It could be anything, give a homeless guy a sandwich, help an old lady across the street like anything to make this world a better place. If everybody just did one good thing for another person like a selfless good deed just think about how much a better place this would be.
I feel like the personal me and the artistic me are separate, but connected. It's almost like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. As much as you try to keep them apart, they end up together. I'm very much aware that when I'm miserable on the creative side - if I can't make things work a certain way - it really detracts from being the father I want to be. So in order to ultimately be a good father and the man I want to be I know I need to keep my creative side in check, or at least a little bit happy. It's weird how it's intertwined that way.
I feel like the older I get, the more I start to think about life in general. All the clichés that people tell you, the ones that you hear over and over and over again, there's a reason they're cliché, there's a reason you hear them over and over again, because it's all true. As much as you don't wanna hear it, it's true. You'll find out later on, like "Man, they're all right."
I have a split - of my real home-life side that's real-life, and then the creative side that is not necessarily real-life, but it intersects my real-life so much.
I think the fun thing about doing a project under your own name is that literally anything could be a follow up, it doesn't necessarily need to be a record, it could be film related, it could be book related, it could be anything.
At times, it could be a bit difficult to understand everything that's being said when just listening, but I wanted the lyrics to be the first impression.
Anytime you put yourself in a creative box, it's going to stifle you; it's not conducive to the writing or recording process.
I've always been a fan of the band setting. I've always been a believer in bands, and I've always been in bands. That's where my comfort zone is. So to stand outside of that, that was never my intention or goal. I never had the dream of, 'I'm gonna go into all these bands as a spring board for my solo work.' But life takes you on different journeys sometimes. I ended up playing a bunch of songs and some of them I really liked.
I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again.
When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.
I've been really fortunate where I've made stuff that connects to people on a positive level, and that makes me feel really good, but I can't feel comfortable in dictating what they're supposed to feel out of it, nor am I a professional in something where I can really help people any farther than creating the things that I make to help myself.
I'm a big proponent of letting songs tell me what they wanna sound like.
Every time I felt the pain coming on I'd go downstairs and hammer out an idea. After a few months I started to take a look at what I was making, I had for the first time in my life written a large grip of songs completely alone and without any expectations or plans of what they would be for.
If I couldn’t play, I wouldn’t be alive.
My first show was when I was a high school freshman, but it was at the junior class dance. My older friend and bandmate booked it.
I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.
Where my heart lies is in the real-life, but at the same time part of it lies in this creative realm where I need to go in and put out that fire, scratch that itch, in order to be all rounded.
Having kids had a big effect on me, but nothing more than when they started to get older- that really made me realize how fleeting each moment is.
Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!
I've always been in bands writing songs with friends in order to play shows or record a future record.
There's lots of bands where somebody will write lyrics and somebody else will sing them. It works for a lot of people, but that feels weird to me. I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it just feels fake.. I guess in my heart of hearts, whether the person has a good voice or not I want [the songs] to come from them. I don't know why.
Very rarely I create things and feel like I don't want to recreate them in a live setting. It's a completely different world, but at the same time that's where I've always come from. Enjoying that give-and-take from a live audience, there's a large part of me that's looking forward to it, and creating that relationship again.
I have no want or desire to solo. I'd rather create melodies and accompanying parts.
