Sunday Uncensored: Tommy Vext Members Only Podcast
Tim & Co join Tommy Vext For a spicy bonus segment usually only available on Timcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Feb. 19, 2023 - Timcast IRL - Tim Pool
41:06
Participants
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
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| Welcome to our special weekend show, Sunday Uncensored. | ||
| Every week we produce four uncensored episodes of the TimCast IRL podcast exclusively at TimCast.com, and we're going to bring you the most important for our weekend show. | ||
| If you want to check out more segments just like this, become a member at TimCast.com. | ||
| Now, enjoy the show. | ||
| I mean, we typically hang out with Phil anyway, though, so we're usually graced by the presence of rock stars. | ||
| He still has his job. | ||
| I don't have mine anymore. | ||
| You lost your job. | ||
| There's multiple platinum and gold records between the two of us. | ||
| That's a lot of platinum and gold. | ||
| You want to grab your mic, brother? | ||
| Sorry, congratulations on going platinum, by the way, in real life. | ||
| Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| So let's talk about those lockdowns, because we were mentioning just at the end of the show, you mentioned Pete Parata, and I've mentioned it a million and one times. | ||
| He's actually coming out here. | ||
| I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, but he'll be here on Friday. | ||
| Oh, just missed him. | ||
| Yeah, you just missed him. | ||
| Should just stay, hang out, man. | ||
| Yeah, just stay and hang out. | ||
| Yeah, just me at the, what's the name of the diner? | ||
| I'm just going to hang out at Penny's for a week. | ||
| You can hang out here, you know. | ||
| You can hang out with Phil. | ||
| But yeah, we're actually filming a music video. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, for a song we've been sitting on for a while. | ||
| Have you released a song? | ||
| Do I know it? | ||
| We've released three. | ||
| No, no, I know. | ||
| This one's not out yet. | ||
| I saw the video, the first video that he posted that got like 1.9 million views, which is... | ||
| Which is actually very impressive for a new artist, because people don't realize the YouTube game, without having the labels and all the other stuff, how hard it is to get people's eyes on your music. | ||
| But without the big challenge, I think this is probably good information for people who are trying to get into the industry, I would say, from my perspective, unless you have the streaming playlists, unless they put you in rotation, After you hit your marketing, that's it. | ||
| We get a certain number of plays in the videos, but it's very similar to how it works for YouTube. | ||
| I put up a video, it gets a couple hundred thousand hits, and then disappears and ceases to exist. | ||
| And that's very similar for what happens with the music we put out. | ||
| It gets a big blast, gets tons of traffic, and then slowly starts dropping because people have to manually choose to put it in their playlists because it's not going to appear on rotation anywhere. | ||
| I have a guy that can help you with that. | ||
| All right, well, let's talk. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But there is also other ways of doing this, which I kind of configured if you want to talk about industry stuff, because I went from being on a major label, you know, and having like five or six number one radio hits and globally and whatever, whatever, to being completely excommunicated. | ||
| So I can I can say we put out three songs and all three have charted on Billboard in some capacity. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So like the first one charted two years after we released it, because you know the fuck we were doing. | ||
| But that happened to me too. | ||
| I had like a 15 second clip of a cover of Take Me to Church on TikTok, and it went viral, and then I made it available two days later, and I made like $50,000. | ||
| Holy shit, we didn't make any money. | ||
| That's cool. | ||
| I charted at number four on Billboard overall in rock, and I charted at 17 in alternative, which alternative, you have to have like 10 or 20 times the amount. | ||
| It's higher, right? | ||
| Much much higher it goes up as the genre changes. | ||
| So metal is like for me Do you guys still even bother to register as metal? | ||
| Yes, like metal so small it's like to be number one at metal like, you know, it's like nothing some people do it for posterity like five-finger will still release in both genres just to piss off the metal heads because Not really metal. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh God, we get that so much. | |
| There's melodic singing. | ||
| Oh, you covered a Garth Brooks song. | ||
| Melodic singing. | ||
| Yeah, they're like, it's so mad. | ||
| Why are you singing? | ||
| Well, apparently, I was reading, you know Poppy? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| She's like the first female metal award winner in some category or some shit. | ||
| Well, she also wasn't a metal artist and then signed with Samarian and then did a metal record. | ||
| Her whole thing came out and she was just making Kind of strange. | ||
| It was like bubblegum. | ||
| It was like bubblegum, K-pop, Japanese pop music. | ||
| It's like Babymetal but an American version. | ||
| But that's what they did. | ||
| They basically replicated Babymetal because it wasn't really taking off, you know? | ||
| I mean, her weird bubblegum stuff, I think, is not a fan of, but her metal stuff, or ish, or whatever you want to call it, I actually really like. | ||
| Well, because the musicianship is done by guys who are our age shedding, woodshedding in a basement, you know what I mean? | ||
| Like playing djent, like... If you take all the music away and you put a different singer, you'd still like it. | ||
| The dude that filled in for our... We just did a tour last year in March and April and May, and our drummer couldn't, Jason couldn't Handle it he had to go home. | ||
| So we had someone come out the guy that came out I'm not sure if I'm supposed to say this but he plays for one of those bands drums and he is Nasty, yeah, you know. | ||
| Yeah as in very good. | ||
| Yeah the musicianship that that the bands like that require are I mean, I And is her band publicly known, or is it just a backing band? | ||
| Probably just backing band. | ||
| Because when they play the videos, they're wearing masks and stuff like that, or they're not visible. | ||
| In This Moment does that too. | ||
| That was the final iteration of In This Moment's evolution, is to just put everyone in masks. | ||
| Ghost does that as well? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because that way, if you have a singer or an artist that is kind of the focus, and you get the rest of the band as faceless, nameless people, then you can just hire people that are available. | ||
| Or if you're like me and you don't get along with people and you fire them constantly, no one will notice that you're getting rid of your band members. | ||
| Is Levine still with you? | ||
|
unidentified
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No. | |
| The look he just gave you, man. | ||
| So Levine used to be... So I took him in, literally. | ||
| He lived in my apartment in LA. | ||
| Oh, did you? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, and he's a great guy. | ||
| He's a very nice guy, very good person, amazing videographer, not the strongest drummer, and I replaced him for Tim Young, who's one of the fastest drummers in the world, and a guy who I've been playing with for 17 years, right? | ||
| And we reconnected, and then Levine proceeded to steal my laptop. | ||
| He stole my laptop, he changed all the locks on my lockout space in LA and then was like, I'm not letting you in your storage facility because he was keeping his drums in my storage and then changed my locks until he could get his drums. | ||
| So these are the things that, this is why. | ||
| Crazy people. | ||
| She had members behave like chicks. | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| You know, and then it was like, well, I hate you anyway. | ||
| And I'm like, I'm like, Hey man, like. | ||
| All I said was, hey dude, rehearsal was real rough. | ||
| I had a vocal cord injury so I postponed my tour. | ||
| And I was like, I have two music videos to shoot. | ||
| I'm going to have Tim come down and play in the video because the songs are too fast for you to perform. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| Right? | ||
| And it wasn't, there was no beef. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And it just exploded into that. | ||
| He was offended, I guess. | ||
| Beef. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So we were talking at the end of the show about Pete and the one thing I always want to mention that I think is really important. | ||
| It's one thing to fire somebody because mandates and make an excuse like, look, they wouldn't let us play. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It's another thing. | ||
| I mean, and that's bad. | ||
| It's another thing not to rehire him once the mandates are gone. | ||
| He never said anything bad about him. | ||
| They could've just been like, bro, Band-Aids are done, like, come back and jam with us. | ||
| They said, fuck you, and kicked him out after 14 years. | ||
| That really does blow my mind that, like, they're just- 14 years? | ||
| Yeah, he's been in the band for that long, and they're just like, see ya because of... | ||
| Yeah, but this is the problem with the liberal mentality, right? | ||
| People won't understand this, but when I left Bad Wolves, I walked away from one of my best friends of 20 years. | ||
| Doc Hoyle and I have been thick as thieves for 20 years, right? | ||
| His band and my band used to play shows together in the late 90s. | ||
| When he moved to LA, he was borderline homeless. | ||
| I hired him. | ||
| I gave him a job. | ||
| I trained him. | ||
| I gave him a place to live. | ||
| I put him in the band, this, that, the other. | ||
| And because I wasn't on the BLM tip, I wasn't in the BLM cult. | ||
|
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| He completely turned his back on me. | ||
| That's a cult. | ||
| To the point where he told the band, he was like, it's either him or me. | ||
| And the guy didn't play on the records. | ||
| He didn't play on the records at all. | ||
| He was my hired guitar player. | ||
| And this band still exists? | ||
| Yeah, they have another singer. | ||
|
unidentified
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How does that even make sense? | |
| Because, listen, this is the way that the left goes. | ||
| They're holding on to basically, they're basically just holding on for deal life to what I created and trying to move past all this and, you know, whatever. | ||
| I prayed for these dudes. | ||
| I'm not mad at them. | ||
| Chris quit the band. | ||
| He called me. | ||
| He made amends to me. | ||
| I flew to LA. | ||
| We met at my hotel. | ||
| We hung out for five hours. | ||
| Hugged it out. | ||
| It's all good. | ||
| I imagine at some point and someday all of us will be like, wow, that was really dumb. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And I also, I mean, I still, like everyone knows, I still love those guys in the band. | ||
| So I hope that it does because I, you know, I don't want to see you guys. | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I don't think anything's worth, I don't think anything's worth being in hatred towards each other for that long. | ||
| Like you have to just accept it. | ||
| And like, that's it. | ||
| My friend, did they, did you ask them if they understood the lyrics to the song Zombie? | ||
| No. | ||
| I think that's the, when they're also going down to be like, Mike, my guy. | ||
| Yeah, but there's also songs on Disobey called The Conversation, right? | ||
| If you read the lyrics to No Masters, if you read the lyrics to Officer Down, I have never shied away from discussing the important topics that are going on socially or personally. | ||
| Our biggest hit songs are about me hitting rock bottom and finding sobriety. | ||
| Not just sobriety for me, but what that does to the family afterwards, right? | ||
| My brother tried to murder me in 2010. | ||
| There's a song called Remember When, that's all about that. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Then on top of that, I was in the witness protection program for 10 months because he hired a hitman to kill me. | ||
| There's a song called Foe, a friend on that. | ||
| And the actual phone conversation, the phone call he called And left on my voice message is on the record of him threatening to murder me again. | ||
| Why did he want to kill you? | ||
| Because he's a drug addict and he's a gangster. | ||
| And that's where we come from. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And so he got caught breaking in, tuned me up, didn't like that I lived, and definitely didn't like that I cooperated with law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Right? | ||
| But I was a different guy then, right? | ||
| If it was five years before, it would have been the coat of the street. | ||
| But I went through the process of recovery and I found God and it's not my place to take somebody else's life and revenge belongs to the Creator, right? | ||
| Like in the departed, how they say. | ||
| And so, you know, these things all led to that, right? | ||
| And so, you know, I forgave my brother. | ||
| I forgave my band members, like my ex-band members. | ||
| It is what it is. | ||
| Do you think your ability to forgive comes from your experience getting sober? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| I think, look, there's a... | ||
| There's a selfishness to it too, right? | ||
| Because the longer we hold on to resentments, it's corrosive, right? | ||
| I can't be okay if I'm still mad. | ||
| And I went through a whole period for a year, I was pissed off at them. | ||
| And we trashed each other online and I overly exposed them. | ||
| They were not ready to go to war with somebody like me and all my resources. | ||
| And so a lot of people had done things in their past that got exposed. | ||
| They weren't good guys. | ||
| I was hurt, and I didn't act, I didn't respond spiritually. | ||
| So, in essence, everyone, you know, when the war's over, it's all spare and love and war, and the, you know, the war's over, and it's just like, I, you know. | ||
| It reminds me of, I think it's a Buddhist saying, like, holding onto anger is drinking poison and expecting the other person to die, like at a certain point. | ||
| Or holding onto a hot stone waiting for the other person to throw it at them. | ||
| You only burn a hole in your hand, you know? | ||
| And I think that, listen, I think that there's a period of time for everybody where there is self-righteous indignation. | ||
| You should feel feelings of anger. | ||
| We shouldn't be passive-aggressive. | ||
| I believe, you know, I believe that If you trespass against me, there will be a consequence. | ||
| I will create a consequence for you so you learn, you know? | ||
| But I'd rather be like a porcupine than like a leopard, right? | ||
| A porcupine is just minding his own business, and if you snatch me up and try to kill me, you might get killed, right? | ||
| If you fuck with me, you're gonna get fucked up. | ||
| And that's how I try to live my life, you know? | ||
| And then once the whole interaction's over with, I don't wanna sit here and feel Negative feelings about it. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Feelings are a choice. | ||
| There is a certain amount of feelings can surprise you and grab a hold of you. | ||
| But you really do have the ability And it takes some practice, I understand that, but you really do have the ability to look, take a step outside of yourself and look at the fact that you are overcome with feelings. | ||
| And that's one of the things Tommy was talking about earlier with meditation and stuff like that. | ||
| And I meditate, I don't do it as much as I'd like to, but it's something that has really taught me that my emotions don't have to control me. | ||
| Even though they do every time I get in the car, right? | ||
| Like I rage about traffic. | ||
| I'm not saying that I'm in control, but I do know in the back of my mind that it's always an option to let whatever I'm feeling go and let it go away and not have to live in that emotion. | ||
| And that kind of thing is something that's very valuable to have that perspective, I think. | ||
| Well, I think that's not taught either, right? | ||
| I think this is something that men who don't talk about anger and how to deal with it, right? | ||
| We spent our careers putting our frustration and our feelings into music as a creative | ||
| force but there are also, that's the tip of the iceberg where I think when I was younger | ||
| I thought that was the end all be all, right? | ||
| You like use it as fuel. | ||
| But you know at some point you have to take, you know, it also impedes your creativity. | ||
| If you're only painting with black and gray, you're only going to get black and gray. | ||
| If you, once you release yourself of such heaviness, you have access to more different | ||
| colors, you can tell stories better, you can create, you know, you become limitless in | ||
| Like, you know, I believe God shines light through all of us. | ||
| And that it's our job to upkeep the prism and keep it clean so that we can refract different shades and colors that make life worth living. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If that makes sense. | ||
| And that's something you developed after becoming sober? | ||
| Did you always feel this way? | ||
| No, this is something that I developed through maturity. | ||
| I've been sober for 14 years, so these are things. | ||
| Things had to happen that caused so much discord and resentment, especially with my brother. | ||
| I used to be a public speaker, and I talked a lot. | ||
| I've told this story hundreds and hundreds of times, and people are like, I'm so sorry. | ||
| Your brother would do that to you. | ||
| And I was like, he didn't do anything. | ||
| He didn't do that to me. | ||
| He did it for me. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Because he gave me an experience where now I don't have, I don't fear life. | ||
| I'm not afraid of dying. | ||
| Right? | ||
| I'm not, I'm not afraid. | ||
| I can't like, it's like, I can't be threatened. | ||
| I, you know, before I got canceled, there was every kind of like, you know, there was every kind of threat you could imagine came my way. | ||
| Like, If you don't do this, we're gonna do that. | ||
| And I'm like, yeah, okay. | ||
| But I'm like, I got cancer from being alive. | ||
| You know, so it's like, you know, sometimes courage is the absence of fear. | ||
| It's a judgment that something else is more important. | ||
| And so, you know, having the worst possible thing happen to me from the closest possible person in my life happen, what else are you gonna do to me? | ||
| What's your family dynamic like now? | ||
| You take care of your mom, you said, your brother's incarcerated. | ||
| Yeah, my father lives in Florida with his wife. | ||
| We don't really talk that much. | ||
| My father was an alcoholic. | ||
| He's sober a couple years now. | ||
| My mother is like, you know, I take care of her. | ||
| I just took her to Europe. | ||
| My mom is my adopted mother. | ||
| She's first-generation American. | ||
| Her parents are from Denmark, and my grandfather was a New York City undercover detective after he fought in World War II, and she's never been to Denmark. | ||
| We come from a very poor family, so I flew. | ||
| I went to Sweden. | ||
| I just went to Europe on vacation. | ||
| And I flew to Denmark and we hung out for like 10 days and, you know, when she turned 70, I sent her to Italy and Paris for 24-25 days. | ||
| That's amazing. | ||
| With my sister. | ||
| Yeah, and my sister and my mom are best friends. | ||
| Yeah, it's just we make it work. | ||
| My mom had to go to Al-Anon after my brother tried to kill me because she actually borrowed money from me and gave him some of it. | ||
| And I found out about it and I was like, you have to get help. | ||
| But that's a family disease of alcoholism. | ||
| A lot of people think that if they have a child or a relative that is The best thing they can do is keep giving them and they're eventually going to come out of it, but the disease is a rapacious creditor and it does not allow the person who's suffering to, you know, take credence. | ||
| We have to hit rock bottom often, very, very low rock bottoms in order to have a come to Jesus moment, so to speak. | ||
| Have you guys experienced this as you're getting bigger? | ||
| I'm asking you this because it feels like you did, but the harsh betrayal of people you thought were your best friends. | ||
| Oh God, yes. | ||
| You said that already, but for both of you guys. | ||
| Oh God, so back in 2009 This band was on tour and | ||
| my ex ex-wife now at the time went to this show and She was going there thinking like oh, I'm gonna go hang out | ||
| with people that I know that I'm friendly with And I told her, I was like, I really don't like the idea of you going to a show without me because people get that the wrong idea, you know, chicks from shows, you know? | ||
| Um, but she, she's like, no, it'll be fine. | ||
| You know, you know, all the guys that are there cause it was, it was shadows fall and five finger death punch. | ||
| And I'm like, no big deal. | ||
| OK, fine. | ||
| So she goes and the singer from from Shadows Fall is gets completely hammered. | ||
| And then he's like basically chasing her around the place. | ||
| And then he follows like she goes into the ladies room and he follows her into the ladies room. | ||
| He climbs up on the toilet and he's looking over. | ||
| And Ivan from Five Finger Death Punch comes in and grabs Brian by the hair and throws him on the ground because he's like, yo, that's Phil's, you know, that's at times my girlfriend. | ||
| He's like, yo, that's Phil's girlfriend, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| I used to be in Shadows Fall. | ||
| So the fact that it was Ivan, the guy that I wasn't ever in a band with, I'd been friends with him for a lot of years, but You know, I wasn't in a band with him. | ||
| He's the guy that goes and steps in and says, hey, and my friends that I used to be in Shadows Fall with, and I had never spoken a bad word about this band. | ||
| They kicked me out and they wanted to get another guy. | ||
| I was like, OK, cool. | ||
| Nice guy. | ||
| Biggest, you know, cheering him on from 2000 or from 1999 or 98 when they kicked me out until 2008. | ||
| Ten years of being the biggest fan. | ||
| We're friends, blah, blah, blah. | ||
| And no one in that band can go and say, hey, don't try to fuck Phil's girlfriend. | ||
| When did they kick you out? | ||
| What year? | ||
| 1998, because that's the year that I started All That Remains. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| 1998, and that happened in 2009, so 11 years of me being their cheerleader. | ||
| Man, we're friends, we're all from the same area, and All That Remains hadn't hit yet. | ||
| yet, like from 2000, you know, 1990, 1999 until | ||
| 2006 is when the record that put it really put us on the map | ||
| came out. | ||
| So like we I've been, you know, talking them up and being | ||
| the guy and, you know, it's not like all that remains had the mojo where | ||
| like I could be like, you know, oh, screw them or whatever, you know, | ||
| never never said a crossword or bad And then, you know, none of them can step in, step in and say, hey, don't fuck Phil's girlfriend. | ||
| Just just hearing your story about, you know, this guy that you worked with, who turns on you, it's either him or me, Doc Coyle. | ||
| I'm just like, you know, I've had my experience with that, too. | ||
| And it's just, I gotta say, man, it really strips your faith in humanity. | ||
| I don't know how you guys feel about it. | ||
| Well, the way that I look at what, look, I think that in my Like I said, I actually really did like I prayed for all these dudes for like months every day Like I literally put my phone under my bed So I couldn't answer my phone till I hit my knees in the morning and force myself begrudgingly and then I got peace over it And then the day I stopped praying the guitar player who quit called me to apologize So it's like one of those weird things, but I think in in understanding How what motivates people I think to Doc's credit | ||
| His mom died, right? | ||
| On the record I was supposed to be on, we wrote a song for his mother who passed away, and then his dad died, completely unexpectedly. | ||
| And I think that when somebody is using substances, and they're dealing with loss, and they're dealing with that, you start to feel like everything's being pulled away from you, and I think that The band was seeing, in real time, because I had taken a political stance, my star started rising exponentially, where I was hundreds and hundreds of thousands of new followers on every single platform. | ||
| Sales were going up. | ||
| So you would think, from a business standpoint, it would be not beneficial for the label to want to remove me, but the liberal blinders, blindside of them, they couldn't understand that There's a place for everybody and I should be allowed to have freedom of speech. | ||
| And so I think he felt like he was losing control over everything in his life and so this was the only thing he could try to do. | ||
| You started the band? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Well, the drummer had a bunch of demos called Eye of Tongues, and he asked me to sing on it. | ||
| And I did. | ||
| I sang one song called Learn to Live and crushed it. | ||
| And then he was like, oh, I got all these demos. | ||
| And so I just went in and he had no money and I finished paying for the rest of the album to be made. | ||
| And I just financed the rest of it. | ||
| And then I got called for Five Finger. | ||
| I think the only reason why I got called to fill in for Five Finger is because he was busy. | ||
| Because he had already had a really successful run for them. | ||
| And then you know Ivan who he mentioned was having a really bad time staying sober and so ultimately they thought me being there because I had known him for just as long would help and it had the opposite effect where he was like became defiant and resentful of me that I was there and I couldn't really reach him and then finally He had to be he had to go take care of himself and so they asked me to sing instead of sober coach which was terrifying but You know, it all led to me getting signed to the label. | ||
| So, Bad Wolves was not signed. | ||
| I was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And John had these songs, and the other band that I was in wasn't really doing well, and then they wanted to replace me because they thought I was going to be the new singer of Five Finger. | ||
| So, basically, Bad Wolves got signed by default. | ||
| So, I changed the name and then added a bunch of songs to the album. | ||
| Sounds similar to the mistake that Hayley Williams' family made, or she made, with Paramore. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know too much about the backstory. | ||
| It was the guitar player? | ||
| I'm not going to pretend to know a lot about this story either, but just for my understanding, because I think I've talked about it with people before, that she got signed, but she was like, I want to have this, I like this band. | ||
| I think it was because she was romantic, like she was a teenager interested in this guitar player. | ||
| Well, I think they were together for quite a while. | ||
| I mean, like every song she wrote was about him. | ||
| No doubt, same thing. | ||
| Bass player. | ||
| But she gets signed and then brings them in. | ||
| Then when they start turning on her, she's like, yo, it's me. | ||
| Then later on, I think it was the bass player who said, I have rights to this music. | ||
| And she's like, no, it's me. | ||
| And so basically, like. | ||
| That's the this is the mistake when people are You know, I'll put it this way. | ||
| I've gotten I got a stern warning from a good friend of mine who's also Famous who said that The mistake a lot of these people make is two things, like you're rising, you're a rising star, and then you think that your friends are also capable of handling what you're handling, and you bring them with you, and now you've taken someone who doesn't know how to handle it and put them next to the brightest star in the sky. | ||
| When I got back to doing All That Remains stuff after doing the Five Finger Death Punch tours, the shows, Jason Costa, our drummer, asked me, he's like, hey, do you think that we can get to where they are? | ||
| And I just looked at him, I said, no, because there are people in the band that will not do what the people in Five Finger Death Punch have done. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I know you guys won't do it. | ||
| I know that you know this person won't do this, this person won't do this, and it doesn't happen without all the people involved saying whatever needs to happen to reach the next level we'll do. | ||
| Whatever it takes. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| But you force someone Who has no experience with, so actually I'll put it this way, I was talking to somebody about what we're doing with Rotational Coast and stuff, and they were like, whatever you do, just make sure the people who go on the show have experience with the press. | ||
| Because if you get somebody who doesn't, who hasn't dealt with it, who doesn't know what they're gonna do, those people are gonna fucking lose their minds. | ||
| And so I'm like, I think all of us have experience with the press. | ||
| Oh, yes. | ||
| At least knows what it is and what it means to sit in a chair. | ||
| And so I just, this is like a warning I got a while ago, like, yeah, man, there is, you know, you bring people, like, someone comes to you, and I'm just saying it's kind of what it's not, like, this is what it reminded me of when I was reading about the Paramore stuff. | ||
| She's the talent. | ||
| She says, I like these people. | ||
| Let's bring them on board. | ||
| They lose it. | ||
| They can't handle it. | ||
| They get angry. | ||
| They're entitled. | ||
| They're deserving. | ||
| I guess her bass player sued her saying he owned ownership of a bunch of the music, and she was like, you're an employee of a corporation. | ||
| It is my company. | ||
| I'm signed. | ||
| You play bass for me. | ||
| They don't understand that. | ||
| They don't understand that, right? | ||
| And in our case, the drummer and I were co-owners, but he was also, you know, he was I don't know where the source of John's resentment toward me started, because he's apolitical, but things were happening where we would go places and people would recognize me and hand him their phone, and I'd be like, that's the guy, he's the drummer, and they're like, oh cool, can you take a picture of us? | ||
| That's the drummer's curse, though. | ||
| The drummer's curse. | ||
| Drummers and bass players, man. | ||
| But here's the thing, though, there's plenty of drummers and bass players who are celebrities, right? | ||
| Like Five Finger Death Punch. | ||
| Chris Cale is a celebrity. | ||
| Jeremy Spencer was a celebrity. | ||
| Who was Zeppelin's drummer? | ||
| John Bonham. | ||
| Everybody knows John Bonham. | ||
| Tommy Lee is the most famous guy in Motley Crue by far. | ||
| But it's about if you don't do press, if you let yourself go, if you are awkward, if you are fat, if you don't want to be around people, if you are Under the influence. | ||
| There's many things that go into why you're not being present or in the public eye. | ||
| Or if you just reject that and don't want anything to do with it, you can't be mad at the other people who have to pick up the slack. | ||
| I had to do almost 100 interviews a year for two years, to almost three years, because no one else could do press. | ||
| And then people would be mad at me. | ||
| And I'm like, well you do it. | ||
| They're like, well what do I talk about? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| You ever see Almost Famous? | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| It's like the scene where the t-shirts come in and it's like he's in the front. | ||
| Yeah, the guitar player with Mystique. | ||
| Yeah, everyone's kind of blurry and faded in the background. | ||
| They're like, what is this? | ||
| Like, guys, I didn't do this. | ||
| And they'll get mad at him. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's like, I didn't make this. | ||
| Like, I'm not trying to be in front of you guys. | ||
| People talk about this thing called LSD, lead singer disease. | ||
| And it is true. | ||
| It's a thing. | ||
| It is true and it is real. | ||
| That doesn't change the fact that when people go to see a band, they're associating the front person as the band. | ||
| There are very few bands where the singer is not the front guy. | ||
| This band called Kill Switch Engage comes to mind. | ||
| The guitar player Adam, he is the front guy. | ||
| Doesn't matter who their singer is, Adam can hold it down. | ||
| Most bands can't. | ||
| But he has a thing. | ||
| He does! | ||
| I call him the Andy Kaufman of metal. | ||
| Yeah, he's ridiculous. | ||
| Not only can he just literally write an entire album, everything, the whole thing by himself, he's like a mastermind. | ||
| On stage he's like... | ||
| He's like a, you're like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| He's got a cape on. | ||
| He's a clown. | ||
| And Daisy Dukes, and he's like super serious, but then he's not, and you're like. | ||
| And he executes flawlessly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| With a fallout boy. | ||
| Pete Wentz was the bass player. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He was the front man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, he was a heartthrob, yeah. | ||
| Marketable. | ||
| Yeah, they were like, he's the guy to go for and then there was I don't know if you guys ever heard of the band jellyfish early 90s and The drummer was the lead singer. | ||
| Oh, yeah, and it was just I'm sorry, dude. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| This is bad idea Yeah, because he can just sing you get a drummer and so they tried putting him in on the stage, in the front, with a stand-up drum kit, while he sang and played, and I'm like, just half the guys, I mean, I was a little kid at the time, but watching this stuff as I'm older, I'm like, that's a ridiculous thing to do. | ||
| Like Soundgarden, you know, Chris Cornell was the drummer, and then he was like, I have this voice. | ||
| Nothing more, Johnny Hawkins, amazing singer, he was the drummer. | ||
| He taught himself how to sing. | ||
| So, Fall Out Boy's story was, Patrick Stomp, they asked him to play drums, and when he played drums and they were trying out vocalists, he sang and they were like, holy shit, you sing instead, we'll get a different drummer. | ||
| And the guy, I think the guy's name was Andy something. | ||
| Andy, yeah. | ||
| Unfortunately, Andy's extremely left and it's heartbreaking. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, really? | |
| We did a tour with The Damn Things, which is a band that Andy played drums in, and super nice, like nicest guy ever, but he's extremely antifa and I'm just like, oh, you're getting conned by them. | ||
| I got a funny story for you guys, just last thing. | ||
| You ever hear of the band The Hush Sound? | ||
| I don't know if this is offensive to the band members, but they're not particularly famous, but they do small shows and they sell out. | ||
| They toured with Fall Out Boy, they were on Decadence, so they were in that sphere and they had three albums that came out through them. | ||
| When I was in Denver, I was at like a Best Buy or something, and I bought some CDs, and I bought like Death Cab for Cutie, because I was a big fan of theirs, and then I remember seeing on MySpace this band Hush Sound, and then I was like, it was like, I don't know how you describe it, but one chick, Greta, sings and plays piano, and then there's a guitar player and singer, and it was like dual male-female vocals, so I grabbed their new album. | ||
| I'm driving back from Denver to Chicago, after living there for a little bit, and I have only two CDs, so I'm just spam-blasting these bands. | ||
| One day I'm at the Metro, You know the metro in Chicago, I imagine. | ||
| And I'm in the bathroom, washing my hands, and then Bob, the guitar player, walks up to my left, starts washing his hands, and then I dry my hands, and I look over, and I'm like, are you Bob from The Hush Sound? | ||
| And he's like, yeah. | ||
| And they were doing big tours, so he's a moderately famous guy at the time, they were doing the Honda Civic Tour and all that stuff. | ||
| As I'm leaving, I see him outside, so I talk to him for a little bit, and I'm like, yeah, dude, I got your guys' album, Like Vines, it's really good. | ||
| Every single song, I think it's fantastic. | ||
| And then we just shot this shit, me and a couple other people. | ||
| That's it, I left, didn't see him, met the guy. | ||
| How cool was that? | ||
| Met a guy in the bathroom. | ||
| Like a year or two later, when I moved to LA, I'm living in Koreatown. | ||
| You guys know where Larchmont is? | ||
| So I'm walking down, it's like right by Paramount or something like that, and everybody drinks coffee, all the rich people. | ||
| I'm walking down my street, and motherfucker is walking the exact same direction with his dog, and right when we get to the corner, I stop, and I'm like, Bob? | ||
| And he's like, oh, you're Tim! | ||
| And I'm like, what the fuck? | ||
| And I was like, I met you that one time, he's like, yeah, yeah, at the Metro. | ||
| And I was like, you remember who I am? | ||
| And he's like, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's cool. | |
| It's like, where are you going? | ||
| I'm going to Larchmont for coffee. | ||
| So am I. And now I'm friends with the guy. | ||
| He's cool though. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| Now he runs like a dog walking thing. | ||
| But he's not crazy or, you know, he's, he's a chill, normal dude. | ||
| So I, you know, messaged him recently and he's like, what up dude? | ||
| Congrats on your music. | ||
| I'm checking it out. | ||
| So it's cool to see, you know, he found success. | ||
| He's chill. | ||
| He's happy. | ||
| That's rad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But he plays in a band with one, I don't know if he still does, with the guys from One Republic or something like that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| They have like some crazy band. | ||
| Anyway, that was my story. | ||
| I thought it was funny. | ||
| In LA, you never can tell like, I mean, if he still plays music, you never can tell if he's playing with someone and just something hits and next thing you know, he's on some fucking gigantic tour or whatever, you know? | ||
| You know, I think he's just doing his own thing for the most part, like in playing music. | ||
| I'm not sure he's really pursuing it. | ||
| I know that he's got like a dog walking business, but I will say this for Bob. | ||
| Like his music was so good I for the life of me couldn't understand why it wasn't bigger why they didn't make it because like I Started listening to their music again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, it's just so fucking good does it cost money? | |
| It costs money to to you the the cost of exposure right like and that's that's the thing like what I you know what I've had to deal with leaving My former band is that, you know, I have a music video on YouTube that has 450 million views alone, right? | ||
| And it's like billions of streams, all like global. | ||
| I got more platinum and gold records. | ||
| I don't even have them. | ||
| They're literally in my friend's garage in Arizona. | ||
| And I gotta send for those. | ||
| Yeah, I'll send you one. | ||
| No, I got a gold YouTube plaque. | ||
| We use as a window stopper, just sitting on the ground. | ||
| Yeah, but it's like, you know, the the reset button of like how you know like I I just I recently had I Spent a lot of money at metaverse talking upwards of tens of thousands of dollars to get my my Instagram profile reinstated | ||
| So, it was hacked. | ||
| It was an external hack, and they said that only eight people could have done it, and that it probably cost upwards of $100,000 to have my profile deleted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn! | |
| And I'm like, the only person I know who could afford to do that, and who needs to do that, I know who it is. | ||
| And so, it took two weeks. | ||
| Basically, they acid-washed the metadata from my profile. | ||
| To make sure that I could never have it again because I had almost 400,000 real fans on there who paid for concert tickets. | ||
| I sold out my entire tour with no radio promotion, no anything, just from the power of my Instagram. | ||
| You know, it's the pettiness of like, if I can't have you, no one will. | ||
| And that's what the slave industry of the music industry is about. | ||
| People don't want to talk about this in a way that's productive, but the reality is like, for example, Kanye West said, like, ridiculousness shit, right? | ||
| So his whole anti-Semitic thing was ridiculous. | ||
| And I have an issue with it, because my stepfather, rest in peace, was a wonderful Jewish man, right? | ||
| And I grew up going to school with people who were Jewish, and I have friends who were Jewish, and it's not, just because someone from a record label has a last name, it doesn't represent the whole of a race of people. | ||
| But what there is a problem is, is that within the music industry, and the entertainment industry, Amongst all races of the, you know, 100 millionaires, the 100 million guys plus up to billionaires. | ||
| They're all unilaterally on the same tip. | ||
| So if you piss one of them off, regardless of whatever their belief system is or their race or whatever, you're fucked. | ||
| And then they also control the media and people are like, ooh, who's up? | ||
| Because the outlets, No longer can survive off print sales, so they have to pay for it in advertising on their websites. | ||
| And so who pays for the big dollars to advertise on the websites? | ||
| Who's paying for the pieces to be written? | ||
| The labels have the money. | ||
| How do I know this? | ||
| Because how do you think that my band became the most famous fucking band in 2018 from thin air? | ||
| You know, it helped that we had a multi-platinum hit song, but everything else that generates around this is controlled. | ||
| You know what everybody tells us? | ||
| With every project we try doing, book, music or otherwise, they're like, oh yeah, we're gonna help you, we're gonna make it all work, here's what we're gonna do, and then the very last thing they say is, now all you gotta do is promote it on your show. | ||
| And it's like I get it you think like that's and so this is why we got books that are coming out and then these companies are like yeah yeah we can do all these things for you and then when you promote it on your show we'll get sales and I'm like well then what the fuck do I sign with you for? | ||
| Well you don't need to that's the whole point you know and it's like I like even even with Even without my Instagram page, right? | ||
| I'm on my third or fourth page. | ||
| I got like 185,000 followers, right? | ||
| Which is nothing. | ||
| But with TikTok, I never had a TikTok, so there's nothing to go after. | ||
| One post on TikTok and I got 300,000 followers. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| Right? | ||
| And then also, what people need to understand in our space is how valuable email lists are. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So I collect emails. | ||
| So if I have a tour going out, it's going out to 50,000 people, period, in the emails. | ||
| And I have a 70% opening rate. | ||
| And advertisers will pay like crazy for your email list. | ||
| It's insane how much money you can make off of that. | ||
| I haven't even sold it because I won't do that to my fans. | ||
| I literally won't. | ||
| So if you notice, anybody who follows me knows that you're not going to get any spam from any affiliate. | ||
| Email lists are such a big deal nowadays. | ||
| People don't realize how How effective an email list is, especially if you can get emails that people open. | ||
| You have to circumvent the social media gatekeepers now. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So so it's very easy because especially people who like us will be censored in certain places and people are invested and they want to get the information. | ||
| The email list becomes your whole life. | ||
| So now you can't be cancelled. | ||
| So they can delete everything, they can take me down, they can kick me off radio, they can blacklist me. | ||
| But I email everyone, hey my new album comes out on Friday and then I'm number three on iTunes. | ||
| So Five Finger is number one, I Proveil is number two, Tommy Becks is number three. | ||
| That's why we do this. | ||
| This is our shield from the censorship and all that. | ||
| This is the members only. | ||
| Point at the camera. | ||
| Well, man, we've went a little bit over, but this has been a blast. | ||
| Thanks for hanging out and talking about all this stuff. | ||
| It's enlightening. | ||
| Thanks for having me, man. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| And to everybody who is a member, you're keeping us up and running. | ||
| I mean, this is the principal way we run the show. |
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