Yeah, and I mean, it can either be personal of like, hey, that thing you said the other day actually really pissed me off.

2:37:36Can we kind of talk about that a little bit? Or, hey, dude, I think what you're saying during this part of the set is not landing. Or, Gabe, your timing on this song is actually not great. Or your wardrobe is like pretty lame, actually, right? Like kind of the, just an opportunity for us to come together and it's like creating the umbrella of we are open 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, it disintegrates this awkward thing that I think a lot of us experience in relationships where let's say your girlfriend thinks like, you know, hey, everything's all good.

2:38:30Then you kind of have to have this awkward moment. You're like, hey, I want to bring something up. 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. 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. 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.

2:38:56Yes. Okay, cool. Let's see you later. 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 gonna 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 and well now you just look back on that show that like it sucked and then it's gonna roll into your next show and all that 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 i'm just gonna say right now but i i've cooled off over it too like it's 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 and yeah i think it's very helpful we started doing that dale carnegie wrote a lesser known second book that's called uh how to stop worrying and start living and in it he advocates for something called worry time and that's basically what you guys have got which is um 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 getting just a tiny bit of sand flicked at you every second yeah just pick this big rock up at the end of the week and um i i think that's really smart there's this fucking wonderful idea from Neil Strauss.

2:40:33He says, unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments. Whoa. Wow. That's shit. Yeah. It's a fucking, it's a real like, oh, that's so true. 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. 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. 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 spoken expectations, right?

2:41:09And they're able to get away from those metastasizing into resentments. I think it's fucking, it's clever. I wonder how many bands would have improved their longevity if they'd implemented, what's it, Smackdown Sundays? Yeah, Smackdown. Sunday Smackdown. Yeah, I think. We're licensing it right now. The silly bus. Silly bus time. I got a tattoo to my finger already, so you can't take it. That's exactly the same as registering it with the fucking trademark office. Yeah. As soon as you get it tattooed, and you're the first person to get it tattooed, and it's like, sorry, Nike. Someone got it tattooed on them in 1940 or some bullshit.

2:41:49Gabe 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? Or have you not released that? Haven't released it at the moment. We're playing Warped Tour in November. But yeah, really busy next year that people will see. We're in Europe in October. That's announced. September, October? Yeah, something like that. And then, yeah, to be determined. Yeah, lots of stuff coming, though, so keep an eye. We'll be touring. We were just saying we're going to be touring like four or five months a year.

2:42:18It's a lot more than that this year, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would also just like to sign off by saying, Chris, your Cavs are magnificent. I'm so jealous I did not know this about you it has not been addressed at least from what I've seen and damn thanks man I wondered why you were looking at that angle I thought it was something else I would say 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 less conditioned you get out toward the ends very lean and very well conditioned boys you're great the new record fucking slaps I'm so happy I thought you crushed it when I saw you at Summer of Loud as well.

2:42:57And I'm looking forward to the tour. I'll be there. Nice. Thanks for having us. If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful, and entertaining that I've ever found. fiction and non-fiction and there's real life stories and there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it and it's completely free.

2:43:29You can get it right now by going to chriswillx.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.