Mental Health, Touring, Family Life, Creativity & Anxiety - Underoath
Chris Williamson (host), Aaron Gillespie (guest), Tim McTague (guest), Narrator, Aaron Gillespie (guest)
In this episode of Modern Wisdom, featuring Chris Williamson and Aaron Gillespie, Mental Health, Touring, Family Life, Creativity & Anxiety - Underoath explores underoath Confront Fame, Family, Anxiety And Aging As Touring Lifers Chris Williamson sits down with Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie and Tim McTague to unpack 25 years of life in a band: relentless touring, mental health struggles, family costs, and the weird intimacy of band life. They react to a powerful essay on touring and mental health, describing “chronic displacement,” arrested development, and the velvet prison of doing something you love for a living. Aaron opens up in detail about crippling health anxiety that drove him from the band at its peak, while Tim explains how a mix of faith, contentment, and open‑handedness keeps him from being defined by success. Together they wrestle with authenticity in art, the pressure of algorithms, aging gracefully as men, and accepting that every meaningful life comes with a price tag.
Underoath Confront Fame, Family, Anxiety And Aging As Touring Lifers
Chris Williamson sits down with Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie and Tim McTague to unpack 25 years of life in a band: relentless touring, mental health struggles, family costs, and the weird intimacy of band life. They react to a powerful essay on touring and mental health, describing “chronic displacement,” arrested development, and the velvet prison of doing something you love for a living. Aaron opens up in detail about crippling health anxiety that drove him from the band at its peak, while Tim explains how a mix of faith, contentment, and open‑handedness keeps him from being defined by success. Together they wrestle with authenticity in art, the pressure of algorithms, aging gracefully as men, and accepting that every meaningful life comes with a price tag.
Key Takeaways
Touring can create chronic nervous-system overload and arrested development.
Constant travel, lack of routine, and swinging between stage euphoria and hotel-room isolation keep musicians in fight-or-flight and often stunt normal adult growth unless they consciously choose to mature.
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Success in art comes with a real family and intimacy cost.
Years on the road mean missing half your kids’ lives, coming home to a household that adapted without you, and partners who must repeatedly harden and soften their hearts; this generates guilt and emotional whiplash on both sides.
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Deep creative gifts are often inseparable from deep anxieties.
Aaron’s obsessive health anxiety and decades of ER visits are the dark side of the same precision and intensity that make him a powerful songwriter and performer; attempts to “cure” it ignored that it’s woven into who he is.
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Authenticity is fragile in an age of dashboards and algorithms.
Streaming metrics and viral expectations push artists to chase what works rather than what’s true, yet Underoath’s proudest work is often the uncommercial, deeply personal songs no one asked for and fewer stream.
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Comparison at scale is corrosive; contentment is a discipline.
Having artist analytics in your pocket and seeing younger bands explode makes it easy to feel like you “peaked at 19,” but Tim argues that remembering humble beginnings and holding success open‑handedly is the only antidote.
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Band life is a multifaceted marriage that demands radical acceptance.
Being in a band for 20+ years means embracing each other’s quirks and damage—like Tim’s ease with impermanence and Aaron’s tight grip on control—or the relationship simply can’t survive.
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Every meaningful path has a price; the goal is to pay it consciously.
Whether it’s being Eddie Hall, Elon Musk, or a touring musician, extraordinary outcomes demand sacrifices; the real danger is chasing a definition of success that leads you somewhere you never actually wanted to end up.
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Notable Quotes
“Touring is beautiful, but it can also dismantle you.”
— Essay read by Chris Williamson
“There’s a type of intimacy I have with my bandmates that I’m never gonna have with my wife.”
— Tim McTague
“It’s weird that this is our job… it’s like a velvet prison, a kind of golden handcuffsy type thing.”
— Chris Williamson
“My whole life I’ve been in fight or flight. I’ve probably been to the ER 250 times over anxiety.”
— Aaron Gillespie
“I don’t want to be that sad 55‑year‑old rocker who can’t let it go. I’ve had more than my fill.”
— Tim McTague
Questions Answered in This Episode
How can touring artists build real decompression and support systems into their careers before a breakdown forces the issue?
Chris Williamson sits down with Underoath’s Aaron Gillespie and Tim McTague to unpack 25 years of life in a band: relentless touring, mental health struggles, family costs, and the weird intimacy of band life. ...
Get the full analysis with uListen AI
What practical boundaries or rituals could help protect marriages and children from the emotional whiplash of a touring parent?
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If anxiety and obsessive traits are tied to creative excellence, how should artists aim to manage them without erasing part of themselves?
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In a world of instant metrics and viral pressure, what does it actually look like to stay artistically honest while still making a living?
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What would aging gracefully as a male artist really entail—professionally, emotionally, and in terms of family and legacy?
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Transcript Preview
Gentlemen, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us.
Thanks for having us.
It's an honor, man.
How long have you guys been playing together as a band?
I've been in the band for 24 years.
And it was like a, it was a local band two years before that, so 26 years.
Yeah.
Right.
We've been playing together for 24 years, though.
Yes.
Have you got any idea how many shows you've done?
No, I don't. Do you?
2500, maybe?
Where'd you get that number from?
24 years, 100 shows a year, something like that.
There's been years where we've done... '06, though, I remember-
Probably more.
... I got married the first time in '06, and we did, that year we did over 300 shows.
(laughs) Holy fuck.
'Cause I remember I got married in Salt Lake City, and no honeymoon, anything. 72 hours later, you know-
Back on the road?
... 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.
I remember Armor for Sleep.
They were the opener, yeah. So I, I, we started that tour three days after I got married. So-
Yeah.
... I bet you it's more than 100 a year.
More... yeah.
We played over 100 last year.
So at least 2,000, maybe 3,000, maybe-
I'd say three to 4,000 shows.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'd say 30-
You realize that's insane.
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.
Yeah.
Playing s- some of the same songs.
Something that-
I was gonna say, how many times have you played They're Only Chasing Safety?
I mean, literally-
2000 every single show, probably 2,500.
We Meaning Wrecked It-
Yeah.
... Boy Brush Red, like those, like the bigger, quotation fingers, songs off that record.
Yep.
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?
Mm-hmm.
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-
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