Mental Health, Touring, Family Life, Creativity & Anxiety - Underoath

1. 0:00 – 7:17

   Origins Of Underoath & Life On The Road

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

   2. AGAaron Gillespie0:01

      Thanks for having us.

   3. TMTim McTague0:02

      Thanks for having us.

   4. AGAaron Gillespie0:02

      It's an honor, man.

   5. CWChris Williamson0:03

      How long have you guys been playing together as a band?

   6. TMTim McTague0:06

      I've been in the band for 24 years.

   7. AGAaron Gillespie0:10

      And it was like a, it was a local band two years before that, so 26 years.

   8. TMTim McTague0:13

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson0:14

      Right.

   10. AGAaron Gillespie0:14

       We've been playing together for 24 years, though.

   11. TMTim McTague0:15

       Yes.

   12. CWChris Williamson0:16

       Have you got any idea how many shows you've done?

   13. AGAaron Gillespie0:18

       No, I don't. Do you?

   14. TMTim McTague0:21

       2500, maybe?

   15. AGAaron Gillespie0:23

       Where'd you get that number from?

   16. TMTim McTague0:24

       24 years, 100 shows a year, something like that.

   17. AGAaron Gillespie0:27

       There's been years where we've done... '06, though, I remember-

   18. TMTim McTague0:29

       Probably more.

   19. AGAaron Gillespie0:30

       ... I got married the first time in '06, and we did, that year we did over 300 shows.

   20. CWChris Williamson0:36

       (laughs) Holy fuck.

   21. AGAaron Gillespie0:36

       'Cause I remember I got married in Salt Lake City, and no honeymoon, anything. 72 hours later, you know-

   22. CWChris Williamson0:43

       Back on the road?

   23. AGAaron Gillespie0:44

       ... back on the road. We, with Taking Back Sunday. I remember that tour specifically. So it was us, Taking Back Sunday, and a band called, um, Armor for Sleep.

   24. CWChris Williamson0:51

       I remember Armor for Sleep.

   25. AGAaron Gillespie0:51

       They were the opener, yeah. So I, I, we started that tour three days after I got married. So-

   26. TMTim McTague0:56

       Yeah.

   27. AGAaron Gillespie0:56

       ... I bet you it's more than 100 a year.

   28. TMTim McTague0:59

       More... yeah.

   29. AGAaron Gillespie1:00

       We played over 100 last year.

   30. CWChris Williamson1:01

       So at least 2,000, maybe 3,000, maybe-
2. 7:17 – 19:55

   How Touring Affects Relationships

   1. TMTim McTague7:17

   2. CWChris Williamson7:17

      Why? What- what does it do to relationships and intimacy?

   3. TMTim McTague7:21

      Well, I don't know, because I've been with the same woman my whole life, um, but my perception is that it displaces purpose and replaces that idea with other things, like instant gratification. Like, the same way, we were just talking about this earlier, but the same way that pornography is not positive for anyone, the people doing it, the people consuming it, it kind of just stretches out something that should be this one way into something that it never should have been.

   4. CWChris Williamson7:55

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TMTim McTague7:56

      And I think that happens a lot on tour. I'll take one of those as well.

   6. CWChris Williamson7:59

      Get in there.

   7. AGAaron Gillespie8:00

      Mine's lost its flavor.

   8. CWChris Williamson8:01

      Oh, you just, that's when you know that you need another one. Take some of those suckers.

   9. TMTim McTague8:04

      Thank you. Um-

   10. CWChris Williamson8:05

       For the people that are listening, we're powering ourselves with nicotine via wood, wood delivery system, dude.

   11. AGAaron Gillespie8:09

       (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson8:10

       Sucking on a cricket bat.

   13. AGAaron Gillespie8:11

       I think, I think a big-

   14. TMTim McTague8:13

       Yeah, like-

   15. AGAaron Gillespie8:13

       ... a big answer to the thing is, uh, th- the obvious thing with love is, is absence, but the biggest piece of it, I know for, in my own life, and we could talk about this for three hours 'cause that just fucked me up on, in ways that I can't understand to you, and I want to talk about something specific.

   16. CWChris Williamson8:29

       Yeah, can you send-

   17. TMTim McTague8:29

       We will go back into it.

   18. AGAaron Gillespie8:30

       ... to us also?

   19. CWChris Williamson8:30

       I want to talk about something specifically there, but I want to get to this love, this l- We can go back through it. We've got all the time in the world.

   20. AGAaron Gillespie8:34

       I want to get to this love bit for a second. We go to work. And we play in front of thousands of people, and like he said, everything is disposable in a sense. You know what I mean? Like, you can have whatever you want, truly. Like, I can, if I wanted to, I could ask a tour manager to get me cocaine.

   21. CWChris Williamson8:50

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AGAaron Gillespie8:50

       I can do that.

   23. CWChris Williamson8:51

       I want a new Game Boy at every show.

   24. AGAaron Gillespie8:54

       Literally.

   25. CWChris Williamson8:54

       I want my tech rider-

   26. AGAaron Gillespie8:55

       Bro, I'm not joking. Whatever you want.

   27. CWChris Williamson8:57

       Yeah.

   28. AGAaron Gillespie8:57

       Like, whatever you want.

   29. TMTim McTague8:59

       Whatever you want.

   30. AGAaron Gillespie9:00

       And when you, and when you get home, you're, it- it- and it changes through various stages of life obviously, but where I'm at in my life now, I'm 42, I'll be 42 next month, and I have two children. And I get home, and my wife has said this to me in colorful words sometimes is, "We haven't stopped living." Like, we haven't ... So I get home and expect, like, time, time, time, give me time, give me time, give me time, and not only give me time but give me this deep, bright level of intimac- intimacy that I need-
3. 19:55 – 29:55

   Battling Mental Health Struggles

   1. AGAaron Gillespie19:55

      to me

   2. CWChris Williamson19:55

      Have I, have you guys heard me do my bit about unteachable lessons?

   3. AGAaron Gillespie19:59

      I have.

   4. CWChris Williamson19:59

      Yeah. You heard me talk about those? Yeah, so it's just there's certain things that we can't learn through explanation, only through experience.

   5. AGAaron Gillespie20:06

      Yes.

   6. CWChris Williamson20:07

      And, uh, I get the sense that the raw truth about touring and mental health is, is one of those things, that you can warn people. And it's the same, um, "You're not in love with that girl, she's just hot and difficult to get." "Money won't make you happy. Fame won't fill your self-worth problem." "You should probably speak to your parents more." "You shouldn't work as hard."

   7. AGAaron Gillespie20:25

      Yep.

   8. CWChris Williamson20:25

      "You need to spend more time in a hammock." Like, all of these things are lessons that we, we disregard because they sound either cliché or purposefully, um, like, paradoxical. It's like, "Oh, yeah, being a rock star is hard." Like, you have to say that. That's like you paying your due-

   9. AGAaron Gillespie20:43

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson20:43

       ... in a way, of making-

   11. AGAaron Gillespie20:44

       We say it all the time. "Oh, I gotta go work for an hour." Boohoo. We say it, yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson20:47

       Exactly, yeah. And y- it's like you making the normies feel okay.

   13. AGAaron Gillespie20:51

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson20:51

       And i- in many ways, when people can see all of the b- like, s- a billionaire saying that their money made them feel empty inside.

   15. AGAaron Gillespie20:58

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson20:58

       Will Smith. Will Smith said, "When I was poor and miserable, I had hope. When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent." Like, 'cause he thought that money was gonna fix his self-worth problem.

   17. AGAaron Gillespie21:08

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson21:09

       But it didn't.

   19. AGAaron Gillespie21:09

       I heard him talk about that, yeah.

   20. CWChris Williamson21:11

       And when you have achieved the thing that you think was going to be the thing that was gonna fix the problem-

   21. AGAaron Gillespie21:15

       You're still empty.

   22. CWChris Williamson21:16

       ... you're like, "Oh, fuck, and now the solution's gone."

   23. AGAaron Gillespie21:19

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson21:19

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   25. AGAaron Gillespie22:33

       Yeah.

   26. CWChris Williamson22:33

       ... dude, let me fucking roll this for you. As difficult as almost everybody in the industry has it, imagine how much harder it is if you're a woman.

   27. AGAaron Gillespie22:41

       Oh, yeah.

   28. CWChris Williamson22:41

       Oh. If you're a female rock star.

   29. AGAaron Gillespie22:43

       Yep.

   30. CWChris Williamson22:44

       Now what? Now, how are you, how are you navigating that?
4. 29:55 – 36:49

   Difficulty Maintaining Relationships On Tour

   1. TMTim McTague29:55

      I forget who it was, but you had someone on your podcast talking about, something about falling in love and staying in love. Really brilliant guy.

   2. CWChris Williamson30:03

      Arthur Brooks.

   3. TMTim McTague30:04

      Brilliant.

   4. CWChris Williamson30:04

      Bald, bald dude who sat there.

   5. TMTim McTague30:06

      Oh, cool. Yeah, and he, he was talking about stage one, two, three and four.

   6. CWChris Williamson30:10

      Yep.

   7. TMTim McTague30:10

      And, like, stage one is where people get stuck in relationships, and that's where people get stuck in a lot of things. And then you kind of push through to stage four, where it's like, "That's my brother. He's crazy. I'm crazy."We don't do the s- same things at all, but it's, we're past that.

   8. CWChris Williamson30:28

      But you know how you get to stage four was eye contact and touch. It's oxytocin bonding, to push you through the serotonin dump.

   9. TMTim McTague30:36

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson30:36

       You get to come out on the other side, which is precisely the thing that being apart from your partner stops you from being able to develop, so that-

   11. TMTim McTague30:43

       It burns the newness off, yeah.

   12. CWChris Williamson30:44

       ... I have to imagine that the, um, there is a lot of sort of cyclical... I mean, it seems like not for you, but there has to be a lot of cyclical dating when someone, maybe even somebody who, "I really want a partner, I want a long-term relationship-"

   13. TMTim McTague30:57

       Yeah.

   14. CWChris Williamson30:57

       "... I want to make this work." And you go, "You can never progress. You're in this permanent, like, holiday romance thing-"

   15. TMTim McTague31:04

       Always.

   16. CWChris Williamson31:05

       "... where you're back home two weeks, like-"

   17. TMTim McTague31:07

       It's a fling.

   18. CWChris Williamson31:08

       Yeah.

   19. TMTim McTague31:08

       It's not a relationship.

   20. AGAaron Gillespie31:09

       We have someone very close to us who's been in a fling for 20 years, with, I mean, different people, you know what I mean? But it's-

   21. CWChris Williamson31:15

       Rinse and repeat.

   22. AGAaron Gillespie31:16

       ... just, yeah.

   23. TMTim McTague31:17

       Yeah. And, and-

   24. AGAaron Gillespie31:18

       And I think, I honestly think with this individual, and I, I, not hyperbole, I, I really believe that he craves and needs deep, real intimacy, connection, reality, and he keeps rinsing and repeating trying to find it because he's chasing that oxytocin feeling, you know?

   25. TMTim McTague31:37

       Yeah. And it's, it, it's really interesting to, like, unpack all of that with one person, let alone five at the same time. I mean, Aaron's probably walked me through the hardest times in my life more than anyone in my family has. Like, my dad died when we were just on tour. He saw me melt down, you know, passed out in the front lounge for a whole tour. Dad has cancer, but I gotta go work, and what do I do? Literally, you reading that, I'm like, "Oh, I am in there." I'm not there now, but I've been everything you just read.

   26. CWChris Williamson32:14

       Mm-hmm.

   27. TMTim McTague32:15

       And I think the easiest thing to do is, well, my next project, that was so, that was so tough, I don't wanna do that again. It's almost like if my wife left me, I wouldn't wanna get married again.

   28. CWChris Williamson32:27

       Mm-hmm.

   29. TMTim McTague32:27

       Because to have a good marriage is so much pain and work, and it's worth every cent of it and every second of the time spent crying together, fighting together, working through things together to get to that other side. But it's not easy. And everyone-

   30. CWChris Williamson32:42

       And it's also not worth it if the end result is you falling just before the finish line, or if the, if the, if the race ends up finishing.
5. 36:49 – 50:57

   The Emotional Rollercoaster of Success

   1. TMTim McTague36:49

      the point of doing it?

   2. CWChris Williamson36:49

      But what about if you have played the perfect show 300 times but you refuse to let yourself actually believe that? Because if you did, then there would be this unreasonable next level. So, I think about it with regards to my show. Um, every time that we hit a new, uh, launch velocity on plays, let's say we do a million plays in, in a day, and say-

   3. TMTim McTague37:12

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson37:12

      ... "Holy fuck, that's insane. Million plays in a day," immediately two things come into my mind. The first one is, "That's fucking great," and the second one is, "Holy shit-"

   5. TMTim McTague37:21

      What?

   6. CWChris Williamson37:21

      "... the minimum bar for acceptable performance has just been taken up by, like-"

   7. TMTim McTague37:24

      Yes.

   8. CWChris Williamson37:25

      "... double." So, every time that you reach a new level of performance, not only is it a cause for celebration, but it's a cause for anxiety because anything less than that becomes a, a sense of insufficiency moving forward.

   9. AGAaron Gillespie37:37

      I-

   10. TMTim McTague37:37

       Dude, I-

   11. AGAaron Gillespie37:38

       ... I think-

   12. TMTim McTague37:38

       Ugh.

   13. AGAaron Gillespie37:39

       ... so-

   14. CWChris Williamson37:39

       Launch of an album. I, I wanted to, I really wanted to get into this as well.

   15. TMTim McTague37:42

       Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson37:43

       The, uh, analyticalization of music.

   17. TMTim McTague37:47

       Yeah.

   18. CWChris Williamson37:47

       The fact that you guys have got Spotify For Artists dashboards on the backend, and you know exactly, track on track, where we were at, how many plays, what's the monthlies at, this album we're counting down.

   19. TMTim McTague37:58

       It's-

   20. CWChris Williamson37:58

       Oh, well, Waterfall released all of the singles so that we can get, we can, like, bump the plays back up again. It's gamesmanship.

   21. TMTim McTague38:04

       It used to be, it used to be tangible, so there used to be this thing called SoundScan. So, like, SoundScan was literally, like, a big calculator that counted records sold.

   22. CWChris Williamson38:15

       Okay.

   23. TMTim McTague38:15

       Like- It still exists.

   24. CWChris Williamson38:16

       It still exists, but it's, now it's not the main, the main metric now is what you're talking about.

   25. TMTim McTague38:20

       Mm-hmm.

   26. CWChris Williamson38:20

       It used to be you'd have a p- your merch guy or whatever had a piece of paper, and however many CDs or albums you sold on that, they would just tick a box, and you would send it in. And the tangibility of it, for me, made it easier to process. I don't know how to explain why, and we could get into it, but, like, it's so weird now because people will say numbers to me about an album release or, uh, uh, how many s- how many times something is streaming, and I'll be like, "Oh, okay. Is that good?" And I'll, the number will be large- Mm-hmm.

   27. TMTim McTague38:47

       ... and I'll think it's great. And then I'll open my phone, and band X or Y will have, you know, a quadrillion (laughs) plays-

   28. CWChris Williamson38:55

       Yeah.

   29. TMTim McTague38:55

       ... first week, and I'm like, "Well, fuck." Like-

   30. CWChris Williamson38:57

       I guess that means I'm a piece of shit.
6. 50:57 – 1:14:23

   The Reality Of Fame

   1. CWChris Williamson50:58

      When you mentioned about some of the challenges you've had with anxiety, nervous system regulation coming back down, did you see, um, How I'm Feeling Now, the documentary about Lewis?

   2. AGAaron Gillespie51:09

      Uh-uh.

   3. CWChris Williamson51:09

      Dude, it's on Netflix. It's-

   4. AGAaron Gillespie51:11

      No.

   5. CWChris Williamson51:11

      It is like-

   6. AGAaron Gillespie51:11

      I know he's had struggles with it.

   7. CWChris Williamson51:12

      It is fucking canon if you're a musician-

   8. AGAaron Gillespie51:14

      Really?

   9. CWChris Williamson51:15

      ... to watch this thing. So I must, I must talk about this, like, every, every month. He, uh, writes his first album. I mean, he, he blows up from a song video that was him playing in some random pub in s- the arse end of Scotland singing this song that he'd written when he was 16, and then he sort of slowly builds up this album. I think he releases it maybe when he's 19, something like that.

   10. AGAaron Gillespie51:37

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson51:38

       And then it's billions, billions of streams. Everything, every single everything. And he's got this really interesting way of presenting. He's very self-deprecating, he's very, very sort of British in that way. He doesn't take himself too seriously, he's not glamorous, you know.

   12. AGAaron Gillespie51:52

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson51:53

       He, like, very self-effacing in the way that he, he shows up. And then COVID happens, and the documentary starts in COVID, and it's him-

   14. AGAaron Gillespie52:03

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson52:04

       ... in his mum and dad's old house-

   16. AGAaron Gillespie52:06

       Wow.

   17. CWChris Williamson52:06

       ... in Scotland, and he's in this back shed thing, which looked very nice, right? Recording studio. And it's like the wall is just platinum record, platinum record, gold record, platinum record, platinum record, award, award, award, like da da da da da.

   18. AGAaron Gillespie52:18

       Yep.

   19. CWChris Williamson52:19

       And his day-to-day life is him having had his entire childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood to write his first album, and then the pressure of the biggest-

   20. AGAaron Gillespie52:30

       Woof.

   21. CWChris Williamson52:30

       ... record labels on the planet saying, "Hey, how are we going with, uh, anything for the second album?"

   22. AGAaron Gillespie52:37

       We need to follow up, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson52:38

       "How's anything?" And he develops, um, a, like, a twitch. He develops this nervous twitch over time-

   24. AGAaron Gillespie52:46

       Huh.

   25. CWChris Williamson52:46

       ... uh, that it turns out is Tourette's. So he's got this predisposition for Tourette's, but it's 100% brought on by this.

   26. AGAaron Gillespie52:53

       It just... Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson52:53

       And then what you want is for there to be some wonderful, uh, conclusion, some sort of victorious hero moment at the end, and one of the final shows of the entire, uh, documentary, he steps out on stage and he's so nervous he can't sing the songs. And his dad and his mum are in the crowd, and his dad sprints from the seat to, like, be backstage to, like, hold his son.

   28. AGAaron Gillespie53:20

       Ugh.

   29. CWChris Williamson53:20

       And it, like, tears them up. And he went out and did Glastonbury. I think he might have done Glastonbury two years in a row and not been able to perform, like got to stage-

   30. AGAaron Gillespie53:28

       And then shut down. Wow.
7. 1:14:23 – 1:39:58

   How To Leverage Obsession To Your Advantage

   1. CWChris Williamson1:14:24

      Most of the things, I think, that you're ... the, the shames that you have in your life, the ones that are the worst that you have about yourself, if you look at them, they're usually the dark side of the stuff that you're the most proud of as well.

Episode duration: 2:45:37