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Ep. 134 – Songs I Wrote Instead of [Unaliving] Myself w/ Singer-Songwriter Jetty Bones
100 Plays2 years ago
Our guest this week is musician Kelc Galluzzo, better known as Jetty Bones! Kelc has a wild story, to say the least. She’s dealt with trauma, loss, mental health struggles, as well as the turbulent ups and downs of the music industry. We cover a lot of ground in this episode, and it gave us an even deeper appreciation for Kelc’s music. Her new album “Songs I Wrote Instead of Killing Myself” is fantastic, and is available everywhere! Follow Jetty Bones on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter (@jettybones), and visit www.jettybones.com for news, merch, and upcoming shows!
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Transcript
Youth Pastor's Message and Teen Suicide
00:00:00
Speaker
youth pastor he said all the games we played all the songs I chose those are out the window they're not going to connect to anything and oh I haven't talked about this in a long time I might actually cry um but he basically said that he really felt like there was someone there struggling who needed to hear an entirely different message who I really haven't talked about this in in years um wow and
00:00:25
Speaker
So he started talking about the increasing, the exponentially increasing teen suicide rates. Okay. Okay. Take your time.
00:00:34
Speaker
Well, I love to cry. I just don't like talk very clearly. I'm crying, which will not be effective for a podcast. Like this bitch loves to cry. So crying is great, but trying to talk when you're crying, not so good. And then just went on just talking about that and talking about how even if you don't feel like you have a purpose and you don't understand why you're here, everything you're struggling, everything you're learning, if you can get through it, it will give you a story that you can use to help other people.
00:01:02
Speaker
And that is something that I carried with me my entire fucking life.
Graduation Memories and Speeches
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. I'm Casey.
00:01:30
Speaker
And we are entering graduation season. Do you have to go to any graduation party? I feel like we're moving past that point where we're going to graduation parties. But you see the signs everywhere. I can't drive to work without seeing, like, do people visit your area where they put like signs in their yard with pictures of their kids on it and it's like senior class of whatever? Do you see that? No.
00:01:58
Speaker
honestly no not at all but i don't really live around any people so yeah and i don't think i know anybody that's under 28 yeah you don't well so like my neighbor uh his kids are graduating high school um
00:02:14
Speaker
My foster son graduated last year. So he's got friends who are graduating. But yeah, I just like it's everywhere. Everyone's graduating. And that's also summer. So everyone's getting married. Who's planning on getting married. But whenever like graduation season comes around, I think of like when you did go to graduations or when you had your graduation. So you graduated from a Christian school. Do you remember like
00:02:43
Speaker
Being in a Christian world, I feel like graduation speeches, commencement speeches for high school graduations are like way different than like, you know, public school where it's just like, go seize life by the balls, go to college, have a good time, but don't have too good a time. It's just like real shitty, like, but par for the course, encouragement.
00:03:09
Speaker
But with like Christian grad, I feel like I went to my fair share of like Christian type graduation events. So like homeschooled graduations were insane. I don't know, I can speak to that a little bit, but do you remember like, was there anything notable about your graduation or whoever spoke at your high school graduation?
00:03:35
Speaker
No, not really. I mean, if our senior year, like at our school at, you know, if you were accelerated Christian education, like you had so few tangible tasks that you were supposed to do other than like finish your stupid workbooks, but like everybody had to give a speech their senior year. Like that was a part of your like 12th grade English paces.
00:04:00
Speaker
And you could kind of do it on whatever. And I gave my speech on why Calvinism was wrong solely because one of my best friends and his family were all Calvinists. And so he just got to sit there in the audience and listen to me going like, you know, God so loved the world and blah, blah. Just just like a total jerk off.
00:04:30
Speaker
Do you remember any of your main points other than God so loved the world? Oh, I think I used all the same cherry picked versus that like counteract all the Calvinist cherry pig versus man. I.
00:04:45
Speaker
So I had a home school, like, so a church in my area would do like a graduation ceremony for home school kids. So they got the whole like walk experience. So you got the fucking gowns and the hats and shit like that.
00:05:01
Speaker
I don't remember what I don't remember what mine was. I remember not caring. I remember not being interested in even being part of it because I mean, it was a bunch of other homeschooled kids there. And it's like, I don't know any of you motherfuckers. I don't. That's why we're homeschooled. I knew a couple because they're from my church. But overall, I was just like, what? What?
00:05:24
Speaker
Like part of graduation is cool because you're there with your class and people you know it's like a big to-do when you're just like showing up to a church with like 80 people you've never met before. You're like, why the fuck are we doing this? It doesn't make me feel good about myself. It actually makes me feel worse about my entire experience. Especially when you see the caliber of people you're graduating with.
00:05:48
Speaker
You know, I've never, I didn't know they made such high-waisted pants for boys. And I didn't know you could tuck in your t-shirts so far and so tight. And it's like, when you're tucking in graphics tees to the point where the graphic is unrecognizable, you're just like, you're overdoing the talk.
00:06:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it's like your your your 2004 graphics tee is tucked in so far that it just says like I can only please one person a day. Tomorrow's not your. It's like they're tucked in so tight, you can only see like the top of Goku's hair. That's it.
00:06:33
Speaker
Just give me your underscore underscore instead of thoughts. So I don't remember the speech at mine, but I remember going to a friend's graduation. He was a year behind me and my whole family went for this.
00:06:58
Speaker
graduation ceremony at their church. And the guy gave a whole speech on, um, his, the, the head, the title for it was be losers for Christ. And Oh my God. Yeah, dude. It's as sad as he, it's as bad as that sucks. Holy shit. He sucks so bad.
00:07:25
Speaker
And it's just about how Christ went out and gave himself for this. And the Christians have always been known as the whole persecution complex.
00:07:38
Speaker
giving it all up for God. It's like so you lose for God. Be losers for God. Everyone wants you to make something of yourself. Be your own power. Build a name for yourself. We don't want that. We're Christians. We want to build a name for Jesus. And we want to do that at a cost. So be losers for Christ.
00:08:00
Speaker
I remember at that time being like, that wasn't bad. And my brother being at a point in his trajectory who is like, that fucking sucked. Unapologetically being like, that was a bad message. That wasn't a terrible speech. It's like the exact reason that you're standing in a crowd of people just like you and yet you feel like totally alone and separate.
00:08:29
Speaker
I'm supposed to take pride in the fact that I have no connection to anyone, but you know, I mostly just hate myself. I go to a mall and I'm surrounded by teens my age and just feel like a caged animal.
Youth Ministry Anecdotes
00:08:45
Speaker
god going to do I remember I don't know if I've you can stop me if I've shared the story before but when one of my like youth ministry classes that I took when I was at Liberty one of the one of the assignments was to just go sit at the mall and people watch so you could just really it's like you know he this guy rich Brown shout out rich Brown rich Brown fucking sucked this guy
00:09:15
Speaker
was the worst he this guy was so dumb he thought he came up with the term christianese amazing he he in class he was like he's like and this is like i i've heard other people say this but like i mean this is something i came up with and you guys might have heard it before but you know i this is my i came up with the term uh i i i i coined this phrase here
00:09:44
Speaker
You might have heard people say, they're speaking in Christianese. I'm like, bitch, you did not make that up. Like, everyone knows you didn't make that up. But he would be like, his assignment was you had to go and sit in the mall and watch kids like a pervert. And the whole assignment was to write about like what you really saw.
00:10:12
Speaker
And he goes, people are always surprised. But every time I read people's papers on this, like they always talk. They're surprised. You know, we're just so used to living in this world that you almost you forget and you don't realize how lost people are until you really sit there and are just like analyzing it for the sake of that to see what was really going on. And of course, he gets that. That's what I said. Oh, my God. These kids walked into Hot Topic.
00:10:42
Speaker
And they were like arms around each other. I just didn't even realize how, you know, sexualized our culture was. These people are this guy is just jerking himself off to the assignments that he gives because he just it's like self-fulfilling. Like you're grading people based on how traumatized they are by watching a 14 year old go into Arab postal. It's like no one. It's fine. It's fucking fine, dude. You're just old and out of touch.
00:11:09
Speaker
Dude, I love that. I love the thought of just like arguing over something like founding something so trivial. It's like like Rick Warren was the Edison to his Tesla. God said it first. I imagine there's been several fights over like who who was the first to say the joke like Adam and Eve and not Adam and Steve. Yeah.
00:11:32
Speaker
Yeah, that was a classic. That was the first time I heard that. Somebody's been really angry over the fact that someone else used that at some point, I guarantee.
00:11:41
Speaker
Dude, he's a joke. Just someone, copyright, someone just tries to like, they file cease and desist with any, they just, they use, they scrub the internet for any sermon where someone says Adam and Steve and then send cease and desist letters. Frickin' Mike Warren kiddies to write his own material, bro.
00:12:06
Speaker
Another graduation, my sister, when she graduated, we were all homeschooled. Another homeschool graduation at the same church that mine was at.
00:12:19
Speaker
And I was, all right, when she graduated, I'm like seven and a half years old in her, so I was in like 18, no, it was like 23, 24, right? Just at that point where I had been shifting out of, I was still pretty traditionally Christian, but out of evangelicalism at that point.
00:12:44
Speaker
Uh, that was kind of post me finding Shane Claiborne's irresistible revolution. And it's starting me on like a whole new, like, Oh, there's like a different way to be Christian. You don't have to just be like a conservative neo con and.
00:13:03
Speaker
I don't know who gave this speech. It was just some like suit and tie motherfucker who was like pretty young. And the entire thing was about how it's necessary for Christian, young Christian men and women to get involved in government.
00:13:19
Speaker
because everything's going so south and that they need good Christian leadership in government and they need Christians to infiltrate the government so that way they can make legislation that would honor God. It was just a Christian nationalist speech. It was so brazen.
00:13:40
Speaker
and obvious that like, I feel like more people than you would ex, than I would have expected felt kind of icky about it. Like we're, I don't know where they found this guy. It was just like, I don't know. I was just like, there's just some regular, like we had all these like, um,
00:14:03
Speaker
political like debate team type stuff that you could join. I used to do teen pack that mentioned that a little bit where you just go and hang out at the state Capitol for a week and learn all about how awful government is without Christianity. And it was probably someone from one of these organizations that we were always part of. But
00:14:23
Speaker
God, man, listening to this guy tell a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds that like, the most important thing they could do is to just get into government to affect legislative change. You're just like, this is pretty gross. Governments the highest calling. Yeah. Politics from within a church. Just goofy. I find like,
00:14:49
Speaker
I miss it. I would like to go see some more. I should just start, um, looking for, I bet that same church still does homeschool graduations. Oh, probably should go just for something to talk about here.
Introduction to Kelsey Galuzzo
00:15:06
Speaker
Yes, we can go ahead and introduce our guest here. We're keeping this one short. We talked to our guests for quite a while. She was wonderful. Her name's Kelsey Galuzzo, but most of you would better know her by her, I guess you'd call it a stage name of Jetty Bones.
00:15:23
Speaker
She's kind of like an indie pop artist. She, well, you know, like the pandemic did to a lot of artists that made some shifts in or had a big impact on touring schedule and album releases, things like that. But we get into the long and short of it during our conversation, but she was kind of just on the up and up. And then, you know, pandemic hit some mental health crisis arrive and she
00:15:54
Speaker
goes through it. We get into some of the details. I don't want to share them here because the conversation was really fantastic. We were very thankful for her to take the time to talk to us. But in 2023, she'll refer to this as the pandemos throughout the conversation. She put out a roughly recorded album.
00:16:22
Speaker
as in demos. It was titled Songs I Wrote Instead of Killing Myself. Really, one of the songs started out as a suicide note and then it turned into a full album.
00:16:37
Speaker
We get into kind of some of her whole roller coaster of an experience throughout our conversation, throughout her career, throughout mental health, diagnoses, and getting the help that she needs. And her story is fascinating. She's something we wanted to have on a while ago, and it finally worked out now that we were able to do this.
00:17:01
Speaker
Uh, and it worked out perfectly because even since the first time we reached out, there's been so much that's happened. Um, so she was a great guest. Uh, and I hope you all enjoy our conversation with Kelsey. Hey everybody. We are back with our guest, Kelsey Galuzzo, AKA Jenny bones. What's up, Kelsey.
00:17:24
Speaker
Um, not much just hanging out in my basement, laundry room, watching a blanket dry, just standard stuff. That's what it's do. I wasn't sure if that was a background, uh, choice or just like, uh, but it's, it's actual, it's practical and serves a purpose. Yes. If I wanted to do a background, I promise aesthetically, it would be a lot more pleasing than that. Um, is that clouds? I don't, I think it's like a.
00:17:48
Speaker
a wash, like tie dye, like a cold dye blanket, but it's really soft, so I don't want to put it in the dryer. I've maintained its softness for like three years now, and I'm dedicated to the cause, so it's hanging up to dry. And this is the problem with falling in love with something made of fabric is that it's very hard to take care of.
00:18:07
Speaker
I feel like we have, so my wife and I, I, you know, I'm a progressive man, so I do laundry too. Um, so, but we have, we, we always have these like articles of clothing that we don't want to dry, but we don't always like call that out when it goes into the laundry. And usually, you know, but it's like always just a ticking time bomb on like when someone's going to dry someone else's shirt and ruin their day. And that did happen to me this week and that's why I'm thinking about it.
00:18:34
Speaker
That shirt will not fit properly. That is ever again, because I don't plan on. That's why I do the laundry. Yeah. I only like to talk about losing weight so I can pretend there's a reason I haven't thrown out my old clothes. Yeah, it's like classic bandshirt problem. It's like you we went to the show and you're like probably should get a large.
00:18:54
Speaker
I don't need a, I'll get a medium. And then you get home and it's like, it's like a long sports bra. And then you like make yourself wear it somewhere. And then the whole time you're like doing the, the, the belly shirt tug, like, like an old guy. You need a TC tuggers. That's one that didn't.
00:19:18
Speaker
stick with me until I realized I was pulling my shirt out of my stomach. I, it made so much sense after that. Well, that's because it's not a joke. Okay. It's not like the Snuggie, like you don't do pub crawls and then like the Snuggie, it's not a joke. Teasy tuggers is serious. I need them. You put a ripcord on the front of mine.
00:19:41
Speaker
Well, Kelsey, I, uh, sorry, go ahead. No, if you're, if you were going to stay on the, I think you should leave topic. I'm willing to stay. I was just going to say that, um, the idea of having like a rip cord with like inflatable clothes is something I've always really enjoyed and thought about. And, um, that, uh, TV series, Dave, they're the.
00:20:01
Speaker
Like last season had an episode where he has like a ripcord inflatable suit and it was just very pleasing to me. It was totally irrelevant. My brain just, you said ripcord and I was like, inflatable clothes, man. They do make those for a motorcycle stuff, like motorcycle racers, they have like impact triggered inflatable suits that they wear. So it like holds your head in place. If you crash and you don't like, uh, you know, tumble yourself into oblivion.
00:20:32
Speaker
Exactly. Nice. Okay, sorry. We can continue as the actual subject matter of this podcast, unless we're trying to start a new one where we just reference television series, which would be fine with me as well. That is kind of what we do. So we try to stay on topic. Our listeners are very aware of the fact that that's not really how things always go. But we'll bring it back here and there. We are interested in your story because I feel like even so before we even hit
00:21:01
Speaker
record you mentioned doing zoom church uh during like the pandemic and stuff and i was doing the same thing and the fact that you still were at that point i'm like oh i that triggered that there's a lot more through line here than maybe i even thought i didn't uh i believe how do you feel about your wikipedia page
00:21:22
Speaker
Do you read it ever? Okay. Um, I had, I actually had this thing a couple, maybe like two months ago. We're out of curiosity. I hadn't looked at it since like 2019. So I decided I'm going to take a deep breath and I'm going to look at my Wikipedia page. So as I was scrolling through it, there was a lot of stuff I saw and I, so I, I'm clinically diagnosed with OCPD just as a compulsive personality disorder. So sometimes if.
00:21:51
Speaker
If something is incorrect, I need it to be correct. Uh, and it's a personality disorder. Cause sometimes I'm an asshole and the social awareness that what I'm doing or how much stress I'm putting on it, I can't, um, I can't pick up the social cues that it's upsetting other people. I make sure people in my life know that right away. I'm not trying to be an asshole. So if I am just say, Hey, maybe, maybe take a breather and let us know more of what you're thinking. But I was looking at my Wikipedia page, kept seeing things.
00:22:21
Speaker
That is simply incorrect. That's not true. And also a lot of things that I had done myself where credit was being attributed to other people, especially when it came to writing the music in certain parts of records. So I edited my own Wikipedia page.
00:22:42
Speaker
Nice. Not all of it. Did it stick? Not all. I think so. I didn't go back. I didn't. Sorry. I hit my microphone. I didn't go back and check because I only wanted to edit the things that were actually and factually inaccurate. Everything else. I just wanted to work differently because I am a writer, but I, I refrained. I just needed people to know that I do write my own music. Other people don't do that.
00:23:10
Speaker
We had Dawson from the ongoing concept on and he had repeatedly tried to change their Wikipedia page so it didn't say that they were a Christian band and every single time he changed it it just got reversed. Someone would revert it back. So for like seven years he just dealt with that and he
00:23:31
Speaker
I was like, after talking about it, he's like, I don't know, maybe this will count as a reference and we can actually get it changed. But the reason I asked is because, again, I had mentioned not I don't know the through line of your your Christian upbringing, but I know that Wikipedia only quotes a 2012 Tumblr post from you as to what it is that you believe. So but that probably sums it up.
00:23:56
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the Wikipedia page just says you're a non-denominational Christian and raised Catholic. Do you want me to read your Tumblr?
00:24:09
Speaker
Oh please, I put so much late night sad teen angsty work into that. I'd love to hear it from someone else out loud. Anonymous asked, are you religious? Meaning you have any kind of faith, not necessarily that you participate in organized religion. I really appreciate the clarity there. You said, yes, I am a Christian. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can you do it in my voice?
00:24:32
Speaker
No. I don't do impressions. Thanks for trying though. We'll fix it in post. We have a real serious AI behind us so we can clearly, we'll be able to clean that up.
00:24:48
Speaker
Yes, I am a Christian. I wouldn't consider myself part of a religion exactly. I grew up in a Catholic church, but got out of there in middle school. Just not for me, non-denominational Christian, because God saved my life and Jesus is my homeboy, which was probably a t-shirt you might've had in 2012. I didn't, but I just talked like that, actually. Yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
So that is that's that's the extent that I have but just from you know here and around and I know I feel like we may have had some alignments on our comeuppance when it comes to music a whole like cornerstone bands deal things like that so
Kelsey's Upbringing and Church Skepticism
00:25:28
Speaker
It's hard to know where to start, because the music direction is always a blast. But let's just go ahead and start with your Catholic school upbringing. Were you always like, was it always private Catholic school, or is that just something, when did the Catholic thing start up for you? I know sometimes parents make that choice for their kids. It's funny, because it wasn't Catholic school. It was just Catholic church.
00:25:57
Speaker
But in high school, I did try really hard to go to a private Catholic school because I didn't have friends. The only friends I had went there. But my family didn't really have money and I didn't understand that private school costs money. So that didn't happen. But when I was younger, like a year and a half old, my parents got divorced. So my mom grew up in a Lutheran church. I would say non-practicing really just kind of holidays. But I honestly can't really remember ever going to
00:26:26
Speaker
any kind of service with her, even for holidays. My dad, uh, that side of the family, very Italian, very Catholic in the convenient, extremely hypocritical way, which I think a lot of people, and I, I'm not explicitly saying that every part of the Catholic church or every member of each congregation is corrupt and uses it to
00:26:52
Speaker
and rationalize certain things that benefit them, but in my experience with my family and the congregation that I went to, that's what was happening. What was the first, like the first hypocrisy that became clear to you as a kid? And I feel like whatever once hit people first is always interesting.
00:27:11
Speaker
Oh, um, honestly, I think the purity aspect of it. Um, and my dad saying that the Catholic church, at least the congregation I went to didn't believe in the rapture, which to me, I felt was very black and white throughout the Bible. Um, so that the purity aspect of it, uh,
00:27:32
Speaker
because of what was being preached and the stories my dad liked to tell of when he was in the Air Force. And then also the emphasis on financial contributions, it didn't make sense to me when I was younger. I felt like it was wrong. And as an adult, I can look back retrospectively.
00:27:54
Speaker
and see people actively trying to buy their way into heaven, which is so silly to me. There's no other word to describe it. It's just silly, silliness. Yeah. That was what, so didn't grow up Catholic, grew up Evangelical. So we didn't like the, we liked the Catholics, but like we knew where they were going when they died. Right.
00:28:19
Speaker
different place than us and that was the one that came up all the time was like the buying it was indulgences yeah penances indulgences i don't know but yeah i i always it's funny because i i feel like there's some people who grew up catholic they were like i don't know that they didn't see that because ultimately like you could argue that like a tithing all the tithing we did it's like yeah you weren't buying your way into heaven but they had a really
00:28:45
Speaker
fucking great sales pitch for why you had to do it. So like the outcomes were pretty similar. Yeah. I definitely, I don't know. I didn't learn anything about Jesus growing up in a Catholic church, which that is the cornerstone and the foundation of Christianity. So they love to say that the Catholic church is
00:29:07
Speaker
The only real religion, because that's the one that was started, you know, Jesus literally said, you're going to build the cornerstone of my church. And that was the Catholic church that came from that. So why didn't they feel any need to teach anyone or any of the kids, even at Bible school?
00:29:23
Speaker
about Jesus. That's the thing that also as an adult looking back, I don't get that. How are you supposed to really educate children in a way where they can choose to follow that faith if you're not telling them what the core of it is supposed to be? That makes sense. Yeah, it's almost like a dependence on just the traditional aspect of it, tradition for the sake of tradition, which is what a lot of people's experiences is in religion in general, but
00:29:52
Speaker
Evangelicalism lacked traditions to like mode. I don't know. It's like when you when I there wasn't like that thing to bring you back like for the sake of doing it or the it's like a comfort even over time where you're just like I my one of my previous bosses was Jewish and he would he invited me over to his house for a
00:30:12
Speaker
a Seder, my wife and I, and we were talking to a bunch of different people at the table. Some were at previous Christians who converted to Judaism. One was becoming a rabbi who grew up Christian. One was Jewish, but an atheist. And you talk to all these people and you're like, it's kind of sick the way that you're all still here doing this around these traditional concepts. But I know they hold onto those a little bit more Catholic traditions.
00:30:39
Speaker
Like, I mean, maybe you like stale wafers and stuff like that. So if that works for you, that's fine. But not quite the same. My point is evangelicalism kind of like craps on tradition and ritual. I feel like it's almost like, you know, it's like exercising like you don't always feel like exercising. It's not always like a
00:31:05
Speaker
friends, send dental experience, go into the gym and like just doing your reps. Sometimes it's just going there and going through the motions and saying like, okay, I did it. Like I got through it. I committed and I did this thing that I said I would do. And that's almost kind of how like tradition is, which you can't have all that. It can't be all just going through the motions, but then like evangelicalism is like so heavy on like the other side of it's where it's like,
00:31:33
Speaker
you almost should have like a, you know, like an epiphany and a spiritual awakening like every Sunday or else like maybe you're not really tapped in the way other people are. I don't know, it's tough. It's like one way or the like too far one direction or the other gets very difficult to keep up with.
00:31:53
Speaker
I feel like even on a psychological level, there are so many studies that show that routines are positive for us. So I feel like a lot of the tradition in church with, you know, religions that primarily focused around a routine, like you were saying.
00:32:09
Speaker
It is tapping into that psychological need for consistency, even if there isn't necessarily a faith element under it. I think those people end up believing that the routine and the tradition they're doing is positive and beneficial for them. They're raised in it. They're taught not to doubt it, not to second guess it. And then they die being happy that they had that for their entire lives, which I think is great if that serves people in a positive way. Awesome. Awesome.
00:32:39
Speaker
Yeah, for sure, which is why you'll see the same benefits in like non-theistic religions, where it's just like, that's like the commitment to practice for practice sake or for even grounding sake, you know, like having that grounding post of like, here's an ethos or a set of values that you can anchor yourself to. Because without that, it's just like, you just kind of, I mean, I struggle with that even like, as I've
00:33:03
Speaker
steadily become less religiously committed, I guess. I'm 35. I was super committed to this through, I mean, evangelicalism through my mid-20s. Started leaving that in around mid-20s.
00:33:23
Speaker
And then kind of just in the past couple years, I've had some more dramatic faith shifts. But I'm like, even still, like, it was I could I can see I was thinking about this even today, like benefits that I saw in my life from having a commitment to that, that
00:33:42
Speaker
it's like a collective set of values where like some of the things that I feel like I did that added value to my life and were some of the most impactful life experiences I had were because of that. And I know now that with not having that so much is like, I feel like I've lost a certain connection and I don't, it's hard to even get it back or I don't really know the path to really find that in the same way again, but that's strange.
00:34:09
Speaker
But enough about sorry. Now he just emails Russell Brand videos to his mom and dad. That's his Sunday ritual.
00:34:18
Speaker
It's a positive life decision. And I know, I know you kind of ended there feeling like you're on a tangent, but it was kind of, I was having that like old woman moment where I'm like, yes, yes. Cause I, um, my, so my church currently, they do, uh, seasons. So they do like a season of service, which we're in right now. Um, a season of learning, a season of giving. And to be totally honest, I can't remember what the other one is because I probably don't care about it as much.
00:34:48
Speaker
but uh community i don't know i don't know but the season of service is my favorite and they do this huge uh community city-wide day with a bunch of other churches where it is just a week uh and a long weekend of
00:35:05
Speaker
volunteer work, charity work, drives, going door to door in neighborhoods, if you can help with any. And I, I have not been attending lately. I've been watching the services online when I can, but that was something that hit me when I saw that was coming up where I was just like, wow, this is, this is a really big part of my life that is missing. But I was so focused on everything else that I needed to fix.
00:35:33
Speaker
I forgot about and kind of abandoned the one positive thing that was working for me. So it's interesting that you said that now because I was thinking about that last night before I went to bed.
00:35:45
Speaker
yeah it's funny there's this uh push and pull of like i it's like you you when you're in certain things you get tired by it because it's exhausting you just you want your free time but then after a while you just kind of sit in your own self for too long and you feel like that's kind of ruining you and then you just teeter back and forth between unhappiness is you know a depressed person's way of looking at it but it's also like it it's
00:36:11
Speaker
It kind of in between those shifts. You're like, I finally found it. You're like, I don't like this anymore. And you kind of just bounce. I don't know. You bounce back and forth for a while. You got to get back on the landscaping crew. Like there's like an old man with a wood pile full of hornets that needs moved. You know, it's got your name. That's all I need.
00:36:30
Speaker
little danger, little excitement. I do have something to add about growing up in the Catholic church though that I thought of that might offer some really nice comic relief. I actually got kicked out of Sunday school. I love this already. Three times. I was in elementary school. So this was before I had found the first non-denominational church that I was going to.
00:36:54
Speaker
which is a whole separate and very life altering story for me. Um, but I was sitting in Sunday school and we were going through Genesis in the kid friendly version. And, you know, we're talking about how God made everything. Yeah. Oh, actually valid, very valid statement. Um, nobody, nobody wants to hear the heavy.
00:37:19
Speaker
But anyway, sorry, I'm I'm very tangent ish. I just need to close my eyes when I'm talking so I don't get distracted by it. Nobody likes to talk about the part where giant angels fuck a bunch of humans. Yeah. No. Why would you even bring that up? This is my favorite part. This is my my P.G. My favorite porn category. It's really been taking off since the pandemic, if we're being honest. That's the fourth season. Blood reckoning.
00:37:47
Speaker
Hmm. That one's my favorite. It sounds like a good meal. I'm just kidding. I'm a vegetarian. So that was funnier to me. You get it at like a wild game party at some rod gun club or whatever. No, it's a special at KFC.
00:38:04
Speaker
Anyway, so I basically were going through the whole story of creation and, you know, this day, this was made this day, blah, blah, blah. And then the day of rest. So I raised my hand and I don't remember her name, but I can just throw out a name. Give me a random. Rebecca. Miss Rebecca, if God made everything, who made God? To which she said, God was just always there. You know, he's always existed like the air you breathe. And I said,
00:38:33
Speaker
Miss Rebecca, you just said God made air. So it was not it was not positive, I guess for her because she can answer it. So I remember exactly what she looks like. I remember she's wearing terrible at names. I guess I was as a child too. I'm pretty sure I was in like second grade at this point. So I didn't find this out until
00:38:56
Speaker
Maybe fifth, sixth grade, because my dad was laughing about it. Apparently she pulled him aside afterwards and asked me not to come back because she was afraid I would disrupt the faith of the other children. Ooh, what a fresh, weak faith. She thought you were a rascal. She thought you were getting fresh and you were just seeking knowledge. I said, but like who made God, though?
00:39:19
Speaker
Duh, is there a person in the world that hates being questioned more than elementary school, Sunday school teachers?
00:39:27
Speaker
I actually kind of am one and I love it. Ooh, my dad. This regular I have at the coffee shop who accused me of getting a fake coffee degree online when I went through a year and a half of training to get my SEAA certification. So he made me really mad the other day. I probably shouldn't say that out loud. He's not gonna listen to this. A fake coffee degree. What's, what name did he ask you to write on a cop?
00:39:55
Speaker
Nothing, we don't write on cups. He just asked me a series of really, yeah, yeah. I like how personal it is there with the names on cups, you know? I greet most of our regulars by name when they come in. Does that count for anything?
00:40:08
Speaker
Well, yeah, with his, you can just hold it in the air and be like, jerk off, jerk off. Same first letter. No, I just hate I have I have a very, very strong sensitivity to people making assumptions that are actually very degrading and they don't realize it. Is that why aspects of Christianity became problematic for you?
00:40:31
Speaker
Um, I didn't think about it like that. Um, I actually, the only time it was ever problematic for me was, uh, when I got kicked out of my first band for having a crush on a girl, but we'll get there. Oh, we have, we have ground to cover.
Transformative Youth Group Experience
00:40:46
Speaker
Um, all right. So for, okay. Catholic school, Catholic church. Sorry. I don't know. I keep saying Catholic school. I feel like a doofus. Um,
00:40:55
Speaker
You find an evangelical church. What is the appeal of evangelical church? You seemed like you were getting a little disenfranchised there with Catholic Church, but how did the evangelicals find you or how did you find them?
00:41:07
Speaker
Okay, sixth grade. First year in middle school at the small local school that I went to. So there's two elementary schools. They combine into one middle school and then you're with those people through high school, et cetera. There was this girl who rode my bus. Also the first time I ever had to ride the bus because I always had
00:41:25
Speaker
either my older sister to take me to school or my stepfather was a gym teacher at the elementary school. So first time riding the bus, I have no friends. I'm absolutely terrified of being in this giant long hot dog car with a bunch of kids that are just staring at me because I am like soft God at the time.
00:41:46
Speaker
100% like, like going to school with my, um, my little Ramones, like side messenger backpack and like a blink one 82 shirt. Absolutely every day. There's like not a day where that was an exception. And if I wasn't wearing a blank shirt, it was a blank hoodie. So there's this one girl who I thought was
00:42:05
Speaker
crazy, highest pitch voice I've ever heard acted like the embodiment of a real life anime character. And I just, I couldn't stand her because I was a little asshole, you know, and she ended up, um, this is a trigger warning for suicide. Um, but I, at that point the previous year had lied my way out of counseling, um, was very heavy.
00:42:28
Speaker
fully struggling with suicidal ideation. And at that point, that was the first time. Still sixth grade you said. Yep. Sixth grade. Yeah. I started going to counseling in fourth grade for self-injury.
00:42:40
Speaker
My, yeah, my brain decided that it hated me at a very young age. And I think everybody thought it was something that I would grow out of. But there are some mental health issues that just stay with you forever. And that's kind of that's why I'm so open about them because I think there's too much emphasis on
00:42:59
Speaker
the need to fix, correct, get better. So the people who are really struggling and will forever because that is their brain chemistry and it can't be corrected. You can't change it. You just have to learn how to cope, how to shut those voices down, how to ignore it. And this was actually something
00:43:18
Speaker
that started helping me because she had tried to be my friend and I ignored her. She was in every single class that I had to homeroom to the end of the day, every single class, the only person. And I had made this plan after like the third week of school where I just decided I was done. That was my new chance to make friends. The only friends I had
00:43:39
Speaker
kind of had that thing where they got hot over the summer in sixth grade, the sixth grade version of hot, you know, they got their back to school wardrobe at Aeropostale or whatever. And I was so left behind. Their acne cleared up early. Yeah. Assholes. Meanwhile, I was like very small and hit like a weird puberty where I was still short and small, but I was not a feminine and had that weird Italian like boob sprout thing.
00:44:06
Speaker
which has completely disappeared praise jesus and um because i would not be able to stand up straight but i i went through that so it was just very much the opposite it gave something for the boys to pick on me about they made something for the girls to also tease me about because they're like oh well why why don't you take advantage of that or point at me in the gym room which is the first time like the gym locker room where i'm changing in front of other girls also
00:44:34
Speaker
Having realized the previous year that I was getting crushes on girls as well. So just this, all of these things are happening at the same time. So I made my first exit strategy, we'll call it to unalive myself. And the same day where I like went home.
00:44:53
Speaker
I even took a couple things, gave them to old friends, et cetera, wrote a middle school version of a will, took an hour nap with my cat and then said, okay, this is the day. This girl. I don't want to be like that guy, but who got all of your stuffed animals.
00:45:11
Speaker
I didn't have any at that point. Sorry. It was it was really the like 200 pack zipper case of CDs. That was important to me. Oh, yeah. We're all going to get sent to California for my brother because he sent me most of them. Very influential on me. Send me my first instrument. Send me every blink one eighty two CD. I read this on Wikipedia. Yeah. A bass guitar. Mm hmm. I still have it. It's.
00:45:37
Speaker
over, it's in a case over there somewhere. Um, but yeah, so she had invited me to this youth group that was right by her house. So this, she lived maybe two minutes away from me. The church shared a parking lot right beside her house, invited me to go to this youth group called the rush. Um, so I said, okay, I'll go. Cause it was the same night. I asked my mom and the only reason I agreed to go is because I thought
00:46:05
Speaker
in a really sick way, I thought it would hit people harder if I went to a youth group and then, um, died by suicide the same night, premeditated. Yeah. So I said, this just adds like an extra twist to it. So I remember I was sitting in that room. It was a skate bowl in the back of it, like a half like bowl. And then.
00:46:28
Speaker
bands playing they covered a blink 182 song the worship band did pretty progressive yeah and then they uh let's see i graduated in 2011 so early 2000s yeah early 2000s so i i had never seen worship obviously growing up in a catholic church i had only seen singing from hymns
00:46:52
Speaker
So when all of these kids are worshiping, I'm seeing, you know, kids in a couple grades older than me that I know from the skate park. I'm seeing girls that are in high school who I looked up to because I thought they were so pretty, but they were all so nice to me in elementary school. And I remember looking down during worship and seeing this girl who was either a sophomore or a freshman at that time and seeing cuts all over her arm. And this was someone who I just thought was light years away from me.
00:47:21
Speaker
And then seeing her worship, it kind of tipped something into me where I resonated with the pain she was feeling, even though I thought she was untouchable. Cute, she's so high. But then the pastor, like the youth pastor, he said, all the games we played, all of the songs I chose, those are out the window. They're not going to connect to anything. And ooh, I haven't talked about this in a long time. I might actually cry.
00:47:51
Speaker
But he basically said that he really felt like there was someone there struggling who needed to hear an entirely different message. I really haven't talked about this in years. Wow. And so he started talking about the exponentially increasing teen suicide rates. Okay. You're okay. Take your time.
00:48:13
Speaker
Well, I love to cry. I just don't like talk very clearly. I'm crying, which will not be effective for a podcast. Like this bitch loves to cry. I love talking about how I'm crying. I had my sign on my merch table used to say crying is normal. I had limited hand printed shirts that said crying is fucking normal. Deal with it. So crying is great, but trying to talk when you're crying, not so good. And then just went on.
00:48:35
Speaker
Just talking about that and talking about how even if you don't feel like you have a purpose and you don't understand why you're here Everything you're struggling everything you're learning if you can get through it It will give you a story that you can use to help other people And that is something that I carried with me my entire fucking life to the point where I had to stop because I was running myself in the ground I stopped caring for myself. I was only doing everything for a
00:49:02
Speaker
Everyone else. But I decided to go back the next week. I said, I'll give myself one more week and I'll go. I made so many new friends the next week. And then the week after that, I made more friends that went to my school and it just, I had a community where I felt like I belonged. And I had somebody who the first time I ever met them made eye contact with me and told me to stay alive when I hadn't told anybody what my plan was.
00:49:28
Speaker
So when you like that tumbler post that you referenced, when I say it saved my life, I mean, it literally saved my life. Wow. That sounds like some divine serendipity. Heavy stuff for a youngster. I mean, sixth grade, that's a lot.
00:49:45
Speaker
when I was like 11, 12, maybe, I think I was 12. Yeah, I was, yeah, 11 or 12, because the next year at a Christian New Year's Eve event, a 17-year-old was heading on me and then found out I was 12. And that was a joke for a long time. All of my friends that were their age would just come up to me randomly and go, you're 12? So there's that.
00:50:11
Speaker
Wow. So you, that's where you found like, so you, you stayed with that community for a while, like through high school. Was that like your connection to your, your Christian connection and community for a while?
Music Career and Challenges
00:50:26
Speaker
Yeah, I actually, so I stayed there for like all throughout the rest of middle school, seventh, eighth, ninth grade, freshman year, I actually was going to a lot of local shows and that was 100%. We all know this, the era of churches and Christian venues that are often skate parks, things like that. So growing up in Ohio- That saved our lives. Well, not in the same way that stuff saved your life, but metaphorically speaking,
00:50:55
Speaker
It was like that created our personalities. Yeah. It allowed me to have a personality that like, because everyone's trying to adopt one, right? You're like, you have your group that you fit into. No one wants to feel like a floater completely. So you're like, I was like, that's like what provided me that that's it. I found it. That's what I'm going to be. So then you, you know, trade in all of your clothes for banned t-shirts and black jeans and studded belts. And you found your people.
00:51:24
Speaker
I still have my white studded belt for middle school. I will not get rid of it. Oh, man. I wish I still had mine. Yeah. You rock the white. You did rock the white studded belt. I kind of want to bring it back. Can we? Hot topics are closing all over the nation. How can we bring back the white studded belt? It's almost time because like right now it's like all the stuff that was popular in like 2001. Right before. It's big.
00:51:49
Speaker
There was wearing like low cut gooch jeans, you know, knit tops. Please don't say that. We need, I need a lot, the black studded belt thing and the black studded bracelets are back. I've seen them on TikTok. I went on tour with the TikTok artists. It's a thing that's happening, but we need to transition to the white and then it's gotta be the lime green.
00:52:15
Speaker
Yes, rainbow ones were always a thing too. I never had one. Add a splash of color. It's like the firmament that separates the waters. It's like the rainbow belt that separates the black tea and the black pants. You have to have the one belt on your jeans and then the one that's just like over your shirt that's like mid-side length. That's right, the dose belts, I remember that.
00:52:43
Speaker
Bad name. Those belts. Yeah. I want to skip back to that period where like my whole persona was bleeding cowboy font. That was my best years. It's all been downhill from there. I was famous on MySpace and people used to steal my profile themes. I would code them and build them myself and people would steal them.
00:53:12
Speaker
That was like the ultimate. Yeah. I mean, that was the ultimate sign of disrespect during the MySpace heyday. I was Kelsey fucking Delta. You're going to you're going to take my profile. Kelsey Delta. Yeah, that was my first man that actually look at this good segua. We've.
00:53:31
Speaker
Sorry, I was going to say that seriously, but I wanted you to know that I... Is that how you supposed to say that? Seguin? It depends. How do you say croissant? Croissant. Croissant, seguin. I know. I'm pretty sure it's... Dang it. There go my headphones again. I'm pretty sure it's segue, always and forever. I can't hear segue without thinking about the CEO driving one off of a cliff.
00:53:56
Speaker
The dream. He didn't have one of those ripcord outfits to save his life. I just remember like every time I hear segue, I think of, I'm not going to get specific, but I remember a couple that we knew got married very young. And like one of the few things you saw from their honeymoon was that they were on like a guided segue tour with the bike helmets.
00:54:25
Speaker
That's canned fun right there. So what you're saying is you are so jealous. I would do a segue to her today because he got married late, which was six months after that couple.
00:54:38
Speaker
Mm hmm. So they stole the idea from you. So it's actually this like huge contention point because you were like, you you already posted online. I can't I can't do it now. He already has. I wasn't daring enough to copy their Myspace theme. You already had a romantic segue tour booked for you and your fiance. And you're just like, God damn it. She's going to think I stole it haunted segue tour. Let's make it a thing. There we go. A ghost hunting segue tour.
00:55:08
Speaker
ghost. Yes, you have to like, you have the full like, one of the Ghostbusters backpack on while also segueing. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So segue. Speaking of segue, how did what we started what we were talking about segue into your next, your next story.
00:55:27
Speaker
Yes, the Saguai identified. So you asked if how long I stayed with that church. So I started going to those shows that were hosted by churches, a lot of Christian venues. I'm from Ohio, which means I grew up with like the Devil Wears Prada and things like that. Like my first show that I ever went to was the Devil Wears Prada's first show ever at 180 State Park. Nice. Their drummer.
00:55:51
Speaker
Dan was actually playing in two bands that same night. Yeah, just that, you know. Was that pre-Reptar King of the Ozone, right? They literally didn't have any music out yet. Amazing. Good times. Growing up going to those shows, so I started these shows in middle school. I would come home, find every band on MySpace, add them, send them a great set tonight message, you know, just trying to make friends.
00:56:20
Speaker
And after one show at this place called The After, I had a solo MySpace music account, which is still up. And you can hear really crappy, my first ever demos. And a couple of people from one of the bands found that page when I added them. And they wanted to start a quote unquote girl band. So a female fronted project. And this was, I think, Paramore had just released
00:56:48
Speaker
their first record. So I auditioned to be in this band with Pressure by Paribor. And I remember them saying, yeah, you hit all the high notes. Sure, let's do it. So I was in that band, which was called Delta Delta for a while. And that was really where
00:57:09
Speaker
I would say like the beginning of the life that I still lead, but they were all raised by pretty hyper conservative Christian parents. So I got kicked out of that band because my best friend, um, someone who still identified as female at the time who I did have a crush on. Um, and he is a trans male who has given me 100% permission to.
00:57:33
Speaker
explain that he did identify as female as that time because it is so crucial to my story. So there were rumors starting because I was friends with someone who at the time was a quote unquote lesbian. So everyone was talking about that. They sat me down and had an intervention with me. So I got to love that very good Christian love. I love that.
00:57:54
Speaker
I miss that even. I was the face of the band. So if I didn't align morally with what they thought, I couldn't be in that band anymore. So they kicked me out. I started dating that person. That was like my high school sweetheart. And that was my time that made me a very fuck the church person. Fuck the church. I imagine they didn't give you the two thumbs up on that then.
00:58:20
Speaker
No, we didn't talk for years. We didn't talk until I think it was four years. If we saw each other at shows, it was, cause we divided the scene. There were people who found out why that hated them. And there were people who supported them because that was the culture at the time. So it was, it was just, it was really rough. Like the, the core people in Ohio's prominent like Dayton music scene were split in half at the time. And it was my fault.
00:58:48
Speaker
It's so wild. And the church that you were part of, did they have, did they thumbs down that too? Were you? So they didn't know. I had never, I had never said anything about it. And your old band didn't narc on you for the sake of.
00:59:07
Speaker
We went to different churches, so I had a little bit of safety debt there. But I had already had a little bit of a divide with some of the people in my church. About six months before I started this band, one of my best friends from youth group actually died by suicide as well. So I had a very heavy little kid life, which is funny because I'm pretty happy externally on the outside. I've learned to protrude.
00:59:36
Speaker
joy, because I have to, or I will die. Oh, God. That's a little things. I feel like that has to be common, right? Because the amount of people, I mean, it could just be a platitude, but the amount of people who know someone who died by suicide, everyone's like, they were so happy all the time.
00:59:58
Speaker
you never would have seen it cut like there was it's always that um so there's got to be fairly common to like feel like you got to stay in in that zone right yeah and there's this it's like you also don't want anyone to know and if you're already hurting all the time you you don't want to put that on other people and if you're struggling with depression suicidal thoughts you most likely already feel like a burden so why would you want to carry yourself in a way that makes you feel more like a burden on other people
01:00:26
Speaker
And I mean, with my friend, her name's Laura, I've talked about her a lot because it was very, very pivotal. We had an anti-suicide pact because we both struggled with it. So we had this agreement where if one of us failed and didn't make it, the other one had to stay alive no matter what and lead a life that was so good that you could split it between two people and the accomplishments would still be superb.
01:00:52
Speaker
I worked through a lot, yeah, and then she died. And I spent so long being so mad. But I've worked through that a lot. A lot of my therapy that I started at the end of 2020,
01:01:08
Speaker
was unpacking how I turned what could have been good motivation into like this ghost that was haunting me because I would get mad because I would struggle with those suicidal thoughts and be like, how dare you leave me here with this promise? I'm done. I want to leave. I want to exit the room, but I can't. But I'm also, I'm thankful for that now because I'm properly medicated and I'm glad that I'm alive.
01:01:34
Speaker
There's that. There's a lot of you guys didn't know that you were going to be talking to a real sad bitch. No, I mean, I had some inclination that we were going to traverse some of this territory when your most recent album was songs I wrote instead of killing myself. So that kind of like set the scene a tiny bit. But. Mm hmm.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm gonna I'm gonna condense the the church journey so you can ask me questions where you see fit, because I really was all over the place but it's played such a prominent role in my life that it could be a four hour conversation which we don't need to do because my voice is high pitched enough that there are people who
01:02:14
Speaker
probably immediately turn this off. I'm aware. I'm aware. Well, but still listening to us, Bramble, they're probably just along for the ride, whatever, whatever we. I feel like I've tried really, really hard to not do voices. I default to like character voices a lot. But I try not to do that on podcast because it's just I've had people tell me it's very disorienting. Well, give me an accent. What in your mind is an Ohio accent?
01:02:44
Speaker
my voice. Ohio is the most... Ohio is actually voted and rated the quote unquote most neutral state accent in the United States. Is it really? Well, and then you got Michigan, like just north, that's where I grew up. And Michigan is just like, it's kind of like trashy Wisconsin, like accent wise.
01:03:08
Speaker
No, I always, I always thought like growing up, I always thought Michigan boys had cute accents, but that's just because I was very much in love with Jordan Dreyer from law dispute after seeing them play in the dirt like Cornerstone so many years. Please don't, they follow me. Cornerstone will do that. Edit that out. No, I did that. I think Cornerstone is definitely something we should talk about, but let me, let me do my bullet point thing real quick. So, um, left.
01:03:37
Speaker
kind of left that church cause that friend, she had actually called me right before and had tried to get in touch, but I had just started, um, practicing. So it was like six months before our first show. Cause we had started rehearsing. We're already bands. I was so busy with the band stuff and getting, um, ready, like getting sets together, writing our songs that when she reached out to me with just a, Hey, can we catch up? It'd be really good to talk. And she called me after I wasn't supposed to be on the phone. I picked it up. I hung up and then she was gone.
01:04:07
Speaker
And I carried that guilt for a really long time because I was prioritizing selfish endeavors. And that was when music for me became something where I realized I could write songs that were about what I was struggling with, or I could write songs about people I had crushes on. And I saw a very strong contrast.
01:04:28
Speaker
The dichotomy between those two things and how they impacted other people, especially as a female artist, you get written off so quickly if you're writing love songs. And I realized that as like a 15 year old. So I wrote some songs about her and people really resonated with that.
01:04:47
Speaker
And that, again, changed what I shared, but that I started pulling away from my church and I don't think it was really the fault of any of them. It was just that I felt a lot of pain every time I was there and I sat in the same seat and she wasn't. So I just kind of started drifting and I think leaning into the Christian music scene instead, that kind of became my church. So I stayed there and then I still considered that my church until
01:05:16
Speaker
Summer of 2011, I went on a tour with 21 Pilots. I was just helping a friend's band. And this was before they were even signed to Fueled by Ramen. It was actually that tour that they had the meeting with the Fueled by Ramen reps. Yeah. And they, I had had a conversation with Josh where I had said that I was looking for a new church and I knew they were both Christians and anybody who is as passionate about what
01:05:42
Speaker
They do as they are and is also a Christian probably has a really good church so he actually recommended going to Tyler's Church, which is Still my church to this
01:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, so I think becoming friends again with a group of people, I would drive an hour and 15 minutes to the house where Tyler and Mark, who runs Real Bear Media and does all of their media stuff, Mark is still one of my best friends. He literally called me today just to ask about my cat. But having that community where I think I kind of became like,
01:06:26
Speaker
their younger sister that they also kind of saw as their age, because I was just a few years younger, having those people where I could go over there, stay up talking about life, having questions, having doubts.
01:06:38
Speaker
Um, seeing the correlation between art and how it can help people. And then also watching 20, 21 pilots just take off and how hard they worked. That was something to me. I, it, it changed my perspective on everything. Um, but that was, I think the thing that really put me back on a faith journey. That's yeah, that makes a lot. So I think what's, uh, what I think is really interesting about that is.
01:07:05
Speaker
I mean, we're living in just like the zeitgeist is like ex-vangelicals at this point. I mean, even media has grasped those straws. Every like few months there's a new documentary about some fucked up church or family or something like that related to Christianity. So like, that's clearly what people are interested in. And I think so, I mean, you, I mean that,
01:07:31
Speaker
Obviously exists for a reason a lot of legitimate reasons for people to feel the way they do. I am like like but so much of it was just like this juxtaposition of like truth and lies and which one's which and when the cognitive dissonance kind of sets in people are like I can't really hold this intention with this and what I'm hearing is like you kind of bypass some of that by finding like
01:07:55
Speaker
Kind of like real people in an environment that was just a safe place to be a real person And you didn't have to like it didn't become all about like this like these Just just the I can't I'm trying to like Articulate but just this idea of like is it true or is it not like I feel like those become inconsequential concepts At least if you have a life of faith that goes deeper than just you know these like concrete
01:08:25
Speaker
ideas of right wrong what happens if I break the rules like when you break out of fundamentalism essentially and I think people got stuck in like the fundamentalist lane for so long that their brains are just like adapted to that way of thinking so though they just had to shift out and even still I think Casey and I talk about this a lot but you find fundamentalism on
01:08:52
Speaker
in the same side, the people who leave evangelicalism, you kind of see fundamentalism on some of those other spectrums as well too, just a different team. So I don't know, I think that's what I find fascinating about people, like what you're saying is being able to like find these people and rekindle that faith connection. It doesn't feel like you are like, and I'd like obviously you to speak to this, but
01:09:21
Speaker
Nothing about your story was so far as, well, it just didn't, you know, I read some science books and it didn't really make sense anymore. Like it's not that it's, it, it's something more than that. So your, your reason for leaving didn't just like, just have to like balance one idea versus another. Like maybe think there's a space to hold two things together at once.
01:09:42
Speaker
Yeah, I definitely, I feel like most people just get bored with it. They hit an age where if you grew up in the church, especially if it wasn't your own choice, you just are out of it. And I did have another circumstance where I almost left. I was going every week to my church. I would be the last one there. I would be the first one to leave. I wouldn't talk to anybody.
01:10:05
Speaker
And I kind of approached my pastor and gave him a courtesy notice after being there. Gosh, I think this was like 2015 maybe? After being there for years at that point, every single week, I just walked up to him and I said, you know,
01:10:23
Speaker
the people I was friends with who I came to this church with, they're gone most of the time. I feel like I lost my community anytime I make friends. It's because they're trying to use me to get to those people. And that was a real big side effect of like being introduced as a group of
01:10:40
Speaker
in the friend group that was around 21 pilots. I couldn't make friends at my own church after they got famous, even, even when I wasn't really hanging out with them anymore, because it would be two, three weeks, or, you know, when they would be home, if we were going to go get lunch, it would be those people I thought were friends being like, well, well, aren't you going to bite me? Well, I would like to hang out with them. That kind of stuff. So I just gave up. Yeah. That's a shitty feeling.
01:11:05
Speaker
It sucks so bad because I, I was like, this is supposed to be my safe place in my community and I can't have a community because nobody is seeing me at all. Um, so I, I approached our pastor and had, um, I don't have anything bad to say about this church. So his name's Joel. Um, I, and anybody can literally Google like.
01:11:30
Speaker
But I approached Joel and I basically said, hey, I'm not going to be coming here anymore. This is my last week. And this is why. And it was funny because I had already decided that. And when I was leaving, he said, Kelsey, and he called me over and he said, how have you been? I haven't talked to you in a while. And I said, it's funny, you know, I'm, I'm not going to be here anymore.
01:11:47
Speaker
I'm leaving. This is kind of my last service. I just kind of want to say bye. And this is why. And he said, well, have you considered serving? Have you considered getting involved? And I hadn't at that point. I, you know, I would, I would kind of hang out and help with small things, but I had never actually committed to serving. So obviously the first thought was,
01:12:05
Speaker
helping with worship because I'm a musician. But I said, okay, I'll give it a try. Just put me where I need it. Just put me somewhere where you need help. And he said, you know, there are a lot of people who have no idea who you are friends with. And we have a lot of new members who are actively serving who, who won't know and who don't care.
01:12:22
Speaker
So I had a meeting a week later with someone, his name's Dan and he is in charge of the elementary school kids church. So he's one of the youth pastors there. And we sit down, we're talking and he was like, Oh, it's funny. I know you're old band, like you're my space band. And we start talking about music and how we're probably the only two people at that church that listen to me without you.
01:12:49
Speaker
Um, and then he asked me if I will be a small group leader for, uh, first and second grade girls. So I said, sure. I used to work at the YMCA. Let's give it a go. Um, and the third day that I was there, this, uh, this little girl, I caught her like, I don't know how to describe this with words. If one of you wants to see what I'm doing and then give a description. So imagine this glass I'm holding is a fish tank.
01:13:13
Speaker
the tadpoles in it right so she's she's going like this like she's you're like shaking your head wiggling it towards your glass like okay i guess that's exactly what it was and i said hey what are you doing and she said this is how they communicate she's doing that and she was so funny and it was her
01:13:33
Speaker
It was her second time there. So she came the second week after I did. So I got kind of a, a week to see a week to like actually be doing it, which was her first week. And this was her second week there. I was like, Oh, okay. And she goes, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can talk to them like that. And I said, Oh, and she, Oh, you enjoy them. Do you really like animals? And she said, yeah, I like animals more than people. I used to have friends, but they're all gone now.
01:13:56
Speaker
Which obviously with I've had, I've had several friends that passed away, um, not just Laura. So it hit me really hard. And I said, well, there are a lot of people here that you could probably make friends with. So I kind of stayed in that role because I was committed to helping her find friends. And I, I will never forget a couple of weeks later, we're going outside, we're playing on the playground. Cause it's nice outside seeing her holding hands with one of the kindergartners and just running and saying, I think
01:14:22
Speaker
I made a friend. And this other girl would be like, she's my new best friend. I just started sobbing. And I was like, I'm sorry. I've just been waiting for her to make it so beautiful. And I'm trying to make friends. And somebody else that I was serving with, he was like, well, I'm your friend. And I said, what?
01:14:38
Speaker
What do you mean? He said, we're, we're friends. Like I'm coming to your show next week too. And I was like, okay, I guess we, we all made friends. It's beautiful. So I stayed in kids for a long time. And I still every once in a while will help. I did some worship stuff with them too. And.
01:14:53
Speaker
Ended up being in a small group that was led by Dan and then everybody got married and I got shoved out and then I was in a different small group. And then I was touring all the time and it just, I was just, it was too inconsistent for me. And I, I just felt like I was six months behind every time I came back. Um, so that was hard, but pandemic was nice because we were all on the same page, but yeah, I don't know. I just haven't felt as connected. I think since the pandemic.
Pandemic Impact on Church Attendance
01:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that was the exodus for a lot of people, too, right? They're like, maybe they realize that they didn't. They're they're used to going. They go on their whole lives. And then they're like, after like three months off, they're like, oh, I actually feel fine. And it was hard to go back. And about the 12th like Zoom church service that they tuned into where he's like, we're going to talk about having faith over fear like.
01:15:50
Speaker
Oh, maybe I'm an atheist. My pastor actually talks a lot. Like, I think he's very good at walking the line between things that legally you're not allowed to say, like politically, like who you're voting for, things like that.
01:16:06
Speaker
But he just doesn't stop a lot of them. No, but he would do it in the best way because he would during one of the elections, he basically said, we're not going to tell you who we're voting for, but we will tell you that it's very clear that one candidate wants to help people and one wants to hurt people, isolate people. And he said.
01:16:27
Speaker
neither of them look like Jesus, but there's a fine line, you know, Christianity we're meant to serve, we're not tear people down just cause they don't believe what we believe, et cetera, et cetera. So it was very, it was a very fun day cause I'm looking around and I'm watching like the whole congregation, especially like the older it's, it's seen kind of a privilege area in Columbus, watching them like look around and kind of like whispering, like everyone is realizing that he's going to vote for the Democratic candidate.
01:16:52
Speaker
That's the that's the liberal version of I'm not going to tell you how to vote or who I'm going to vote for. But I all I know is that I'm tired of seeing babies getting murdered in the womb. And you're like, I get it. I get it. Brother.
01:17:10
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it was. They all have their work arounds. My church had that had that work around. That was the church I grew up in. Same. Same. Mine is a southern accent. You know, it's pretty bigoted to just instantly go to a southern accent whenever you want to just shit on conservatives. So.
01:17:27
Speaker
That's probably not the right word, but maybe can if you want. I grew up in New England. I live in Massachusetts. I've grown up in New England. I've never I mean, I wasn't till college. I live somewhere else. And despite the fact that every fundamentalist I've ever met for the first 18 years of my life did not have an accent. I'll do the accent when I go fundamentalist.
01:17:49
Speaker
My abusive ex had a Southern accent, so you can talk shit on it all you want. As far as I'm concerned. Just kidding. I like Southern accents. I think they're... I have one sometimes. Yeah. If I'm drinking. It just comes out. A lot of my family, I don't know why they have a little bit of like a Southern twang and it comes out. I worked hard to kind of not have it, but you can hear it sometimes. And then I released the song Taking Up Space and people were like, just kind of has some twang in it. And I was like, shit.
01:18:17
Speaker
Shit, they know. Oh, everyone knows. People around here get the if they don't have an accent, get they'll get a Boston accent when they're drinking or yelling. Mm hmm. That's our equivalent. What a miserable population. We are, for the most part, seems that way.
01:18:39
Speaker
Did you have any words or phrases where you felt like as you got older, you had to actively change the way you pronounce things? Did you do the work? No, so I never really had the accent. So I didn't have to work towards it at all. But there are, yeah.
01:19:00
Speaker
Thank you for stating your privilege. Yes, it is. I mean, I never had to learn how to enunciate my R's. Thankfully, it's clearly complicated for people, but I didn't have that burden in my life.
01:19:13
Speaker
That's fair. That's fair. I'm, I'm resisting accent urges. Yeah. See, they always sound good in your head and then you do it and you were, that's a lot of instant regret when I try to do accent. That's why I was reluctant to do an impression of you earlier too.
01:19:30
Speaker
Um, I think you just have to like switch your voice up a couple six octaves. Although I'm not, I think I don't fear. I think I've gotten to the point where I don't have retail voice when I'm talking about shit anymore. So I think, uh, people will be very surprised in interviews that I have my real voice because I used to talk like this is my real speaking voice, but people always thought I was mad at
Voice and Communication in Personal and Professional Contexts
01:19:54
Speaker
them. Cause when I w you know, I've worked in customer service at a coffee shop or I'd
01:19:57
Speaker
I'd be talking to people and it's always, you know, if they're saying something nice to me, oh my God, thank you so much. And I mean it because I'm excited and my voice goes up when I'm being enthusiastic. So when I'm speaking to someone in my real voice, they're like, what did I do? She's so pissed at me right now. She's so mad. I'll get texts. I just seem like you were kind of mad at me today. And I'm like, no, I'm just trying to be myself. Fuck.
01:20:20
Speaker
Retail voices for sure a thing of going up a couple octaves I I've done some retail, but I used to I had this Incredibly shitty job in a call center And so you're around like a dozen other people who are all reading the same script you are and in between calls everybody's talking and then you know like they get the beep in their headset and all of a sudden they go from just talking like Going up like a couple octaves like hey, how's it going? I'm so it's so calling for whatever and you're like, oh god
01:20:50
Speaker
You don't hear it in yourself, but then you hear it in other people and you're like, am I doing that too? And you definitely are. Yeah, I do it a lot. Uh, I also have like the, with my friends, I kind of default to that weird baby voice all the time, especially if I'm asking for something. Uh, uh, I don't, I don't know why. I don't know why it has been heavily established. I think it's because I foster kittens. So I talk about cats a lot. And a lot of people talk about animals with that very specific.
01:21:20
Speaker
voice and I you know exactly I'm looking at your faces you know what voice I'm talking about where it's like kind of like a baby yes you get a little bit high-pitched and so cute yeah wheeze and pie that sort of thing
01:21:34
Speaker
And Steven did so good at the vet yesterday, just stuff like that. But also, I only have a few super close friends, but we use that voice if there's conflict or if we need to ask for something. I was just wondering if maybe you could work my shift tomorrow because you said you would, but I think you forgot that kind of thing.
01:21:57
Speaker
it just softens the blow my abusive ex literally at one point he told me he looked at me there's a lot of issues there but i stopped using that voice for a long time so i think i enjoy it now because it feels like um oddly empowering to uh
01:22:13
Speaker
take myself back 17 years or so. But he told me one time, he was like, yelled at me and was like, if you stop fucking talking like that. And I was like, I'm sorry. He's like, when you talk to your fucking friends like that, it makes me feel like a pedophile. And it was the first time I ever said anything back to him. And I said, well, that sounds like a U issue, which I did immediately regret because repercussions. But also, it's true. That was not my problem. I realize that
Reflections on Abusive Relationships and Healing
01:22:38
Speaker
it is a strange thing to say.
01:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I think it was because it was something that showed a connection to someone else. You know what I mean? Like if me and my best friend were talking like that, but there are a lot of isolation tactics and things like that that I can see now. I'm just a trauma queen. I am a trauma queen. He wasn't a youth pastor, was he? No. No. He was an Episcopalian. That explains a lot. Just kidding. Sorry, Episcopalian.
01:23:08
Speaker
No, yeah, I'm sorry. I tried to I tried to not. I've never actually like outed him or like said his name. And I recently found out he's married now. So it's just one of those things where I'm like, I hope she's OK. That was my first response. I'm still friends with his sister on Facebook and I didn't know it. So stuff from like his wedding popped up and it was a very it was a bit. Yeah, it was it was an emotionally heavy day, I'm sure.
01:23:32
Speaker
Yeah. I just caught me off guard. I actually drove through, um, Ohio has drive through liquor stores. You can literally drive through and buy. That's cool. I bought two red bottles, like two bottles of red wine. And I looked at the woman that was working. I brought her a cheesecake once she's very nice. Um, and I just said, this is what just happened. I'm going to drink both of these tonight. She gave me her phone number and she said, if you need help later, you just give me a call.
01:24:01
Speaker
That's got that Southern hospitality vibe. I drank one and a half, but I'm Italian so that's like two glasses.
01:24:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's just getting hydrated. Yeah.
Community Support and Healing Journey
01:24:11
Speaker
Yeah. Trauma's fun, though. That's everything. I don't know. I feel like the shit that I have gone through, it's it's been the community and the church and probably my mom, because she actually is an angel. She hasn't come up very much because we've been talking about shitty things mostly. But I think those are the two things that have kept me here and have often motivated me to keep going. I actually had a big article
01:24:39
Speaker
It's weird because we had to, obviously I had the flu, so we had to delay this and reschedule it. So we are now having this conversation the day after like a 12 page article and interview came out about why I actually paused doing music during the pandemic. That was the result of a sexual assault that I didn't tell anybody about and I pushed everyone away. That is also the same time that I stopped serving at my church.
01:25:02
Speaker
Because I just couldn't be around anybody who could tell that something was wrong. Because I was on the cusp of taking my story back. Pushback came out. It wasn't about my abuser anymore. It was about me. It was about my struggles, how I wanted to connect with people. And then it was...
01:25:17
Speaker
very shortly after that, like within two weeks, um, that happened. I was sexually assaulted again. And I just,
Addressing Sexual Assault Aftermath
01:25:24
Speaker
I couldn't handle it. So I just pretended it didn't happen. And anybody who could tell anybody, I'm just away. And I, I just got to the point where I was like, if I want to do this, I don't keep being secret. So it has always felt like lying to me and I understand I don't need to tell anybody that, but I did let a lot of people down and I, I did push a lot of people away in a very strategic, um,
01:25:44
Speaker
kind of thing that I planned out. So people would think it was normal. I needed to make sure nobody asked what was wrong, because I couldn't acknowledge it. So those people deserve an apology. You know, the the people who supported me deserve to understand why I just didn't want to so sick of just being that like the the victim survivor, I that's divine it. So we're now in this where that came out yesterday. So for
01:26:13
Speaker
You know the past 24 hours I've been getting so many messages from people and I have to I have to be really careful going through them And take care of myself, which I've I've learned how to do better at that But it's also something where like I said last night I was I was thinking about it because in that whole article I'm talking about the friends I pushed away family I shut down industry people that I just burned the bridges with because I just couldn't I just Fucking couldn't and not once in that article
01:26:42
Speaker
Did I talk about how I stopped working in the children's ministry? Cause I, I just, I couldn't, I couldn't get up in the morning to go to church. I just couldn't do it.
Reconnecting with Church Community
01:26:51
Speaker
And there, there's a lot. That's the theme of that couldn't, couldn't, couldn't, couldn't. Um, but now I'm at a point where I've done so much work that I can, and I've, you know, apologize to friends, tried to reconnect with people starting to do music again. And that's the biggest missing piece that I need to, I need to figure out where I am. I feel like a lot of this podcast.
01:27:11
Speaker
You know, and the conversations you have with people is, you know, obviously growing up a Christian and where you're at now. So I'm in a very weird season where I have to, I've spent so much time doing work on myself by myself with.
01:27:26
Speaker
you know, not Christian therapists that my healing process that I needed to do psychologically for me, I had real tangible work that I needed to do that is not a, I'm just going to give it to God thing, which I've never been like that. I have control issues. So now I need to figure out how, how me taking care of myself and reconnecting with people works. Basically what I'm saying is I need to fucking go back to church and I'm going to go on Sunday and just see what happens.
01:27:56
Speaker
I'll be your accountability buddy on this one. I'll message you on Sunday and see if you went. So how long has it been? I'll post it. Well, I have gone. So like the Christmas services.
01:28:14
Speaker
It's been December, I think December of last year, I did go. They were short staff for people and I was supposed to do help with worship for the kids service, which is one of my favorite things. I filled in on worship here and
Music Tours and Career Balance
01:28:26
Speaker
there. 2021, I was doing some tours, so I didn't want to commit to a new group of students, especially following the pandemic because I wasn't going to consistently be there. I felt like stability with a leader was something those kids probably needed.
01:28:42
Speaker
So if I'm going to be gone every other month with touring, it just didn't seem fair to them. So I was still helping lead worship. Um, occasionally, you know, like maybe every other week for a couple of months, then it, it, I was gone and I went on tour with machine gun Kelly. And then I felt like I couldn't go. I'm just kidding. That was a joke. I was like, okay, we're going to have to stop here for a moment.
01:29:07
Speaker
No, I mean, I did go on tour with machine gun Kelly. I was working for another artist, but I will. I was just shocked by like the juxtaposition of musical stuff. So it was with you weren't playing music. No, I was playing guitar and tour managing for another artist. OK. And I prefer to leave the conversation at that. But OK.
01:29:28
Speaker
Colson is great. He's a really nice person. Everybody on Michigan Kelly's team was awesome. But yeah, so that was the joke. I just actually had a lot of stuff going on when I got back and was trying to work on my own music stuff and had to work at the coffee shop job on Sundays because we had a couple people leave.
01:29:46
Speaker
So it was something where I just needed time to readjust then filled in here and there. And I really felt like my return to the community was going to be last Christmas. I had a couple children's services. I was going to help with worship and be a team leader at one of the services, but we had the biggest snowstorm of the season that day. It started the night before and I live an hour away from my church. So.
01:30:13
Speaker
They reached out. I think they ended up canceling all the services anyway, but they didn't want me. It was like, I think a level two snow emergency goes up to level three here, which is only emergency vehicles are permitted on the road. If you drive in a level three, you'll get arrested. So they, uh, they told me not to come and I haven't been to a service in person since like the week before that. Okay. So when you are, okay. Six months.
01:30:42
Speaker
going to jump back a little bit. I think if any of the way I explain this sounds like it lacks empathy, please just point that out. But I know. But I'm thinking of like you have these.
01:30:55
Speaker
you have these experiences that you don't want to share with anybody for I mean that because it's deeply personal and obviously difficult to talk about and I think what's interesting is most people like you yourself probably would have if you had known someone who'd gone through a similar experience your heart would have gone out to them very sincerely like that's what people that's generally the reaction that we
01:31:20
Speaker
I think what I'm trying to say is people are afraid to share with people knowing that if someone shared with them similar information, they would be like, you would you'd be like, oh, my God, like, what can we do? And that's all of humanity. Everyone's doing that constantly. They just how old that it's different for me. And I don't know if that's some like ego or God complex that people have or it's different for me. It's just
Sharing Abuse Stories Through Music
01:31:44
Speaker
the internal. It's just like, I don't want to rehash this over and over and over again for
01:31:49
Speaker
you know, 10 different people. Right. Right. The thing that was like particularly like stuck out to you is like surprising in the way that it played out after you started being open about your experiences or Well, I think so the first time when I was writing songs about my abusive relationship, that was different because I kind of had the safety net of releasing the songs and then
01:32:15
Speaker
playing them. And I wanted to be really intentional about verbalizing a trigger warning before playing some of the songs live. So it was something where I didn't realize how much a lot of people in the music scene I was playing in, like going on tour with like Knucklepuff, Boston Man, or the Wonder Years. In that music scene, how many women needed to hear from another woman
01:32:42
Speaker
that they have been through that because it's not something, I mean, we've got a lot of pop punk songs that guys are writing about some dude being shitty to another girl. You know, we have that. We have we have that or about, you know, a girl being shitty in the story so far anyway. So but there's not there's not a lot of female fronted projects in the spotlight or touring with those bands getting on stage and
01:33:11
Speaker
singing a song about an abusive relationship or assault or rape and saying that, hey, this is what this is about. It happened to me. Um, you deserve people in your life who support you and your ability to change changes possible, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm not saying there are no other female artists writing about those kinds of experiences because there are plenty.
01:33:30
Speaker
I just had this privilege of having a great team who got me on these tours where I was saying that. So a lot of people who only go to those bigger tours hadn't had that experience. So I think the surprising part was how many people were coming up to me after shows. And I would be at the merch table for two, three hours, just talking to people about how hearing that song made them feel like they weren't alone, how it inspired them to tell other people
01:33:54
Speaker
that it had happened to them. So that was shocking. This time around, I think I knew people would be really supportive, but I was too ashamed to say anything because I thought I would react differently. Like I thought, I have all the support. I know people are there for me. I know statistically if this has happened to you once, it's
01:34:15
Speaker
way more likely that it'll happen to you again. And a lot of that is because predators will prey on people who are empathetic and compassionate. So that's
Recovering from Trauma
01:34:23
Speaker
one of the statistics there, but I felt like the way I reacted was not this badass persona of, you know, woman scorned that I thought it would be. So I felt like I was disappointing myself and disappointing everybody else. So, and I know that's not true. I understand that's not true. I wasn't ashamed because of what somebody else did to me. I was ashamed of my reaction.
01:34:44
Speaker
And I think that's what it was. It wasn't, yeah, I didn't want sympathy. It wasn't because I was like, I can deal with this myself. It was because I didn't want it to be true. And if nobody else knew, and it was just my little thing, then I could just erase it. Shit doesn't work like that. Trauma doesn't work like that. It just builds up. Funny thing about trauma.
01:35:05
Speaker
Snowballs, even if you don't realize it, you know, you're yelling at an old lady because she's walking in the crosswalk when you're at a red light. And then you're like, oh, this is not her fault. Her hat is fine. I'm not offended by her red hat, even though she's wearing it with a green jacket. I'm not offended.
01:35:24
Speaker
I work with kindergarten first graders at a school as an adjustment counselor and it's in a district that's a lot of DCF involvement or whatever you would call it in your area, but like Department of Children and Families, CPS, whatever.
01:35:39
Speaker
And it's so wild working with kids in that age group and that population that are so heavily traumatized because you see the way it comes out when they are under some sort of stress or duress and like they go from like, you know, making choices to not making choices and just reacting and responding to events or setting events or antecedents and you're just like, oh, shit, like,
01:36:04
Speaker
You just you sit like for like, you know, you meet them and they might be new to the school or whatever. And you just like for the first five days, it's just like perfect. I'm like, wow, what a sweet kid this kid's made. And then like they said it and something happens and they're.
01:36:17
Speaker
the way that their bodies react and the way that trauma affects your responses that they're not you're not they're not calculated responses they're just you know obviously trauma responses and it's it's fucking wild uh what it does to you uh so i think that it's like trying to explain it or make sense of it is like a very challenging because he's like you as i imagine so as an adult too who's had traumatic experiences where you you know your
01:36:45
Speaker
We're set on trying to make sense of the world around us and rationalize our experiences. And it's like to maybe try to set yourself on that path and have things not work out the way that you told yourself they would based on how you respond to the next thing that comes up. It's like, I imagine that's confusing and hard to work through.
01:37:04
Speaker
Well, one of the things I was talking about in that interview is we put so much emphasis on healing and the process of it, how it's not linear, how it's different for everybody, but we don't really talk about like, okay, healing from a traumatic incident. Like I'll obviously just use like sexual assault. We can learn how to like deal with the thoughts we're having.
01:37:28
Speaker
our responses, things that make us feel unsafe, like feeling comfortable, feeling confident again, we can work through all of that stuff as our healing process. But healing doesn't necessarily teach you how to deal with it if it happens again, because a lot of healing is convincing yourself that it won't happen again.
01:37:47
Speaker
Which is, because you need to believe, you absolutely need to believe if something like that happened to you, that it was a one-time thing. That you're free from it. You have to believe you're safe. It's like life's about convincing. That's why you can drive to your job and not think about death statistics. You just have to believe you're safe in this world.
01:38:08
Speaker
Yeah. So then when something happens that shows you, Oh, you're not like you're still susceptible to this thing. It's terrifying. And that's, I think that's why I, I needed to accept the truth. I accepted
Resilience and Purpose
01:38:20
Speaker
before that, but I don't know. And sometimes being healed is equally as hard as healing because you see the person that you are now. And if you had been that person before, it would have gone totally, totally differently.
01:38:32
Speaker
You want to hear the last trauma bomb in the series of shit things that happened? I didn't talk about this in my other interview. So I decided to start playing music, releasing music, going really, really hard again last year. So I started with a festival. I had a couple other shows booked. So I played a festival last June that I put on Benefit Fundraiser. Super excited. First time playing my record that came out during the pandemic. All this stuff. Saw a lot of old friends.
01:39:01
Speaker
And then a couple of weeks later, one of my friends who was at that show, who I've been friends with for 17 years died. Oh my God.
01:39:08
Speaker
Um, so I went to her, I went to her funeral on my ex boyfriend's birthday and then drove to a family vacation on a beach. And she had two kids that just, and she's just amazing and amazing, amazing person. But she was, uh, my friend Laura that died by suicide. She was her other best friend. So the anniversary of that suicide of Laura's was this past May 21st. So I'm driving home from a show.
01:39:35
Speaker
And I realized it's 1 a.m. So I pull out my phone and I go to text my friend Rachel that passed away because that's what I did every year. And then I was like, oh, I can't. I can't. After Rachel died, Laura's dad looked at me and said, and then there was one. So I was like, are you fucking kidding me? Why were they all dead when I've tried so many times?
01:39:57
Speaker
You can laugh at that. It's a joke. I think that there's a valid reason that I'm still here. And I'm gonna die a natural way. And I'm gonna do probably a lot of really fucking cool stuff before then. Probably a lot of really stupid stuff too. And I'm excited to see what all of those days look like now.
01:40:19
Speaker
But yeah, that was my last little trauma bomb. And now I have, you know, I put out new music after that, and I have shows coming up, and I have like festival things, and I'm talking to strangers like you guys again. And I think it'd be good. Yay, strangers! Yeah, because it is interesting. One of the things that we had...
01:40:38
Speaker
talked about was I had first reached out almost almost two years ago and when you when I had finally but I'd left it you know I don't I reach out to a lot of people sometimes yeah I do that I move on sometimes I'll follow up sometimes I'll follow up quite some time later and then you're like
01:40:55
Speaker
When we, when
Music Industry Pressures and Authenticity
01:40:57
Speaker
I followed up again, it was like years late, almost two years later, it was like, yeah, this was after hearing your story. But one of the things you said was like, it's actually a much better time to do this now. And now listening to your story, it's like, yeah, it probably wasn't the best time for you to want to be doing a bunch of interviews. Oh, yeah. Well, I was. I already was because pushback had just come out.
01:41:21
Speaker
Oh, so you would have been talking to a robot like before we hit record when I was saying, you know, I had a list of things that I had to say, I can talk about this. Don't ask about this. Um, if I say, I'd love that kind of stuff. So you were saying before we recorded that when you, you're in the industry, there was a list of things that they told you, you couldn't talk about or the interviews couldn't ask about what were like a few of them that were interesting.
01:41:45
Speaker
A lot of it was stuff, um, like, you know, upcoming releases, normal stuff like that, where it's like, Oh, this will probably come out before we announced this tour, like, or this music video, or, you know, it's saying things like that, which is like pretty standard. Um, but I had a label rep remind me that we were moving away from my trauma image.
01:42:08
Speaker
That's just not working for us. You wanted to move away from that. So make sure they know that they're not allowed to ask you about that. And I was like, well, I mean, I feel like it's, it's like really prevalent with my career and the fan base. And it is part of my platform. Um, but to be totally honest, they tried to steer me away from.
01:42:29
Speaker
I'm going to say this, but I would also prefer not to go past it. I was associated with a couple of people who had allegations come out who weren't really in my life anymore at that point, but they were like, you can't say anything that will potentially lead someone to those questions because you're not allowed to talk about that. And that was a big thing where I was like, I would love to talk about that.
01:42:49
Speaker
I'm not in like a problematic way, not in like a, like a defending anybody way, just in a, hey, I like, this is triggering for me. I have a side in this experience too. So if people have a problem with me talking about that, that I don't really care, but obviously, you know, there's like industry things that you have to do. I also wasn't supposed to talk about how I was almost 30.
01:43:16
Speaker
You worked, they didn't want you to talk about you. I don't think you do. What a sex, that is like, it's funny, you know what, it's actually heartwarming to know that that kind of sex isn't still alive and well. I know. I love it. America, God bless. Like, I love it. Don't tell anyone that you're almost 30 and stop talking about myocarditis. Yeah, we need, we need people in their 50, no, okay, I'll move on from. Yeah, no, I don't like the direction those jokes were going in.
01:43:45
Speaker
Uh, no, I would, I would like to be, I, that's honestly one of the big reasons that now it's like, fuck you. There's a, uh, on the pandemos, there's a song called whatever that sounds like this real nice eighties pop song. And at the end of it, it says, uh, fuck you to the people who said that I missed my moment in 2021. I took my story back and someone stole it. And that's like about everything we talked about, but also I just, some of the people, I worked with some really great industry people and my, my trauma responses.
01:44:15
Speaker
created situations that it's good we parted ways because I think it would still be rough to work out. My fault, my failures. But my goodness, some of the people that I work with in this professional music industry, it's so weird to be a fucking product.
01:44:32
Speaker
Like I'm a person. I know that you probably forgot, especially in this conversation, but like I'm a human who like breathes and I have skin that has nerves that are attached to me. And I can hear things that people say and I can see shit that people are doing, but I have a lot of feelings also.
01:44:55
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not just a product. And that's how it is. And like, especially as a solo artist and as a woman, you are a product with an expiration date. And that expiration date either happens when you hit a certain age or when you decide you're too old to do dance videos on TikTok, or you decide you don't want to shift your entire image by making sure you post five selfies a week, three of which need to include your whole body.
01:45:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. What is this like because it's especially weird considering that like you're an artist and I don't know. I just feel like if.
01:45:34
Speaker
If you're a company that brings an artist on board that especially has built a fan base to date, you've built that fan base because people are connecting with who you are and how you're representing yourself. I don't understand this impulse to
01:45:54
Speaker
you get like these, you know, suit and tie, maybe not in the record industry, but like the suit and tie people that like, it's like, Hey, I'm on the ground here. I see what people will respond to and what they don't like, I've gotten to this point without you. Like, why are you trying to interject now and tell me how I can like, do me better? You know?
01:46:16
Speaker
It doesn't it just doesn't make sense. It's like it's it's compromising like the relationship that you have with your audience if you're not authentic. It just reminds me like when I started out and in like the industry I'm in, you know, initially like all the old guys were like,
01:46:33
Speaker
You need to wear a tie. Respectable people wear ties. And if you go into a meeting and you don't have a tie on, everybody's just going to look down on you and stuff. You go into these meetings and it's like, nobody here is wearing a tie. I feel ridiculous. I'm doing like hands on. I'm working on a car with a tie on like an idiot.
01:46:50
Speaker
This is not the case anymore. Why are you making me do this? It's so ridiculous in that artistic realm to try to force and sterilize a person's image and try to take control of their branding.
01:47:11
Speaker
Yeah, I will say I worked with Lindsay Burns, who is, she was my creative director for Pushback. And she is the greatest thing that happened to me during that record cycle, because she is amazing. So there are certain things that, you know, if the label wanted like, quote unquote, sexier pictures or whatever, or like, wanted me to do,
01:47:35
Speaker
hot girl shit, I guess, which has never been my thing at all. Um, it was, they wanted that. And, but Lindsay's approach with me was not like, Oh, we have to give the label this. It would
Empowerment Through Photography
01:47:47
Speaker
be, this is what the label wants. Is there, you know, is there, what do you want? Is there a compromise that you're comfortable with? You know, to the extent of me saying, I, you know, the way I grew up coming out of abusive relationships, being in abusive or being in relationships where
01:48:05
Speaker
If I posted something like that, like even beach day, swimsuit, top jeans, whatever, it was always an issue for someone in my life. So it made me really insecure and really ashamed of that stuff. And I remember one day during a photo shoot, Lindsay said, you're hot.
01:48:21
Speaker
You're, you're fucking hot. You're beautiful. You're, you're pretty and you're allowed to feel like that. So let's take some pictures that make you feel fucking hot. You don't have to post them if you don't want to, but you deserve to feel like that. And that, especially, you know, from another female that is, I didn't have a lot of close female relationships growing up. So it is the, the snap your fingers, gas up your girls kind of mentality that I never had. And.
01:48:45
Speaker
The photos we ended up taking that day, I still look at them and I'm like, who is she? And it's not, it's, it's because I felt confident for the first time in probably six years and.
01:48:58
Speaker
That's something I've carried with me all the time. Like even now, if I'm gonna like post something on social media, I have moments where I'm like, Lindsay would love this. And it's just like her voice is one that stayed encouraging in my head. And also when I was going through some rough stuff, she was the one, I didn't talk to her about everything, but she had a point where she was like, is this what you wanna do? Because if you don't wanna do it, I don't care. I don't fucking care. I love you and I want you to be happy. But if this isn't what you wanna do, you don't have to do it.
01:49:27
Speaker
So it was, I don't know, she's, um, she's an angel and I think anybody who's ever worked with her, she's like, she's a photographer and a creative director that is like a tiny life coach just by fucking existing. I could praise her for days. So Lindsey Burns is amazing. Um, and that is
Future Music Plans and Balance
01:49:46
Speaker
the hill I will die on. Thank you. Shout out Lindsey Burns. Shout out Lindsey Burns and your brother Ken.
01:49:52
Speaker
I know we've had you on for a while. I have one more question about your new music and what's going on. And then we can start wrapping up unless you have anything you're dying to get off your chest. But we know. Yeah. So new album 2023. It seems like so. I know.
01:50:12
Speaker
pandemic made a big shift in what artists could do. Obviously, some of your mental health struggles over the past few years made touring probably also a challenge and putting yourself out there. As far as the capacity, I feel like I saw something where you had talked about maybe in an Instagram post or something about the capacity in which you were touring and what that's like in your
01:50:40
Speaker
level of commitment to to being on the road frequently versus when you can and also that you've found a lot of satisfaction in managing this coffee shop that you do like where you at with all of that and like kind of like gun ho back onto the road full speed ahead with the whole with music versus the life that you've kind of built where you are doing the things that you like in the area you live
01:51:05
Speaker
Okay. So I
Life with Foster Kittens
01:51:06
Speaker
still have, um, I have a lot of foster kittens here right now. Um, I was very tempted to the setup up there, but it would have every five seconds. I would have been like down. No, no, or been like, Oh, look how cute he is. So I said, I'll be professional ish, I guess.
01:51:23
Speaker
You did get to meet Jeffy. That is one of my partner's cats who has become my son as well. But that is the cat that's like his baby. Very, very like his baby. Jeffy's got fat face. The way that I picked him up, I know I'm on a tangent. But if you guys could take a screenshot of that, I think that's we need that. That's the thumbnail. Oh, yeah. He's a little plumper.
01:51:50
Speaker
Anyways. Okay. Sorry. You can also edit me talking about Debbie out if you want. That's what we love to hear. Um, but yeah, so I have some foster kittens that I still need to rehome. This is the last batch. Uh, we're doing, I'm also keeping one of them cause he's blind and I'm obsessed with him. I ordered him a harness and a leash today. So, you know, have those things. Um, but I think I always pushed myself so hard. It wasn't necessarily how often I was touring.
01:52:18
Speaker
It was just that I only saw worth in myself when I was touring. So when I came home, I was so depressed. And it was not just the post-tour blues that went away. I came home and I could hardly function, which is why I started working at coffee shops again like I did before tour. I found a...
01:52:35
Speaker
a nice coffee shop in Columbus that I had worked at previously that would just let me work as much as I wanted to when I was home. And, um, you know, they can go back on tour. Um, during the pandemic though, that was really my only option was going back to those coffee shops. Um, but I went from the one in Columbus back to one I started working at right when I turned 16, which I managed. I helped run it for a couple of years and I came back under the, um,
01:53:03
Speaker
under the agreement that I was not going to be a manager. I would help with extra stuff that needed done, but I was just there to work, to help during a short period of time. And that was in October of 2020. Now I'm a manager at that shop and I work almost 40 hours a week. And I kind of just had, I don't know, I think that I sort of was in this like trauma pause and it was like I was disassociating
01:53:30
Speaker
for two years and then I woke up and was like, whoa, what the fuck? Like what, what is this? So then it's, you know, picking apart the parts of life here that I settled into because I enjoy them or like what felt safe because I needed that at the time and what, um,
01:53:50
Speaker
did I kind of fall backwards into because it was comfortable and I needed comfort. And I think the coffee shop is one of those things. It's the first place I ever played music at an open mic night when I was 15. And, you know,
Music Industry Reconnection
01:54:02
Speaker
I booked shows there and gave back to the community that I needed when I was growing up, which is art community in a farm town, basically.
01:54:11
Speaker
But it's it's time for me to go or I'm going to get stuck forever. So I actually just talked to the owner a couple of months ago about how I need to start transitioning out. You know, that's I have some other shows coming up this year that haven't been announced yet. I have some songs I'm working on that are not going to be released as demos that are actually going to be recorded in a studio or at least sent to a studio and then back to me and then back to the studio.
01:54:37
Speaker
As far as touring, ideally I would like to tour next spring, but that's also where the, oh, I accidentally, uh, and kind of purposely cut all of my industry ties. So it's, it's a lot of work. It's more work than the first time because it's not.
01:54:54
Speaker
It's harder to come back than it is to start, which most people would probably disagree with that, but I've already projected myself to a lot of people who went to bat for me as someone who's not reliable and who won't do the work, which is the exact opposite of how I was for years and years and years.
01:55:12
Speaker
So I think everybody just thought I got burned out and was done. And I wasn't, I just, I needed a break and I didn't know how to verbalize that. So now it's building new relationships and starting from the ground up, which I'm actually kind of excited about because I did get to a point where
01:55:28
Speaker
I would be home and I would look at local, you know, local lineups for shows and not know anybody. So now I'm like, oh yeah, this show is coming up in Columbus. And like this guy who's in this band also plays in these two bands and they're really good. And you know, they just started this community art fundraiser thing. So being back in touch.
01:55:47
Speaker
feel so good. It makes me feel human again and less producty. But yeah, so that basically I would like to, we'll manifest it right now. I would like to put out a small EP of something that's kind of special at the end of the year. I would like to release
01:56:04
Speaker
a couple of singles that are not related to that for either an EP or full link to come out in spring. So, I mean, the song as I wrote, instead of killing myself, we're literally just, here are demos I recorded. This is how they're recorded. I'm not rerecording anything. This is where I was. This is the story that you missed. This is me filling in the gaps. So maybe if you get it, you'll get it. And now that I have all this off my chest, let's fucking go. I love that. I'm looking forward to it. I hope you, uh, I hope I see you, uh, some shows pop up in Massachusetts.
01:56:34
Speaker
Me too. Me too. I'm going to
Media Consumption and Cultural Reflections
01:56:36
Speaker
try to get the girls that run the morbid podcast to come out. That's my goal. That's my goal. Oh, there you go. The morbid podcast. That's the happening show. You've never listened to it.
01:56:48
Speaker
Ooh, it's a true crime podcast, but they're funny. I, yeah, they're funny. They also, they just started another podcast called, uh, the rewatcher that's been out for a couple of months and they're rewatching every episode of Buffy the vampire Slayer and giving a run through and talking about it. One of them has seen it. The other one hasn't and is watching it for the first time. I'm obsessed with that show to the point where my mom banned it from me when I was.
01:57:13
Speaker
in like fifth grade because she thought I was too obsessed with it. I love influences. A lot of joy, a lot of joy in that show. In the musical episode, I'm pretty sure that's why I'm in advance.
01:57:26
Speaker
I've never seen an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have thought about, recently I've been seeing some bits and pieces of some episodes of Seventh Heaven popping up and I thought, I've never seen an episode of that, but I thought maybe running through that whole series could be filled with entertainment, at least on a personal level.
01:57:47
Speaker
I'm doing a podcast running through that series about all of the like problematic fundamentalist aspects of that that would not hold up if they came out in a TV show today would be interesting. Yeah, there's insane. I mean, I keep seeing all these like insane plot lines and like the the ultra drama revolving around inconsequential things is incredible. Yeah, that's the question community because I thought the oldest sister was hot. So Jessica Biel.
01:58:14
Speaker
But specifically, yes, but specifically in that series, I was like, and she, outside of that, it was like, she's a cool girl. I would, I would like to hang out with her. But in that one, I was like, why is she hot? I think it's because in my like little, little child, not out of the closet, gay brain. I, I think I was just like, she's in a really conservative Christian family. I'm not allowed to like her. That's the taboo element. It's always the taboo element.
01:58:44
Speaker
The disequilibrium and desire, the way that those... Jessica Beale. I got a little Woody for Tucker Carlson, myself. That's who you... That's my like... That little Tucker pomp. Oh, man.
01:59:03
Speaker
that face. You like that confused schoolboy face. Exactly. Just wanna feel it. Tucker Carlson sounds like an action, like a slang term for doing something. It doesn't sound like a name. It sounds like a made up country stage name. I came in hot so that I could Tucker Carlson and you know what I mean. You know what I'm saying. That's all it sounds like to me.
01:59:27
Speaker
gave him the old Tucker Carlson. His name is basically Cleveland Steamer. I think we need to define what the Tucker Carlson is. If you say, yeah, Tucker Carlson, we have to make something up. It has to be good, and we need to get it on Urban Dictionary or this entire conversation we've had. It's a failure. We have failed.
01:59:55
Speaker
Oh, okay. I'm, I'm, I'm thinking, I'm thinking. I want it to be something that you don't feel comfortable putting on your podcast. We'll just put it on urban dictionary and then people who get invested in this can just check back once a week. And then when it finally pops up, they'll be like, Oh shit. That's where they went. That it's not the direction. Wow. That
02:00:21
Speaker
Everything I could think of is just over the top gross. Exactly. That's it. It's a weird one to
Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude
02:00:29
Speaker
brainstorm because it takes a lot of bad ideas to get to the right one and those bad ideas might put you on a watch list somewhere. So I think we should just... I mean goals. Just wait for the final product.
02:00:42
Speaker
I would love it to be somebody else holding me back from doing things. So put me on a watch list so I can finally say it's not my fault. Kelsey, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much for joining us, sharing your story. This has been great. Thanks for having me at a more opportune time instead of talking to a robot version of myself a couple of years ago. I appreciate you guys listening to me, me spew all of this.
02:01:12
Speaker
Well, it feels like just like you spelled out some of your experiences. I'm going to chalk this one up to divine providence and it working out this way. I'll take it. Maybe they'll talk about it at church on Sunday. We'll see. Yeah, I see some footsteps in the sand. I had a sermon I was going to give, but I feel like there's somebody here today who needs to talk about a podcast they just did because I will call back earlier when I was in sixth grade. OK, I'm going to shut up now. I'm going to say thanks and then I'm going to stop talking. So thank you.
02:01:42
Speaker
Oh God, I just had a thought like, remember when they used to in church, they would be like, they would open up the floor and just be like, does anybody have something, a blessing that they want to share? Like how many of those in the last like 10 years has started with, I was listening to a podcast, uh, earlier this week and.
02:01:59
Speaker
Oh God, I jumped through a stained glass window if I heard that. That's how all of them would start. Yes, that's now. It used to be I was listening to AM radio or Rush Limbaugh, but things have changed. Earlier this week, Gary Vee really laid something on my heart and I thought I'd share it.
02:02:24
Speaker
All right. Listening to Rush Limbaugh, my dad's Cadillac growing up was like another point of trauma that I should probably unpack in an upcoming therapy session. OK, that's the last thing I'm going to say, because it is relatable to plenty, I'm sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a thread that everyone from our generation shares. No, Rushbo. Well, thanks, everybody, for listening and we will see you next time.
02:03:00
Speaker
you