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

Chris Williamson 0:00 Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

Aaron Gillespie 0:01 Thanks for having us.

Tim McTague 0:02 Thanks for having us.

Aaron Gillespie 0:02 It's an honor, man.

Chris Williamson 0:03 How long have you guys been playing together as a band?

Tim McTague 0:06 I've been in the band for 24 years.

Aaron Gillespie 0:10 And it was like a, it was a local band two years before that, so 26 years.

Tim McTague 0:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 0:14 Right.

Aaron Gillespie 0:14 We've been playing together for 24 years, though.

Tim McTague 0:15 Yes.

Chris Williamson 0:16 Have you got any idea how many shows you've done?

Aaron Gillespie 0:18 No, I don't. Do you?

Tim McTague 0:21 2500, maybe?

Aaron Gillespie 0:23 Where'd you get that number from?

Tim McTague 0:24 24 years, 100 shows a year, something like that.

Aaron Gillespie 0:27 There's been years where we've done... '06, though, I remember-

Tim McTague 0:29 Probably more.

Aaron Gillespie 0:30 ... I got married the first time in '06, and we did, that year we did over 300 shows.

Chris Williamson 0:36 (laughs) Holy fuck.

Aaron Gillespie 0:36 'Cause I remember I got married in Salt Lake City, and no honeymoon, anything. 72 hours later, you know-

Chris Williamson 0:43 Back on the road?

Aaron Gillespie 0:44 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 0:51 I remember Armor for Sleep.

Aaron Gillespie 0:51 They were the opener, yeah. So I, I, we started that tour three days after I got married. So-

Tim McTague 0:56 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 0:56 ... I bet you it's more than 100 a year.

Tim McTague 0:59 More... yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00 We played over 100 last year.

Chris Williamson 1:01 So at least 2,000, maybe 3,000, maybe-

Tim McTague 1:03 I'd say three to 4,000 shows.

Aaron Gillespie 1:05 Yeah.

Tim McTague 1:06 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 1:06 I'd say 30-

Chris Williamson 1:06 You realize that's insane.

Tim McTague 1:08 It is. It's, I mean, I think it's weird to think about doing something for a quarter s- of a century. Like, you hear people like, "Oh, I've been married for 30 years." You're like, "Wow, that's impressive." And then it's like, yeah, we've been in a band for 25 years. Like, the same band.

Chris Williamson 1:21 Yeah.

Tim McTague 1:22 Playing s- some of the same songs.

Aaron Gillespie 1:24 Something that-

Chris Williamson 1:24 I was gonna say, how many times have you played They're Only Chasing Safety?

Tim McTague 1:28 I mean, literally-

Chris Williamson 1:29 2000 every single show, probably 2,500.

Aaron Gillespie 1:30 We Meaning Wrecked It-

Tim McTague 1:31 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 1:31 ... Boy Brush Red, like those, like the bigger, quotation fingers, songs off that record.

Tim McTague 1:36 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 1:36 Like, something I think about a lot as you were just saying that, I th- I think about this so much, is the people I love the most in the world, like my wife and children, I have spent more time with him than them. Do you know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 1:49 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:49 And I don't know why it does it, it does a number on my head sometimes. If I really, if I really, like, if I get introspective about it, it fucks me up for some reason. And I don't know why. I, and I think there's a piece of, like, there's a piece of guilt or something about that to me. And I, I never really talked about that. But it's s- and I don't know if guilt is the right word, but there's like a thing, like if I think about the fact that like, and I love you and I love spending time with you, but like if I think-

Chris Williamson 2:12 (laughs)

Aaron Gillespie 2:13 ... if I think about it, it's strange. And I don't know, you know-

Chris Williamson 2:16 What do you think the emotion is when you feel it?

Aaron Gillespie 2:18 The one that keeps coming into my mouth right now just looking at you is guilt. Because you spend X amount of time all the time away from your wife and children with someone else. And what we do is fun. And I, and I, I'm cognizant enough to know that I shouldn't be guilty. That doesn't make any sense, like technically.

Chris Williamson 2:37 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 2:37 But for some reason, I feel that sometimes.

Tim McTague 2:40 Yeah, it's, it's an interesting emotion when you love what you do. So it's kind of, it's, I think if we were oil riggers and we had to leave for seven or eight months and we were in, like, the middle of the ocean, like, eating shit, it'd be different.

Chris Williamson 2:56 'Cause there's a sense of nobility and sacrifice-

Tim McTague 2:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 2:59 ... that doesn't happen when you're... Fuck, like, there's a type of intimacy I have with my band mates that I'm never gonna have with my wife. Like, there's a type of intimacy that you have, like if, if you're dating a musician, there's a type of intimacy that that person has with a fucking random keyboardist playing in an airport that you as a non-musician will never, ever know.

Aaron Gillespie 3:20 A non-spoken-

Chris Williamson 3:21 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 3:21 ... synergy.

Tim McTague 3:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 3:23 Yeah.

Tim McTague 3:23 Yeah. And it's like, yeah, doing something you love, it, it, it, it can almost creep in personally on both sides. Like, the wife, you know, our partner's side and ours. It's like, "Oh, we have, you know, we've gotta go to Austin and do all these things." And it's like, oh, you know, it's very easy to go, "Oh, it must be so difficult hanging out with, like, Chris-"

Chris Williamson 3:42 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 3:42 "... hanging out with your friends and going to the Comedy Mothership and all this stuff." And it's like, it's weird that this is our job, you know? It's weird that talking to you is something that I would do for fun-

Chris Williamson 3:53 Yep.

Tim McTague 3:53 ... 'cause I'm a big fan of you and what you've done and the, the kind of journey you've been on. And then for that to be a priority because-

Chris Williamson 3:59 Work.

Tim McTague 3:59 ... we happen to be in this weird-

Chris Williamson 4:02 Yeah.

Tim McTague 4:02 ... public figure business thing is just, yeah, it's not work.

Chris Williamson 4:05 It's like a, it's like a velvet prison in a way. It's a very strange kind of-

Tim McTague 4:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:09 ... sort of like golden handcuffsy type thing. And, uh, I w- I got sent this the other day. I wanted to read you guys this and get your, get your thoughts on this.

Tim McTague 4:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 4:17 It's an essay called The Raw Truth About Touring and Mental Health. "Touring breaks people in ways that most don't talk about and the industry rarely admits. At its core, touring is chronic displacement. You're always somewhere else. No routine, no grounding, no permanence. Your nervous system never lands. You live in fight or flight. Travel delays, high-pressure shows, interpersonal tension, constant overstimulation. There's no decompression and no off switch. And emotionally, touring swings between extremes. One night it's 1,500 people screaming. The next, it's a silent hotel room. You go from deep connection to total isolation over and over again. That kind of cycle burns out even the most resilient people. But the culture of touring rewards stoicism and punishes vulnerability. You're expected to power through, joke about it, drink through it, avoid it, and the deeper you go, the harder it becomes to admit you're unraveling because your whole identity is tied to the road. Your worth becomes about being needed, useful, reliable, so when your body screams, 'I can't,' your mind says, 'You have to.' There's no roadmap for recovery, no built-in support, no decompression protocol, and when you finally make it home, you don't feel home. You feel disoriented and numb, out of place. No one around you quite understands what you've been through, and honestly, you don't either. The truth is, touring is beautiful, but it can also dismantle you. And pretending it doesn't is why so many are suffering in silence. Admitting the toll doesn't make you weak. It makes you honest. And that honesty is where real change begins."

Tim McTague 5:42 (sniffs) Yeah. Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 5:44 Did you-

Tim McTague 5:44 That's-

Aaron Gillespie 5:45 ... did you write that?

Chris Williamson 5:46 No.

Tim McTague 5:46 That, that is-

Chris Williamson 5:47 Saw it on Instagram. I got it sent to me.

Tim McTague 5:48 Yeah, I mean, I think all of that rings true to me i- in a lot of ways. I think there's an arrested development that happens in touring, where it, you have to make a conscious decision to grow up.... because it's very feasible and almost encouraged to not.

Chris Williamson 6:07 What does not growing up look like?

Tim McTague 6:09 Um, I mean, we've all done it. Uh, w- we grew up in public, unfortunately, unfortunately for us. Um, I think having a tour manager, having an agent, having riders-

Aaron Gillespie 6:20 There's a machine that tells you what to do every day, your food's brought to you.

Tim McTague 6:22 Having shoppers, runners, you need anything, drop of a hat, it's taken care of.

Aaron Gillespie 6:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 6:29 You lose, uh, value of substances. You lose value of money and value of time because it's just excess all the time. And it- it- i- it's not like this massive toxic thing all the time. It could just be we always get a loaf of bread and five things of deli meat, and nobody touches them, and we just throw it out. Like, things that, in a normal construct-

Chris Williamson 6:54 Would be wasteful.

Tim McTague 6:55 ... you would be like, "What are you doing?" But in touring, it's like how are you not doing that? You know? Um, and then that's the very baseline all the way up to love, commitment, how, like, relationships are really hard. Um, I mean, we know a lot of people in the industry that don't know themselves and don't know how to co-exist with a partner.

Chris Williamson 7:17 Why? What- what does it do to relationships and intimacy?

Tim McTague 7:21 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.

Chris Williamson 7:55 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 7:56 And I think that happens a lot on tour. I'll take one of those as well.

Chris Williamson 7:59 Get in there.

Aaron Gillespie 8:00 Mine's lost its flavor.

Chris Williamson 8:01 Oh, you just, that's when you know that you need another one. Take some of those suckers.

Tim McTague 8:04 Thank you. Um-

Chris Williamson 8:05 For the people that are listening, we're powering ourselves with nicotine via wood, wood delivery system, dude.

Aaron Gillespie 8:09 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 8:10 Sucking on a cricket bat.

Aaron Gillespie 8:11 I think, I think a big-

Tim McTague 8:13 Yeah, like-

Aaron Gillespie 8:13 ... 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.

Chris Williamson 8:29 Yeah, can you send-

Tim McTague 8:29 We will go back into it.

Aaron Gillespie 8:30 ... to us also?

Chris Williamson 8:30 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.

Aaron Gillespie 8:34 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.

Chris Williamson 8:50 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 8:50 I can do that.

Chris Williamson 8:51 I want a new Game Boy at every show.

Aaron Gillespie 8:54 Literally.

Chris Williamson 8:54 I want my tech rider-

Aaron Gillespie 8:55 Bro, I'm not joking. Whatever you want.

Chris Williamson 8:57 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 8:57 Like, whatever you want.

Tim McTague 8:59 Whatever you want.

Aaron Gillespie 9:00 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-

Chris Williamson 9:31 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 9:31 ... and crave, and feel like I have been out here working so I don't get that. And it's impossible-

Chris Williamson 9:38 I'm hungry for the, I've been parched.

Aaron Gillespie 9:39 I've been hung- parched. It's, and it's a-

Chris Williamson 9:40 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 9:40 And it feels impossible to get on the road.

Chris Williamson 9:43 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 9:43 You know, in a certain way. Like-

Chris Williamson 9:45 Well, there's no physical, as, as long as you're being faithful, right? There's no physical-

Aaron Gillespie 9:47 We are, we, and we all are, so yeah. So you get home. And she always says to me, she goes, "Aaron, give me a couple days to like get used to having you here even. To like hear your footsteps in the house. You know? And to like, to see you with our daughter." And it's emotional for me because-

Chris Williamson 10:06 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 10:06 ... it's my reality. You know what I mean? And it hurts. I, 'cause I want her to just be like, you know, in not so many words, like, "Come here, let me fuck you and love you."

Chris Williamson 10:15 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 10:15 And like, "Let's do the whole thing." And that's not reality for anybody.

Chris Williamson 10:19 Well, it's- it's too intermittent for that. You know, you do a normal nine-to-five. You leave in the morning, you come back in, maybe wife runs up and jumps and gives you a hug, uh, when you walk through the door. Hooray.

Aaron Gillespie 10:32 Yup.

Chris Williamson 10:33 You're away for six weeks at a time.

Aaron Gillespie 10:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 10:35 What's the, what's like an average medium length tour? Like a six weeks?

Aaron Gillespie 10:39 Six, six weeks.

Chris Williamson 10:39 Six, six weeks, something like that?

Aaron Gillespie 10:40 We did one last year that was 12 weeks.

Chris Williamson 10:42 Motherfucker.

Aaron Gillespie 10:43 Yeah. It was-

Chris Williamson 10:43 Um, and that's across time zones-

Aaron Gillespie 10:45 It was awful.

Chris Williamson 10:45 ... that's the intermittent contact, it's all the rest of the stuff.

Aaron Gillespie 10:47 Yep.

Chris Williamson 10:48 And, um, if you have been away for that long, that's not, "I missed you today." That's "I got used to life without you. I got used to a type of life that you were not in, and I'm aware that you went away from one peak experience of deep connection with your family to another peak experience of deep connection with your art form, but I kind of went through this insane acceleration, deceleration process."

Aaron Gillespie 11:13 Yes.

Chris Williamson 11:13 "I've had to develop all of these coping mechanisms, e- emotionally, to work out how to like split or like compartmentalize my heart so that I can open it up when you're here, but so that I'm able to silo it off when you're not, 'cause if I still have it open when you're not here, then it fucking tears me up and you're up until s- three in the morning, four in the morning on the tour bus. And I don't know what you're doing, and I don't know who you're with, and there's all of these screaming fans and you've got this like crazy set..." Ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba. Like, "Fuck."

Aaron Gillespie 11:38 Yeah. Yeah, it's ... I used to come home and we'd just, you know, you end tours on weekends, like, you know, your last show's Sunday or Monday or whatever it is, and I'd just come home on a Tuesday. And I'd get off the plane, Uber home, and the house would just be empty. And it's like, you know, the kids are at school.

Chris Williamson 11:58 (laughs)

Aaron Gillespie 11:58 You know? And that's what-

Chris Williamson 12:00 Welcome back, Dad. (laughs)

Aaron Gillespie 12:01 But to your point, like-

Chris Williamson 12:02 The kids.

Aaron Gillespie 12:02 ... your kids are at school, your kids have, you know-

Tim McTague 12:05 ... extracurricular activities. Your wife's, has a doctor's appointment. And it, it was that. It was like, "Yo, I'm home." And you expect, like, this big parade, very selfishly.

Chris Williamson 12:15 Mm.

Tim McTague 12:15 Like, I'm back from war. Where, where are the-

Chris Williamson 12:17 But also the, like, the tour continues. 'Cause you start the tour, and I imagine, opening show, go, ah, you know, like, "Let's have a beer, let's do the whatever."

Tim McTague 12:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:24 It's like, "Hey, where's the fun fair and the banners and stuff?" It's like, "No, you're not, you don't get the special treatment no more."

Tim McTague 12:29 Yeah. You're, you're here drinking ice water with-

Chris Williamson 12:30 You're, you're not, you're not fucking guitarist, singer, fucking drummer guy. You're Dad. And-

Tim McTague 12:35 Yep.

Chris Williamson 12:36 ... like, frankly, you're kind of like new dad or, like, absent dad that's now come back.

Tim McTague 12:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 12:42 So you need to make it up to us, not us making it up to you.

Tim McTague 12:44 Yeah, it's a weird thing to have a 15-year-old and realize I've only been physically in her life for maybe seven years. If you ac- actually chop it up.

Chris Williamson 12:54 Yep.

Tim McTague 12:55 You know, if I'm gone half the year, then if my 10-year-old is 10, I've only seen that child grow up for five of those 10 years. Which is, that's a, that's a vacuum that you can't let yourself get sucked into, 'cause it will destroy you, and it makes you just kinda-

Chris Williamson 13:09 You mean that kind of reflection, that kind of thought process?

Tim McTague 13:11 Yeah, it's, it's good to reflect on it, and I think that kinda goes back to the arrested development. You have to see those things and look them in the eyes and not try to cope them away or forget them. But it has to come from a place of self-reflection to then inform your next step.

Chris Williamson 13:31 Mm.

Tim McTague 13:31 Which is, how do you treat this person? And when you go on tour and you have all these people waiting on you hand and foot, and then you co- you get home after 10 weeks, and it's the first time you've had to do a dish.

Chris Williamson 13:41 Hm.

Tim McTague 13:41 It's the first time you've had to take out a literal trash bag. And so, I think a lot of people, thankfully for us we do a good job of keeping each other in check, but I've seen a lot of people almost feel like home is the least valuable place, 'cause it's the only place that you have responsibility.

Chris Williamson 14:01 Ah.

Tim McTague 14:01 So you go from, you know, screaming fans and girls and you can't go to a bar within two miles of the club without getting recognized, and it's, "Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow." And then you come home and it's like, "Take out the trash. Pick up, can you pick up those socks? Can you fold that laundry?" And it almost feels like the domesticated home life is the least exciting. Like...

Chris Williamson 14:22 That feels like work.

Tim McTague 14:24 Real, real work.

Aaron Gillespie 14:24 And you expect-

Chris Williamson 14:25 Work is when you're at home.

Tim McTague 14:26 And it's meaningful work, if you view it that way. It's a, it's an honor to serve my wife and kids. But if I view it-

Chris Williamson 14:32 Like a labor.

Tim McTague 14:33 ... opposite way, it could, it could tear you apart.

Aaron Gillespie 14:35 And you expect it to be grounding. I think that's the biggest problem, is when you're on the road, you are ... Like, I can say for me, and I c- I can probably speak for you, but y- y- what you do, you, and this sounds cliché, but what you do, you do for them. Do you know what I mean? Like, you, you're, you're making a living for your family, and you work hard for your family in, in, uh, in the way that we do. And then you get home, and you have felt ungrounded and, or unmoored for however many, six, eight, 12, whatever fuck it is. And you get home and you expect to feel grounded. You know what I mean? You expect that you're going to feel grounded 'cause it's the person you love, it's your offspring. And you expect to feel grounded, but what they need to feel grounded is you to pick up the fucking socks, and you to whatever.

Tim McTague 15:16 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 15:17 You know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 15:17 And make it up to me. Like, you've just-

Aaron Gillespie 15:19 Totally.

Chris Williamson 15:20 ... fucking been away-

Tim McTague 15:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:20 ... for two months.

Aaron Gillespie 15:22 Totally.

Tim McTague 15:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 15:22 Make it up to me.

Tim McTague 15:23 I, I think if you can get out of your head space and make it less about you, which is the point of life in general, is to be of service to others. And the more you do that, the more you find the true purpose of being a human. Um, but it, it's intimately attached to your wife and kids in a way that I don't think it could be replicated. Like, i- it's almost like if you've never been on tour or if you're on tour but you just have a girlfriend, you don't understand what we're saying right now. Like, there's something else that, like, heightens it. It's all the same subset. It's all the same data sets. They're just infused with, like-

Chris Williamson 16:02 Volume's louder.

Tim McTague 16:03 Yeah, it just, it turns everything up a notch. And I, I think it's important for all of us to recognize that, and then also recognize what tour is capable of doing, and then avoiding those things at all costs.

Chris Williamson 16:17 What, like? Mm.

Tim McTague 16:19 Like, I think it's probably a rarity that I've been with my wife for 18 years and have only been with, with my wife for 18 years on tour.

Chris Williamson 16:29 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 16:29 You know what I mean? I think that's a rarity.

Chris Williamson 16:31 You're an outlier in that.

Tim McTague 16:32 It should be standard protocol, but it's not. Um-

Aaron Gillespie 16:36 Well, it's, it's also, that's also, it's socially accepted that somebody who is a rock star or a-

Tim McTague 16:41 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 16:42 ... you know.

Tim McTague 16:42 I've had people be like, "Yeah, you're married, but you're in Milwaukee. Like, this is how this works."

Chris Williamson 16:46 (laughs)

Aaron Gillespie 16:47 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 16:47 Because we know that marriage laws don't apply in Milwaukee.

Aaron Gillespie 16:49 Milwaukee is the place, brother.

Tim McTague 16:51 No, but, but literally-

Chris Williamson 16:52 Yeah, yeah.

Tim McTague 16:52 ... there's like, there's women that know we're married, and there's women that still try to, uh, disrupt that functioning, flourishing relationship. And I'm like, y- it's so easy to fall into those traps. And then, what's interesting too is, one of the hardest things for me is watching people fall in love, theoretically, with people that love what they do. Like, there is no better feeling than having a partner who thinks you're the sickest. You know what I mean?

Chris Williamson 17:29 Yeah. You fucking rule.

Tim McTague 17:29 And so... So if you, yeah, if you bounce around with fan girls, a regular woman who's her own individual person, who wants different things in life, almost feels boring.

Chris Williamson 17:42 So you're not impressed by... Like, like this fucking riff that I just wrote.

Tim McTague 17:44 Yep.

Chris Williamson 17:44 That's nice, but this song.

Tim McTague 17:46 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 17:46 That's nice, but what about dinner date tonight?

Tim McTague 17:48 Yep.

Chris Williamson 17:49 That's nice, but, like, let me tell you about the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round that I did with the kids that I teach today.

Tim McTague 17:53 Yep. And you have to lean into th- them as much as they lean into you. And I think, for me, growing up, I met my wife when we were possibly at our biggest, or when we became what we are.

Aaron Gillespie 18:06 What year?

Tim McTague 18:06 Uh, 2005.

Aaron Gillespie 18:08 Yeah, so right in the middle of it.

Tim McTague 18:09 I had seen that pattern flipping around, and my friend's like, "Dude, you gotta meet my girlfriend's sister." I'm like, "I am not interested in women right now." Like, it's too sticky. It's like, I don't know why they like me.

Chris Williamson 18:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 18:23 Is it because of this, or is it because of who I am and vice versa?

Chris Williamson 18:26 Reverse reasoning, yeah.

Tim McTague 18:27 Yeah, and, and my wife is like, "I don't listen to your music, and I don't listen to, like, this style at all." And I was like, "Check." Like, "Let's go get a coffee." Like, "Let's go try this out."

Chris Williamson 18:38 Yeah.

Tim McTague 18:38 And then, here we are 10 years later.

Chris Williamson 18:38 Your complete uninterest in my career is the most attractive thing you could have said to me. (laughs)

Tim McTague 18:42 It was attractive to me, yeah. But then there's, then there's other people who literally view it the complete opposite. And that's what I mean by, like, the arrested development, like, literally what you just read is the path. And you just have to read that before you go on the journey to look out for potholes.

Chris Williamson 18:59 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 18:59 So, but, but you-

Tim McTague 18:59 So you don't become that.

Aaron Gillespie 19:00 ... but if you do it, if you do it the typical way, if you come up in touring in the typical way, it... Let's say we met 20 years ago-

Chris Williamson 19:08 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 19:08 ... and w- we sat across from one another with these cricket bats filled with nicotine-

Tim McTague 19:11 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 19:11 ... and you read that to me.

Chris Williamson 19:12 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 19:13 There's no world where that would've been anything that would've grabbed me in any way. There's sentences I could have gleaned, you know, information from-

Chris Williamson 19:22 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 19:23 ... but I don't, and that-

Chris Williamson 19:24 "Uh, my energy sometimes goes up and down."

Aaron Gillespie 19:26 That, that's, yeah,

Chris Williamson 19:26 The- "Uh, sometimes I feel lonely in a hotel room."

Aaron Gillespie 19:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:29 But I guess at the beginning, it's like y- you sleep on a bus or...

Aaron Gillespie 19:33 Or we sleep, or wait, for, you know, for us, we, we did it the old-fashioned way where you go to Buffalo and there's four people, and you go back a year later and there's 50, and you go back 10 years later and there's 3,000. Like, we did van-

Chris Williamson 19:42 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 19:43 ... shitty van, nicer van, you know, RV, bus. Like, we did it that traditional way, and I just wish that, I wish that there was, that somebody told me, could, could've succinctly told me that and it made sense

Aaron Gillespie 19:55 to me

Chris Williamson 19:55 Have I, have you guys heard me do my bit about unteachable lessons?

Aaron Gillespie 19:59 I have.

Chris Williamson 19:59 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.

Aaron Gillespie 20:06 Yes.

Chris Williamson 20:07 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."

Aaron Gillespie 20:25 Yep.

Chris Williamson 20:25 "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-

Aaron Gillespie 20:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:43 ... in a way, of making-

Aaron Gillespie 20:44 We say it all the time. "Oh, I gotta go work for an hour." Boohoo. We say it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:47 Exactly, yeah. And y- it's like you making the normies feel okay.

Aaron Gillespie 20:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:51 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.

Aaron Gillespie 20:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:58 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.

Aaron Gillespie 21:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:09 But it didn't.

Aaron Gillespie 21:09 I heard him talk about that, yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:11 And when you have achieved the thing that you think was going to be the thing that was gonna fix the problem-

Aaron Gillespie 21:15 You're still empty.

Chris Williamson 21:16 ... you're like, "Oh, fuck, and now the solution's gone."

Aaron Gillespie 21:19 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 21:19 In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentous. If your workouts feel flat, your recovery's slow, or you've just been feeling off, it might not be your training plan or diet. It might be something a bit more boring, like your testosterone. So, if you're not performing in the gym or the bedroom the way that you want, or you just want to naturally improve your testosterone, Tongkat Ali is a fantastic research-backed place to start. And when this is stacked with zinc, it can make a huge improvement in testosterone production, strength, recovery, and energy, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momentous's zinc. It supports testosterone, boosts vitality, and helps keep everything running like it should. And if you're still unsure, Momentous offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it for 29 days, and if you don't love it, they'll give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernwisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S (laughs) E-N-T-O-U-S (stutters) L-I-V-E M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com/modernwisdom, and MODERNWISDOM at checkout. So, I think that this is one of those, uh, a little bit of one of those unteachable lessons. And-

Aaron Gillespie 22:33 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:33 ... 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.

Aaron Gillespie 22:41 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 22:41 Oh. If you're a female rock star.

Aaron Gillespie 22:43 Yep.

Chris Williamson 22:44 Now what? Now, how are you, how are you navigating that?

Aaron Gillespie 22:46 I saw it firsthand when Underoath broke up for a period of years. I left in 2010. I quit. And then Underoath broke up from 2012 to '11?

Tim McTague 22:55 '16, something like that.

Aaron Gillespie 22:56 '16. And in that time, I played drums for Paramore.

Chris Williamson 23:00 Oh, fuck, Hayley Williams?

Aaron Gillespie 23:01 Yeah. So, I spent f- almost five years or whatever on the road with her.

Chris Williamson 23:04 And they sell out, like, fucking Madison Square Garden.

Tim McTague 23:06 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 23:06 Twice in a row.

Chris Williamson 23:07 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 23:07 But what you're talking about, I saw firsthand. And she's-

Chris Williamson 23:09 Is she a mom?

Aaron Gillespie 23:11 No.

Tim McTague 23:11 No.

Aaron Gillespie 23:12 She wasn't then. I don't think she is now, is she?

Tim McTague 23:15 No.

Aaron Gillespie 23:15 But she would, she would kind of, like, hearing you say that, "Imagine how much harder," I would see, I got a glimpse of seeing that. And sh- they, she didn't distance herself much from us, you know?

Chris Williamson 23:25 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 23:26 From the band. But she distanced herself a bit.

Chris Williamson 23:28 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 23:28 And I, uh, and, and at the time, I was 29 or 30 or whatever, and I would think, like, "Why does she distance herself from us?"

Chris Williamson 23:33 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 23:34 You know, she had her own dressing room and, there's the obvious reasons why. But, like, I think even more so, she, she felt a different type of isolation, a different type of, like, unmooring, a different type of unsettling, you know?

Chris Williamson 23:45 Where do you think that's coming from?

Aaron Gillespie 23:47 I don't know. I, I, I mean, I can imagine it's hard to be a female in rock and roll music, which is a predominantly male-centered and fronted thing. But also for her, she came up in it so young.

Chris Williamson 23:59 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 23:59 Like, when Paramore signed their first record deal, I think she was, when we met her-

Tim McTague 24:03 She was 14.

Aaron Gillespie 24:03 Yeah, a child. The drummer was, the drummer was 11.

Tim McTague 24:06 Playing-

Aaron Gillespie 24:06 Like, the original drummer. When we met them, we played at a place called Blue Sky Court in Nashville. I remember it. Remember this show?

Chris Williamson 24:11 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 24:12 It was hotter than the devil's butt.

Chris Williamson 24:13 (laughs)

Aaron Gillespie 24:13 And she, she was 15 years old.

Chris Williamson 24:16 ... fuck.

Aaron Gillespie 24:17 You know what I mean?

Tim McTague 24:17 She was on Taste of Chaos tour, opening. And it wa- it was before Paramore, it was just Hayley Williams and it was her on an acoustic. She was like 14 or 15.

Chris Williamson 24:23 Is Paramore a, like, pseudo solo project? How much is it solo?

Aaron Gillespie 24:29 She al- She... Something she says a lot, and me spending time there, is she always, she would always scribble. Like probably once every 10 shows, she would put a white tank top on and scribble "Paramore" as a band on it. Like, that's her. She is vehemently like-

Chris Williamson 24:42 Hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 24:42 ... "This is a band."

Tim McTague 24:43 This is not the Hayley Williams

Narrator 24:44 We get it.

Aaron Gillespie 24:45 But I think that, I think that she feels... And I don't want to speak out of turn, but I think she feels heavy pressure the other direction. Because if you were her, and you look like she does, and you dance like she does, and you have this great talent that she does, the back- I can see how the suits would be like the back-

Chris Williamson 25:03 Continuing to push-

Aaron Gillespie 25:04 Yeah.

Tim McTague 25:04 Yes, her-

Aaron Gillespie 25:04 The su- the super talented-

Tim McTague 25:05 And then the out-of-focus guys.

Chris Williamson 25:06 The super talented-

Aaron Gillespie 25:06 Yeah.

Tim McTague 25:06 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 25:07 Yeah.

Tim McTague 25:08 And she doesn't want that. They're all a band. They all write the music together.

Chris Williamson 25:11 Hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 25:11 Yeah.

Tim McTague 25:12 Um, but by nature, yeah.

Chris Williamson 25:14 That's something that only in the last 12, six months... I've listened to this music for over 20 years now. I actually spent... It's a cool story about you guys. So I spent, when I was 21 years old, I spent my final £10 to drive from Edinburgh, where I was doing my placement year, to go and see you guys play in Glasgow-

Aaron Gillespie 25:38 What?

Chris Williamson 25:38 ... to put fuel in the car-

Aaron Gillespie 25:39 Really?

Chris Williamson 25:40 ... to drive. And then I came back, and I had the choice between being, being able to afford food that night. I was a s- uni student running a huge events company.

Aaron Gillespie 25:48 What year was this?

Tim McTague 25:51 Yeah, but-

Chris Williamson 25:51 2008. 2008 in Glasgow.

Aaron Gillespie 25:59 Crazy.

Chris Williamson 26:00 Uh, I think that would have been just after Define a Great Line-

Aaron Gillespie 26:02 I remember this show.

Tim McTague 26:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:03 ... came out.

Aaron Gillespie 26:03 It's a brick building. I remember the show.

Chris Williamson 26:05 Yeah, yeah, on the main strip.

Aaron Gillespie 26:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 26:06 Uh, so I, I drove to go and see you guys.

Tim McTague 26:09 That's wild.

Chris Williamson 26:10 Uh, and then, and then went back. So anyway, I've been around the sort of world for a very long time. And it's only within the last 6 to 12 months that I've realized how many bands that are ostensibly bands outwardly are solo projects inwardly.

Tim McTague 26:23 We actually talked about that, uh, a while ago.

Aaron Gillespie 26:26 More and more now than there ever has been.

Tim McTague 26:27 Yeah, real bands, like full-on groups that all have equal contribution and/or veto power are, are dwindling.

Chris Williamson 26:38 No, it's not even hiding, though. I mean, it, it is if you just look at, "Hey, this is called a band and the person's name," but anybody can go and work this out. And, you know, i- it's not, it's not to say that anything is better or worse in terms of the way that you put things together, but it's certainly a much more... A much different kind of dynamic. But for anybody that listens to any kind of music-

Tim McTague 26:56 Yep.

Chris Williamson 26:56 ... if it's a group, go on Spotify, go on a track, and just prack on the, press on the song credit.

Tim McTague 27:02 Yep.

Chris Williamson 27:02 Look at the song credits-

Aaron Gillespie 27:03 You can do it.

Chris Williamson 27:03 ... and see how many people are credited. It's like, "Huh, those two people aren't... They don't seem to be in the band." It's like, yeah, that's a producer, and that's maybe a, like some session songwriter, drummer-y type person.

Tim McTague 27:13 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 27:13 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:14 But yeah, that, that's a, a whole... I'm like, "What the fuck?" Kind of, like, you know, Ronnie Radke or something like that, you go, okay, like, oh, kind of evidently, like that's a fucking insane-

Tim McTague 27:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:23 ... projecty type thing. But you go, the rabbit hole of that stuff goes pretty deep. It's pretty interesting.

Tim McTague 27:28 It does.

Aaron Gillespie 27:28 It's deeper than you even realize. I- a lot of it is not just, you're talking about the creativity of it all, like, th- y- you know, producer A wrote this song and, and songwriter B wrote this song. But there's a lot of it, it... Wholeheartedly is a solo project, like business-wise.

Chris Williamson 27:42 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 27:42 Like, the other four guys don't get to say, you know, "Can we have this kind of bus? Can we have this on the rider, even?" Like, I, I... There's more... And I- it's uncouth to speak about, and I never would, but there's m- if I told you all of them that are that way, you'd be very surprised.

Chris Williamson 27:57 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 27:57 Like, I can't count them on my fingers and toes.

Chris Williamson 27:59 Is that a function of, uh, bands struggling to get coordination from a creative standpoint and power struggles happening?

Tim McTague 28:10 Yeah, I think... Something I've observed is this new, "It's me, I'm calling it this, and then you guys work for me," kind of structure is from people who have already been in bands.

Chris Williamson 28:26 Hmm.

Tim McTague 28:26 Like, it's like the, it's like the next evolution, I think.

Chris Williamson 28:29 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 28:29 Like when you... For us, it's like a marriage, right? It's like, it's hard enough being married to one person. We're actually married to five people. And we have to manage everyone's mental health and physical health and who's getting sick and whose kid's coming when and, you know, all of these things. And it's, it would be so much easier if it was just my band. I pick when we go on tour based on my schedule. I tell you who you're allowed to have out-

Chris Williamson 28:57 We can't go on tour at that point. It's our anniversary.

Tim McTague 28:59 Yep.

Chris Williamson 28:59 We can't go on tour at that point. It's the wife's birthday.

Tim McTague 29:00 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:01 The kid's birthday. It's this or me.

Tim McTague 29:01 I mean, I'm playing, I'm playing a show on my wife's birthday this summer. Like, literally, I'm going to be in Canada. And I have to look at these guys and then look at my wife and go, "I'm screwed here either way."

Chris Williamson 29:14 (laughs)

Tim McTague 29:14 So-

Aaron Gillespie 29:15 That's the fucked up guilt part.

Tim McTague 29:16 But, but it's true. And then I have to literally weigh, like, do I tell five people in our band and then all the surrounding people, like our crew, manager, agent, "Even though you did your job and got us this opportunity to make some money, I'm gonna say nobody here gets to eat because it's my wife's birthday"?

Chris Williamson 29:35 That must be difficult to do.

Tim McTague 29:36 Yeah, and, and we've done a really good job of navigating it, but there was, there was a time where it's like, "We're not doing this ever. That doesn't work." And then there's, there was a time we said w- yes to everything.

Chris Williamson 29:45 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 29:46 That's not sustainable. And you only arrive at this place, I think, after, to your point, an unteachable-

Chris Williamson 29:53 Lesson.

Tim McTague 29:53 ... lesson over decades.

Tim McTague 29:56 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.

Chris Williamson 30:03 Arthur Brooks.

Tim McTague 30:04 Brilliant.

Chris Williamson 30:04 Bald, bald dude who sat there.

Tim McTague 30:06 Oh, cool. Yeah, and he, he was talking about stage one, two, three and four.

Chris Williamson 30:10 Yep.

Tim McTague 30:10 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.

Chris Williamson 30:28 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.

Tim McTague 30:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:36 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-

Tim McTague 30:43 It burns the newness off, yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:44 ... 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-"

Tim McTague 30:57 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:57 "... I want to make this work." And you go, "You can never progress. You're in this permanent, like, holiday romance thing-"

Tim McTague 31:04 Always.

Chris Williamson 31:05 "... where you're back home two weeks, like-"

Tim McTague 31:07 It's a fling.

Chris Williamson 31:08 Yeah.

Tim McTague 31:08 It's not a relationship.

Aaron Gillespie 31:09 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-

Chris Williamson 31:15 Rinse and repeat.

Aaron Gillespie 31:16 ... just, yeah.

Tim McTague 31:17 Yeah. And, and-

Aaron Gillespie 31:18 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?

Tim McTague 31:37 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.

Chris Williamson 32:14 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 32:15 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.

Chris Williamson 32:27 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 32:27 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-

Chris Williamson 32:42 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.

Tim McTague 32:49 Y- yeah.

Chris Williamson 32:50 You know?

Tim McTague 32:50 And, and it's like, I think that's where solo projects with other guys come in. It's like, I was in a band for 20 years, I don't wanna be in another band. I would never start another band. I would literally start my thing.

Aaron Gillespie 33:00 But you take all of that-

Tim McTague 33:01 You know?

Aaron Gillespie 33:02 ... uh, y- we've-

Chris Williamson 33:03 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 33:03 ... we've both done all of those things. And I did do so- a side project.

Chris Williamson 33:08 I remember.

Aaron Gillespie 33:08 Yeah. And I brought all of this to the side project. And the, i- I thought the whole time... Here, I have, I have, here, here, here. I thought the whole time-

Chris Williamson 33:18 It might have dried up, so.

Aaron Gillespie 33:19 ... you might have started something with this. Um, the whole time, I thought... I have a severe, um, I have a severe anxiety issue, and the fight or flight thing is, I've been in fight or flight for, in varying degrees, for 25 years. And the work that I do around that is life giving and life altering, and I've probably been to the ER 250 times in the last 20 years with anxiety. And we can get into that later if you want, but the whole, the, what I'm saying is I, I took all of that with me, all of this baggage, if you wanna call it baggage, whatever you wanna, whatever you wanna put on it. Like, I just took it with me to the side project, and it was worse. And I think that's why, you know, when we started this conversation of how many bands are actually solo, solo projects, there is a h- there's a, a modicum of like, this isn't a great thing. When you said it, like, I don't know exactly what you meant, but I had this feeling that you're, there's, there's some dis-earnestness or something about it when you hear about a band that, you know, whatever. And I think that's because that individual was in a band once, like he said, and they take it to the next thing, and it doesn't fix anything. If you're broken, if you're broken and you're out of sorts and your priorities are out of whack, changing the room does what?

Chris Williamson 34:38 We'll get back to talking in one second, but first, this episode is brought to you by AG1. I've been drinking AG1 every morning for years now, and it just got even better. AG1 Next Gen keeps the same simplicity, one scoop, once per day, but now comes with four clinical trials backing it. In those trials, AG1 Next Gen was clinically shown to fill common nutrient gaps, improve key nutrient levels within three months, and increase healthy gut bacteria by 10 times, even in healthy adults. Basically, they've upgraded the formula with better probiotics, more bioavailable nutrients, and clinical validation. AG1 genuinely care about holistic health, which is why I've got my mum to take it, my dad to take it, and tons of my friends too, and it's why I put it inside of my body every single day. And if I found something better, I'd switch, but I haven't, which is why I still use it. Plus, if you're still unsure, they've got a 90-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it every single day for three full months, and if you don't like it, they will give you your money back for the lot. Right now, you can get a free year's supply, vitamin D3, K2, and five free AG1 travel packs, and that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernwisdom. Yeah, getting all of the veeting, uh, veto voting power makes no difference.

Tim McTague 35:58 It makes it worse.

Chris Williamson 35:58 That being said...

Tim McTague 35:59 But on paper, it feels great.

Chris Williamson 36:01 But also, on the flip side of that, if you have great vision, wonderful songwriter, all of the contacts, you're a healthy person in a well-regulated relationship, you now get to do exactly what you want and your creative output is completely unbounded, that's a dream. I just wonder how many people are able to, to reach that.

Tim McTague 36:21 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 36:21 Didn't work for me.

Tim McTague 36:22 I mean, I, I don't know, I don't know if we've reached it. I think in varying degrees we have. I don't know if we ever will, and maybe that's the whole point, is like you just keep trying and you're ne- you're never gonna get it right, you know? I'll never have a perfect show.... I will never be able to take my wife on the perfect date, and I think that life is designed that way on purpose because, to your point, like, when you have the perfect show, and you have the perfect date, and there's nowhere else to go but down from here, what's

Tim McTague 36:49 the point of doing it?

Chris Williamson 36:49 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-

Tim McTague 37:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:12 ... "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-"

Tim McTague 37:21 What?

Chris Williamson 37:21 "... the minimum bar for acceptable performance has just been taken up by, like-"

Tim McTague 37:24 Yes.

Chris Williamson 37:25 "... 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.

Aaron Gillespie 37:37 I-

Tim McTague 37:37 Dude, I-

Aaron Gillespie 37:38 ... I think-

Tim McTague 37:38 Ugh.

Aaron Gillespie 37:39 ... so-

Chris Williamson 37:39 Launch of an album. I, I wanted to, I really wanted to get into this as well.

Tim McTague 37:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:43 The, uh, analyticalization of music.

Tim McTague 37:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 37:47 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.

Tim McTague 37:58 It's-

Chris Williamson 37:58 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.

Tim McTague 38:04 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.

Chris Williamson 38:15 Okay.

Tim McTague 38:15 Like- It still exists.

Chris Williamson 38:16 It still exists, but it's, now it's not the main, the main metric now is what you're talking about.

Tim McTague 38:20 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 38:20 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.

Tim McTague 38:47 ... 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-

Chris Williamson 38:55 Yeah.

Tim McTague 38:55 ... first week, and I'm like, "Well, fuck." Like-

Chris Williamson 38:57 I guess that means I'm a piece of shit.

Tim McTague 38:58 Y- yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:59 But one of the ways that behaviorism gets reinforced is the speed of the feedback loop.

Tim McTague 39:03 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:04 So the tighter the feedback loop, that's one of the reasons why I have massive envy over guys that get to do stuff live. Comedian friends of mine, musician friends of mine, that, uh, first off, you have feedback that happens in person.

Tim McTague 39:18 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:18 That's very positive, very reinforcing, and it happens instantly. You play a fucking cool riff, you sing a great note, the crowd reacts immediately.

Tim McTague 39:27 You can feel it, yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:28 You put a good podcast out on the internet, and it's like two weeks later, some people that you never see maybe press the thumbs up button. And it's this totally sterile, arbitrary number-

Tim McTague 39:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:42 ... that has no emotional salience to it at all, and in some ways that's good because you think, "Okay, I'm less at the mercy of some of the emotional fluctuations," yeah.

Tim McTague 39:52 You get your stability elsewhere.

Chris Williamson 39:54 You do.

Tim McTague 39:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:54 But on the flip side, you go, "Fuck, like, that's a lot of work to not get the s- the, like, requisite, equivalent amount of positive reinforcement that you want." So you have to find your motivation from elsewhere, too.

Tim McTague 40:07 Yeah, I, I mean, I think, I think it's, to answer your first question, to circle back to that, I think it is, I think it's really toxic, um, w- without contentment. Like, I think-

Chris Williamson 40:20 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 40:20 ... it was really easy for us... I'll, I'll give you an example. I think it, when we, uh, for w- I do, is there a m- a more, is there a better word than blew up? When we, when our band-

Chris Williamson 40:33 Popped off, bro.

Tim McTague 40:34 ... when our band came out and we had, we were whatever, number two on Bill-

Chris Williamson 40:37 We had our moment.

Tim McTague 40:38 We were selling out everything, and we were, in theory, at least in our little scene, the biggest band for a few years.

Chris Williamson 40:45 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 40:46 You, you have this, like, "We're on top. How do we help everyone below us?" And then you fast-forward, and it's really easy to be a positive, community-focused person when you're at the top, you know? It's like you're Rogan-

Chris Williamson 41:00 You've got a big bank account, it's very easy to be charitable.

Tim McTague 41:02 Yeah, if you're a Rogan-

Chris Williamson 41:03 Big audience.

Tim McTague 41:03 ... you, you want to give everyone a thing because you're at the top, and you're in a super position, and, and it's almost natural. It's d- it's not even a sacrifice. And then you fast-forward, and we take out Spiritbox, and we take out Bad Omens, and they're opening for us-

Chris Williamson 41:18 Beartooth, yeah.

Tim McTague 41:19 ... three years ago, and now they're selling out arenas, and we're playing the exact same room that they opened for us. We have not moved-

Chris Williamson 41:26 Yeah.

Tim McTague 41:27 ... and they have gone nuclear. And it's interesting because you really see the person you are if, when that happens, you're happy for them or if you're jealous of them. You know? And I think it's, I, I've, we've seen it in our small circles of, like, as soon as that band pops, it's, "Oh, it's because they have a mask," or, "Oh," be that, th- like, you start making excuses because you're feeling not validated. And it's like, there are bands that are ten times bigger than us that suck, and there are bands that are ten times better than us that will never leave their small town, and that's just how the universe works. And you may never have 50 million, but you may have five, and is it worth stressing over how to get to six? Or can you just go, "Dude, look at me. I'm, you know, reasonably wealthy. I'm in great shape. I have a very successful podcast." It's like, "I have nothing to complain about."

Chris Williamson 42:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 42:22 But then there's always a North Star. As soon as you ratchet down, your aim gets higher and higher and higher.

Chris Williamson 42:27 Well, this is a habituation problem, right? That you play a show, that's your new minimum baseline.

Tim McTague 42:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:33 Okay, well, does that mean that anything that isn't that-... becomes failure?

Tim McTague 42:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:37 So, um-

Tim McTague 42:38 For some people, yes.

Chris Williamson 42:39 Well, let me give you-

Aaron Gillespie 42:40 It does feel that way.

Chris Williamson 42:41 Let me give you this from a different industry to yours. Uh, books, authors. So Mark Manson, good friend of mine, uh, his first book actually is from 2013. It's called Models. It's one of the best books for guys that want to learn how to be more attractive to women. It kind of came out of the, I guess, like, elevated pickup artist world where it wasn't, like, icky. It was-

Tim McTague 43:00 Yeah, I've seen the book.

Chris Williamson 43:01 ... I just wanna, I just wanna improve myself and, you know, find a, find a good woman. Um, but then he writes The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck in, like, 2018, something like that. And, uh, this thing's been on the New York Times bestseller list for, like, 250 weeks.

Aaron Gillespie 43:16 Every airport has, like, 18,000 copies. It's everywhere.

Chris Williamson 43:18 Yeah. It, it, it's Atomic Habits by James Clear, Morgan Housel, The Psychology of Money. I've spoken to each of these guys individually. M- m- Mark said to me, it's like, "The worst thing that I could have done was have a book that went that big, 'cause every book after that's gonna feel like a failure."

Aaron Gillespie 43:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:31 "Every single book that I write will never be as big as that one." Right?

Tim McTague 43:35 How do you sw- uh, but we deal with that. It's like we, we go on tour, and we have a new record out. And, you know, it's the place after this one, and it's all about that. And then, the songs do well, and then we play a 20-year-old song, and the place explodes. And y- you have a choice in that moment. You can be grateful and be like, "Holy crap, we wrote this song in my mom's living room or our local church when we were 19, and now we're 40. And there's 2,000 people screaming-"

Chris Williamson 44:09 Every single one.

Tim McTague 44:10 "... this song again." Or same dataset, "We peaked when we were 19. Everything we've done since then has been dog shit."

Chris Williamson 44:20 How do you not-

Tim McTague 44:20 "Nobody, nobody cares about my band, they just care about this one stupid record I wrote 20 years ago."

Aaron Gillespie 44:24 It's like the author.

Tim McTague 44:25 Th- those internal dialogues are all getting a drink at the same bar all the time.

Chris Williamson 44:30 How would you navigate that emotionally?

Tim McTague 44:33 Man, honestly, I think, uh, for all the shit that we give it, growing up Christian really helped. Like, having something, whether it's real or not, we debate till, to this day. We've shed all of it pretty much, but from a young age being baked in with your life is not your life. This is not the Tim or the Chris or the Aaron show. We are small pieces of sand, and our job is to make the most beautiful beach out of this, and we're a small part. And just the, almost the forceful humility and the forceful, like, what is, what is life, and it's, it's never about us, and all of those things, which can be overexposed, uh-

Aaron Gillespie 45:23 Can be toxic.

Tim McTague 45:23 ... and toxic.

Aaron Gillespie 45:24 Literally.

Tim McTague 45:24 And they have been.

Chris Williamson 45:26 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 45:26 But I think once you back out of that and you balance it and you kind of get all the, the levers right, and everything's kind of balancing on a very thin edge, uh, it, it just turns... It's almost like how can you not just be grateful? Like, there's, there is no other option, you know. I'm proud of Beartooth, I'm proud of Bad Omens. And, you know, it's such a drain to try to listen to bands that are bigger than you and listen to their new song and pick it apart. Uh, it's just, it's not good for anyone, and it's not helping you become better. It's just making you more violent in- turmoil inside, you know. Um, and I, yeah, I don't know.

Aaron Gillespie 46:12 Uh-

Tim McTague 46:12 For me, I always go back to all I ever wanted to do was sell out the State Theater in St. Pete.

Aaron Gillespie 46:18 Which holds like 500 people.

Tim McTague 46:18 500 people. All I ever wanted to do was play there, which we did. One of my first shows was opening for a band called Moss Feaster with Underoath.

Aaron Gillespie 46:28 (laughs)

Tim McTague 46:28 And, which is named after a funeral home crematorium.

Aaron Gillespie 46:32 I thought about that one.

Tim McTague 46:33 So my first show with the band was playing State Theater. We played first to nobody.

Aaron Gillespie 46:38 To 40 people or whatever.

Tim McTague 46:39 And I was like, "Man, how sick would it be if we were, like, the last band?" We didn't know about headliner and direct support and two if, we, we didn't know anything. It's just like, what if we played late when people are here? And then, we sold that out, and then everything else has just kind of unfolded. And if you can remember where you came from and why you did it in the first place, this is all a blessing. It is not a game. I think you're really good at optimization, and you have a lot of guests talking about, you know, if you wanna go from here, do here, and then IPOs, and everyone's always trying to ratchet, ratchet, ratchet, ratchet, ratchet in a good way. But for us, I, I, we didn't set out for this to be our career, you know. And you can see the bands that do. And if it's your career, then it's different. We happened to be here. Like, I don't-

Aaron Gillespie 47:29 We're here, we're here-

Tim McTague 47:30 ... I don't know what I'm saying exactly.

Aaron Gillespie 47:30 ... I have, I have a theory. How many friends do you talk to... I've been thinking about this for the last 15 minutes. How many friends do you talk to that say this? "Oh, I loved their first album." When you're talking about an artist, you're talking about artist XYZ.

Tim McTague 47:43 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 47:44 They go, "Oh, I loved their first album." It's, it's the, and I think-

Chris Williamson 47:47 Lewis Capaldi is a good example of that.

Aaron Gillespie 47:48 Yeah, and, and I think with our band, we're an example of that. And it, it, it hurts me to say it sometimes.

Chris Williamson 47:55 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 47:55 Because I do think that we, I know we work so hard on our new music, and I, we work so hard on optimizing the way we run our business, and how much stuff can we bring in-house, and what can we purchase versus rent, all this stuff, but I think that people, like, why is Bad Omens bigger, and why is this that, why is this that and the other thing? I, and I don't, I don't know the answer, but I think I know a piece of the answer, and I think when you make your first thing, you know, like, this The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck wasn't his first thing, but it was like-

Chris Williamson 48:27 Basically.

Aaron Gillespie 48:27 It was bas- basically.

Chris Williamson 48:29 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 48:29 And I think that, and I started thinking about this when you said that. Our first album, it was, it was-... honest. There was no reason we did it, other than the fact that we wanted to. We weren't following something.

Chris Williamson 48:45 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 48:46 We weren't thinking about what was next. We weren't even thinking about being big or popular or cool or any of those things. So now everything we do is, like you said, it's, it's hearkening back to that, but I think the first album syndrome theory is because the public feels that earnestness and that honestness-

Chris Williamson 49:07 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 49:08 ... and a word that I hate, that ausen- that authenticity. Do you know what I mean? Like, when we wrote They're Only Chasing Safety, there wasn't never a moment, I promise, I can say this with, with glee in my heart, we never thought, "A bunch of people will sing this."

Chris Williamson 49:21 In 20 years time.

Aaron Gillespie 49:22 I ne- I never-

Chris Williamson 49:22 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 49:23 ... ever, for any reason had that thought.

Chris Williamson 49:27 I love the word earnest. I, it's one of my favorite ones, the bravery to take your emotions seriously.

Aaron Gillespie 49:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:32 Earnest.

Aaron Gillespie 49:33 Yeah. I mean, you're not worrying about sucking and you're not worrying about failing. And I think that that's this whole thing. That's why people start side projects. That's why people chase the, the rabbit, the dragon, whatever it is. So if you will, with this business, with this art form-

Chris Williamson 49:49 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 49:50 ... is because you're, you're, you're, you're chasing something you... And this is, this is a huge generalization and an assumption, but that you'll never get again. Like, no matter how hard Lewis Capaldi tries, I don't think you're gonna get that record again.

Chris Williamson 50:03 Before we continue, if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your bloodwork done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with Function, because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard, and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your bloodwork drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with Function it is only $500. And right now, the first 1,000 people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only 400 bucks to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/modernwisdom. That's functionhealth.com/modernwisdom.

Chris Williamson 50:58 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?

Aaron Gillespie 51:09 Uh-uh.

Chris Williamson 51:09 Dude, it's on Netflix. It's-

Aaron Gillespie 51:11 No.

Chris Williamson 51:11 It is like-

Aaron Gillespie 51:11 I know he's had struggles with it.

Chris Williamson 51:12 It is fucking canon if you're a musician-

Aaron Gillespie 51:14 Really?

Chris Williamson 51:15 ... 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.

Aaron Gillespie 51:37 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:38 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.

Aaron Gillespie 51:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 51:53 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-

Aaron Gillespie 52:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 52:04 ... in his mum and dad's old house-

Aaron Gillespie 52:06 Wow.

Chris Williamson 52:06 ... 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.

Aaron Gillespie 52:18 Yep.

Chris Williamson 52:19 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-

Aaron Gillespie 52:30 Woof.

Chris Williamson 52:30 ... record labels on the planet saying, "Hey, how are we going with, uh, anything for the second album?"

Aaron Gillespie 52:37 We need to follow up, yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:38 "How's anything?" And he develops, um, a, like, a twitch. He develops this nervous twitch over time-

Aaron Gillespie 52:46 Huh.

Chris Williamson 52:46 ... 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.

Aaron Gillespie 52:53 It just... Yeah.

Chris Williamson 52:53 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.

Aaron Gillespie 53:20 Ugh.

Chris Williamson 53:20 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-

Aaron Gillespie 53:28 And then shut down. Wow.

Chris Williamson 53:31 Like multiple times. And, uh, that, that was, that's like it still, it's one of the most formative things I've ever watched.

Aaron Gillespie 53:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 53:40 And it, it taught me two lessons. First one, there's this bit partway through, and he's explaining about this sort of, you know, wild trajectory of what's happened. He turns straight to the camera and he goes, "People think that fame changes you. Fame doesn't change you, just changes everybody around you." I was like, "Holy f- fuck, that's deep."

Aaron Gillespie 53:59 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:00 And then the second thing it made me realize is that there, there are some people who have the skillset to be unbelievably famous and successful, but a disposition that is not very, um, comfortable with it. Or you could say there are some people that are built to be, uh, uh, so talented that they would be famous but they can't deal with the fame.

Aaron Gillespie 54:21 And they'd be an introvert or whatever. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:22 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 54:22 I mean, I think, I think fame in general is not healthy. I mean, I think with technology and everything being everywhere, like now I can hear about a girl who was kidnapped and beaten up in Iowa, and now I'm wearing that. And it's like the world got so short and so small in our lifetime-

Tim McTague 54:46 Like, we used to tour with Sam's Club payphone cards to, to call home. No cell phones, we had an atlas. No GPS.

Chris Williamson 54:57 What's an atlas?

Tim McTague 54:58 It's a map.

Chris Williamson 54:59 Like a TomTom? Oh.

Aaron Gillespie 55:00 No, a company called Rand McNally, in the '90s and early 2000s, would make this, like, binder book-

Chris Williamson 55:07 Right, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 55:08 ... of the entire United States-

Chris Williamson 55:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tim McTague 55:09 Yep.

Aaron Gillespie 55:09 ... with the highways and roads.

Chris Williamson 55:10 We've got, we've got that in the

Tim McTague 55:11 Yep. And then every... There's like 65 pages, so then you get into, like, per state. And we would navigate literally by map.

Chris Williamson 55:18 Fucking orienteering your way to the next show.

Aaron Gillespie 55:20 I don't know how we did it.

Tim McTague 55:21 And then, and then when we got lost-

Chris Williamson 55:22 It's just an additional fucking-

Tim McTague 55:24 ... we would have-

Chris Williamson 55:24 ... burden.

Tim McTague 55:25 Yeah. Then you, you get lost, so you have to find a payphone. You type in your minutes, it says you have 120 minutes left, and I'm calling this promoter being like, "I think we're close." And then fast-forward and we have Instagram, and your podcast is being listened to in probably 75 countries. That was not possible. And I think that acceleration of information has just accelerated the, kind of the fame engine a bit, and I don't think anyone knows how to deal with it. I think-

Chris Williamson 55:58 Hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 55:59 Shit.

Tim McTague 55:59 ... we were meant, we were meant to be in a community, you know?

Aaron Gillespie 56:03 Of 100 people or whatever, yeah.

Tim McTague 56:04 We were meant to be in our neighborhood. I should know my neighbor's name, and he shouldn't have to buy a lawnmower 'cause he could borrow mine. Like, that is what we have done, literally until about 20 years ago, as people. And the, the ones that did it before us were like these mythical outliers. The Beatles, obviously, yeah, worldwide successes, of course, but on a day-to-day life, our kids are the first generation just being born into this is the way life is.

Chris Williamson 56:32 Well, I think probably everyone that's listening to this podcast right now will have one friend that they know personally, from earlier in their life or that they've spent some sort of a time with, that's got a million followers on some platform.

Tim McTague 56:45 Yep.

Chris Williamson 56:46 And y- y- for, uh-

Aaron Gillespie 56:48 Probably more than that.

Chris Williamson 56:49 ... a variety of, um, like, justified and unjustified reasons.

Tim McTague 56:54 Yeah. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 56:54 You know what I mean?

Tim McTague 56:55 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:55 Like, someone might know Bonnie Blue, someone might know, like, a great fucking poet or some shit.

Tim McTague 56:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:59 Um, and... Not that Bonnie Blue's not a poet. That speed of ascendancy-

Tim McTague 57:06 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:06 ... feedback loop, like how fast... And, you know, you mentioned about sort of tribe, ancestral setup, what's typical.

Tim McTague 57:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:15 The problem that we have is our previous comparison group would have been... So you've got your Dunbar number of about 150-

Tim McTague 57:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:22 ... but within the 150 tribe, that wasn't one big tribe, it was little pods-

Aaron Gillespie 57:27 Yep.

Chris Williamson 57:27 ... typically of about 30 within that.

Aaron Gillespie 57:28 Would break off, yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:29 Ye- t- j- yeah, they'd sort of be, like, moderately tightly affiliated, but not totally, totally tied together, and then you would have this, this sort of wider group. You didn't have that many people to compare yourself to-

Tim McTague 57:42 Correct.

Chris Williamson 57:43 ... 'cause out of 150, 75 are male. Fucking, like, of the 75, maybe 15 or 20 are under the age of 14.

Tim McTague 57:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 57:54 Right? 'Cause everybody fucking dies early. It's like, well, I'm kind of not competing with a 14-year-old.

Tim McTague 57:58 Yep.

Chris Williamson 57:58 So, you know, there's such a small group of people that you end up actually competing with, and the issue is that in the modern world, we don't know where the boundary of what our competition comparison group is. You can compare yourself to-

Tim McTague 58:10 To any-

Chris Williamson 58:10 ... everybody-

Tim McTague 58:11 Yes.

Chris Williamson 58:11 ... in a different... It's like you guys, in some way, are comparable with Sabrina Carpenter, despite having s- n- you could not find a person that's more different than you, other than the fact that she makes notes come out of her face.

Tim McTague 58:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:23 Right?

Tim McTague 58:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:24 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 58:24 And, yeah, I think, I think with that knowing that, the... I'm not surprised by that documentary. And honestly, if we were filming our lives the whole time, we would have those moments too.

Aaron Gillespie 58:39 I, I have a version of that.

Tim McTague 58:40 I mean, even... Like, I intentionally don't go on Instagram, and I intentionally don't look at other bands' Spotify numbers. I don't look at that because all it does is lead to comparison. And, you know, even if I'm looking at it and looking at smaller bands to make myself feel better-

Chris Williamson 58:57 It's still comparison.

Tim McTague 58:58 ... it's a, it's... The binary's still there. I'm, I need a, a dopamine hit, I need to feel valid, I don't, so let me find something to be like, "At least I'm not as bad as that guy," which is never the way anything progresses, you know? And I think fame is just an unfortunate, uh, an unfortunate thing, to be honest.

Chris Williamson 59:21 Would you tell me that story? Your Lewis Capaldi equivalent?

Aaron Gillespie 59:24 Yeah. Um, I, uh... In 2004, we, I think we, I guess we probably wrote Chasing Safety in '03, right?

Tim McTague 59:32 We did.

Aaron Gillespie 59:33 So in 2004, we started touring on it. And we were still touring as a pre... Th- there was Myspace, so there was some evidence of how things, big things were getting or not. But that year we did the Warped Tour, and we s- we were playing on a stage called the Smart Punk stage, which was like, (laughs) like a-

Tim McTague 59:51 Out of the seven stages, it was the worst one.

Aaron Gillespie 59:53 Like, like literally like a truck with a flat surface. Like, the opening band from the stage had to build it every day to s-

Chris Williamson 1:00:01 Sick.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:02 ... to gain their access to play it.

Chris Williamson 1:00:04 Yeah. Okay.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:05 Um, some of those guys we're still friends with. One of those guys plays in Paramore now.

Chris Williamson 1:00:08 Sick.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:08 (laughs) Underminded, Joey Mullen.

Tim McTague 1:00:10 Yep, yep.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:10 So, um, we started out playing that summer in front of 100, 150 people, people that were niche enough to know the underground hardcore scene that would come see us on Warped Tour, and by the end of that summer, it had blown up. I'll never forget it, we played in Boston, and we played during The Used. There was a lot of crossover during-

Chris Williamson 1:00:28 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:28 ... at Warped Tour. So there was this big blowup thing in the middle of the stage, and you, you didn't know when you, what time you were playing until that morning every day. 10:30 in the morning. There was no set set times on Warped Tour.

Chris Williamson 1:00:37 Jesus Christ.

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:38 So if you're in Milwaukee, like, you might play at 8:00 PM, and the next day you're in Chicago and you play at, um, 11:45 AM. So-

Tim McTague 1:00:46 We were woken up a lot going, "You're on in 40," and we're like, "Shit."

Aaron Gillespie 1:00:50 A lot.So that particular day was the final day of the tour. And we get told when we're playing, and then we go look at the blow up, the blow up thing. And The Used is playing during us. I'm like, "Well, there, there's that." You know, we're fucked. Like, no one's gonna watch us play. And we got on stage, and there was two or 3,000 people, like-

Chris Williamson 1:01:10 In front of the flat truck?

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:11 ... in front of the flat truck to see us play. Because Chasing Safety, unbeknownst to us-

Chris Williamson 1:01:15 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:16 ... had, had, I hate this word, and you said it now, I hate it worse, like, blown up.

Chris Williamson 1:01:20 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:21 Right?

Chris Williamson 1:01:21 But no one had a phone to be able to keep track of what the fuck was going on?

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:23 No, there was no way, there was no, there was no way to know. And then that f- that, and then that fall, um, we toured with a band called Stretch Armstrong, um, and we had to play twice every day so many people showed up to the shows.

Chris Williamson 1:01:39 So, you did a matinee to try and keep up?

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:41 No. No, no, no. We didn't, we wouldn't know because again, the metrics were so messed up and there was no phones. So we'd show up at a 800 capacity club and we'd play, and there'd be 900 people outside still. And so we would just go run it back. I don't even know if we got paid for it half the time.

Chris Williamson 1:01:56 Yeah.

Aaron Gillespie 1:01:56 It was just, we would just run it, do it again. And in the middle of that, I started having, um, I started having chest pains. Like, and I had experienced them a little before, like searing sharp, like (sniffs) chest pains. And my hand would go numb, and my jaw hurt, and I would get real nauseous. And there was days on that tour, I don't know if I can, I don't know if I can... And I would always muscle through it and just play. Meanwhile, I'm going to the hospital every third day. I'm having a heart attack. I'm having a heart attack. I would go out, walk in crying and saying, "I'm having a heart attack." And they would go, "You're 21 years old. You're not having a heart attack." You gotta find, I gotta find out, you gotta do the work. You know, I need blood work and metroponin levels. And I know all the jargon 'cause I've done it so many... I probably had 300 EKGs in my lifetime, you know. I need an EKG, I need a metroponin, you know. And there was days where I remember the opening band one day part- particularly this guy Chris telling me like, "This is just in your head." And I'm like, "How? I feel it, it's real. I feel it, it's real." Um, and it got progressively worse through the years as the band got more popular. Um, and then 2010 I quit. Um, and I put it under the guise of like, at the time, we were all pretty religious. And I put it under the guise of like, "I, I gotta, you know, I gotta do something else for God. I gotta..." You know? And the reality was I just didn't deal with my nervous system and my anxiety. And if you ask me today, gun to head, like what caused it, you know, what caused the, the onset of it, I have a bunch of theories, but I don't really have an, uh, uh...

Chris Williamson 1:03:42 What are the theories?

Aaron Gillespie 1:03:45 Uh, I grew up in a super, super Christian home, like Keith said a little bit ago. And my, like, my family talked like this, like I grew up in the, you know, my family's from Georgia and they talk like this. And, um, all I ever heard growing up was about medical things. To this day, like my mother to this day, if I call my mom right now, right now, and I love my mother, and I'm not, I don't, I don't, I don't want this to come off if she hears this like, "Mom, you fucked me."

Chris Williamson 1:04:10 We love you, mom.

Aaron Gillespie 1:04:10 Yeah. But she-

Chris Williamson 1:04:11 Mm-hmm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:04:11 ... she would, "Yeah, so and so, you know, Sister..." They, in the churches, they call you Sister whoever, Sister Gina Whatever. "You know, Sister Gina's got like a, they had to do something to her aorta. Can you believe that? Can you believe that?" And growing up the whole time it was like that. It was like that the whole time. My parents, my dad had a mistress and I caught him with his mistress and kicked him out of my house when I was 18, and I think that probably aids and abets to it, and both of my parents had this anxious disposition as well.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 This health anxiety thing?

Aaron Gillespie 1:04:42 This health anxiety disposition.

Chris Williamson 1:04:43 That has been fed into you-

Aaron Gillespie 1:04:44 My whole life. My whole life. To this day, if I call my mom right now, I promise, Chris, she would tell me something about her physical body. I promise. Like, like I know my name. Like, she would say... So it was put into me that way, and then the pressures of, oh, there's not only one show that's sold out. There's another one that's sold out. Are we getting paid? I don't know. We, a- and Tim, Tim and I are very different, and we're very alike in some ways, but we're very different in Tim is the most punk rock person I know. I mean, like, we'll do anything. Like, if there was 500 people out in the street and you were like, "Can you guys play?" He'd be like, "Oh yeah, for sure. Yep." And I'm just, I have a hard time with that. I'm getting better with that, you know, by being able to be more, you know, spontaneous and, but at the time I wasn't. Um, and it ate at me and ate at me and ate at me. And if I'm honest with you, which I think this format doesn't work and our conversation doesn't work, um, I deal with it today. Not to the extent that I did then, but, um, something I deal with every day.

Chris Williamson 1:05:42 Mm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:05:42 And it's really difficult and sca- to be honest, like, it's scary sometimes, you know? The fact that I have to say this to you-

Chris Williamson 1:05:50 Mm.

Aaron Gillespie 1:05:51 ... um, I hate a lot because I'm a fan of your show and I'm a fan of a lot of the people on your show. So to come here and say what I'm saying about my own life and my struggles, it feels like, a little bit like those Spotify (laughs) numbers where I'm like, I want modern wisdom and I'm talking about this.

Chris Williamson 1:06:05 Well, don't forget, I mean, I appreciate you saying that. And, uh, that must've been hard to deal with. That's tough to be a young kid thrust into the limelight and to be, "Fuck, like, this is my dream."

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:16 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:16 "It's my artistic outlet, and like, my fucking s- nervous system is betraying me."

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:24 Hates you.

Chris Williamson 1:06:24 "Like, this is my shot, this is my thing."

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:26 "And my fucking, I'm..." That must be what it feels like to be Lewis Capaldi. It's like I, this is what everything I've ever dreamed of. I'm on Glastonbury, the biggest festival in the world.

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:34 All the flags, yeah, man. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:37 And my fucking body's betraying me. So I'm sorry that you went through that, man.

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:40 That's really-

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:40 No, thank you for saying that.

Chris Williamson 1:06:41 ... really tough.

Aaron Gillespie 1:06:41 It's something that it, it, and on the flip side, I was thinking about this the whole time talking about Lewis too, is all the struggles that I've been through with my mental health and my nervous system and the whole thing, it directly has affected him. Like, indirectly and directly. And that is something that I feel-

Chris Williamson 1:07:00 ... actual guilt for, heavy guilt. 'Cause I really think about it, like, when I left, I've never said this. When I left, there was a large decline i- in their cr- they did a record without me when I left. Yeah. And there was a large decline in their career. And I know that it was directly correlated to me leaving. And I left because I couldn't, in layman's terms, get my shit together, you know. I'm sorry that happened.

Tim McTague 1:07:26 Thank you.

Chris Williamson 1:07:28 Yeah.

Tim McTague 1:07:30 But that kind of goes back to, like, how do you do that for 23 years and then, like, feel like you can be close with, like, your mom? You know? Like-

Chris Williamson 1:07:45 Let me pick, let me pick the kids up-

Tim McTague 1:07:45 Yeah, that exact-

Chris Williamson 1:07:46 ... and just stay, like-

Tim McTague 1:07:46 That exact thing is, like, they're... And I'm grateful for it. I'm, I'm glad that me and my wife will never have stuff like what we've been through. But once you go through it or still deal with it, it does do something to a bond in your brain that it is... is not better or worse or closer or more distant. It is just an... It's a unique bond, it's not-

Chris Williamson 1:08:14 That's what I meant about-

Tim McTague 1:08:14 It's not-

Chris Williamson 1:08:15 It's a different type of intimacy.

Tim McTague 1:08:16 Yeah, it's not brotherhood-

Chris Williamson 1:08:17 That's through music and then other ones through tour.

Tim McTague 1:08:19 Yeah, it's, like, not brotherhood, it's not family, it's not best friends, it's not business partners. It's, like, all of it, all the time-

Chris Williamson 1:08:28 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 1:08:28 ... which is interesting.

Chris Williamson 1:08:29 And that would-

Tim McTague 1:08:29 And I mean-

Chris Williamson 1:08:30 Yeah.

Tim McTague 1:08:30 ... I talk to him a lot about his stuff. Like, I mean, the last fight we got into was in Europe. We were having, like, the oldest beer or something and you were, you were going to the hospital, like, three times that tour and I told him straight up, I'm like-

Chris Williamson 1:08:44 I don't remember what the ailment was (laughs) it was something...

Tim McTague 1:08:47 I just told him, like, "Dude, you're going to have a lot of regrets at the end of this whole thing because you're, you're either choosing to or being captured by... I don't know which 'cause I'm not in your head and sometimes it feels like it swings different ways, as we all do."

Chris Williamson 1:09:07 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 1:09:08 Um, but to have this beautiful kind of thing happen in this random career that none of us asked for and for you to just be sitting in it in misery rather than going to the pub and grabbing pints with the boys or-

Chris Williamson 1:09:24 We were drinking the oldest beer ever made.

Tim McTague 1:09:25 ... popping out-

Chris Williamson 1:09:25 The oldest recipe ever made. Somewhere in Munich.

Tim McTague 1:09:27 Or... Yeah, and-

Chris Williamson 1:09:28 Jesus Christ.

Tim McTague 1:09:28 But he was in a, in a... He was in a state, um, and I was j- and we were all in a state-

Chris Williamson 1:09:35 A manic spiral.

Tim McTague 1:09:36 And we were all drinking so when I drink I, I... I'm a very direct talker anyway. Unlike him, I'm from New York and my New York family is, like, "Say what you f- what the fuck you on about?"

Chris Williamson 1:09:49 (laughs)

Tim McTague 1:09:49 Like, "Say what you need to say." Um, very loving but just very direct and so I was just like-

Chris Williamson 1:09:54 Bonding is done through argumentation.

Tim McTague 1:09:56 Yeah, and I was just like, "You're just gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna have a lot of regrets when all this is over 'cause you're wasting this thing," you know? And he got really mad, we all disbanded-

Chris Williamson 1:10:09 You said it differently.

Tim McTague 1:10:09 ... and he came... What did I, what did I say?

Chris Williamson 1:10:12 I have to say that I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry.

Tim McTague 1:10:15 No, I-

Chris Williamson 1:10:15 You said-

Tim McTague 1:10:16 ... I- I'm not trying-

Chris Williamson 1:10:16 "When you die."

Tim McTague 1:10:18 I-

Chris Williamson 1:10:18 You say at the end of this thing, which is very podcast etiquette, you say, "When you die, you will regret so many things." There, I said it.

Tim McTague 1:10:25 On your deathbed.

Chris Williamson 1:10:26 Yes. On your deathbed.

Tim McTague 1:10:28 Yeah. 'Cause that's, that's when you get full perspective and reflection and the goal is not to look at, like, Steve Jobs' last 10 things he wrote, money doesn't matter, I wish I would've spent more time with my family. To your point, these unteachable lessons. It's like, we're being taught these lessons now, man. Like, we've had this, we've lost it, you left, you're back. Like, we all have done the good, the bad, the biggest, the smallest. Biggest band in the world, this tour's eating shit and we're making no money. We've done all of it now.

Chris Williamson 1:10:56 Mm-hmm.

Tim McTague 1:10:56 So it's, like, how many more lessons are there left to learn? And to his point, he's like, "I don't choose, it just happens."

Chris Williamson 1:11:04 Yeah.

Tim McTague 1:11:04 And kind of, like, you know, the dude with the tic, like, can... Is it just, do you just live here now and is there anything you can or can't do? Um, and yeah, as far as that goes, like, I think his, his stuff specifically does directly affect us but I think if I'm being honest, it's more, like, I can tune him out. If he's going to the hospital, I'm like, if for this period or episode I just need to reduce you to a coworker, as long as you get on stage for the hour I need you and we make our money and we can have enough gas in the tank to get to the next show, you can melt down for the other 23 hours by yourself in your bunk. You know? And that's not unloving or true but you have to, in those states, figure out a way to cope. He can't cope, I can't cope, what are we gonna do? Blow up the whole tour? No. So you then start putting in these protections and, um, sometimes they're not healthy and so we've been through, again, so much that it's... It, it's kind of like you go home and somebody's having a bad day and it's like, "What are you on about?" Like, "You haven't had a bad day in your life." You know? You've, you've never been through certain things that we have, therefore I can't expect you to have the same perspective but it's hard when your perspective gets shift- shifted so much, you know?

Chris Williamson 1:12:31 I imagine you've used a couple of times sort of soldiers coming back from war as a, an example and that's not-

Tim McTague 1:12:36 Which is a terrible example.

Chris Williamson 1:12:37 Of course.

Tim McTague 1:12:37 I'm not trying to church up-

Chris Williamson 1:12:39 Fucking people... Like, I had Jocko Will- Jocko Willink went out today. Like, that was the guy that did the Battle of Ramadi.

Tim McTague 1:12:45 Oh, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:46 So he's a Navy SEAL.

Tim McTague 1:12:47 Saw that go up today.

Chris Williamson 1:12:48 Yeah, who i- is maybe one of the scariest men I've ever seen in my entire life.

Tim McTague 1:12:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:12:52 But is it comparable i- in terms of kinetic danger? No. Is it comparable in terms of emotional intensive... uh, uh, in- uh, intensity? Yeah, probably. And I would, like... I really appreciate you opening up like that. One-... slight perspective that might be useful here. A quick aside, you've probably heard me talk about LMNT before, and that's because I'm frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started my morning every single day with LMNT. LMNT is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. Each grab-and-go stick pack contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium, potassium, and magnesium, with no sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, or any other junk. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue while optimizing your brain health, regulating appetite, and curbing cravings. It's basically a magic elixir, and this