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Ep. 165 – The Pre-Confessional Jibblies w/ John Ryan of Keep Flying
389 Plays1 year ago
This week we’re joined by John Ryan, saxophonist and vocalist for Keep Flying (one of Sam’s absolute favorite bands)! John grew up Catholic on Long Island, and is a longtime music industry insider. Whether he was playing in a band or booking and managing tours for other acts, he’s one of those guys that’s seen a lot of country and met a lot of people. We had a great time talking to him, and we can’t recommend Keep Flying enough! Follow them on Instagram, X, and YouTube (@keepflyingband), and visit their website (www.keepflying.band) for more info!
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Transcript
Band Dynamics and Personal Experiences
00:00:00
Speaker
Again, everyone's different, man. I know plenty of bands that are, they've always done well and they're tremendous size and they're still grateful to be there. And I know bands that are just showing up for work. I know bands that the members don't talk to each other outside of work. It really is work.
00:00:22
Speaker
I was a crew person for people that are friends. I was a crew person for people that treated me like an employee, not a friend.
00:00:32
Speaker
been in bands with people that were best friends that I don't don't speak to any longer. I've been removed from bands against my choice in the past, which drove me to want to actually do crew. Actually, the last band that I was in when I was asked to leave the band drove me up the wall so much that I said, I don't want to play music anymore. It removed the desire for me to want to play music because I was so invested and then it was just taken away. And I said, screw that.
Unpredictability of School Closures
00:01:20
Speaker
Hey, everybody. We are back with another episode of Growing Up Christian. I'm Sam. I'm Casey. And I'm patiently waiting here, Casey, to find out if I have work tomorrow. We're getting snow through the night. It's supposed to start at like, I don't know, maybe three in the morning.
00:01:41
Speaker
and then go all day tomorrow. The projected amount of snow is wildly varied. It's like one to six inches. Not a lot you can do with that. But I hate this shit because it's this time where like, so my wife works in a school district as well that's more likely to cancel than most.
00:02:10
Speaker
And maybe it's at seven o'clock tonight. We're recording this the night before this will come out. So seven o'clock tonight, they just they already let that whole school district canceled. And it's like just because of what might happen. And it's it's really just shows you you kind of see by district how much they believe in themselves to be able to like take care of snow when it falls. They like
00:02:37
Speaker
No, we have no chance of handling this at a reasonable hour before school starts. So we're just going to like throw in the towel already. My district is like, let's cancel last minute. So like now they, because her school called it, she's now enjoying tonight. Like it's a Saturday night, like it's another weekend day. And I'm like, I have to set my alarm and get up at the regular time to see which
00:03:02
Speaker
You know, if I get up and there's a surprise, that'll be nice, but I'm really hoping there will be. So when I wake up tomorrow morning and I check the cancellations and my school's not on it and everybody else's is, I'm going to feel so cheated.
Work Travel in Poor Weather
00:03:18
Speaker
I hate this feeling. I, I would rather than just send the email out to their staff.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, right, right. I would rather them just say right now, look, assholes, we're having school tomorrow. And I know I'm not saying we're not means we are, but it means we are until they say we're not. And that just feels so unclear. Just, just tell me. Just, I just, I hate this limbo of not knowing is annoying, but also, you know, this is a privileged person's speech here because
00:03:51
Speaker
back in my corporate world days, especially when I had the ability to work from home, it was like, oh, there's a lot of bad, it's going to be bad weather. Just work from home tomorrow, I guess. And it's like, fuck, I still have to work. So a lot of people are going to be driving in this awful weather tomorrow, potentially bad weather tomorrow. They're going to be driving an hour long drive to their shitty jobs that they hate. And, uh,
00:04:18
Speaker
Risking life and land to the UPS store. Yeah. And they just because they know for a fact that their company will not close under any circumstances. Which is crazy, dude, because when you work for those companies, when I would work in Boston and I'm like driving down like the biggest highway in Massachusetts, the mass pike on my way to Boston, barely taking care of you can't see the lines in the roads anymore. There's snow everywhere. You're going to work and you're just like,
00:04:47
Speaker
That would be more likely on my way home from work. I would probably, but anyway, you're just like, even if it's on your way home, you're like, I went to work. I knew this was coming. I tried to leave early, but I didn't. And now I've taken my life into my hands. Like I'm getting off the off ramp and you're like kind of doing three sixties, trying to avoid the Jersey barriers on your left and right. And it's like, you look around and you go, we all are, we're all.
00:05:15
Speaker
We're all putting our lives on the line for fucking capitalism. It's great. I love how they just have us by the balls so hard. Yeah, it's true. We had we've had some delays and stuff recently here. My guys all have company vehicles, so like.
00:05:32
Speaker
If it's really nasty out, we're like, all right, everybody just stay home so we don't have to fix anything. Yeah. Everyone just crashes their cars. You have 15 vehicles out of commission.
00:05:46
Speaker
It could get real bad. Yeah, we go through spurts where we just destroy Ford transits for like, there's like a three month period where we just destroy every Ford transit in the fleet and everybody's in a rental car or something like that until it gets fixed.
Animals vs Vehicles
00:06:02
Speaker
I don't know why it's that way, but it is that way. Dude, one of my guys, he was driving and it was like dusk or like early morning and a turkey flew out in front of his van and
00:06:15
Speaker
You would not believe the damage that a freaking turkey can do to a transit I mean, it's just like It was like running headlong into a cannonball is like that You remember that scene in the Patriot that like almost made you puke the first time you saw it when you were 13 Where it takes the guy's leg off. Yeah, that site that scene was wild. I remember seeing it I was wildly impressed by it cuz
00:06:44
Speaker
you don't think about, you don't think about what, like the, a cannonball rolling afterward. You like, you think of it like being shot into the side of a pirate ship or something. And then when you, when you realize that that thing's gonna roll for like 800 feet and just rip off the shins of everybody in its way. It's like one of those old fashioned lawnmowers, like Donald Duck pushed around, but it's just chewing up ankles.
00:07:13
Speaker
Yeah, that scene is crazy. Yeah, it's that. But it's the old poultry puncher just smashes right through the headlight. I I don't know if I've mentioned it, but one of the when I was a teenager driving home late at night, I had an owl fly into my car. Oh, that sucks. Yeah, I know. It feels it. It felt bad. There's something. He was like right in his prime.
00:07:43
Speaker
Enjoying his life hunting mice and you know, he probably was just like my headlight lit up a mouse for me He's like, oh, thanks brother. And then I just like beat. I just crashed the Straight, you know, I he actually crashed it to me. It was um, he like got caught up in my wheel Well, I had to like kind of like pull how it was Pretty gross but the wings that was him dude. I'd never seen an owl up close I don't know what kind of owl it was but
00:08:08
Speaker
fucking big old wingspan. Maybe Jesus will tell you someday when you stand before judgment. I hope so. Bearing down the barrel of the book of the land. That'll be my one question for him. October 12th of 1998, you killed Hootie the Great Horned Owl. You're like, I don't even remember it. He's like,
00:08:36
Speaker
I was pretty close to home when it happened. Uh, and then the next morning I woke up and my, my tire was completely flat. Like the talons or the beak just shredded my tire. Yeah. Was it still in there? Like, did you have to pull him out with like the car hammers? Just the beak was still in there. Just the beak.
00:09:02
Speaker
Yeah, it was it was crazy. I mean, like I said, huge owl. I wouldn't have. I mean, I was afraid to move it after I hit it because we've all seen Tommy Boy. Right. Where the they the deer or the deer rakes up in the car and shit. And you're like,
00:09:22
Speaker
So I'm like, maybe I was afraid I was like, maybe it's just stunned. And I'm gonna like, go drag this owl out and it'll just kind of become alert real quick and then just fuck me up because it was as big as I was it felt like. Yeah, you would not want one of those mad at you. That's for sure. Lots of pointy parts.
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah. Uh,
Controversial Figures and Cults
00:09:45
Speaker
okay. So recently, uh, last week, April and I watched a documentary series called the way down. Have you heard of that? Yeah. Yeah. That's the Gwen Shamblin one.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yes, Gwen Chamblin. So I didn't realize that she had her own church. It was like a diet, profit, tests, whatever. That was her thing, right? Like the... Yeah. I didn't know she had her own church. I thought she was just like a televangelist, not televangelist in the Sunday morning service type, but like, just like, I thought she was like some Christian nutrition. And by nutrition, I mean like,
00:10:25
Speaker
got nutrition all wrong but that was her like like the boomer Billy Mays with the scene girl swoop she yeah she was too um she was to nutrition is what uh Catherine Crick is to modern day profits well sidetracked but have you seen you've seen that video of her talking to the
00:10:53
Speaker
He's like an Asian guy talking about his autistic son. No. Dude, the stuff that she claims to heal is like, she's truly out of control at this point. Oh man. You gotta watch it. If you go search for like Catherine Crick deliverance or something like that. You will be inundated. It's gotta be the first one that comes up. But there's one where she's talking to like an Asian dude with a buzz cut.
00:11:23
Speaker
And he's like, I think he's Australian, if I remember right. And he literally, he says like, well, I'm here to talk about a generational curse. My son, he's got autism. He's got, he kind of like shakes his hand next to his head and he goes, he's got autism. He's got just no brains at all.
00:11:47
Speaker
Oh, my God. And then she she like prays for him and lays hands on him and he starts like screaming. And then he does a headstand and rolls forward and then flops on the floor. Does like the convulsive like cartoon just touched in an electrical wire or something.
00:12:08
Speaker
Dude, that's what all of them do when they get prayed over. They just convul, convulse, convul. I don't know what the right. The word convulse. Okay. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, they just like violently shake. It kind of looks like a seizure, like, but like not a real seizure. Like a person's acting out what they think a seizure is. Yeah. It is funny how like you there, there's clearly like,
00:12:34
Speaker
cultural cues have been injected into like subconsciously injected into their mind about what being swayed in the spirit was because they all kind of do the same thing. And what do you do when they leave? How do you like just implant the idea that like being swayed in the spirit means you lose control of your bowels?
00:12:56
Speaker
Do they actually shit and piss themselves sometimes when they get delivered? No, but that's what I'm saying is like, how do we touch them in that way? Like we leave that little imprint on their perception of, you know, spirit filled convulsions to where all of them just start wetting their pants when they, like that now becomes a part of the dance.
00:13:18
Speaker
I'm looking forward to that phase of deliverance. I'll believe it more. I'll at least believe that maybe, if anything's going to make me believe that maybe someone isn't full of shit, it's that like, I get that you could commit to this because it costs you little. Just, you know, it costs you maybe some social clout if people don't buy into what you're doing.
00:13:43
Speaker
the respect and adoration of your autistic son. At the end of the day, if you're willing to shit and piss yourself for the role, for the bit, for the whatever, I don't know, maybe, I'm like, well that takes, it feels less likely that someone will be willing to do that, so maybe it's more likely that they're getting delivered.
00:14:06
Speaker
Maybe maybe that'll bring me back into the fold. Maybe when people start shitting and pissing themselves, I'll believe again is what I'm trying to say. I'm willing to make that commitment, not even just entertain it. I'm willing to commit right now to like if I start noticing the trend, I'm buying in for sure jokes on you because I'm going to get exercise tomorrow and I'm going to shit and piss myself and you will have to now believe again.
00:14:34
Speaker
I don't believe that God could touch your life at all. So that's not going to work. So I'm the one exception. Uh, dude, for Gwen Shamblin though, jumping back to Gwen Shamblin. Um, I, when was this? I made this post a while ago on her Instagram, uh, 20 September, 2022.
00:14:58
Speaker
Uh, it was a side by side shot. One of Gwen Shamblin, one of like a scene girl with the super teased out hair. And, uh, the caption was who roar it better with, uh, the capital R a W R.
00:15:13
Speaker
I like that one. I'm going to reshare that one when this episode comes out, because that felt... I was proud of that one. And surprisingly, she's got that super heavy side swoop where she pulls all the hair from the one side of her head, just above her ear, all the way across her forehead. The older she got, the more exaggerated the hair got, where it was clearly like an emperor has no clothes sort of situation, where no one was willing to just be like, hey,
00:15:43
Speaker
Maybe like draw a line at six inches. No way. If it gets taller than six inches, like you look like absolutely. Yeah. When your hair is like teased out enough and tall enough to where you can see whatever is behind her hair, through her hair, that's just too much. You've overdone it.
00:16:02
Speaker
and you listen to like they're showing clips of her in the documentary about when she was younger you know and like you listen to her when she was younger and she still looked normal. She was very good and she made a great like she made like such a perfect appeal for American audiences.
00:16:21
Speaker
Where it was like, you don't need to watch what you eat. You need deliverance from like the demon gluttony sort of thing. I love the spirit of everything. You need to start bowing down to the refrigerator and start bowing down to Christ. Take the crown off of that cheeseburger and put it back on Jesus's head.
00:16:44
Speaker
Nice. It's she's she was pretty good. Like it's kind of it's I respect a good con and she had a great con. But then like throughout the documentary, anytime. OK, so there's a funny if you listen to like Martyr Maids podcast series about Jonestown and Jim Jones, he makes a great point that like you can't unsee once you hear it. You can't unhear.
00:17:14
Speaker
Um, but he talks about like, when you listen to a, when you listen to or watch like a Jonestown documentary and like all of these former members are talking about like their experiences in the cult and stuff. They're very invested in, in making the case that it was like Jim Jones knew how to like, he, it was mind control, like a control of myself.
00:17:42
Speaker
I was under some sort of magical spell. This was Jim Jones acting alone the whole time. He had just like a supernatural hold over these people. And really what it is is like, he was a charismatic figure that you turned over your agency to.
00:18:01
Speaker
Like you willingly gave him that power over you. And then you propagated that same sort of power structure against other people. Like you were not just a participant. You weren't just a victim. You were also a participant that aided in the atmosphere that he had there. And like, it's interesting when you listen to these cult documentaries and stuff because of how people portray their time in the cult,
00:18:29
Speaker
And also like on modern ones, they talked to a lot of people who like knew someone who was in it, had a family member that was in it or something. So there's an interesting thing in this way down documentary series where there's like this guy who's talking about him and his wife, how they like lost their daughter to the cult.
00:18:51
Speaker
their daughter like started dating somebody who was a member, a young guy that was a member of the church, probably grew up in it, you know. He was, they were young when they started dating. And so they started, they started seeing each other when they were like 15 or 16 or something and ended up getting married and she's like a full fledged part of the church now. And
00:19:18
Speaker
is you're listening to him talk about this scenario and the situation where his daughter got involved with it. I don't know if it's just me and just that I'm a little bit overly sensitive to this type of stuff, but you're listening to him talk about his daughter being pulled into this cult and stuff, and she's still alive. She's still very much alive and a part of the church and everything.
00:19:48
Speaker
And this guy is talking about how, yeah, like he's talking about how he lost her to the group and how, I don't know, it's very weird to listen to somebody talk about their kid in that way, who's like 22 years old and married, but still like, she lives like 15 minutes from you.
00:20:13
Speaker
and like you very much could have some sort of relationship with her. And it almost felt like he was kind of like spiking the football on their relationship by doing this documentary. Like you have to imagine that he was gonna find out that he was a part of this thing and maybe see how he talked about her and stuff. And like at one point even acknowledges like, you know, I fully aware of the fact that like this could
00:20:42
Speaker
hinder my relationship with my daughter, being a part of this. But if one person doesn't join the church because of that, I don't know. I just felt weird about it. It just felt like it doesn't seem...
00:20:57
Speaker
wise or prudent for you to sit down and do interviews with these people about your daughter who, in all likelihood, is going to see these and maybe doesn't want to have contact with you more now because you did this.
Cults and Familial Impact
00:21:13
Speaker
I don't know when the documentary was made or when that footage was.
00:21:18
Speaker
I know Gwen Chamblin died several years ago. I don't remember exactly when, but spoiler alert. If you, if you haven't seen the documentary, like just, this is a spoiler, I'm giving you a fair warning here, but she gets married on the day that the plane crashed happened. Oh, whoa. That's wild.
00:21:39
Speaker
It's the craziest twist. It's did her wedding planned out through the church is this big elaborate thing and their parents like really deliberated over whether or not they were going to attend this wedding and stuff, you know, which is also kind of insane, like the way that that all transcribed. It's like, yeah, I was an adult now. Like, do you want a relationship with her or not? But the plane crash
00:22:05
Speaker
happened the morning that they were getting married and they went through with the ceremony like with the church group and stuff like that not at the church but with all these people from the church in spite of the fact that the plane had just crashed into the lake and they were all dead
00:22:21
Speaker
That's crazy. Did so did that. I guess after she died, the church continued. Is it still a thing? Do they get into that? I don't know if the cult usually don't survive cult leaders, but she had her daughter to be the next leader. And I got to watch the last episode still. I think it's a lot of like stories about people who were a part of the church and whatnot. But
00:22:47
Speaker
I think that was, that was kind of the question that was like hanging in the air when, uh, on the second to last episode that we watched where it was like, is the daughter going to take control and is she up to the task? Okay.
00:23:01
Speaker
Yeah, I gotta watch it. That one's been on my list for a minute and same with the other one you share in the discourse, like the love. Love has won. Love has won, which maybe we should, I should watch that if you already did. I should watch that and we should talk about that a bit because that one's super fascinating too. Just another cult leader.
00:23:25
Speaker
That's a woman. It's nice to see some women getting some airtime on cult leading. I love that. Love that for them. It's good to know that women can also victimize people. Yeah, it's nice. Victimize them and then that some of them like with this, this love has one woman, you know, usually it's like the men are like, they decide who they want to have sex with and make that happen. She's like, I'm gonna have sex with you because you're the male in
00:23:54
Speaker
incarnation of God and I'm the female incarnation of God and that's why this works. And then when she like just is tired of the D, she's like, uh, actually just kidding. You're, you're not God, my bad. And then just like kicks into the curve. It's sick. I know her story. I've read her Wikipedia before. I love it. Uh, but I got to watch the documentary because she's, she's a fucking gangster about how she runs her cult.
00:24:20
Speaker
It's like a hippie kind of cult. It's so dope. Uh, so I gotta watch that and we gotta, yeah, they're not. I really, I rather hang out with like a January 6th reenactment group than a bunch of.
00:24:36
Speaker
I don't know. Jerry's out of that one, but they're both, they're both in sovereign reenactment.
Cult Behaviors vs Corporate Environments
00:24:42
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, maybe, I don't know. They like acting and they found their lane. Maybe they're just good with that who raw mentality. Oh, sorry. That's Marines. Well, maybe some Marines were there. I don't know. Depends. Put on your Buffalo helmet and take up your Tiki torch.
00:24:57
Speaker
yeah oh my god uh we should introduce our guests i don't know if you had last minute thoughts or some closing comments on this documentary but uh try not to join a cult but above all else don't be a hippie because they suck so bad they just suck and don't poison yourself to death with colloidal silver only take a little bit
00:25:22
Speaker
a little bit noted. Don't get sucked into a cult, but if you have the impulse to start one and you're a charismatic guy and you can get your bag, this is a capitalist society and a marketplace of ideas. I don't know what to tell you. If it works, it works. Yeah, join like a safe corporate retail sort of cult like Amway.
00:25:51
Speaker
Yeah. Sandler training. Just normal MLM shit. Yeah. Team industries. Mona V. And the list is on Cutco knives. Hey, no. Kirby vacuums. The cult of Kirby vacuums. We could probably do an episode on that. I bet that is some history. All of our most successful friends worked there.
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah. All right. Our guest this week is John James Ryan. I really love talking to John. He's from a band called keep flying. Keep flying. I've talked about them on the podcast before. They made my top five on Spotify this year. I had the privilege of seeing them in Manchester, New Hampshire.
00:26:36
Speaker
fantastic energy he plays saxophone for keep flying incredible energy incredible band one of my all-time faves real just fun fun music makes you feel good gets you
00:26:52
Speaker
fucking bopping around in your car a bit. It's some great shit. Definitely check out, keep flying, keep an eye out for, they don't have, I don't think they have anything posted yet for tours. They just got off of a really long tour. So they're hopefully going to be posting some shit soon about what they got coming up for 2024.
00:27:13
Speaker
John was fucking awesome. Super nice guy. Love being able to hang out and talk with him for a bit about his life. Different. Uh, you know, we talked to a lot of people who had the evangelical evangelical experience. Um, occasionally we dabble with the Catholics and that's, uh, that was his background, but he's got,
00:27:30
Speaker
It's coming back, dude. Yeah, it really is. We got Shia LaBeouf just converted. We got Shay Dozer, comedian Shay Dozer, just went hard into an Instagram post about converting to Catholicism.
00:27:45
Speaker
I've seen a lot of evangelicals. Yeah, I've seen a lot of evangelicals go that way. It's our former evangelicals. It's really interesting. But yeah, it was great talking to john about his experiences and a lot of overlap, a lot of differences. But overall, it was just cool to hear his story. What a great guy, but a great conversation. And
00:28:12
Speaker
Like I said, check out Keep Flying and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed being able to talk to John.
00:28:34
Speaker
heard the advertisement on this podcast that you sent him.
John Ryan and Keep Flying's Musical Journey
00:28:38
Speaker
So, come on, stop. Your mom is putting up with something awful and you gotta talk to your dad to get that shit under control. Think about how many frivolous lawsuits Morgan & Morgan isn't getting because they haven't sponsored this show yet. Morgan & Morgan & Morgan & Morgan.
00:28:58
Speaker
But yeah, seriously send us or leave us a review wherever you listen to the show preferably a good one and share this with a friend that you think might like it and I think I mentioned it last episode but hey if you got a cool story or you know somebody with a cool story that you think would be a good candidate for our show we've had a
00:29:22
Speaker
A lot of our best interviews have come from referrals from listeners. So send us a message. Best place to get Addis is on the Discord. You can find that in the notes on our, or in the bio on our Instagram. That being said, everybody enjoy our conversation with John Ryan. Hey everybody, we are back with our guest, John Ryan. John, what's going on, man? How are you guys?
00:29:51
Speaker
doing good man I'm super excited to have you on dude I'm pumped to be really glad it worked out I feel like I'm a somewhat recent fan maybe over the past year but big fan you guys made my Spotify Spotify wrapped top five artists so
00:30:11
Speaker
Gotta say, been pretty much a nonstop listener since I found you guys. Didn't know, didn't know Scott was doing stuff and keeping it real. And since I even started listening to you guys, I got like, you know, Spotify goes, hey, you might like this and that. And I'm just like, holy shit, this is like a thriving, it's a thriving genre. And I was totally in the dark. Yeah, there are a lot of bands out there doing the thing, some of which we cross paths with, some of us not.
00:30:41
Speaker
We've gotten to support some of the bigger ones, which has been great. And I think the cool thing about Keep Flying is that we don't really fall under that umbrella 100%. No. In fact, I'd say we probably only fall under it about 10%.
00:30:56
Speaker
we are very welcomed by the people who welcome us and that feels really good. Especially since not all the members but a lot of the members of the band have a back history with previous bands that were ska bands. So it's nice to be in that world that is smaller and is clearly significantly less bands than other genres but
00:31:22
Speaker
You know, yeah, I mean, the shows are fun. That's why we are happy to be a part of it. When we are welcomed in, we are happy to be a part of it.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah, dude, I mean, your guys' shows are a fucking blast. When I saw you guys in New Hampshire, I was, you guys bring 110%. I was, I don't know. It was also a personal feel too, man. I feel like a lot of shows I go to, I just kind of stand in the back and I'm getting, I feel like an old person at shows now. I'm not old, but you know, 35, you know, 35 at shows feels old now, so like.
00:32:00
Speaker
You just kind of stay in the back by the bar and do your thing. Drink unattended drinks. Yeah. Finish that last sip from the ones that people left there when they walked up front.
00:32:12
Speaker
But lately I've been trying to move my way up a little bit closer and I kind of forgotten that feeling of like camaraderie with people that you're just standing with too, even. I was at another show recently where I just ended up near the pit opening and I was just like, I haven't done that in a decade. And I was just like,
00:32:34
Speaker
Oh, it's crazy to think like you're just next to strangers. Like, and you just look each other in the eyes and sing the same lyrics at the top of your lungs. And you're like, I don't know you. I feel like anywhere else to just be like, it's all kind of seems weird. But when you're in that moment, it's like a real point of connectivity. And you guys really I just love the energy that you guys brought. You kind of opened that up for me, too. It was like the first time in a while I've been just stood up front and really felt like I was fully engaged in what was going on.
00:33:01
Speaker
Well, that is our goal always. Our thing is always the show, the live show, and trying to acclimate those who do not know the band to those who do as well as us.
Importance of Live Performances
00:33:17
Speaker
And I like to think we do a pretty good job of it as most people who've never seen the band will either say something at the show before they leave or on the internet later saying, never heard your band. I'm in. That was fun. I'm in a good mood now. You made me feel excited. You made me want to do things. And that's really speaking for me personally. It's a great goal and something that I feel very fulfilled by. Yeah.
00:33:48
Speaker
So you guys have been on the road for a minute and now you're finally home. You did the US and then did you even take a break before you went to the UK? Nope. Just straight into it. Yeah, we wrapped those dates up. We flew immediately to the UK. We went to the UK for the first time as this band, which was amazing.
00:34:10
Speaker
Super Farm brought the morale of the team up 200%. And then our flight home got canceled actually. And we had to fly back day of a show and we were able to make it work where we, you know, we moved like insane people, but we did not have to cancel the first show back in the States.
00:34:35
Speaker
And that show was incredible. We came home to Utica, New York, upstate New York, and it was an incredible first one back in the States, because it was just...
00:34:43
Speaker
They have a very special scene up there, and it was overwhelmingly exciting from the crowd giving the energy back. After being in the UK where the shows were good, but not everyone knows us yet, so we're not getting as much energy back. It's nice to come back and suddenly get hit in the face with everyone just having a good time, singing all the words, dancing, moving, jumping on each other, jumping on me, which is very needed.
00:35:10
Speaker
And yeah, we just finished on yesterday. Oh, wow. Wrapped up Sunday in Pittsburgh was the last show and then last night we did a live stream for everyone at home, which was really goofy and silly and fun. And I'm actually stuck in New Jersey still because the van got put in the shop and it had a couple of repairs it needed and it didn't get finished yet.
00:35:35
Speaker
I'm sitting here in Peter's basement doing this with you guys because I have not been able to go back home yet because I do not want to have to leave and come back and then go back again.
00:35:44
Speaker
At least the van held out until the very end. It held out. And it would still run now. It's fine. It just has some things that need a little upkeep. And I just didn't want to have to come back to New Jersey because our mechanic lives here. Just didn't want to deal with that during Christmas time. I want to get home and be done. You know what I mean? Yeah. Where's home for you? Long Island, New York. OK. I thought so. You guys are all New York, right? Half the band's originally from New York.
00:36:11
Speaker
Poughkeepsie, Buffalo, and Long Island. And then two guys from New Jersey and our bass players from Philly. But now, so I live back and forth between Long Island and Nashville.
00:36:20
Speaker
My guitarist from Poughkeepsie lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Ricky from Buffalo lives in Denver. Our singer moved from New Jersey to Columbia, South Carolina. And then Pete, as I said, is still here in North Jersey in his family's basement. Damn. I didn't realize you guys were... That's tough being so spread out and trying to get the music together.
00:36:43
Speaker
Definitely a challenge. Definitely something different. But a lot of the bands that I used to work for and or am friends with older bands, it's the same way. It's normal bands, people, personal lives take over. And it is what it is. And you just figure out a way to make it work. And we figured out a way to make it work. I guess a lot of zoom, zoom jams.
00:37:07
Speaker
We do a lot of sending Dropbox links back and forth with edits for music.
00:37:14
Speaker
And then sincerely, everything that we need to get done, we usually base around the tours. So like either on the off days or before or after is when we're gonna go to the studio or shoot a music video or whatever new promos, whatever we need to get done. We try to like tailor it to the front or the end of the tour because, you know, like for instance, the band will not be back together until February 1st. So anything that's required,
00:37:43
Speaker
uh for the rest of this month and January had to get done before we went home because we're not going to be back in the same room together until then that's again it's tough but once you come up with a system it works we got a system in February 1st back in the same room is that like you guys just playing around a time where you can all figure out how to do that to write together i mean what's uh what's the thing we're gonna just uh we originally so i'll
Recording Plans and Music Industry Trends
00:38:10
Speaker
just
00:38:10
Speaker
Things, we had other plans. They changed. So now we're just going to go to the studio. We're going right to the studio. We're going to figure out in the next week or so exactly where and how long and we're just going to go. And we're going to see what comes out. It might be three or four songs. It might be a record, but we're just going to go. It's time. It's time for us to get in there just so we have stuff ready. That said, we're certainly not done pushing our new record, Daylight, because
00:38:37
Speaker
It only came out in August and still so many people haven't heard the record and it's the best songs we've ever written and we want people to hear the record. So next year's service is certainly still going to be daylight, pushing daylight, getting people to come back and finding new people, new listeners and new members of the community while also hopefully trickling out some new singles and whatnot. That's the hope right now.
00:39:06
Speaker
Nice. Dude, I mean, you guys, the last couple things you put out are EPs, which is kind of sick. They're just kind of, I like that.
00:39:14
Speaker
It's, uh, you kind of just keep spitting out the EPs, uh, at least you did with survival. Then I felt like when I found you guys, also I had new music and it's like, I mean, it's just like song after song of just, it's all bangers. I mean, you guys just throw, throw together an EP of bangers and get it out quick. And I, to me, love it. The most recent one is like pretty long, isn't it?
00:39:37
Speaker
No. Six songs. Six, yeah. You know what it is? 18 minutes. 18 minutes of just heat. So here's my thought on that. I think the use of the term EP has been getting progressively used less and less. Less and less.
00:39:59
Speaker
Is that being attached to records? LP is still being attached. Bands love to say debut LP, new LP, LP2, LP3. So that's still being used and you register LP in your mind as a full length.
00:40:15
Speaker
We've found that so many bands are releasing shorter records, but they're still calling them albums or records. So we've never said the Survival EP, the Daylight EP. We say album or record because it is. We put out a 12-inch vinyl, one side of vinyl.
00:40:32
Speaker
Here's another way to boil it down. Spotify does not use the term EP at all. They only use album and single. And for them, what constitutes an album? It's seven tracks. That's it. It's not length, it's tracks. If you have seven tracks, it's an album. If it's under seven tracks, it becomes a single. So that's what Spotify does. Whereas Apple Music does recognize single verse EP versus album.
00:41:03
Speaker
And they constitute that an album is eight tracks. So Survival comes up on Apple as an album, I believe. I'm fairly certain. So for us,
00:41:18
Speaker
especially with the addition of how much more the single is pushed by most of the industry. Singles is what people are releasing. Yeah. They'll release half the album of Singles now. You just get a new single every few weeks until they build up the album for a year. I find that such an interesting shift.
00:41:41
Speaker
Sometimes by the time you've heard the singles, you've listened to the seven songs and then they put out four more and call it the album, it feels like you've already almost exhausted the listens on it.
00:41:58
Speaker
the science there, in my opinion, one, you get to use the same ISRC code for the track, the single. So all those plays from that single, they immediately appear on the album when the album comes out. So the album will start off out at whatever all the singles are, total,
00:42:16
Speaker
the album starts at that many tracks, right out the gate. So when the bands are posting week one, look how many streams, really that's months of streaming of singers. That's accumulated. Of course. Interesting. But that's just how it is. That's just what everybody does that, except for the artists who still choose to surprise, drop a record, no single, which does exist. It's not really the
00:42:43
Speaker
most used method from what I'm sure you've seen that's more rare these days whereas in the past before streaming
00:42:51
Speaker
What do you mean single? You're talking in the eighties, there were singles in seventies on seven inches that that was happening. But then after that coming into modern day like punk and rock, it just album come out record record. You just you'd go and pick up the record at your CD at your local record store when it came out. They came out. You think it was more related to like radio hits and pop hits and things like that. Right. Right. So.
00:43:17
Speaker
It almost feels devalued now. Here's another term that was used forever, filler tracks. Filler tracks makes me feel so sad. There was years of time where artists chose to have filler tracks in between hits just because they had to have them.
00:43:38
Speaker
knowing, already calling it a filler track. For me, it just kind of stinks. It just sucks. I don't know. It's just an admission of phoning it in. It's kind of a bummer. It just doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel good. Skillet had a few of those on their albums. I remember it. Yeah, you're like, what? So for us, having no fat to trim, having, like, being able to leave and be like, yo, every song rocks.
00:44:09
Speaker
Every song is good. I don't know if we're going to give them all the single treatment, but all of these are ready to rock. And another factor, as you're both aware, attention span, it gets less and less over the years. The attention span is so gone. And people, because things are so easy at your fingertips,
00:44:33
Speaker
It's less urgency. It's really impossible to get somebody to listen to a full record, especially if you put it on the internet and it's 41 minutes. 41 minutes? I'm in the middle. Okay. I have a bunch of friends who are big periphery fans and I've never listened. I had never listened to a periphery song in my entire life. I missed everything periphery. Not one song could I ever heard. And I was like, you know what?
00:45:01
Speaker
Just for the fun of it. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna hit every single periphery album I'm gonna listen to each one and in the discord that I have with my friends I'm gonna just do my own little rate and review on how I feel about it and I was like
00:45:15
Speaker
The first one I go, are all of these over an hour long? Because that's not easy to get through. But it's so funny because I feel like if I was like go back 15, 20 years, I would have been like my favorite band put out an hour in 15 minute album. Hell yeah, because you buy the record and all you do is just put that on your car and play it till it doesn't work anymore. If you go back 15, 20 years,
00:45:44
Speaker
You didn't even know how long the record was. There was no option to see. You just put it on or put it in. And I remember some of the bands I like would put out, Goldfinger, it was like a 19 track album, 19 songs. And you're just excited to get, and you're just sitting there listening, maybe you're reading the lyric book out of the CD, going through it or looking at who they thanked.
00:46:10
Speaker
It's different now. There's no question. Now you immediately see how long and you're like, ah. And so, look, a lot of great full lengths of friends, bands have came out in 2023 that are 20 minutes, 22 minutes.
00:46:26
Speaker
23 minutes, 21 minutes. They're not even that long, but the tracks are shorter. There's more tracks on them. Suddenly it constitutes as an album. We put out a record that's 18 and a half minutes long. It's only two and a half minutes shorter than somebody's full length. What is the real difference there? I don't think it matters anymore. So at least for us, we have too been victim to, we must get a full length. We must get a full length. And then literally last week we were like,
00:46:56
Speaker
It doesn't matter. We just need to have good songs. Yeah. That's what I love, man. I love that every single one, I'm there in it from start to finish, and then I'll just turn it on again, start from the beginning. Not for nothing. Because we are cataloged, we have a bunch of records, but we don't have a tremendous amount of songs. We're rehearsed in the entire catalog. We could play any song at any time.
00:47:19
Speaker
It's amazing bands that have 300 songs in their catalog, but how many of those songs get played? Yeah, you're bound to a set list for sure. I spent a lot of many years working for an artist who played the same set
Balancing Creativity and Life
00:47:35
Speaker
list. Their fans pretty much every tour, maybe one song might change, but just so many songs in the catalog that never saw the light of day ever. It's like, I don't know.
00:47:47
Speaker
It doesn't feel like a good use of time these days to invest into something that may never do anything at all. How did Def Leppard take that kind of criticism?
00:48:01
Speaker
Not very well. He fired me on the spot. I was going to say you used to work with him. Correct. Correct. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to the studio probably a couple of weeks, figuring out where, with who, and then
00:48:19
Speaker
The goal is to churn out, hopefully, another album. And if we come up short, we come up short. And if we overdo it, then maybe it'll be the longest record we've put out. We'll see. But we're excited.
00:48:34
Speaker
talked about some of your previous experiences in music. It feels like you've been in the music world for a
Faith and Personal Stability
00:48:39
Speaker
minute. Um, I definitely want to kind of dig into some of that, but you have connected with a podcast called growing up Christian. So let's go a little bit further back and talk about some of your roots there, man. Uh, we always like to get into what people grew up in and how they, where they went and how they look back on it is kind of where the youth group kid angst is that you pour into your songs.
00:49:06
Speaker
Like you're over-chlorinating a pool. I did attend a youth group. I did. So I was raised Roman Catholic. Yep. Our mortal enemies as Protestants, but we'll make this work. Well, I think I said to you, like, I'd love to come on because it is different, especially in the last couple of years as I've gotten closer with people who
00:49:31
Speaker
were raised Christian. Yeah. And some of them, you know, have a much different life than I had. That's the good way to do it. I was raised Roman Catholic, Italian. Like deep blood Italian, like parents. Yep. Okay.
00:49:53
Speaker
Went to Mass every Sunday, was baptized, communion, confirmation, went to religion classes, which was a very normal thing on Long Island. CZ Catholic. Just so many Italian Catholic, I would say in my grade, 85%, 90% of the people once a week would leave school to take the bus to the church to have religion classes. It was very normal. That was most people. Most people.
00:50:26
Speaker
That's so interesting to me to think of it like a public school where like that large percentage of students just take the bus to you leave school for that. Right. It's during the day. You get an excuse. No, no, no. We would go after school. Oh, OK. I know people who have left school to do it depending on when they're maybe their church at it. I've heard those stories as well. But I was going to say that would be nuts. Like half a drop off after I think it was every other week. Maybe some people, you know, clearly couldn't be bothered, hated it. They just had to do it. You know, it's something you had to do.
00:50:45
Speaker
Um, uh
00:50:58
Speaker
But that's where it ended because it was so
00:51:02
Speaker
It didn't really integrate into my normal daily life as far as school, at school, not spoken about. It's like we all had to do it, but it didn't impede us or impact us at school in any way. At home, we did a lot of the rituals. Catholicism is very ritualistic, very just by the book, and it really is.
00:51:33
Speaker
It's just like Gregorian chanting and kind of mindlessly going. Looking back, I know that I'm going to jump for a second, but looking back, it's like everyone's just kind of autonomously doing, and then you leave. Yeah, you're like on autopilot almost. Then it's over. Most people, most in my experience, from that part of my life,
00:52:02
Speaker
The second they left the church, it's over. My family, it was all the time. At the house, they'd be running the rosary at night. My mother, my aunt, my grandmother did it. There was a lot of prayers before bed for dinner, dinner table. There were a lot of prayers that were happening, but it still wasn't like summertime. Suddenly, it didn't really matter as much in the summer.
00:52:31
Speaker
because it was the summer. We weren't forbidden from watching any sort of fantasy films or any sort of spirit movies, like a lot of people that I have come to find out were.
00:52:52
Speaker
So it was all like pretty, I mean, it was all just like part of the daily life. It was at least a traditional aspect for you. How many of, I mean, did you come across kids in your, in that world that were like, really? So I guess this is what's always interesting to me is like, you're all in it, all 80, whatever percent of your grade, you're all in it. You're all doing it because their parents are doing it and they're still doing it. So you have this entire generation of adults
00:53:17
Speaker
who are bringing their kids into it, they're into it to varying extents, but at least traditionally it's important to them, or maybe there's some Catholic guilt or fear of their kids like, you know, going to hell or them going to hell. We don't know how that kind of stuff can play into it, but you have for whatever, to whatever
00:53:38
Speaker
extent all these parents are into it enough where they're having their kids go through the full All the programs and then when they all are in your experience is when everyone was done With high school and could do their own thing that most people just didn't do that anymore. So for some reason no No, I would say I would know when we left like the foot what I meant was when we leave
00:54:07
Speaker
We wouldn't talk about it any further as kids. Correct. OK. I actually think most people, if I was to quickly look through Facebook, probably still are. They probably still are not not either practicing or non practicing Catholic people like just kind of still doing the routine. OK. Either either at the same or different church, wherever they move, they found a new church. But it was if they're still in Long Island, it's probably a Catholic church.
00:54:37
Speaker
They probably didn't try something different out. I think it's very interesting. It's been made aware to me that the idea of confession is a very interesting Catholic thing where you can get in the booth, kind of admit your sins to the priest, and kind of wash your hands and walk away. And for me, because that was instilled with me at a very young age, I really did believe, well,
00:55:05
Speaker
If I get in that booth and just admit these things to this person behind the screen who can't really see me, they're going to say some stuff. They're going to tell me what to do, how many prayers to say, and I'm just, I'm good now. It's over. I can just walk away. Apparently, that is really bizarre to most other Christian people. That's kind of like a, wow. Okay. Well, that's something. Yeah. We got to carry on. It's important that you
00:55:32
Speaker
Yeah, it's important that you carry it around forever. It slowly builds on your back until you're like a Dark Souls character with like 300 pounds of stuff up there. Then you take it out on your children later and their children's children do the same. That's our tradition. It was just like the
00:55:53
Speaker
The Christian fear, I don't think that is nearly as prevalent in Catholicism. I really don't. Catholicism is much more business, like looking back at business.
00:56:05
Speaker
It's business. They passed around a bucket during the services. People put money in. They feel good putting five bucks in there. They feel like now their prayer might get answered putting five bucks in there. They also believe, which is great. They believe in Jesus. They believe in God. That's great. Whatever they believe in, whatever gets them through at night when they're having a bad day, this is what my mother said to me and it really made me click and actually is what brought me back to God, which we can get to. My mother said,
00:56:33
Speaker
When I go to sleep, when I lay down at night, I have my faith. At least I have my faith. My faith is something that keeps me going tomorrow. Like even when I have the worst day ever, I know that he loves me and I know that
00:56:48
Speaker
I'm cared for. And, you know, I'm a child of God, and I have Jesus. And that makes me able to go to sleep peacefully and wake up and get back to business tomorrow. That really resonated with me as an adult, it made me really rethink a lot of things. It's kind of like a grounding thing, a comforting thing, you feel like you're kind of
00:57:12
Speaker
Even when everything's chaos, there's still this fundamental thing that you can go back to and plant your flag in that doesn't change in a way. It's a pivot foot on everything else's in motion. A hundred percent. In fact, I say this to people all the time. I think it's very important that everybody has faith in something. It doesn't necessarily have to be a religion, but if you don't got the one thing at night
00:57:41
Speaker
At least there's this. That is where I think hopelessness and despair really starts to overwhelm a human. You have no faith in anything or anyone or anybody, nothing. I'm essentially choosing to just give up. And that is, for me, I'm a really...
00:58:03
Speaker
I'm really someone who tries really hard to help people see past suicidal thoughts. And that's like my biggest thing with mental illness is just trying to help bring people back from that place. And I think having a faith in something, religion or anything is a really great stepping stone to get out of that place.
00:58:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. I some things I've been learning somewhat recently is just the way because we're at a kind of a weird crossroads in our culture of like when it comes to faith. And that's because we see bad actors in in religious systems constantly.
00:58:50
Speaker
But or you know people weaponizing it for political power things like that we see the worst of it and we associate that on to everybody else or you know you look at the way people vote in mass scale and that's upsetting to a lot of people with more progressive values when they look at people who are in religious systems.
00:59:10
Speaker
in the way that they're more likely to vote. But when it comes to individual or collective groups where you, it's easy to just say based on certain political outcomes that you disagree with that religion's toxic or problematic. But when you look at the way that it impacts people on an individual scale, their mental health, their community, their sense of belongingness,
00:59:36
Speaker
There are real sets of unconditional love. I think religion does get a bad rap for saying that you're not welcome if you don't agree with me on everything. I think that exists in the more fundamentalist you get, but there's plenty of circles where there's a window in which you can exercise different sets of beliefs before your struggle to find yourself at home there. You can look at the positive outcomes on people who
01:00:04
Speaker
participate in religious practices. Whether it's how meditation or prayer impacts the individual. When you look at overall giving, progressives want to denigrate religion a lot.
01:00:21
Speaker
some of the harm they do, but they're also more likely by a large amount to give to charities and not the kind that they don't like, just good charities that are helping the people who need it the most. There's a lot of positive that comes from it. You do have to balance that with maybe collectively what you can see and how that might hurt marginalized people to some degree
Religious Groups and LGBTQ Inclusivity
01:00:45
Speaker
or another. But on an individual level, when it comes to your mental health, there are benefits to
01:00:51
Speaker
to being in that and how that impacts individual. And we see such an increase in loneliness in just people in general right now, not having any real sense of belonging, no real community.
01:01:06
Speaker
that's something that religion does provide. So there's a lot to criticize, but there's also a lot of positive aspects of it that I think get overlooked that aren't being replaced elsewhere. It's not, we don't have bowling leagues anymore. We don't have, there's a lot of stuff that we don't have to replace what the best parts of religion does have to offer. You know, it's funny, you did say something in there that resonated with me. I find it at least amongst my peers
01:01:33
Speaker
My peers who are religious people and they all practice different faiths are way more open to conversation with people who don't see all 10 points exactly the same way than the people that are also peers of mine who are anti-faith and or
01:02:02
Speaker
You know, proud atheists who I have a difficult time sometimes talking about certain things because they're it's very weird how the coin flipped from when I was younger to now.
01:02:19
Speaker
where I'm just so willing to, I think it's because I'm a very neutral person. I'm very, as far as like everything, I'm pretty centrist, pretty down the middle. So over the years, it's interesting to see some of my friends that lean so far one way are really very similar to some friends of mine that lean very far the other way.
01:02:46
Speaker
at least mentality wise, it's very interesting. Horseshoe theory complete. Yeah, it's just tough. It's really, really tough for me because I just have people in my life of all kinds because I just like to give people the benefit of the doubt before just shutting them out. It's just not in my nature to do that. Maybe that's a flaw, but that's just who I am and that's just in fact how I like to be.
01:03:16
Speaker
until someone takes it too far and then it's, okay, this isn't going to work. It's like, that's too much. Yeah. I don't, I don't agree with these very basic things that that's a little too, too far for me to really be able to like stand with you on, on this right here. I just simply can't. Um, but as far as, I don't know, Catholicism and at least my, my experience with, with my faith,
01:03:42
Speaker
Yeah, I'm glad I was raised, Kath. I'm glad I was raised in a faith because as I got older, I did question my faith, which I think is important. And I started, as I started touring at a very young age, 18, I started meeting lots of people, not just Jewish people who were pretty much the only other people that I, you know, as a child really was around. We might've had a,
01:04:10
Speaker
Five, you know five Muslim people in my school five, but I didn't know anything about their religion anything about their culture Nothing just that they were there and then they were nice. That's it, you know As I started traveling started becoming a global traveler it changed and I started making friends with people of all kinds of faiths Then I actually started having interest and started learning and asking them directly from a person
01:04:37
Speaker
which for me is easier to learn than Wikipedia. Wikipedia is great, but it's easier for me to like here's the way we're talking right now about our experiences. It's easier for me to soak that in. Yeah, actually like understand. Oh, that's why okay, that makes sense to me actually. And that's what made me
01:04:56
Speaker
go back and really realize that I feel very blessed that I did, that my mother did raise us in a faith because it feels good having had that experience because I like sharing that experience with someone who celebrates something different or someone who celebrates nothing or tries to tell me that it's stupid. It's nice to be able to say, well, you know, I have my experiences I could share with you and they were all pretty, pretty good.
01:05:27
Speaker
Um, again, Catholicism, maybe isn't the best one because there's not too, there's not too much to it. The biggest thing was, well, the Pope hates gay people. Yeah. Okay. Not anymore. It's wrong. It's wrong to be homosexual. Okay. That was immediately as person my age was like, that's stupid. That can't be the way I don't agree with that. I can't, I.
01:05:53
Speaker
that's not right to me. And then now fast forward, as you just said, like I'm 37, it's like, oh, that has changed now. Finally, the church has moved things around to like, let the old people know, we need to be more open to the idea that that isn't the definition of the Bible and maybe somebody is wrong here, which is nice, especially since so many Christian, as I've come to learn,
01:06:21
Speaker
cultures were the exact opposite, the exact opposite. In my town, there's a Christian church that has the pride flag on the whole side of the church. And it's been like that for years, 15, 20 years. And they have a female priest or pastor or whatever it is. And I'm just like, it's just so bizarre to me. This was so by the book. It's just like this.
01:06:47
Speaker
I understand the world has existed for a really long time and some cultures, some things are maybe a little outdated. I don't know. Well, God did throw fire rocks at them. Right, right. Who's that? That said, there is something, I know you said actors, there is something to say about
01:07:11
Speaker
traditions as well. I just watched a couple weeks ago, I watched a very long segment of King Charles, the new, you know, British King. Vampire. Doing his like inaugural speech and the whole gimmick. And I'm watching it and I'm like,
01:07:36
Speaker
This looks like LARPing. This is cosplaying. This is cosplaying. Nowadays, nowadays, I'm looking at it going, this guy, this is like attending a San Diego Comic Con. Everybody can do this. And of course, it's sacred. You know what I mean? It's special. It's putting all the clothing on and running it all. It's just so...
01:08:04
Speaker
you're keeping something that's been passed down and you're trying to keep it as accurate as possible. It's the same way that they have
01:08:15
Speaker
They have like Civil War reenactments, people that spend all this time to volunteer to rehearse, to do these reenactments of something because you want to keep it alive. You want to keep these memories of someone there's great, great, great grandfather or whatever it is who was involved in something.
01:08:35
Speaker
They feel very drawn to want to be a part of it. I think that's really special. And that that is something that I like about the Catholic faith specifically is that there is still that that still exists. There still is this system of this is how it's done. And this is what we wear. And this is who is part of it. And this is the school. You've got to go for it if you want to become a priest or none or whatever it is you want to do. If you want to move, you know,
01:09:02
Speaker
But like everything, of course it's business as well, and it's politics as well, and we know that. Long Island, I just think, because one of my favorite podcasts, the guy's, he's from Long Island, and it sounds like that's a pretty conservative area by comparison to a lot of Northeast. So did you guys get a lot of, was there a segment of Catholics that were kind of like the real stringent
01:09:31
Speaker
Birth control is wrong. Yes. Again, I speak transparently with you guys because this is always very healing for me. My mother kicked me out of the house. She thought I was gay. I was young and she's one of the greatest moms in the world.
01:09:53
Speaker
We're past it now. She has immense guilt from it. She also grew and changed. But when I was younger, she just thought this of me. And there's no question that I'm certainly not straight. But I'm not a gay man. It was the girl's genes, wasn't it?
01:10:18
Speaker
No, I dressed like a punk. I had the vest, I had a mohawk. There was an era where I was an emo kid, like a lot of people. I wore like a youth large shirt and had the hair like this for a minute. I wore like a track jacket. That era existed for me and I got into all the bands, but I fell in and out of it really, really quickly. But no, yeah, she just, and it was tough, man.
01:10:47
Speaker
I don't think it really caused me much trauma, to be honest with you, because it kind of went away really quick. It never happened, and it didn't get addressed again for many, many, many years. How old were you when that happened? I think I was 17. Okay. Where'd you go? What did you do when that happened? I went to my friend's house. It just crashed there?
01:11:10
Speaker
Yeah, my sister was pissed at my mom. It was really confusing. But again, again, when I look back, I find out all the things that my mom all the stresses that my mother was under at the time, and it makes way more sense that she just wasn't
Parental Influence and Community Standards
01:11:25
Speaker
all there. And, you know, she had a lot going on in her life at the time with with, you know, her life. So yeah, that was definitely a thing. I think it was cool that you can see that side of it.
01:11:39
Speaker
too, you know, because that's one of the things we talk about a lot is, you know, some people are really hard on their parents. And I know, like, at least in the environment that we grew up in, like, there is a lot of peer pressure among parents there, you know, and like, like, in most environments, like the most extreme person kind of sets the pace for what's going to be the standard. And, you know, there's a lot of
01:12:05
Speaker
You know, things that we weren't, there was things that we weren't allowed to watch and stuff like that. And looking back on it, I'm like, well, I, I, a lot of that, like I distinctly remember a group of people talking about it as if it was the worst thing ever. And that's when we were told, you know, and so there's, there's factors there that you have to, you have to cut your parents a little bit of slack. Yeah. Some of that stuff. Especially if it was passed down.
01:12:30
Speaker
I think my grandma, I mean, again, different era. You know what I mean? Like, Catholic schools, they used to hit the children. You know, they hit the children.
01:12:41
Speaker
Not my era. I didn't go to a Catholic school, but before me, that was just normal. I mean, it's in movies. That was a very normal thing. You got hit with the ruler. And then when I hear my grandfather saying it, it's like, oh, that really was a thing. It was a different thing. It was normal for a parent to spank their kid or whatever. That was a normal thing, right? It was. Oh, yeah.
01:13:06
Speaker
Several states still, I've recently learned that several states still don't have laws against corporal punishment in schools. You can still do that in some states. I believe it. It's crazy. Again, you know, like, I remember my grant, he never did it. He never did it.
01:13:25
Speaker
But my grandfather was our father, basically, he raised us. He would threaten his belt. I remember that. He never did it. He threatened his belt, but he never did it. But my mother and my aunts, they're like, no, I mean, we received the belt.
01:13:39
Speaker
You know, but you're talking about a different time. It's where everybody on the street did the same thing. And that was all the information they had. They didn't have the internet. They didn't have all the psychological studies. They just knew that if you want a kid to stop doing what they don't want you to do, you threaten them with violence and it works. And it does actually work in the short term. It just doesn't actually, like, it's so funny. I think of like, even like my brothers in law who
01:14:05
Speaker
they were the kind of kids who like, they, I think they were grounded from the start of high school to the end of it, all of them. They just always caught drinking, always caught smoking weed, always being grounded, always getting yelled at, always getting like just
01:14:20
Speaker
No, it just didn't, it didn't do anything because like what, what, what most punishments don't deal with is like underlying problems in human psychology. It's just like, uh, we use fear to control and it works and it gets you the immediate outcomes. And it, you know, at that point, some of the immediate outcomes as parents not having to deal with the shame of their community because their kids acting out and they don't, they think their kids acting out or the community thinks their kids acting out because they're not good parents.
01:14:48
Speaker
And that's just not the case. And that's not how all children work. So there are so many factors involved that they weren't aware of. And they're just like, how do we get the immediate outcome to what we need to happen? And of course, their thought was less selfish than that. Their hope is that it translates long term. It just as we know now, I just want their kids quiet. Yeah, that's what I want. Belt if necessary. See not heard, motherfucker.
01:15:16
Speaker
Um, yeah, I don't, you know, same thing though. I think that my grandfather and my grandmother were able to go to church and confess and then move on. Yeah. Like, you know what I mean? Well, this is what happened this week, but I confess and I'll do the Hail Mary's. Like you said, I'll play the rose three times and all right, I'll be good. I'll go back to work. Like it never happened. You know, that that's got its own problems. There's no question. Did you, did you have,
01:15:46
Speaker
I mean, I'm assuming you probably went to the same church pretty much the whole time you were a kid. The whole time. So you didn't have a lot of interaction with like other priests. Well, our church was like a revolving door of priests actually.
01:16:02
Speaker
We had different people. Every time one molested a kid, he had, I'm sorry. You don't need to be sorry because in fact, I was gonna get there at some point. Oh shit. The priest that we ended up, we're closest with.
01:16:18
Speaker
This guy, Father Tom, he was one of those priests. Fuck. None of us, but my mother was very close with him and he used to come to the house for dinner. That was a very normal thing. I'm fairly certain it's still a very normal thing on Long Island. Some people are just more involved with the church than others and they become closer with the priests, they become friends and they invite them for dinner. He used to come to our family events all the time.
01:16:47
Speaker
He remarried my mom to my stepdad at the time. And we were very close with him. And when all that was unraveling, he definitely got caught up in that. I don't really recall if he had actually physically touched anybody, but I know I remember that he at least at the very least had pornography and things like this. Wow. That was really jarring for my mom.
01:17:15
Speaker
And that was again another interesting era in my life and with my faith because my mom struggled to keep her faith during that time. She left the church. She went to a different church. She didn't feel comfortable going there.
01:17:30
Speaker
She eventually came back, but it never became the same. She goes to a few different churches now. She chooses different churches to go to. She's more particular about which priest she wants to hear the sermon from versus others she doesn't. It changed her. There's no question. She still believes, but suddenly how close she was to the faith, it definitely pulled her out a little bit.
01:17:55
Speaker
like it would to anyone who believes in anyone who then lets them down in a disappointing way, not necessarily, you know, screws them over, but disappoints them in a way of something despicable or just even simple, i.e., you know, even when it's like,
01:18:13
Speaker
you love an actor and you find out like something horrible about them and suddenly you're like, I'm bummed now, or you like a band and found something, I don't like, I heard something through the great, now I don't like them. Like it happens, you know what I mean? Like anything you look up to, it's gonna shift the way you feel about
Trust and Disappointment in Religion
01:18:30
Speaker
stuff. It just does, just does. Yeah, I had a person that was in, I guess in a leadership role in a lot of different spot, you know,
01:18:43
Speaker
I was fairly. I knew this person fairly well. I'd spent a lot of time around them. And they, they got busted on one of those, you know, it was like one of those.
01:18:58
Speaker
vigilante internet sting groups that poses kids and, you know, find people in chat rooms and stuff. Try to lure them in a little bit, try to like, we have suspect, we suspect that we're going to try to lure the person in. Yeah.
01:19:19
Speaker
When it came out, I mean, I don't know if there was legal ramifications for it because of how I really don't understand how that interaction worked in these vigilante groups and legal system, but it was shocking. I mean, unbelievably shocking and sad and just, I don't know, just really disgusting. And yeah, it rattles you. I mean,
01:19:48
Speaker
It's, I don't know what's I honestly, I don't know what would be worse to like, have your confidence shaken in an institution that you trusted as much as, you know, person trusts the church or something, you know, especially if they've been a lifelong participant, or I don't know a person. And really, that's, you know, your mama, she went through both. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. That pushes you.
01:20:18
Speaker
You know, what did that, what, what were you, when that happened and you saw that around, how old were you? Were you still living at home with teenager? No, that was when I was no, I was on the road. I think I was, I was, I was shocked, but that was in my era where I was not really, I had stopped. I, I chose to no longer receive communion before that had happened. I no longer felt like I was, I should.
01:20:45
Speaker
I told myself it didn't feel right going up there and receiving the communion because I didn't believe, but I still would go to church with my mother because it made her feel good, and that made me feel good. I'm her only son. I'm her firstborn. She would ask me. I would go.
01:21:02
Speaker
It did slowly become less, and eventually it became just going on Christmas. Again, for her, because she asked and it was really special. But she doesn't even ask us anymore, really. Some of my sisters practice full-time, still every week, and some don't. Yeah, it didn't really impact me. I didn't feel anything from that. I don't know why. Maybe I should have.
01:21:29
Speaker
Did you find out about it through, was it like a media story or something like that? Or did she share that with you? Through her, she like told me. And I don't know if I even ever looked up something on the internet. I don't think I did, to be honest. I think I just let it go. Yeah, why don't you remove yourself from those spaces that can, I don't know, it can be hard to like, to be honest, sometimes there's like that,
01:21:55
Speaker
I mean for you there's an element of surprise because it was someone you personally knew but then there's there's a part of you that's like you're far removed and I like. You know my mom will talk to me about people that we knew that she still knows but I knew twenty years ago I haven't seen in forever and like.
01:22:12
Speaker
You just kind of hear it as a story about somebody that you just don't have that connection to. And you you might feel that the disappointment or you feel something in the sense that like you've got bad information, but it doesn't connect on that kind of personal level anymore because you just don't you've eliminated the personal connection for the most part. So do you remember because it sounds like like confession, there was a there is an element of like
01:22:42
Speaker
unloading and ridding yourself of some of your feelings of guilt and stuff. Do you remember any particular thing that you were stressed about confessing that you were real nervous about? Or was there just a faith in the fact that this never leaves the booth and I don't care if this guy knows it's me?
01:23:04
Speaker
No, I like right now I'm doing this with my hands. Think like thinking about while I'm sitting there in the pew waiting for it to be next because when we would go there would be like certain times where there there's someone in there so you'd have to wait. I think I think right.
01:23:24
Speaker
and a high school, or right out of high school, I think I was, I think I would, I think I told the priest that I cheated. I think I told, I cheated on my girlfriend. And I think I was scared to, I think I was petrified of admitting that to the priest because we're not married. I'm 18 years old. But the fear a little bit, you know, was definitely there.
01:23:53
Speaker
How many Hail Marys was that? Probably three, five. Oh, that's a good deal. Not many. Man, what a great system. I'm fairly certain something, again, a lot of it's blended together, but it was probably like, you know,
01:24:10
Speaker
You need to be more honest and you need to be honest with yourself and you need to ask yourself when you're in prayer at night, like if this is, you know, how would you feel if it was done to you? And the classic, not really like religious things, but more like good person ethics.
01:24:27
Speaker
just standard, good morals. Like, do you want this done to you? How would it feel if you were in the person's shoes? And and if you feel that way, then maybe this is not where you're supposed to be.
Evolution of Relationship Norms
01:24:39
Speaker
And instead of doing these things, you could just not be doing that by just not being with the person. Yeah, sounds solid. It sounds as easy as that, as we all are aware, it's not as easy as that. It's not that black and white. That's especially as the earth becomes 2023 and now is moving into 2024. And
01:24:57
Speaker
The rules just don't apply the same way they've ever applied, especially when it comes to relationships. There's just seemingly no rules most of the times. It's just the- We're outside the realm of traditional relationships. Ether. The ether is just, you know- Everyone's Paulie now, man.
01:25:14
Speaker
Everybody's something and I don't that's fine. I'm happy. My childhood best friend is in a is in a polyamorous marriage so happy and he tells me about it and I'm so stoked for him. I'm like, this is so cool that you figured it out and you guys are happy and
01:25:32
Speaker
Yeah, and he's, oh, we have a whole group of people we meet up with every Tuesday of the month. And it's all other people that are polyamorous, man. I'm like, yeah, it's just finally granted. Always, anything with intimacy is going to have some taboo to it. Always some, but the amount that's shaken off has drastically changed now. Drastically. Drastically. You can't judge anybody for something. Not only shouldn't you, you're really not allowed to.
01:26:02
Speaker
Suddenly you're, you're a bad person for, you can't judge like that. Like what do you know? You don't know. In my opinion. Yeah, it's funny. I can't, it's what it's those things where like all those kinds of shifts, you're like, I can't cognitively wrap my mind around some of it. I can academically go. Yeah, of course. That's fine. You're an adult. You can do whatever the fuck you want. It's like, if it works for you, it works for you. And then you like, that's just when you know, some people are just different. They're wired differently because it's like,
01:26:32
Speaker
You think about those kinds of, I'm like, I can't wrap my mind around not caring about something like that. You know what? Same thing with the face. I have so many friends that are non-binary, trans,
01:26:52
Speaker
bisexual, metrosexual, pansexual, demisexual. I start to learn from having these conversations, and I always do, because I am. I do love learning. I love soaking it in. And sometimes certain things get said to me that make sense to me, that I understand, that clicks totally. It's not ever that anything doesn't make sense to me. I don't think that ever happens, but
01:27:17
Speaker
I think, you know what, I'm really glad that the earth has chosen to change, to allow for people to be what they want, with who they want, when they want. I think that that's super, super important for the continuation of growth. We have to, as long as everyone's safe,
01:27:47
Speaker
and everyone is, and that no harm is coming to any person from what you're doing, then that's great. You know what I mean? That's great. For sure, man. I don't know. I have a question. Go ahead. So I was listening to an interview that you did. I can't remember the name of the, it was like the first one that popped up on YouTube when I looked up your name, but you were talking to this guy, he had blonde hair, kind of a, he was real into music and stuff. You were talking a little bit about
01:28:17
Speaker
being because you were you were a manager for some bands. Yeah. Right. For a long time, it sounded like like a decade. Right. Yeah. So you said a few things in that interview where you were just talking about, like, you know, you're very cognizant of the kind of person you are to work with. As a band, having been in that seat and dealt with people, you know, you talked about like
01:28:45
Speaker
be, you know, sticking around to help people carry out gear or, you know, just saying thank you for things. And so that, to me, it sounds like you're a person who's learned a lot of good and bad things about dealing with people and who they are.
01:29:07
Speaker
Yes, I would like to, so I also tour managed for a very long time.
Tour Managing and Artistic Fulfillment
01:29:13
Speaker
I still do it part time, but the biggest role, at least in my opinion, is customer service and knowing who you're working with and knowing how to
01:29:29
Speaker
adapting to the room very quickly because all the personalities are different and knowing how to please as many personalities as possible without pissing off some. Because it's almost impossible to not... Someone's going to be pissed no matter what happens. Almost impossible to make it where everybody is truly happy. But I would say that I learned a lot of that. I was an introvert as a kid, actually.
01:29:58
Speaker
It came later. I was very to myself and my actual father also was a very shy person as I found out later in life. He's a very shy person growing up, kind of kept to himself. And I'm not that anymore. I haven't been that for a long time. But I think that two things, I would say my experience with the church at a young age and also being in the Boy Scouts of America were two organizations that gave me tools of just
01:30:28
Speaker
Simple things like that, that someone else wouldn't even think of, that go a really long way. I would also say that the fact, I would also say to my, not sad, but like a bummer thing, I wasn't often thanked a lot for simple things like that. And that made me, that drove me further to wanna do them spitefully.
01:30:58
Speaker
because it was annoying. Now that I look back, I actually see how I don't want to say that I was ever taken advantage of because there are people who are taken advantage of far worse. But I certainly was never not appreciated for a lot of the things that I done and was never told.
01:31:18
Speaker
that I was never thanked even or was any sort of small kindness in return didn't really ever come back favors as well favor pool for me and I can say this confidently the amount of favors that I've put out in my life that I've received back is just so unbalanced so unbalanced that I do have bitter days when I have to think about that but I do everything I can to not let that affect me
01:31:48
Speaker
Man, people love to not return the favor. Such a normal human thing. So, so normal. They don't think you did a favor for them. And you're like, bro, I've done a dozen favors for you.
01:32:01
Speaker
Hmm. Yeah, I imagine that's like a that's a real a real economy in your in your business. Like, well, a lot of things built on favors like I, you know, whether it's show bookings or taking someone, putting someone on the bill, whatever. I can imagine there's a real economy in contacts, I'm sure, is a big one. Yeah. Yeah. People want to get paid.
01:32:28
Speaker
That's the thing because it's a business like every other business.
01:32:32
Speaker
music industry as a business, I do have a little bit of disdain towards the music industry as someone who's been in it for a long time, especially as someone who doesn't own a house or have a million dollars and still happily playing shows to sometimes 30 people who 30 people who are genuinely moved by the music that I'm putting out there and by the message that we have. That means more to me. I have fulfillment comes in a not financially.
01:33:00
Speaker
It'd be amazing if that ever changed. And I was able to do this even more so and be able to not work as much to compensate for the fact that I have to take off so much time to do my art. But yeah, not everyone's raised the same way. Not everyone had that, you know, not everyone
01:33:24
Speaker
Everyone's different and that's okay too. But I do love being a person who is gonna hold the door. I do love being a person who is gonna watch every band that plays opening for my band or after my band.
01:33:40
Speaker
And I like to make sure that they see me standing there watching because I'll never forget being a youth and seeing a band I love side stage watching my crappy band play. That lasted with me to today still currently. Yeah, I'm sure Scott punk band called the voodoo glow skulls.
01:33:58
Speaker
And I will never forget that the guitar player just stood there and I watched him watch the entire set. I will never forget. I was 17 years old. I'll never forget it. That was 20 years ago. I'll never ever forget it because he did not have to. As I've learned from working with bands that most bands don't.
01:34:17
Speaker
Most just go about their day and play their set and that's it. That's like they clocked out after their shift. That's totally okay. No shade. That's how you are. That's fine. It's just not how I am.
01:34:31
Speaker
I revere it very much because I feel very fortunate to still after all these years be involved in music and finally back more so doing what I always wanted to be doing the whole time which is being an artist less working. I love being crew. I loved all the years. I love managing. I love I'm sure I'll do it again but right now I just love
01:34:55
Speaker
entertaining people. I love when someone tells me that their day was horrible and that they now are going to leave the venue stoked.
01:35:03
Speaker
That's great because that's what I need for me to go to bed. Stoked that other people were moved. That's what I need. Yeah. You're great at it, man. And I think what even just seeing your show, like in hearing the passion in your voice, all of you guys just you're clearly 100 percent, 110 percent. You're just in it. You're in it. And the gratitude, the appreciation, the love for what you're doing is very, very palpable. Are you going to say something, Casey? How old are you?
01:35:32
Speaker
37 okay, so we're like the same age I would imagine that there's Because I did a lot of music stuff in college and it's like a whole bunch of us young people Trying to be in bands and everybody's got this like idealized romanticized view of what that's gonna look like with you know, whatever record labels and all that kind of stuff as as like
01:36:00
Speaker
Bands get older and, you know, as you're, you know, you're a part of the music scene, like after, you know, a lot of people have kind of like that, that was like a, you know, sowing their wild oats in college or something like that. And then they hung it up. Like, I imagine that the motivation for making music changes a lot. Yeah. And it's, it's less about like, I don't know, I guess it varies by person, but
01:36:30
Speaker
Is that palpable among the bands that you spend time with now? What ways is that good and what ways is it difficult, I guess? I call those people fallen angels actually, the people who decide I'm done now. I simply don't want to tour anymore. I did my years, I call them fallen angels. Then they get to go live the real life while we still are out there drifting around in the ether.
01:37:01
Speaker
Again, everyone's different man. I know plenty of bands that are, they've always done well and they're tremendous size and they're still grateful to be there. And I know bands that are just showing up for work. I know bands that the members don't talk to each other outside of work. It really is work.
01:37:24
Speaker
I was a crew person for people that are friends. I was a crew person for people that treated me like an employee, not a friend.
Business vs Art in Music
01:37:33
Speaker
I've been in bands with people that were best friends that I don't speak to any longer. I've been removed from bands against my choice in the past, which drove me to wanna actually do crew, actually the last band that I was in when I was asked to leave the band.
01:37:53
Speaker
drove me up the wall so much that I said, I don't want to play music anymore. It removed the desire for me to want to play music because I was so invested. And then it was just taken away. And I said, screw that. And I immediately within a week, I think I flew out and I started working for my friends bands, this band, A Lost for Words, who are still a part time band. Still, still like shows a year. Yeah, you know, still the first band I was like, I'm going to work for a band. I think everyone
01:38:22
Speaker
that had the magic that is involved in the industry, that's been involved in the industry. Clearly the curtain's been drawn and they're seeing really how it works. I think everyone's reaction to that is different. Some people love it, some people loathe it.
01:38:40
Speaker
Some people play the game, which is texted to me all the time from industry people. You got to play the game. Just playing the game, play the game, play the game. It's like, yeah, I got it. I know what business is. I know how to do business. And this is every other industry as well. You have to play the game if you're doing business. I understand it.
01:39:03
Speaker
when you start to see or feel like it's becoming more business than it is genuine art. Is it art anymore? Or is it just business? Art and business is two different things, two very different things. It's like, I went and saw Godspeed, you black emperor. Was it Godspeed? Yeah, no, yes. With my buddy, Chris, years ago,
01:39:32
Speaker
I cried during the set because the show fucked me up. It was so powerful.
01:39:42
Speaker
certain cinema movies that I see question thing make me question my life certain things like I very upset very upset I was on tour with my buddy Pat from light years a couple of the people we saw or he's in a bank on no pressure as well now shot them out yeah we went saw Coco when it came out
01:40:03
Speaker
in the theater. Dude, I wanted to go home. We left the theater. I was like, I have to go home. I can't believe that I'm on tour right now. I have to go back to my family. I feel urgency to go home to my family. I'm making a horrible mistake being on the road right now. I have to go home. That's how I felt. That, to me, is really special. And I don't know, man, when certain pieces of art start to become only business, it loses all that value.
01:40:33
Speaker
I don't know. It seems like when you have, because for, you know, like for you, you know, you're talking about, like, it costs, you know, it costs everybody something to make and produce art and stuff like that. But for you, like, you have to sacrifice in order to do this thing that you love. And that, I think that's, that's
01:40:58
Speaker
got to be reflected in the art that you're putting out. And I think that's kind of what I was thinking about is like, you know, as you get older and you have, you know, maybe you're married, maybe you have kids, maybe you got a job that you're doing. Like music, when you're when you're younger, it can be a lot of things. It can be like actual like art, it can be like
01:41:22
Speaker
You know, just trying to maintain a sense of belonging. It can be like trying to push the idea of settling into some form of normal life down the road, you know, prolonging that at some point, but like to come to it in your, in your thirties and say like, you know, I only have so much free time. I only have so much money. I only have.
01:41:44
Speaker
You know, I can only do so much and give so much of myself to one or two things. And like, I care about this enough that I'm just going to pour myself into that. I'm going to sacrifice for this thing that I love. I don't know. I just, it seems like the inevitable by-product. It's almost got to be better as a result. I mean, I feel really good about the fact that there's not a soul
01:42:13
Speaker
out there that could possibly get away with saying that I'm doing this for anything other than self-fulfillment and bringing a positive message to people who want to hear it because, like I said, everyone's life experience is different. And again, because I stopped playing music for so long,
01:42:39
Speaker
when we started this band, which I can't believe I started at the time and was sitting there for days contemplating not. When it was asked of me, I was more excited at 30 because I had not been playing music really. I was just working for bands. And I had my fair share of experiences, both positive and negative. So, you know what? I miss playing. I miss entertaining. The pandemic
01:43:06
Speaker
We all experienced and all of us experienced it differently. And for me, coming out of the pandemic, that was the sure sign that I did not really want to work in the industry as much as I was.
01:43:20
Speaker
because it was just people complaining. Whereas when I was playing, I was so grateful and happy that I got, oh, another show, another tour. And every opportunity that has came for Keep Flying, I feel very lucky. Don't feel entitled to. I don't feel it's owed to me. I feel genuinely stoked every time either I or our agent, our now agent Nina, get us booked on something. I'm like,
01:43:47
Speaker
That's so awesome that they want to have us. I cannot wait. And I hope that there's new people there for me to connect with. I'm really stoked. It still makes me excited. Even amongst my bandmates, all of us are different. We're taking off three months. That's a sacrifice for me, actually. The rest of the guys, I'm sacrificing band time right now because for me, this has become like the biggest priority in my life because
Post-Pandemic Music Industry Changes
01:44:16
Speaker
It just has. Currently right now, I'm just so, I'm so passionate about it. Not that the rest of my bandmates aren't. They love it. Thank God. But man, Goldfinger I think did a tour that was like 360 shows in a year or something.
01:44:34
Speaker
That formula has been dead for a long time. Now, bands only tour maybe 80 shows in a year. All the tours are only two weeks long. It's very common. If that was offered to me,
01:44:49
Speaker
I would have said yes before I even told the guys, hey, this was offered. I would have said yes right now, and then said, how do I figure this out? How do I convince you guys to make this work? We have to do it. Because nothing would excite me more than to be like, we just did a 360 shows in a calendar year. Suck on that one. We really just did it. Come on. We did it. That makes me, I'm so driven to want to just, and again,
01:45:17
Speaker
I think that's because of who we are and the music that we play, the songs we have, the way that we perform it. I exercise on stage for 30 minutes every day. That's my exercise. I don't go to the gym. That is my exercise. Happily. That's my thing. I miss it. When I'm off for three months, I feel lethargic. You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Man, what do you fill the time with? For three months.
01:45:42
Speaker
Take three months off, how do you feel your time? Do you do like, you mentioned management? Confessional booth. I have a little bit of work, a little bit of time for my personal life.
01:45:55
Speaker
family. I used to collect a lot of stuff, like not hoarder, but I was a collector of just pop culture, remember action figures, comic books. During the pandemic, I just realized I don't need any of this. I live out of my backpack 10 months a year. Why do I have this? And so I'm going to reopen my eBay store and get that moving. That's like a part-time job for me. Straight up. Oh, nice.
01:46:22
Speaker
I'm sure I'll figure out some quick micro trips and I don't know. I get bored very quickly. I get bored. We're going back to the studio, like I said, in February, so looking forward to that. We'll work on songs. I run all the band, like all the
01:46:39
Speaker
social media and the business. So there's things that need to get done, but it's the winter. There's no tours for me to take right now for work. Okay. I do have one more question. It's a little bit of a pivot, but it's about shows and your experience and what you've seen since the pandemic, since we were talking about it.
01:47:02
Speaker
So I feel like I spent several years not going to shows for whatever reason, even pre pandemic. I mean, I shouldn't say for whatever reason. I got kids. I have an eight year old. I got a six year old. I got a foster son who's 20 now. But he moved in right before the pandemic. And it was like, I think I just my life. I don't know. I guess I just felt busy. If it wasn't 20 minutes from my house, I wasn't really going. I wasn't trying to figure out how to make it work. Sure.
01:47:32
Speaker
And then coming out of the pandemic, I still didn't necessarily feel that craving, but I started going more. And then over the past nine months to a year, I've gone to them regularly, probably once a month at least, maybe twice. It's become a pretty regular part of my life, at least over the past six months. And I'm noticing there's shows that I'll go to buy tickets to that, I'm like,
01:48:00
Speaker
what I drag my feet on, they sell out. I feel like there's a part of me from my vantage point that feels like people are really into going to live events more, that people want to go see concerts more. And I'm wondering if you see anything similar for that's literally just my own perspective. Yes and no. It's both. Everybody came back from the pandemic.
01:48:29
Speaker
I'm just going to give you more information. Everybody came back from the pandemic. The venues were horrifically oversaturated.
01:48:40
Speaker
And actually, a lot of the tours did not sell well. We've seen a shift. Like I said, since then, like 2022 on, we've seen a shift in the way that a tour is booked and how many of them get booked. Like I said, if you notice, a lot of bands will do a full US tour in three weeks. These tours used to be six weeks. Some of them used to be eight weeks, not that long ago.
01:49:07
Speaker
The bands are doing less cities to try to drive up people to travel. And I think this really trickles down from the top. If you look at Harry Styles, he announced his tour. It was only six cities, I believe, many dates in each city with Manhattan having the most. Basically it was like festival style, you're gonna come to me. We're gonna save on the expenses because suddenly touring is just more money.
01:49:35
Speaker
and people don't have any or people are not willing to trudge it out as much as they used to.
01:49:45
Speaker
just a lot more complaining about how little money there is, but there's never been money. So I don't really, you know, it's not that I don't agree, I do agree, but there never was a tremendous amount of money in the first place. So, you know, I digress. So, and look at Taylor Swift, right? Broke, broke records, merchandise records, ticket records, also only did some cities
01:50:12
Speaker
many dates in each of the cities, getting people from all over the areas to come, drive, fly, whatever it was. That's trickled all the way down to the small club tours. The small, small bands are still having to go out and do five, six weeks because bands like us still only make 300 bucks on the guarantee. What does that pay for? Nothing. We basically take home zero of that.
01:50:38
Speaker
But even on the club tours, 500 cap rooms, 300 cap rooms, 1,000 cap rooms, look at the tours. Just look at the flyers and then Google the same band, a tour flyer from even 2015, 2016, 17. They were just more cities, more dates, more often. Band would do four tours in a year. Now you might see a band do two.
01:51:02
Speaker
They might do two in a short one. You know, I mean, it's just changed. People value their time way more than they ever have. And that applies to everyone in music as well, as well as concert goers. Showgoers also value their time more.
01:51:18
Speaker
So someone like you who values their time and wants to go to the shows is going and others who felt the way that you used to feel currently are not going to as many shows or they're picking and choosing which ones they go to or as the festival, which we're seeing way more pop off in the United States now because that formula has been working in Europe and the rest of the world for decades longer. Now, finally, that's being adapted here and you're seeing way more
01:51:47
Speaker
people say, I'm just going to wait to buy the $300 ticket to the festival and see all those bands. Then I don't need to go see them at their own shows. I'll just see them at the festival. You're seeing a lot more of that as well. It's really a mixed bag. It's not that people are or aren't. Sure, tons of tours are still selling out. Some are not doing as well. A lot of venues closed. There's less venues to choose from. So everything has changed so drastically that I don't think there's a
01:52:17
Speaker
definitive answer as to what all people are doing. But I would say that definitively for sure, everybody values their time more than they used to value their time post pandemic.
01:52:32
Speaker
Yeah. A lot of that seems to really be like thinking about the show flyers that you're talking about. Um, you know, I'm in the Worcester area, right? So I have the Palladium, um, and, or, you know, I go out to Boston and there's several venues in Boston of varying sizes, but it, I think proximity clauses, my understanding of that is in the small area of Massachusetts, um, from Worcester to Boston being only an hour drive.
01:52:59
Speaker
Radius it's like the proximity clause kind of kills what people do around here, but to your point I you know it would be like there was a Boston or Worcester show there was a Connecticut show There's a Rhode Island show there and I'm seeing less of that They're kind of picking one in the air Connecticut's usually a good one because it's an hour from me. It's an hour from what I like But you're real you're seeing you're seeing less of the New England market gets saturated by touring bands and you kind of have to decide whether or not you're up for the hour and
01:53:29
Speaker
hour and 30 minute drive.
01:53:32
Speaker
For the band's agents, it's business. If you're like, well, if we split up all those shows and have them play all those places, then they might only do 500 tickets. But if we only do the one city, I think we might be able to sell 1,500 tickets. Let's do that and have it all be at the one venue. Also, it saves the band the time.
Financial Dynamics of Live Shows
01:53:52
Speaker
They make what they would have made between the three shows in one show. So now their time is more valued. And you know what I mean?
01:54:00
Speaker
It goes back to people valuing their time. Is there a benefit to selling out too? Is there a benefit to selling out? Is there any increased payout because you guys sold out a show? Again, it depends on the deal. Every deal is different. As far as settling a show, as far as contract it shows, you might have a flat guarantee with a percentage, like a break-even percentage back end.
01:54:25
Speaker
You might have a versus deal. It's this or this, depending on which is greater. Or you might have a straight door deal. You receive X dollars, X percent after this amount. On door deals, yes, there is a lot of times where the percentage bumps at a sellout. So if you sell it out, instead of 65%, you're getting 70% of the gross box office receipts. If it's a 2,000 cap room and a $40 ticket, that's a lot of money.
01:54:53
Speaker
5% more is a lot more money, you know, so yes, and the same with a regular standard deal of a flat guarantee plus a percentage 85% after a certain amount, the more tickets you sell up to sell out.
01:55:10
Speaker
But on that same note, now we're talking maths, on that same note, there are lots of contracts that go out that are what are called sellout offers, which is basically even at sellout, there's no more money to be made. That's just what it is. You're getting this regardless and that's it. There's no room for any extra money to be made, which is also normal. That's a normal offer that comes through. That's normal.
01:55:36
Speaker
It just depends on the agent and the promoter, Live Nation, AEG, independent, venue size, if the band's hot, how many support bands, hospitality budget, there's so many factors that come into that. But I will say for anyone that's doing it themselves, the best deal usually is a door deal. If you know that you're gonna bring people out, you can make often
01:56:05
Speaker
you'll make more money on a door deal than you would a flat guarantee if you're sure that the show is going to sell well. And I know a lot of agent friends who have certain clients that they try to do more door deals with because they're like, I know they're going to sell the tickets and we'll make more money on the deal if we do the door deal, which I think is badass. It's a risk, but it's badass if you can do it knowing like a little bit of a gamble.
01:56:31
Speaker
Yeah. Especially those hometown shows. Get the door deal in your hometown, right? Correct. Correct. Correct. Man, I just love to be here. I know we're coming out an hour and a half here, but I love to be here because of stuff like this with you guys. I don't think I would have done this if I didn't start playing music again and was still just working for the bands.
01:57:00
Speaker
I'm really grateful for every opportunity I get to have meeting and talking to new people and learning. I really like to learn. I want to just go back to one thing, because I think it might have came off this way, but maybe I'm overthinking it.
Personal Growth and Continuous Learning
01:57:18
Speaker
I'm certainly not a perfect person and I certainly have made plenty of mistakes in my life. I've made some decisions. I wish I had it. I wish I had learned and understood more before making certain choices.
01:57:34
Speaker
But I and so I do think part of me going out of the way for people and doing favors happily and just holding the door and loading the people's gear and what we were talking about, just doing the things and watching the bands. I think part of that is from my past with my Catholic upbringing of I do feel some guilt of my own personal things that I've done in my personal life that have affected me, people that have left my life because of decisions I've made or mistakes that I've made.
01:58:05
Speaker
I think a little a little bit of that is me trying to adjust my karma and me trying to Just follow good person ethics and morals and just be like well that wasn't great So I got I could be better. Let me try to be better coupled with
01:58:21
Speaker
a little bit of the confession stuff, a little bit of the, you know what? It's like me doing my Hail Marys for me. I'm gonna do these good, simple deeds, these just good Samaritan things, simple things because I want to and because I hope that that is a better reflection of someone new who's entering my life now
01:58:44
Speaker
No, meeting the current version of me versus an old version of myself that doesn't exist to the degree that it exists anymore. Certainly, that old version is still there in some degree, can't eliminate it completely. That's just...
01:58:59
Speaker
kudos to those who can completely remove an old version, but I've learned to accept that old version and try to acclimate them to the new version where they don't get me in trouble. So I think because of my upbringing, that is part of
01:59:19
Speaker
why I am who I am today. If that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. You're talking to people who probably feel quite similarly in that we look back on the people we were. Of course, there's that part of you that's still the same. There's personality traits. There's character. There's a lot that's similar, but there's a lot
01:59:40
Speaker
that we've been wrong about. And there's things that our wrong beliefs have definitely caused some people harm. And so I hear the whole adjusting karma thing. Even to some degree, that's this for me a little bit is just like, even thinking back to when we started it, it's like, I'm still a different person now than when I started this three years ago, when we started doing this together. And it's like,
02:00:07
Speaker
decidedly worse. Yeah. In some ways, my parents might say so, but maybe my in-laws, I don't know, depends on your beliefs now. But no, it's true, man. I hear that completely.
02:00:24
Speaker
I think a lot of people listening will resonate with that too. If you grew up in the world, we did. You inherited some bad beliefs, but you did inherit some good things too. Trying to parse out what to keep and what to throw away and how to grow, I think has just been a big part of a lot of people are our age is life. I think that's really going to resonate with people. It definitely does with me.
02:00:51
Speaker
even just letting myself grow because I also, admittedly, did not, from being a full-time touring person, a straight drifter, it wasn't until the pandemic that I realized how little growth in certain departments I actually had because I didn't have to.
02:01:11
Speaker
I didn't have to have growth in certain departments because I was just doing the same thing happily. I'm on the road again. I didn't have to really deal with any problems. I just can leave and then come back and it all sort itself out just from the time and distance. I never really had to and now I am much more
02:01:31
Speaker
forward, try to be transparent, try to nip things in the bud when confrontation comes up versus just leaving. So that's exciting for me. I finally let myself. You know what? I definitely do need to grow in several departments and I think I ought to allow that to happen now. A little bit
02:01:55
Speaker
later than a lot of people. A lot of people are far surpass me in certain things and that's okay too. I accept that but I've tried to play a little bit of catch up I think in the last couple years. I tried to. It's still trying to man. Still trying.
02:02:13
Speaker
which I think we all got the goal, man. I just to see people keep trying to see people keep doing stuff as opposed to like we've all watched people just give up and never not learn a new thing in their adult life. And that's not great. I mean, we see we see that not go great. So, hell yeah. It's an old. That's an old way. That's the old way. Like my grandpa, I think, stopped. He just passed in June.
02:02:42
Speaker
But I don't know that he grew much in the last 25 years. Yeah, I think that the last 25 years he probably just was that and that's fine and he made him him and I love him, but like there's always room. There's always room as the world changes as we keep going right as the Earth is still changing and like becoming way more like just so many more things on our fingertips technology and create everything increasing. I feel like
02:03:12
Speaker
Our generation probably won't suffer the same kind of fate as that generation. I don't think, not nearly as much at the least. Hopefully we'll all be dead of radiation poisoning by then. That also could happen in 30 years we might be gone. And that's also why I want to just play music and have fun because I act, I'm not an apocalypse person, but a little bit of me is like,
02:03:35
Speaker
But what if? Yeah. We're all bridging that gap right now. We'll do that stuff now. I better not put the stuff off anymore. I don't really want to put things off anymore, because what if? So yeah.
02:03:50
Speaker
Dude, John, this is a lot of fun. You've been generous with your time, so thanks for hanging out with us. This has been great. It's been cool to hear from you, hear your story, and hear about the upcoming happenings with Keep Flying, where you want to direct people towards. Ah, you know, if you use Facebook, it's there. If you use Instagram, it's there. If you're young and you use TikTok, it is there. Our singer's doing his dang best to try to
02:04:20
Speaker
find a way to make it work with the algorithms. He's up there. He's trying, man. He's posting crazy stuff. I never even look. I'm just like, keep posting things. And hopefully one of them goes. No, I mean, the standard places. Yeah, you just Google keep flying and there's the website right there. You know, come out to a show. That's really what I definitely go out to a show. I'll plug it to a show.
02:04:47
Speaker
We'll announce, we'll start announcing shows for 24 soon and just, if you haven't come, come, if you've been before, come back and bring a friend. That's all I can ask. Absolutely. Well, everybody follow, keep flying on all the socials and we will see you next time.