I remember clearly when this idea first popped into my head in a really meaningful way. I was in Minneapolis, MN we had just been shopping because the “leader” of the band insisted that I wasn’t allowed to wear shorts in a hard rock band. Whatever that means and as hard as they tried to tell me that hats weren’t allowed or logos on t-shirts weren’t allowed, I rolled my eyes and went along with most of it. After all, said “band leader” was footing the bill for the tour and we were about to go out (as a very large buy-on) opening for Ice Nine Kills, Memphis May Fire and Atreyu for a few months in the fall of 2018.
After said shopping excursion we proceeded to have updated band photos taken in downtown Minneapolis. But every photo looked like dozens of others from similar bands over the last decade or more. Other than a difference in personnel the looks from the clothing down to the hairstyles, even the poses were so unoriginal you could have literally copy pasted our faces over other bands from a dozen years prior and no one would have known. They were literally doing their best to fit into a formula predetermined by decades of bands that started and curated that style decades prior. People can very easily recognize things that are inauthentic and copying someone else’s style is one of the most inauthentic things a human can do.
Isn’t rock and roll at its core meant to disrupt and upset the status quo, not become it? I get it, in this day and age so many things have been done it can be difficult to find a unique or original approach. But so much art and style work on cycles of repetition over the decades that all you have to do it is put your personality into it and you’ve got something unique.
Simply put, every one of us has a unique perspective to offer the world.
If your aim is to fit into a predetermined box or formula how will you ever stand out? This the thought that permeates by brain and just about everything I do creatively these days. I want to make music that moves my heart and soul in a way that is difficult to describe and nothing else that exists does.
It’s me in a practice room in the early 2000s alone at 2am contemplating my creative future playing along with Mars Volta records until my hands hurt and my soul has nothing left to give. Instead of giving into societal or peer pressure of being in a band and doing what only the people I’ve surrounded myself with know how to do. Perhaps there’s a path that leads to a solo career. But a solo drummer you say, that’s unheard of and who would ever listen to that? Cut to 2026 and not only have I recorded solo material but I’ve played shows and small festivals as a solo artist.
As I delve deeper into my experience as an artist I see a lot of forks in the road of my past that start to make a lot more sense. Like beginning to listen to electronic music in the mid-to-late 90s but being bullied into hiding it from friends because it wasn’t as “cool” as the rock or hard rock that was popular at the time amongst my friends. Or that moment in a practice room where I had the first thought that I considered playing solo but instead listened to others and not myself.
I am grateful for all of the experience I gained along the path I took to get here, not knowing any different. But I can’t help but wonder what life could have looked like if I spent a little more time listening to the honest intuition inside instead of the influenced intuition. But cultural and social influence of our world is undeniable. I’ve never been peer pressured to take drugs in my entire life but Iv’e been heavily peer pressured and manipulated into following a path that perhaps wasn’t in my own best interests, many times.
These are just a few of the ideas that make me, me and come out over time in the music I make. The next step, I want to embody this feeling and approach the next phase of writing through a lens of unbridled passion.