#959 - Underoath - The Hidden Struggles Of Mental Health In Music

Summary

Modern Wisdom Episode #959: Underoath - The Hidden Struggles Of Mental Health In Music

Release Date: June 26, 2025

In this deeply introspective episode of Modern Wisdom, host Chris Williamson engages in a candid conversation with Aaron Gillespie and Tim McTague of the influential band Underoath. The discussion delves into the intricate relationship between music, touring, mental health, and personal relationships, offering listeners a transparent look into the hidden struggles faced by musicians.

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1. Band Longevity and Touring Experiences

Underoath's Enduring Journey

The conversation begins with Aaron and Tim sharing the longevity and commitment required to sustain a band over decades. Having played together for over 24 years, they estimate having performed 3,000 to 4,000 shows (00:16), highlighting the relentless pace of touring.

Notable Quote:

Tim McTague ([00:23]): "It's weird to think about doing something for a quarter of a century. Like, you hear people say they've been married for 30 years, and then it's like, yeah, we've been in a band for 25 years."

2. The Dark Side of Touring: Mental Health Struggles

Chronic Displacement and Emotional Extremes

Chris introduces an essay titled "The Raw Truth About Touring and Mental Health," which Aaron and Tim find profoundly resonant (04:05). They discuss how touring leads to chronic displacement, lack of routine, and constant interpersonal tensions, which can severely impact mental well-being.

Notable Quote:

Chris Williamson ([04:05]): "Touring breaks people in ways that most don't talk about and the industry rarely admits."

Impact on Personal Relationships

Aaron opens up about the guilt of balancing time spent with bandmates versus his family, emphasizing the internal conflict between personal happiness and professional commitments (01:36, 08:59).

Notable Quote:

Aaron Gillespie ([02:18]): "The emotion is guilt. Because you spend X amount of time away from your wife and children with someone else."

3. Intimacy Within the Band vs. Family

Unique Bonding with Bandmates

The conversation explores the distinct intimacy shared among band members, which cannot be replicated in familial relationships. Chris remarks on the unique synergy musicians experience, fostering a deep connection that often leads to personal sacrifices (03:20).

Notable Quote:

Tim McTague ([03:22]): "Doing something you love can almost creep in personally on both sides, replacing traditional relationship dynamics."

4. Creative Process and the Music Industry Dynamics

Balancing Artistry with Commercial Pressures

Aaron and Tim discuss the tension between maintaining artistic integrity and succumbing to industry pressures for commercial success. They highlight how the shift from tangible metrics like album sales to intangible ones like streaming counts has altered their creative processes (38:03, 42:27).

Notable Quote:

Tim McTague ([28:10]): "Having a tour manager, agent, writers... it's taken care of, you lose the value of substances, money, and time because it's excess all the time."

5. Fame, Success, and Self-Worth

The Pitfalls of Comparative Success

The duo reflect on the challenges of achieving success, such as dealing with comparison to other bands and managing imposter syndrome. They discuss how milestones can paradoxically lead to increased anxiety rather than satisfaction (36:01, 43:35).

Notable Quote:

Chris Williamson ([36:21]): "When you have the perfect show and then you have the next level, the minimum bar for acceptable performance has just been taken up, causing anxiety."

6. Coping Mechanisms and Personal Growth

Finding Balance Amidst Chaos

Aaron shares his personal battles with anxiety and how leaving Underoath in 2010 was a pivotal moment for his mental health (63:02). Tim emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and maintaining multiple sources of self-worth to navigate the pressures of fame (85:32).

Notable Quote:

Tim McTague ([86:07]): "Choosing to love that person and the things about them you don't agree with is the essence of a meaningful relationship."

7. Legacy, Reflection, and Future Outlook

Contemplating the Journey and Future Impact

As the conversation winds down, Aaron and Tim reflect on their legacy and the impact of their music on both their lives and their audience's mental health. They express a desire to maintain authenticity and prioritize personal relationships over chasing further success (139:57, 145:10).

Notable Quote:

Aaron Gillespie ([146:07]): "When you think about it, if no one else had got married, or had ever decided to have kids, what part of this is you? Have you become the thing that you just did?"

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Key Takeaways

• Mental Health in Touring: Constant travel and performance pressure can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, and strained personal relationships.

• Balancing Relationships: Musicians often face guilt over time spent away from family, highlighting the need for open communication and boundaries.

• Artistic Integrity vs. Commercial Success: Navigating the music industry's shift towards streaming metrics poses challenges to creative authenticity.

• Coping Strategies: Maintaining multiple sources of self-worth and engaging in self-reflection are crucial for mental well-being.

• Legacy and Authenticity: Reflecting on one's journey and prioritizing authenticity can mitigate the negative impacts of fame and success.

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Final Thoughts

This episode provides a raw and honest exploration of the mental health challenges inherent in the music industry, particularly for bands like Underoath who have sustained long careers. The discussion underscores the importance of mental health awareness, authentic relationships, and the constant balancing act between personal well-being and professional obligations.

For listeners seeking insight into the hidden struggles of musicians, this episode serves as a compelling narrative that bridges personal experiences with broader industry dynamics.

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Thanks for having us. It's an honor, man.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Tim McTague]

I've been in the band for 24.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Years, and it was like a. It was a local band two years before that, so. 26 years.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, I don't. Do you?

[Tim McTague]

2500, maybe.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Where'd you get that number from?

[Tim McTague]

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

[Aaron Gillespie]

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

[Tim McTague]

I remember more.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I got married the first time in 06, and we did that year. We did over 300 shows because 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 with Taking Back Sunday. I remember that tour specifically. So it was us taking Back Sunday in a band called Armor for Sleep. I remember they were the opener. Yeah. So I, I, we started that two or three days after I got married. So.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I bet you it's more than 100 a year. Yeah, we played over 100 last year.

[Chris Williamson]

So at least 2,000, maybe 3,000.

[Tim McTague]

Maybe say three to 4,000.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

Shows. Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I'd say 30.

[Chris Williamson]

Realize that's insane.

[Tim McTague]

It is. It's. I mean, I think it's weird to think about doing something for a quarter 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]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

Playing some of the same song.

[Chris Williamson]

Something that I was gonna say, how many times have you played the Ronnie Chasing Safety? I mean, literally every single show.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Probably Boy Brush Red, like those, like the bigger quotation fingers songs off that record.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Like something I think about a lot, as you were just saying that I think about this so much is the people I love the most in the world, like my wife and she children. I have spent more time with him than them. Do you know what I mean? And I don't know why it does. It does a number on my head sometimes. If I really, if I really like, if I get introspective about it, it me up for some reason and I don't know why I, 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, 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, if I think about it, it's strange and I don't know, you know, what do.

[Chris Williamson]

You think the emotion is when you feel it?

[Aaron Gillespie]

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, but for some reason I feel that sometimes.

[Tim McTague]

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 because there's.

[Chris Williamson]

A sense of nobility and sacrifice.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

That doesn't happen when you're fuck. Like there's a type of intimacy I have with my bandmates 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]

A non spoken synergy.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. And it's like, yeah, doing something you love can almost creep in personally on both sides, like the wife, you know, our partner side and ours. It's like, oh, we have, you know, we've got to 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 or 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 because I'm a big fan of you and what you've done and the kind of journey you've been on. And then for that to be a priority because we happen to be in this weird public figure business thing is just. Yeah, it's not work.

[Chris Williamson]

It's like a, it's like a velvet prison in a way. It's A very strange kind of sort of like golden handcuffsy type thing. And I got sent this the other day. I wanted to read you guys this and get your, get your thoughts on this. 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 1500 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]

Yeah. Yeah. Did you, that's.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Did you write that?

[Chris Williamson]

No, that. That is on Instagram. Got it sent to me.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, I mean, I think all of that rings true to me 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]

What does not growing up look like?

[Tim McTague]

I mean, we've all done it. We grew up in public. Unfortunately. Unfortunately for us, I think having a tour manager, having an agent, having writers.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Tells you what to do every day.

[Tim McTague]

Your food's brought to you, having shoppers, runners, you need, anything, drop of a hat, it's taken care of. You lose value of substances, you lose Value of money and value of time. Because it's just excess all the time. And it's not like this massive toxic thing all the time. It could just be what 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, you would be like, what are you doing? But in touring, it's like, how are you not doing that? You know? And then that's the very baseline all the way up to love, commitment. How, like, relationships are really hard. I mean, we know a lot of people in the industry that don't know themselves and don't know how to coexist with a partner.

[Chris Williamson]

Why? What does it do to relationships and intimacy?

[Tim McTague]

Well, I don't know, because I've been with the same woman my whole life. 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, like, 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. And I think that happens a lot on tour. I'll take one of those as well.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Mine's lost its flavor.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Tim McTague]

Thank you.

[Chris Williamson]

The people that are listening, we're powering ourselves with nicotine via wood. Wood delivery system. Dude sucking on a cricket bat.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I think. I think a big. Yeah, like a big answer to the thing is, the obvious thing with love is. Is absence. But the biggest piece of it I know in my own life. And we could talk about this for three hours because that just me up on in ways that I can't understand to you. And I want to talk about something.

[Chris Williamson]

We'll go back into it to us.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I want to talk about something specifically in there, but I want to get.

[Chris Williamson]

To this, Go back through it. It's got all the time in the world.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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 you 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. I can do that.

[Chris Williamson]

I want a new Game Boy at every show, Literally. My tech rider.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, I'm not joking. Whatever you want. Like, whatever you want.

[Tim McTague]

Whatever you want.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And when you. And when you get home, you're. 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 intimacy. Intimacy that I need and crave and feel like I have been out here working. So I don't get that. And it's impossible.

[Chris Williamson]

Hungry for that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I'm hunched, parched, and it feels impossible to get on the road, you know, in a certain way. Like.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, there's no physical. As long as you're being faithful.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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 it's my reality. You know what I mean? And it hurts because I want her to just be like, you know, in not so many words, like, come here, let me you and love you. And like, let's do the whole thing. And that's not reality for anybody.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, it's. It's too intermittent for that. You know, you do a normal nine to five. You leave on the morning, you come back in, maybe wife runs up and jumps and gives you a hug when you walk through the door. Hooray, yeah, you're away for six weeks at a time. What's that? What's like an average medium length tour? Like a. Six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. Something like.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We did one last year that was 12 weeks.

[Chris Williamson]

Motherfucker. It was. And that's across time zones. That's the intermittent contact. That's all the rest of this stuff.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

And 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 I've had to develop all of these coping mechanisms 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. Because if I still have it open when you're not here, then it fucking tears me up. And you're up until 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. But like, yeah, it's.

[Tim McTague]

I used to come home and we just, you know, you end tours on weekends. Like, you know, your last show's Sunday or Monday or whatever it is. And I 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, you know, and that's why.

[Chris Williamson]

Welcome back to.

[Tim McTague]

But to your point, like, your kids are at school, your kids have, you know, extracurricular activities. Your wife 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, like, I'm back from war.

[Chris Williamson]

Also, the tour continues. Cause you start the tour and I imagine opening show, you know, like, let's have a beer, let's do the whatever. It's like, hey, where's the fanfare and the banners? And so it's like, no, you're not. You don't get the special treatment no more. You're not fucking guitarist, singer, fucking drummer guy. You're dad. And like, frankly, you're kind of like new dad or like absent dad. That's now come back.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, there's a.

[Chris Williamson]

There's. You need to make it up to us. Not us making.

[Tim McTague]

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 act, actually chop it up, 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 because it will destroy you.

[Chris Williamson]

And it makes you mean. That kind of reflection, that kind of thought process.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, it's. It's good to reflect on it. And I think that kind of 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, 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, you get home after 10 weeks and it's the first time you've had to do a dish. 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 because it's the only place that you have responsibility. 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.

[Chris Williamson]

Like that feels like work.

[Tim McTague]

Real, real work.

[Chris Williamson]

And you expect work is when you're.

[Tim McTague]

At home 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 like a labor way, it could, it could tear you apart.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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, I can probably speak for you, but what you do, you, and this sounds cliche, but what you do, you do for them. You know what I mean? Like you, you, you're making a living for your family and you work hard for your family in, in, in the way that we do. And then you get home and you have felt ungrounded or unmoored forever. Many, 6, 8, 12, whatever 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 because 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 socks and you to whatever.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You know what I mean?

[Chris Williamson]

And make it up to me. Like you've just totally been away.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

For two months. Totally make it up to me.

[Tim McTague]

I Think if you can get out of your headspace 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. But it's intimately attached to your wife and kids in a way that I don't think it could be replicated. Like, 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, volumes.

[Chris Williamson]

Louder.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, 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]

Well, like.

[Tim McTague]

Like, I think it's probably a rarity that I've been with my wife for 18 years and have only been with my wife for 18 years on tour. You know what I mean? I think that's a rarity.

[Chris Williamson]

You're an outlier.

[Tim McTague]

It should be standard protocol, but it's not. What's.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's also. That's also. It's socially accepted that somebody who is a rock star.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. I've had people be like, yeah, you're married, but you're in Milwaukee. Like, this is how this works.

[Chris Williamson]

Because we know that marriage laws don't apply in Milwaukee. Milwaukee is the place, brother.

[Tim McTague]

No, but. But literally, there's, like, there's women that know we're married, and there's women that still try to disrupt that functioning, flourishing relationship. And I'm like, 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? And so rule. 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]

So you're not impressed, but, like, look at this fucking riff that I just wrote. That's nice. But this sock. Yeah, that's nice. But what about dinner date tonight? 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]

Yep. And you have to lean into 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. Year 2005.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah. So right in the middle.

[Tim McTague]

And 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. Is it because of this or is it because of who I am? And vice versa.

[Chris Williamson]

The first reasoning.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Yeah. And my wife was 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. And then here we are.

[Chris Williamson]

Your complete uninterest in my career is the most attractive thing you could have said.

[Tim McTague]

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. Don't become that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But if you do it. If you do it the typical way, if you come up in touring in the typical way. Let's say we met 20 years ago and we sat across from one another with these cricket bats filled with nicotine. And you read that to me. There's no world where that would have been anything that would have grabbed me in any way. There's sentences I could have gleaned, you know, information from, but I don't.

[Chris Williamson]

And that my energy sometimes goes up and down. Sometimes I feel lonely in a hotel room.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

But I guess at the beginning it's like we sleep on a bus.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Or, 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 a van. Yep. 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 have succinctly told me that and made sense to me.

[Chris Williamson]

Have I. Have you guys heard me do my bit about unteachable lessons? You heard me talk about this. Yeah. So it's just there's certain things that we can't learn through explanation, only through experience.

[Tim McTague]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

And 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. 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. You need to spend more time in a hammock. Like all of these things are lessons that we, we disregard because they sound either cliche but or purposefully, 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 in a way.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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

[Chris Williamson]

We say, yeah, yeah. And it's like you making the normies feel okay. And in many ways, when people can see all of the be like a billionaire saying that their money made them feel empty inside. Will Smith. Will Smith said, when I was poor and miserable, I had hope. When I was rich and miserable, I was despondent, like, because he thought that money was gonna fix his self worth problem. But it didn't.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I heard him talk about that. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Tim McTague]

Problem, it's still empty.

[Chris Williamson]

You're like, oh, fuck. And now the solution's gone.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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. Might be something a bit more boring, like your testosterone. So if you're not 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 back place to start. And when this is stacked with zinc can make a huge improvement in testosterone production, strength, recovery and energy. Which is why I'm such a huge fan of momentous 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. 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 U S E N T U S L I V E M O M E N t o u s.com ModernWisdom and Modern Wisdom at checkout. So I think that this is one of those. A little bit of. One of those unteachable lessons. And 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.

[Tim McTague]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

If you're a female rock star.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

Now what? Now how are you. How are you navigating that?

[Aaron Gillespie]

I saw it firsthand when Under Oath broke up for a period of years. I left in 2010, I quit and then under broke up from 2012 to 2011. 16. 16. And in that time I played drums for Paramore.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, Haley Williams.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah. So I spent almost five years or whatever on the road with her.

[Chris Williamson]

And they sell out like Madison Square.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Garden twice in a row. Yeah, but what you're talking about, I saw firsthand. And she used to.

[Chris Williamson]

She a mom?

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, no, she wasn't then. I don't think she is now, is she?

[Tim McTague]

No, but she would.

[Aaron Gillespie]

She would kind of like hearing you say that. Imagine how much harder I would see. I got a glimpse of seeing that. And she didn't distance herself much from us, you know, from the band, but she distanced herself a bit. And I, at the time, I was 29 or 30 or whatever. And I would think, like, why does she distance herself from us? 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]

Where do you think that's coming from?

[Aaron Gillespie]

I don't know. 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. Like when Paramore signed their first record deal, I think she was. When we met her, she was 14, a child. The drummer was. The drummer was 11, like the original drummer. When we met them, we played at a place called Blue Sky Court in Nashville. I remember. Remember this show?

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It was hotter than the devil's butt. And she. She was 15 years old, you know.

[Tim McTague]

I mean she was on Taste of Chaos tour opening. It was, it was before Paramore. It was just Haley Williams and it was her and an acoustic. She was like 14 or 15.

[Chris Williamson]

Paramore like pseudo solo project. How much is it solo?

[Aaron Gillespie]

She all 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 this is abandoned.

[Tim McTague]

This is not the Haley Williams this is.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But I think that, I think that she feels. And I. 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]

They need to push her.

[Tim McTague]

The, the suit, the out of focus guys.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tim McTague]

And she doesn't want that. They're all a band. They all write the music together. But by nature. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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 playing Glasgow. To put fuel in the car really to drive. And I came back and I had the choice between being able to afford food that night. I was a uni student running a huge events company.

[Aaron Gillespie]

What years was this?

[Chris Williamson]

2008. 2008 in Glasgow.

[Tim McTague]

Crazy.

[Chris Williamson]

I think that would have been just after defying the great line. I remember the show came out.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's a brick building. I remember the show.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. On the main strip. So I. I drove to go and see you guys.

[Tim McTague]

That's why.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Tim McTague]

We actually talked about that a while ago.

[Aaron Gillespie]

More and more now than they're ever had.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, real bands like full on groups that all have equal contribution and or veto power are dwindling.

[Chris Williamson]

No, it's not even hiding though. I mean it is if you just look at. Hey, this is called a band and a person's name. But anybody can go and work this out. And you know, 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, if it's a group, go on Spotify, go on a track and just press on the song credit. Yeah, look at the song credits 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, drummery type person. But yeah, that's a whole. I'm like, the fuck? Kind of like, you know, Ronnie Radke or something like that. You go, okay, like, kind of evidently, like, that's a fucking insane project type thing. But you go, the rabbit hole of that stuff goes pretty deep. It's pretty interesting.

[Tim McTague]

It does.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's deeper than you even realize. A lot of it is not just. You're talking about the creativity of it all. Like, you know, producer A wrote this song and songwriter B wrote this song, but there's a lot of it wholeheartedly is a solo project. Like, business wise. 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 writer even? Like, there's more and it's uncouth to speak about and I never would. But there's. If I told you all of them that are that way, you'd be very surprised. Like, I can't count them on my fingers and toes.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that a function of bands struggling to get coordination from a creative standpoint and power struggles happening?

[Tim McTague]

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. Like, it's like the. It's like the next evolution, I think. 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 kids coming when and, you know, all of these things and. And 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 like, we.

[Chris Williamson]

Can'T go on tour at that point. It's our anniversary. We can't go on tour at that point. It's the wife's birthday, the kid's birthday.

[Tim McTague]

I mean, 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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

So that's the fucked up guilt part.

[Tim McTague]

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]

That must be difficult to do. Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

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 yes to everything. That's not sustainable. And you only arrive at this place, I think, after, to your point, an unteachable lesson over decades. 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, Arthur Brooks.

[Chris Williamson]

Brilliant bald dude who sat there.

[Tim McTague]

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

[Chris Williamson]

Yep.

[Tim McTague]

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 same things at all. But it's. We're past that.

[Chris Williamson]

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]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

So that burns the newness off. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I have to imagine that the. 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, I want to make this work. And you go, you can never progress. You're in this permanent, like, holiday romance thing, always where you're back home two weeks, three.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's not a rel. 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?

[Chris Williamson]

But it's rinse and repeat.

[Tim McTague]

Just. Yeah, yeah. And.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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]

Yeah. And it's. 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 of my life more than anyone in my family has. Like, my dad died. We were on tour. He saw 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. And I think the easiest thing to do is, well, my next project. That was so. That was so tough. I don't want to do that again. It's almost like if my wife left me, I wouldn't want to get married again. 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.

[Chris Williamson]

And everyone 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]

Yeah. You know, 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 want to be in another band. I would never start another band. I would literally start my thing.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But you take all of that.

[Chris Williamson]

We've.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We've both been all of those things. And I did do a side project.

[Chris Williamson]

I remember.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah. And I brought all of this to the side project. And I thought the whole time here I have. I have here, here, here. I thought the whole time they might have dried up. You might have started something with this. The whole time I thought, I have a severe. I have this fear 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 that with me, all this baggage, if you want to call it baggage, whatever you want to, whatever you want to 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 project, there is a, there's 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 dishonestness 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]

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 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 D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs and that 90 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below by heading to drink ag1.commodernwisdom that's drink ag1.commodernwiry yeah, getting all of the veto voting power makes no difference.

[Tim McTague]

That being said, but on paper it feels great.

[Chris Williamson]

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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, didn't work for me.

[Tim McTague]

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, 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 the point of doing.

[Chris Williamson]

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 every time that we hit a new launch velocity on plays. Let's say we do a million plays in, in a day.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Holy. That's insane. Million plays in a date. Immediately, two things come into my mind. The first one is that's fucking great. And the second one is holy shit. The minimum bar for acceptable performance has just been taken up like yes, 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 sense of insufficiency moving forward. Dude, I, I think so launch of an album. I wanted to, I really wanted to get into this as well. The analyticalization of music, the fact that you guys have got Spotify for artists dashboards on the back end and you know exactly track on track, where we were at, how many plays, what's the month? These are this album we're counting down or will Waterfall release all of the singles so that we can get we can like bump the plays back up again. It's gamesmanship.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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]

Okay.

[Tim McTague]

Like, still exists.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It still exists, but it's now. It's not the main. The main metric now is what you're talking about. It used to be you'd have a. Your merch guy or whatever had piece of paper and however many CDs or albums you sold that night, 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 how many. How many times something is streaming. And I'll be like, okay, is that good? And the number will be large and I'll think it's great. And then I'll open my phone and band X or Y will have, you know, Quadrillion plays first week. And I'm like, well, fuck.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, I guess that means I'm a piece of shit. But one of the ways that behaviorism gets reinforced is the speed of the feedback loop.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So the tie to 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 first off, you have feedback that happens in person 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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You can feel it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. 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 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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You get your stability elsewhere.

[Chris Williamson]

You do. But on the flip side, you go fuck. Like, that's a lot of work to not get the, like, requisite equivalent amount of positive reinforcement that you want. So you have to find your motivation from elsewhere too.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, 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 without contentment. Like, I think it was really easy for us. I'll give you an Example, I think when we. For I didn't. Is there a more. Is there a better word than blew up? When we. When our band off, bro. When our band came out and we were whatever number two on Bill, we had our moment. We were selling out everything. And we were, in theory, at least in our little scene, the biggest band for a few years. 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 rogue bank account.

[Chris Williamson]

It's very easy to be charitable. Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

If you're a Rogan. Big audience, you want to give everyone a thing because you're at the top and you're in a superposition and it's almost natural. It's not even a sacrifice. And then you fast forward and we take out Spirit Box and we take out Bad Omens. And they're opening for us 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, 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. 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 it'll be that, like, you start making excuses because you're feeling not validated. And it's like, there are bands that are 10 times bigger than us that suck. And there are bands that are 10 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 5. And is it worth stressing over how to get 6? 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. Like, I have nothing to complain about. But then there's always a North Star. As soon as you ratchet down, your aim gets higher and higher and higher.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, well, does that mean that anything that isn't that becomes failure, so.

[Tim McTague]

For some people, yes.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, let me give you.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It does feel that way.

[Chris Williamson]

Let me give you this from a different industry to yours Books, authors. So Mark Manson, good friend of mine, 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. He kind of came out of the, I guess like elevated pickup artist world where it wasn't like icky, it was.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I've seen the book.

[Chris Williamson]

I just want to. I just want to improve myself and you know, find a. Find a good woman. But then he writes the subtle art of not giving a fuck in like 2018, something like that. And this thing has been on the New York Times bestseller list for like two hundred and fifty weeks.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Every airport has like 18,000 copies.

[Chris Williamson]

Atomic Habits by James Clear Morgan Housel the Psychology of Money I've spoken to each of these guys individually. Mark said to me he was like the worst thing that I could have done was have a book that went that big. Because every book after that's gonna feel like a failure. Yeah, every single book that I write will never be as big as that one. How did.

[Aaron Gillespie]

How do you.

[Tim McTague]

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 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 every single word. This song again or same data set. We peaked when we were 19. Everything we've done since then has been dog.

[Chris Williamson]

How'd you know?

[Tim McTague]

Nobody, nobody cares about my band. They just care about this one stupid record I wrote 20 years ago. It's like the author, those internal dialogues are all getting a drink at the same bar all the time.

[Chris Williamson]

How do you navigate that emotionally, man?

[Tim McTague]

Honestly, I think for all the that we give it, growing up Christian really helped. Like having something whether it's real or not. We debate to, 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 and toxic, literally, and they have been. 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. 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 a new song and pick it apart. 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? And I. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I always go back to. All I ever wanted to do was sell out the State Theater in St.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Pete, which holds like 500.

[Tim McTague]

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 Under Oath and which is named after a funeral home crematory.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I thought about that.

[Tim McTague]

So my first show at the Band was playing State theater. We played first to nobody, to 40 people or whatever. 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 of.

[Chris Williamson]

We.

[Tim McTague]

We didn't know anything. She's like, what if we played late when people are here? And then we sold that out, and then everything else is 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 want to 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 could see the bands that do, and if it's your career, then it's different. We happened to be here. Like, we're here. I don't know what I'm saying.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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 artists. X, Y, Z. And they go, oh, I love their first album.

[Chris Williamson]

And I think Louis Capaldi is a good example of that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah. And I think with our band, we're an example of that. And it hurts me to say it sometimes because I do think that we. I know we work so hard on our new music, and 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. 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 wasn't his first thing, but it was like, basically, it was base, basically. 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. 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 hearkening back to that. But I think the first album syndrome theory is because the public feels that earnestness and that honestness, in a word, that I hate, that authenticity. You know what I mean? Like, when we wrote They're Only Chasing Safety, there was never a moment, I promise. I can say this with. With glee in my heart. We never thought.

[Chris Williamson]

A bunch of people saying this in 20 minutes time.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I never ever for any reason had that thought.

[Chris Williamson]

I love the word earnest. It's one of my favorite ones. The bravery to take your emotions seriously.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Honest.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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 is because you're. You're. You're. You're chasing something. You. And this is. This is a huge generalization, an assumption, but that you'll never get again, like, no matter how hard Lewis Capaldi tries, I don't think you're going to get.

[Chris Williamson]

That record again before we continue. If you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like, getting your blood work 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 blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands. But with Function it is only $500. And right now the first thousand people can get an additional hundred dollars 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 Modern Wisdom that's functionhealth.com ModernWisdom when you mentioned about some of the challenges you've had with anxiety, nervous system regulation coming back down, did you see how I'm feeling now? The documentary about Lewis, dude, it's on Netflix. It's.

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, it is like I know he's had struggles.

[Chris Williamson]

It is fucking canon. If you're a musician, watch this thing. So I must talk about this. Like every, every month he writes his first album. I mean he blows up from a song video that was him playing in some random pub in the arsenal 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. 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 sort British in that way. He doesn't take himself too seriously. He's not glamorous, you know, 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 in his mum and dad's old house in Scotland and he's in this back shed thing which is 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. 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 record labels on the planet saying, hey, how are we going with anything?

[Aaron Gillespie]

We need to follow up.

[Chris Williamson]

How's anything? And he develops, like, twitch. He develops this nervous twitch over time that it turns out, is Tourette's. So he's got this predisposition for Tourette's, but it's 100% brought on by this. And then what you want is for there to be some wonderful conclusion, some sort of victorious hero moment at the end. And one of the final shows of the entire documentary. He steps out on stage and is 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.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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.

[Tim McTague]

Like, got to stage and then shut down.

[Chris Williamson]

Wow. Like, multiple times. And that. That was. That's, like. It's still. It's one of the most formative things I've ever watched. And 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 fuck, that's deep.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

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

[Aaron Gillespie]

It might be an introvert or whatever.

[Tim McTague]

I mean, 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 is 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. Like, we used to tour with Sam's Club, payphone cards to call home. No cell phones. We had an atlas. No GPS.

[Chris Williamson]

An atlas?

[Tim McTague]

It's a TomTom. Oh, no.

[Aaron Gillespie]

A company called Rand McNally in the 90s and early 2000s would make this, like, binder book, Right?

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Entire United States with highways and roads.

[Chris Williamson]

We've got, we've got that in the.

[Tim McTague]

UK and then every, there's like 65 pages. So then you get into like per state and we would navigate literally by.

[Chris Williamson]

Math orienteering your way to the next.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I don't know how we did.

[Tim McTague]

And then, and then when we got.

[Chris Williamson]

Lost, just an additional fucking. We would have burden.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Then you, you get lost. So you have to go 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 we, we were meant, we were meant to be in a community, you know, of a hundred people. We were meant to be in our neighborhood. I should know my neighbor's name and he shouldn't have to buy a lawnmower because he could borrow mine. Like that is what we have done literally until about 20 years ago as people. And 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]

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]

Yep.

[Aaron Gillespie]

For probably more than that.

[Chris Williamson]

A variety of like justified and unjustified reasons. You know what I mean? Like someone might know Bonnie Blue. Someone might know like a great poet or some. Yeah. And not that Bonnie Blue's not a poet. That speed of ascendancy.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Feedback loop. Like how fast. And you know you mentioned about sort of tribe ancestral setup. What's typical.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

The problem that we have is our previous comparison group would have been. So you got your Dunbar number of about 150. But within the 150 tribe. That wasn't one big tribe. It was little pods typically of about 30 within that break off. Yeah. Yeah. They'd sort of be like moderately tightly affiliated but not totally, totally tight 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]

Correct.

[Chris Williamson]

Out of 150, 75 are male fucking like, of the 75, maybe 15 or 20 are under the age of 14. Right. Because everybody fucking dies early. It's like, well, I'm kind of not competing with the 14 year old, 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 everybody.

[Tim McTague]

Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

In a different. It's like you guys in some way are comparable with Sabrina Carpenter, despite having. 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]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Yeah. I think. I think with that, knowing that, I'm not surprised by that documentary. And honestly, if we were filming our lives the whole time, we would have those moments too. I have a version of that 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, it's still comparison. It's a. It's the binary still there. I'm. I need 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. An unfortunate thing, to be honest.

[Chris Williamson]

Would you tell me that story, your Lewis Capaldi equivalent?

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, I. In 2004, we. I think we. I guess we probably wrote chasing safety in 03, right?

[Tim McTague]

We did.

[Aaron Gillespie]

So in 2004, we started touring on it and we were still touring as a pre. There was MySpace. So there was some evidence of how things. Big things were getting or not. But that year we did the Warp tour and we. We were playing on a stage called the Smart Punk stage, which was like.

[Tim McTague]

Like, out of the seven stages, it was the worst one.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Like. Like, literally like a truck with a flat surface. Like, the opening band from the stage had to build it every day to sick to gain their access to play it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, okay.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Some of those guys we're still friends with. One of those guys plays in Paramore now. Sick Underminded Joey Mullen. So 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 at Warped Tour. So there's this big blow up 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 Warp Tour.

[Chris Williamson]

Jesus Christ.

[Aaron Gillespie]

So if you're in Milwaukee, like you might play at 8pm and the next day you're in Chicago and you play it in 11.45am so we were woken.

[Tim McTague]

Up a lot going year on in 40 and we're like a lot.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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. And I'm like, well there's that, you know, we're like, no one's gonna watch us play. And we got on stage and there was two or three thousand people like.

[Chris Williamson]

In front of the flat truck in.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Front of the flat truck to see us play. Because chasing safety, unbeknownst to us had, had. I hate this word. And you said it now I hate it worse. Like blown up. Right.

[Chris Williamson]

But no one had a phone to be able to keep it.

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, there was no way, There was no, There was no way to know. And then that, that. And then that fall we toured with a band called Stretch Armstrong and we had to play twice every day. So many people showed up to the shows.

[Chris Williamson]

So you did a matinee to try and keep up?

[Aaron Gillespie]

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. Yeah, it was just. We would just run it, do it again. And in the middle of that I started having, I started having chest pains, like, and I had experienced them a little before, like searing sharp, like 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 up, walk in crying and saying that I'm having a heart attack. And they would go, you're 21 years old. You're not having a heart attack. You got to find. I got to find out. You got to do the work. You know, I need blood work and metropolitan levels. And I know the jargon because I've done it so many. I probably had 300 EKGs in my lifetime. You know, I need an EKG. I need a retroponant. You know, there was days where I remember the opening band one day, particularly this guy Chris, telling me, like, this is just in your head. And I'm like, how?

[Tim McTague]

I feel it.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's real. I feel it. It's real. And it got progressively worse through the years. The band got more popular, and in 2010, I quit. 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.

[Chris Williamson]

What are the theories.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I grew up in a super, super Christian home, like he 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 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 want this to come off. If she hears this, like, mom, you.

[Chris Williamson]

Me, we love you, mom.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, but she. She would. Yeah, so. And so, you know, Sister, 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? You can believe that. And growing up, the whole time, it was like that. It was like that the whole time. And 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. I think that probably AIDS and abets to it. And both of my parents had this anxious disposition as well.

[Chris Williamson]

His health anxiety. His health anxiety disposition fed into you.

[Aaron Gillespie]

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 sold out. Are we getting paid? I don't know. 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. 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, I deal with it today, not to the extent that I did then, but something I deal with every day. And it's really difficult. And to be honest, like, it's scary sometimes, you know, the fact that I have to say this to you, 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 numbers where I'm like, I want modern wisdom.

[Chris Williamson]

And I'm talking about this, don't forget. I mean, I appreciate you saying that. And that must have 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. It's my artistic outlet. And, like, my fucking nervous system is betraying me. Like, this is my shot. This is my thing. Yeah. And my fucking. I'm. That must be what it feels like to be Lewis Capaldi. It's like, this is what everything I've ever dreamed of. I'm on Glastonbury, the biggest festival in the world.

[Aaron Gillespie]

All the flags. Yeah, man.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And my fucking body's betraying me. So I'm sorry that you went through them and. Yeah, that's really.

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, thank you for saying that's something that. 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 actual guilt for. Heavy guilt. Because if I really think about it, like, when I left. I've never said this. When I left, there was a large decline in their. They did a record without me when I left. Yeah. There was a large decline in their career. And I know that was directly correlated to me leaving. And I left because I couldn't, in layman's terms, get my together, you know.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm sorry that happened.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Thank you.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. 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, let me pick the kids up. Yeah, that. Exactly. 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.

[Chris Williamson]

It's not what I meant about it. It's a different type of intimacy.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

It's not brother and another one's through tour.

[Tim McTague]

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, which is interesting.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And that would.

[Tim McTague]

And, I mean, yeah, I talked 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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I don't remember what the ailment was. Some.

[Tim McTague]

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, because I'm not in your head. And sometimes it feels like it swings different ways, as we all do, 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.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We were drinking the oldest beer ever Made popping out recipe ever. Made somewhere in Munich.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. And. But he was in it in a. He was in a state, and I would. And we were all on a manic spiral and we were all drinking. So when I drink, 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. What. Fuck you on about. Like, say what you need to say. Very loving, but just very direct. And so I was just like, funding.

[Chris Williamson]

Is done through argumentation.

[Tim McTague]

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 because you're wasting this thing, you know? And he got really mad. We all disbanded.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Said it differently.

[Tim McTague]

And he came. What did I. What did I say?

[Aaron Gillespie]

I have to say that I'm sorry, Chris. I'm sorry.

[Tim McTague]

No, you said, I. I'm not.

[Aaron Gillespie]

When you die, you say at the end of this thing, which is very podcast educated, you say, when you die, you will regret so many things.

[Tim McTague]

There, I said on your deathbed.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yes, on your deathbed.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, because 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 have 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 man in the world. This tour is eating shit and we're making no money. We've done all of it now, 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. And kind of like, you know, the dude with the tick, like, can. Is it just. Do you just live here now? And is there anything you can or can't do? 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. Make if for this period or episode, I just need to reduce you to a co worker. 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 loving 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 going to do? Blow up the whole tour? No. So you then start putting in these protections and 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 shifted so much.

[Chris Williamson]

I imagine you've used a couple of times sort of soldiers coming back from war as an example, which is a terrible example. I'm not trying to church up fucking people. I had Jocko willing one out today. Like that was the guy that did the battle of Ramadi.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So he's a Navy seal.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Saw that go up today.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Who is maybe one of the scariest men I've ever been seen in my entire life. But is it comparable in terms of kinetic danger? No. Is it comparable in terms of emotional intensive 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 element before and that's because I am frankly dependent on it. For the last three years, I've started my morning every single day with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mixed 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 orange flavor in a cold glass of water is how I've started every single day for over three years. And I can genuinely feel the difference when I take it versus when I don't. Best of all, they've got a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they give you your money back. And you don't even need to return the box. Plus, they offer free shipping within the US right now. You can get a free sample pack of all eight flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com ModernWisdom that's drinklmnt.com Modernwisdom Most of the things I think that you're. The shames that you have in your life, the ones that are the worst that you have about yourself, if you look at them, they're usually the dark side of the stuff that you're the most proud of as well. So I have to assume that when it comes to writing a record or mastering a track or like dialing in a particular sound or working on the new melody, the new lead, the new drums, fill, whatever it might be, that that is an area where your obsessiveness gets deployed in a really productive manner. Because you're able to go like, no, it's not there. It's not that. I'm going to play it again. I'm going to play it again. I'm going to play it again. You look at the fucking timeline, it's just like 60 takes, 100 takes, 200 takes. Yeah, all the way down. Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

So if you want that, like, do you appreciate that about yourself? The fact that you have this level of precision in your art form? Okay, well, guess what? The price is that you have to pay for that. The price that you have to pay in order to have that level of precision in your art form is that you don't get to switch it off in other areas. You don't get to turn that off. You don't get to turn it off. You're not going to turn it off with your partner. If your partner makes you feel unsafe, like, your nervous system is going to go like, okay, what did they say? Why did they say that thing? There was no kiss at the end of that text. That's what that meant. Ruminate. Think, obsess. Okay, you don't want it, then you do want it. When you're writing a record, choose. Oh, you don't get to choose. You don't. So what do I love about this? Well, I love my attention to detail. I love the fact that, and this is something as well that you can sort of find, I think, between each other, where you go fuck. Like, dude, the way that Aaron shows up, like, he's the first person in the studio in the morning, he's the last person out at night. He will not Give up at. Or whatever it is, right? What? However it is that you like that obsessiveness sort of shows up in the process. Like, I really fucking love that about him. And would it be cool if he didn't have this like. Like demon that he's got to battle in other areas? But would it be fucking total dog if we didn't get this level of performance out of him? When the rubber meets the road.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You know what scares me the most? Sorry, what scares me the most and what I. I've seen a lot of therapists for this stuff, and I've taken a bunch of pills for it and I've talked to a million people about it, and nobody. Nobody has ever said that. It's always been so. Thank you, number one. But number two, it's always been, you'll get better if, like, you'll stop being obsessive about your health symptoms or whatever.

[Chris Williamson]

If.

[Aaron Gillespie]

If you do X, if you do Y, if you do Z, if you change this habit you have. No one's ever just said it like that. And that, my friend, is the essence of what it is to pump your tires up as high as they'll go. Let me do that. Because you're absolutely right. And it's scary to hear, to know that, like, that pill, that conversation, that thing isn't going to fix it because it's. It's connected in that other way. You know what I'm saying?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, well, it's who you are, dude.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's.

[Chris Williamson]

I think so much of it is in the resistance. You know, if you ever have something that you're really struggling with, and I've had a. I've had a rough 12 months. Jesus Christ. I've been kicked in the nuts so many times over the last 12 months. And maybe 20% of it, 30% of it is, like, what you're dealing with. And the vast majority of it is the resistance to the thing happening. It shouldn't be this way. I don't want it to be this way. This isn't what, like, if only it could be different. This is my fault. This is someone else's fault.

[Aaron Gillespie]

What caused it? What did it?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. How can I change it? What can I do moving forward? I'm wasting my life. I'm killing myself. I'm doing this thing. I can't do this thing. Like, all of that, right? You have the first emotion, anxiety. Then you have resentment at your anxiety. Then you have bitterness about your resentment about your anxiety, and then you have frustration about your bitterness about your resentment. About your anxiety. You have this infinite regress of second order emotions. Mark Manson calls them meta emotions. It's like you don't get to control the first one, but you do have choice over the second one. And the problem with that is, oh, I have choice over it. That means that I am bad if I don't control my meta emotions. And if someone says you'll get better when that's a denial of you, that's them saying you are not enough as who you are. And when you're that way, you're less you. And you need to fix the thing that's happening because your behavior makes me feel uncomfortable. Yikes. You being that makes me feel uncomfortable. You not being okay makes me not okay. So I need you to make yourself okay so that I can be okay now too. And that's just a denial of whatever it is that you're going through. And that's rough, man. So, again, I'm sorry that you've.

[Aaron Gillespie]

No, thanks for saying that. I think that I've never heard it put that way and I've always felt that way and I've never heard it put like that because.

[Tim McTague]

But that is it. It's more talk about that a lot as a band, like, even like with people are like, how do you stay faithful on the road? Or how do you stay diligent or not diligent? And it's. It's just that it's like we're all sexual beings. I can't change the first thought. You know, if there's a really pretty girl somewhere, I'm not going to not notice.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

And then it's like, great that I'm not looking for it. I have no interest. But I can't change that first spark and I'm going to throw sand on it or I'm going to throw gasoline on it.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a really cool story. David Buss, grandfather of evolutionary psychology here at University of Texas. And he wrote a book called the Evolution of Desire. And in it, he explains how men have an area of our brains which give us reward if we look at something that's sexual. Like, guys will happily look at a pair of rocks that look like boobs and be like, like kind of fucking hot. And this guy wrote in and he said, Dr. Bus, I just want to thank you for saving my marriage. Because I was finding. I'm happily married. I love my wife, I love my kids. I was happily married, but I found myself, like, finding other women attractive and.

[Tim McTague]

I thought I was unhappy with my partner.

[Chris Williamson]

And something I Thought there was something wrong with me. I thought there was something broken. And your book told me that. No. Like, it's fine for me to see a hot woman and be like, that's a hot woman. In the same way, it's like, huh, those clouds look, you know, gray or what? It's a thing. And I mean, is it the thing that you tell your wife? Probably not. It's like, hey, honey, there's a beautiful cloud outside. Like, yes. Hey, honey, there's like, a hot Latina walking past. No, but the inside voice. Yeah, but the sense that you have with that and that same dynamic there, I think is a good part of what we're talking about here, which is like, huh, I have this thing. There's some good in it, there's some bad in it. It is me. What happens if I'm, like, just okay with that?

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

What happens if I'm not trying to fix it?

[Tim McTague]

Just put it on a shelf and let it be there.

[Chris Williamson]

It's just a part of it.

[Tim McTague]

It's just like, here it is. We're not gonna deny it. We're also not going to exacerbate it. It just is.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, I'm. The question that I've been the most fascinated with over the last few years. One of them has been the price that people pay to be someone that you admire. And Elon Musk, he does this episode with Lex Friedman a couple of years ago, and Lex asks him some question along the lines of, like, how are you really? Or something.

[Tim McTague]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And Elon says, I know what you're talking about. My mind is a storm. People think they want to be me. They don't want to be me. They don't know. They don't understand. You're like, this is the richest guy in the world. Read the. Read the biography that was done on him. And it's like, there was this day where his COO found him laid down in his office, just, like, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep next to his desk.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

They were like, you need to come and do this shareholder meeting. He's like, I'm not doing it. I can't stand up. He's like, no, you need to come and do this meeting. Like, it was one of those Tesla's about to go under, and we need to raise more money or fix the shareholders or do whatever. He's like, I can't stand up. He's like, no, you need to. It took 15 minutes, like, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing, coaxing. Finally get him up it's like, all right, do you want to be Elon Musk?

[Tim McTague]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you want to be that guy? Because that's the price that you need to pay to be Elon Musk. And unfortunately, man, that's the price that you need to pay to be Aaron Gillespie. Like, to be you. Yeah, that's the price that you need to pay. You want to do the, you want to do that. Like, you got to deal with the other thing too.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's, it's, it's just so. It's staggering. It's staggering to hear an acknowledgment of that. You just don't, you don't hear that. You don't hear that when you're rehabbing through it. Not from your friends, not from professionals. You hear, like I said before 20 minutes ago, if you do X, you'll get Y. You know what I mean?

[Chris Williamson]

I don't have any incentive. And I think that that's one of the problems that even the best meaning guys, even the guys in your band, they want you to get better because.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And I understand it, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sour grapes about it.

[Chris Williamson]

No, it's, it's, it's, it comes from a really well meaning place. But yeah, this is an area. Joe Hudson, who does the Art of Accomplishment, has taught me so much about this, and he has a, a framework of view, vulnerability, impartiality, empathy, and wonder. And that's like heart opening, heart opening communication especially. And impartiality is a really interesting one, which is sitting with somebody without wanting to change them. Impartiality. And I think a lot of the time when we see somebody going through something difficult, we want to help them. Of course you want to help them. Is that not the good thing to do? Is that not the empathetic, caring thing to do? Of course it is. Care about your friend. You see them in pain, you want to fix it. It's like. But in that fixing is a denial of what they're experiencing. You aren't right as you are. You're not good enough as you are. This isn't okay. You need to change. And a lot of the time that is a transference of you saying, your discomfort is making me uncomfortable. Stop your discomfort so that I can feel okay again. And that's where codependency comes from. You know, if, if you see somebody and you think, I'm not okay. If you're not okay and roll that forward and all of you guys have got this, which is, I'm not. What's the Jimmy Carism, which is as he's talking about comedians, relationships with audiences, he says, if you don't love me, I don't love me.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, yeah, I don't, I, I, I think it's maybe more complicated than that, but. Yeah, at its essence. Yeah, for sure.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, I think it's significantly more complicated than that.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, I, I would argue not even just nuance, but yeah, it's deep, but yeah, it's like, I think, I think overall it's just a matter of trying to find common ground where you can't and just being okay with things not being okay.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[Tim McTague]

And that's, that's hard, but it's not as hard as. We're not leaving this room until you're fixed, you know, Tim, you're doing this. We're not leaving this room until you stop doing this. Like that, those ultimatums, which don't happen. But I'm saying that's the other side of that. If it's not this, then it's on its way to be that. And I think there's a lot of like, I don't even know, like, everything's so bite size now. It's like hard to even know what like truth is anymore, you know, like music, same thing. Like music and stoicism, I think are like the same thing in the sense that like you have these stoics, quote unquote, that just put up like a little blurb, like a Bible verse, a day, tearaway calendar, and you're missing the context. You know, there's like 14 hours of Marcus Aurelius on audible and then you pick out like your favorite scripture and just pop it out. And everyone's like this. You don't know how much I needed this. And it's like something like, if it doesn't bring you peace, be confident enough to walk away. That without the surrounding context, results in friendships dissolving, people walking away from relationships. Because this just doesn't bring me peace. And it's like music, all of those things are just kind of going in that way where it's like TikTok movements. Nobody listens to albums anymore. We used to write albums that were like 1 through 12.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We don't listen to songs anymore.

[Tim McTague]

We would literally put this song as the fifth song on purpose in a linear sense. And now it's waterfall singles, it's waterfall stoicism. It's pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

[Chris Williamson]

Waterfall stoicism is a funny way to put it.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. And it's, I think it does more. I, I, I don't think it's all net positive. I'd say I don't know if it does more bad than good, but I think it does a lot more confusion, like confusing than it does helping. Because even to your point with Aaron, it's like if you really zoom out, like everything you said, I agree with. And you know, a lot of the talks we've had, I agree with, but it's so much more complicated than that. Everything is. And I think, yeah, just the, the ten sided die of life. It's, it's not just, oh, women are complicated, men are complicated. It's the whole ride is so complex. Yeah. That it could have been walking in on your dad. It could be when my girlfriend left me. It's a trauma response. It could be anything. It's like so deep. Like the cavern is like, you know, you could throw a flashlight into it and it just disappears.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I've been thinking a lot lately about is, is he who wins the one that uncomplicates it enough? And what I mean by that is, for an example, one of my favorite episodes of your show is, is Dry Creek. Dry Creek. Dwayne.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was texting him this week, and.

[Aaron Gillespie]

What I love about that episode is his story is crazy. But my favorite part of the episode is at the very end. And I think you asked him this question or for somehow I, I gathered that you asked him this question. What's a good day to you, Dwayne? And he said, well, you know, like yesterday I woke up, I'm upset with my friend's wife. And then he came home and I had a cigar and then I had another one. And I'm like, if I could, I'm not, and I'm not trying to make him sound like Forrest Gump. That's not what I'm saying. But like, that is, that is pure peace to me when he's, when he outlines that day, when you ask him what kind of day. What's, you know, what's, what's a good day to you, Dwayne? And he says all that. And then we're talking about all this and you're saying that, and all I can think of is the one who wins is the one who can decouple. I'm not saying to become ignorant of the complications of things and to become ignorant of the feelings of things and become ignorant of the idioms of grief or whatever, but is the one who wins the one who can decouple the two? And I Had two cigars and talked to my friend's wife and we ate some supper at Longhorn or whatever the fuck he says. Do you know what I mean? Like, is that. Is that.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, I imagine simple life is.

[Tim McTague]

Is very. Is highly underrated and I would argue more valuable than most things.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And it's becoming harder and harder to do.

[Chris Williamson]

But this is one of the curses I think of being introspective, deep person. If you're someone that's sensitive, if you like to do the reflecting thing, if you like to ask the question why? Why do I feel that way? Yeah, it's like, well, I mean, this is an endless portal that you can tumble into of thinking about yourself. And it's very interesting. I take an awful lot of pleasure from asking the why question. Like, the entire reason for this podcast is understand the world and understand yourself and the world around you. That was what I wanted to do. I didn't understand myself and I didn't understand the world. So I wanted to speak to 900 fucking 50 people or whatever that maybe that would. That would maybe be able to tell me. But the problem with that is that as you alluded to earlier on, there's like a sort of beauty and simplicity. Like the guy that's just like, yeah, fucking 500 person show. Pull it. Yeah, let's go. Like that don't overthink it thing.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

When arrived at, I have to assume more naturally as opposed to curate. That must be part of your nature that you've maybe sort of enhanced a little bit, as opposed to Aaron with you, in order to get yourself to that stage. It's like 10,000 hours of meditation. But to think, okay, well, what if it's not about unpacking more of my stuff? What if it's trying to like, just be okay with whatever's going on and just like the letting go. And that's one of the things, again, to give some props to the guys that are in bands. And also, I think this show is the kind of thing that's listened to by people who are in a lonely chapter. You know, they're people who are struggling to find conversations, stimulus, support in their immediate surroundings. So they find it in other people who they can listen to. They have this. This sense vicariously through them. Community. Yeah, like. Like that's that. That guy went through that stuff and that's real harm. Like, I went through something like that. Holy. I thought I was broken by having health anxiety. And that's the first time I've ever heard anybody talk about it online. I'm not broken. Like, this is part of the human condition. This isn't a personal curse that's been fired at me from above.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And you know, the problem with that is that the lonely chapter, by design, is lonely. Right. You're so developed that you don't resonate with your old set of friends, but you're not yet sufficiently developed that you've got your new set of friends and you're trying to do all of these things and you're developing your life and you're changing the way that you think and the stuff that you're into. And you're like, I don't know anyone that I can talk to about this. And I have two choices. I can either regress back and go to, like, this old version of me, which I know that I can't. Shouldn't do this. But where is the. I haven't found my next tribe yet in that regard. And the problem that you have there. And again, this is what I mean around the band, the one thing that you guys have is that there is always someone with you. And I imagine that if you want some introversion time, the fact that there is 16 people on a fucking tour bus, Double decker tour bus, and the support band's upstairs and the front lounge is full and the back lounge is full and someone's partying and someone's nowhere. Yeah. And you're, like, flying. Like, all I do is pack and unpack and get into. Go to airport or whatever it is.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

But being around other people is a really lovely way to pull yourself out of that. And I think it's at least for me now. Just yesterday we signed. I bought my first office studio space here in Austin.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, sick, dude. Congrats.

[Tim McTague]

Congrats.

[Chris Williamson]

Thank you. That's going to be real special. That for me is because I have exhausted. I have close to exhausted. My solo sigma male, like, D gen work energy tank, like that fuel. I'm on fumes.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

From that I, like, Covid happened. I started working from home and I just never grew out. I never graduated out of it because I'm like, classic introvert. All I want to do is get my head down and crack on. And I just never stopped. I was like, oh, well, this is good. So more of it must be better. So I'll just keep going and keep going and keep going.

[Aaron Gillespie]

This thing's growing, growing, growing.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. You're like, oh, well, this is. This is. And then after a while you go.

[Tim McTague]

How did I get?

[Chris Williamson]

I kind of like, yeah. I kind of like, miss people, I think so that's the solution that I've had to have and must be tough when you want to have your own space and you can't. But on the flip side, the fact that you've got this camaraderie, this sort of brotherhood, this group of people that know everything that you've been through.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, imagine how much, again, imagine how hard it is for male artists, make them female. Imagine how hard it is for bands, make it a solo artist. Holy. You are on the road and you don't even have your boys with you. You don't have anyone that you can turn around and go, dude, when we did that thing on stage, it's like, who the fuck is session guitarist number three? Yeah, like, who the fuck is that guy? Like, he wasn't here last week or last year.

[Tim McTague]

You see any people up like Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, these. I mean, these, these stories are not. They're almost not even documentary worthy anymore because they're just so normal. It's almost like, yeah, we were talking about this earlier, but it's like back in the day, like the guys with tattoos were like the wild ones, and now it's just everywhere that if you don't have tattoos, you're like the weird kind of oblong, out of, out of sync with the culture kind of vibe. And I think it's just, it. It's a story that keeps telling the truth every time. And I think as humans, we have a really interesting knack to go, yeah, but not me, you know, and that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Makes, that gives you juice too.

[Tim McTague]

I literally, I literally, I literally talk about like being rich and it's like if you win the lottery and you have a hundred million dollars, I don't care if you worked your ass off and built a company, blood, sweat and tears, and come from a poor family and, you know, the cycle stops with me and that whole thing. Or you just find a winning lottery ticket, there's a certain amount of money that will destroy you. And everyone goes, yeah, but I think I would do it different. I'd. I'd buy all my friends houses. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do this, I wouldn't do that. And even for me, it's like, I know that it would destroy me. And then if you said, well, here's the lottery ticket, it's worth a hundred million dollars. Tear it up. I'd literally probably not tear it up and think that I can do it better.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you know that is the unteachable lessons essay. That's a part of it.

[Tim McTague]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

And it's. Watch me dance through this minefield and avoid all of the other tripwires that everybody else kicked.

[Tim McTague]

Absolutely.

[Chris Williamson]

Some solipsistic, narcissistic version of that might.

[Tim McTague]

Be true for them, but not for me. And I think that it, like, you. You're. We are attracted to a dry queen, dry creek, Dwayne type guy.

[Chris Williamson]

Impossible to say that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I see.

[Chris Williamson]

Honestly, dude, I feel like I had.

[Tim McTague]

My Dwight tweak way.

[Chris Williamson]

I had to practice.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Before on the way in, you're like.

[Chris Williamson]

Because I start every episode, typically by going like, dry creek, drain, welcome to the drain. Dry creek.

[Tim McTague]

Dry creek Dwayne, welcome to the show.

[Chris Williamson]

And I was, like, practicing it on the way in. Got all of these things to think about. I'm trying. Yeah. I'm trying to work out the motherfucker's name.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. But I think the reason why he's inspiring is because he's just like, it's. It's not about telling you what to do and how to get better. He almost solves his problems by just saying, I just get up every day and try not to break something. A day I don't break something is a good day.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

And it's so simple, yet it's more powerful than being like, well, your monochromatic antibodies when you're. When you're tired, after you get seven hours of sleep versus seven and a half with the wrong bed with UV light. And like, all that's so overwhelming. And then you just see a guy come up. He's like, man, just get up and don't break.

[Chris Williamson]

No, I didn't break anything today. I mean, that was my. That is such a favorite story from him where he was saying, you know, I got up, I looked at this horse. He was trying to ride it or discipline it in some way, and he just looked at it for an hour, had a cigar.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Then I sat down and had another one.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

And he's like, I didn't break anything.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. What'd you do today? Not much. You have a good day. Yeah, I didn't break nothing. Like that is more powerful than. How do I scale 10x here and there and there. And then when you get there to your point, your ratchet changes, your happiness doesn't. And I think there's. I don't know what study it was, but there's like a psychological study that came out that talked about gratification and then satisfaction and the temporary stay of said satisfaction, meaning I make a hundred thousand Dollars a year. You call me in and say, tim, you've been such a good job, I'm going to give you 140,000 a year. My happiness meter goes up about 15% for about 30 to 60 days and then it recalibrates back to.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I need 180.

[Tim McTague]

And it's not even about, oh, now I'm spending 40,000 more and not living below my means. That's a whole financial question that I think is adjacent, but not the point. It's that we keep thinking more stuff and more achievements are going to fill a hole that only contentment and peace that you find on your own can fill.

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, it's not the clubs, it's the theaters. It's not the theaters, it's the arenas. It's not the arenas, it's the st. Stadiums. It's not the stadiums, it's the global tour. It's.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's crazy that you're even saying those words because if you skinny it way down for us, before you were here, it started like this. It started. Let's go real micro for just two minutes. It started with me at 15 going, I just want to be in a band. I play drums in my parents church. I just want to be in a band. Literally. I just want to play music with other people that aren't like the nerdy church people, right? And then it. I just wanna. I just want us to write one song, right? And then I just want us to play one show. I just want us to play one show where people are at it. I just want to play one show where people are at it. Know the words. And now you just said stadium. And that's, that's the most interesting thing to me about the whole thing is we never talk about how micro it is before it gets to this macro place.

[Tim McTague]

Oh, me, me and Chris talk our keyboard player. We talk all the time.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, I know you two do, but.

[Tim McTague]

I like that is that this is this podcast, by the way. I'm not trying to be a fanboy. Like, this is my, like, I love digging in and like, yeah, Chris and I are keyboard player. Talk a lot about it. And to your point, like, how do you know you're grounded? You know, is it natural? Is it my predisposition or is it work? And I think it. It's probably all of it. But like a really interesting way to stress test like your priorities and where your head's at is like, the band breaks up today. How do you feel? Aaron quits. I die of a Heart attack, whatever. Make up anything under oath is no longer. The best years of my life are over. I'll never do anything as meaningful as that again. Now I just work at FedEx as if that's some, like, prison sentence. I have to get a real job. God forbid. All these things. Or same exact data set. I can't believe we made it 23 years. What a blessing. All we want to do is write one song. Like, which one is it? Because both are true. It just tells you who you are inside, you know, like if. If this doesn't work or we break up in a week or 10 years or 100 years, I don't need this again. It's not part of me. It's informed who I am, obviously, and afforded me amazing experiences like the one we're doing right now. But if all of this goes away and you're just a quote unquote, regular person with a regular job, like, are you okay with that or do you need this? What part of this is you? And have you become the thing that you just did? You know, we would just do music. And now have I be. Have I become Tim from Under Oath?

[Chris Williamson]

That was the. I think you said at the very beginning, do people love me for who. Who I am or for what I do about women?

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. And do I love me for who I am or just what I do?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, 100%.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And he's. You've been talking. You've been talking like this. And I think in the. In the early days, especially when a. When it blew up. I keep saying that there's got to be another way to say the band got popular.

[Chris Williamson]

I think it's the way that everybody knows.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah. Yeah. But what you. He has talked like this. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. You've talked like this since you were 21 years old. Like, there was a time when the. When the band first. Here it is again, when the band first blew up, where he would ride. And I don't think you mind me talking about this. No. He would ride with, like, the opening bands in vans. Like, he would.

[Chris Williamson]

Was this, like your stoic hair shirt equivalent, like you purposefully putting the uncomfortable clothing on just to remind yourself of where you came from?

[Tim McTague]

Honestly, it was. It was. I think at the time, it was immature. Looking back, like, would I do that now?

[Chris Williamson]

No.

[Tim McTague]

But I think it was a response to exactly what we've been talking about.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But it came. That's the point I'm making. It came from the same place.

[Tim McTague]

It came from Fame and money and me going, this is all gross and.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It scared us to death. The reason I brought it up, the reason I brought it up because I think it's pertinent to say is that self actualization and that realization of like, FedEx isn't a prison. Like, let's switch this data set to same data set. Let's switch the perspective to say we had 23 beautiful years. It scared us to death. Some of us, some of the rest of us hearing that reflection, like, well.

[Chris Williamson]

It sounds like the person's less bought in or it sounds like they would be okay with a thing happening that you wouldn't be okay with happening. It's like, holy. Is Tim half out? Yeah, like, maybe he's not. Maybe he's just gonna pull the pin one day.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But especially. And I thought that.

[Tim McTague]

And if you hold things open handed, it's not about making sure I never let it go or intentionally throwing it. You just hold it like this and it doesn't matter. Like when you realize it doesn't actually matter. And not to say that under oath doesn't matter. I think we've. I mean, we know we've saved people's lives and they have tattoos and this got me through brain surgery and whatever. We've heard all the stories and the impact that we've had on life and culture is noticeable and palpable. But outside of that, if it wasn't us, it would have been someone else. And. And it's more about it. It really doesn't matter. Like, I'm always thinking about deathbed. Always like. And then everything that comes out. Steve Jobs, last things. I've already mentioned that. All these people's last things. We asked 85 people in a nursing home their top 10 things. They change. You see it all day long and, and it's all the same. So why wait until we're dying?

[Chris Williamson]

Question for you on that. To deploy that Question for you on that. The top five regrets of the dying. The deathbed thing. That was a very famous survey that was done. What do you think are the top five deathbed regrets of ex rock stars? What do you think they would have in there?

[Tim McTague]

Ooh, I think it all depends on where they end up or why they're.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Why they're.

[Tim McTague]

Exactly. I think, I think that the first time you have an actual relationship with a woman, you probably regret wasting 20 years just having sex with random women. I think when your kids grow up and we'll see. And me and Chris talk about this, our keyboard player a lot. Like, I Know I'm doing my best. And I also know I'm breaking something. I just don't know yet which. Which what it is. You know, my kids could turn on me and say, you were never there. And they're technically correct. I FaceTime them. We have a great relationship. You know, my daughter's in a band. She comes to all the shows. She loves it. And I check in with my kids. Mike, do you guys. Is this okay? So for me, it's hard. It's hard to. Hard to tell. But then you have people, like, dying, like, drugs, the whole thing. Like, it's almost like, what's good about being in a band? I think that's a lot easier to quantify. You can count those way quicker than what's bad.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And you do feel like. Like the other night I was dead asleep, like two weeks ago on a Monday, like, very asleep. Like, I've been so busy. And I. I work like a 9 to 5 in Nashville as a song. Is a staffing songwriter.

[Chris Williamson]

I've heard. Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And I. So I just, I'm. So when I get home, you're at.

[Chris Williamson]

The coal face of songwriting at the moment.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yes. So just tired, Tired, tired. And this is something that I. Regret's the wrong word. But I, I. My daughter wakes up and vomits. Has to vomit. Sorry. Sick. Stomach virus, you know, kids, whatever. She's four.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And you know what the first thing she said was? She's scared to throw up. You know that feeling when you're trying to fight vomiting? She goes, somebody please take me to the doctor. And my brain went, oh. Because for years with the health anxiety thing, I've always. That's what. That's the first thing I do. Oh, this hurts? Or this. I gotta go get a scan. You know what I mean? And my brain went, I've passed the curse. I've passed the curse. And that, to me, is the biggest regrets of 50 dying rock stars. Or is. Is like, like, will I pass on the habits that I picked up touring and doing this? Will I pass that on to my.

[Tim McTague]

Offspring and you and you will.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I know.

[Tim McTague]

And I will. And I think that's kind of the thing of, like, we're all breaking something. And I think to make your top five list regrets or top five best things, like, it has to be. It has to be in the construct of, like, we're not there yet. Story's still being written. But we have. I have a pretty good idea. But I won't know until I'm 60. And I look back and go, huh.

[Aaron Gillespie]

When you're Triple D and you can say, well, that's a good day.

[Tim McTague]

I quit the band in my head probably four times a year. And it's like. And it's. It is palpable. And it's always on a plane, always during turbulence. And it's not real, but I'm like, what if I were to die?

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, I see.

[Tim McTague]

And it's all about me going to play in front of 3,500 people in Australia. How selfish was I to think that this was the only way that I can make money and the only thing that's going to make me happy? And now my kids don't have a dad, you know, which is absurd, but, like, when you have these moments of, like, full clarity and peace and you see what really matters, like, none of nothing matters more than a very few people that you've committed to raise and provide for and protect.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, also, on top of that, obviously, it certainly seems like you guys have been through some, like, a tumultuous past, people coming and going, challenges.

[Tim McTague]

We really haven't. I mean, 23 years with the same lineup, for the most part, except for the.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, emotionally turbulent, would I say, between. Between everybody, right. Five, six people.

[Tim McTague]

Copy.

[Chris Williamson]

Five people.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It was.

[Chris Williamson]

It was six.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Not five, to your point, but the game, the gamut. You're right. Addiction.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

This.

[Chris Williamson]

People. People's lost parents, people have had kids, people have been in marriages, people have got divorced. People have, you know, fucking been tempted to cheat on white people. Have you fucking. Dude, you're coming home. You've had too much to do. All that stuff, the full works of that, like, think about. I mean, this is the most, like, maybe it was the friends we made along the way, like, is the most fucking that thing ever.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

But I'm interested to just dig into the artform thing for a second because I think, you know, audience capture is something that's talked about a lot in my world.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, allowing the. You create an avatar of what you think your audience wants, and then you continue to throw red meat to them in an attempt to appease what it is that they want.

[Tim McTague]

Interesting.

[Chris Williamson]

As opposed to doing what do you. Feels tasteful, earnest, artistically pure, being led by curiosity and wonder and awe and intrigue and sort of genuine bravery to say the thing that you mean and feel the thing that you do and not rush through this stuff, like sit with the awkward, whatever it is. And I have to assume as well that looking back on a body of work you guys will have had. I don't know. But I have to assume that there was periods where you would have been like, fuck, okay, so what do we need to write to be popular? What do we. What do we need to write to be able to get like, they're only chasing safety numbers again. And do we need to do that or do we need to do what we. And fuck? Like, how do I even separate that out in my mind? Because there is this analyticalization of the music industry immediately. So what's my metric for success? Is it how hard the fucking crowd goes when we play it live? Well, what if the crowd's a little bit smaller? Is it how much I love the song? Well, what if somebody else in the band doesn't love the song quite so much? Maybe I'm wrong. You have all of this self doubt that starts to come through. And I have to assume that looking back on a library of work that you feel proud in has got to be one of the most dividend paying ways to spend a career that is in an artistic outlet. Because it's the. It's one of the things that you can always feel proud about. You're like, dude, I love that song. Yeah, I adore that. That track, like, that was really, really meaningful to me and I know that we shouldn't have made it and I know that the label hated it and I know that. And it really meant a lot to me and like, that's something that I really feel really proud of.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's been cyclical for me and I. I think I'm. There's been times in our career where I've been like, if we do this, we will. We will. And I've believed it. If we do this, if we make this type of song in this key with this type of vocal arrangement, it will become Chasing Safety. Like I thought that. I thought that like 15 times. And then there's this other side of me where it's like, let's write a seven minute song about his father's death that I think is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I've ever written that no one listens to.

[Chris Williamson]

Which tracks that.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's called Pneumonia. It's on our second to last record, so not our newest one, but one before. It's the final. So is it the last song?

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Like I think about that song and I'm like, oh, that's everything I've ever wanted to do in this band, you know, and then you have. And I have been cyclical like this the whole time. Looking back at that, going, that's what I wanted then. And I think you are probably the person in the band who has been the most steady with what. With how you want it to be. Meaning.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You're the first person. You're the first person. You're the first person I ever heard refer to music as art.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

When we were young, you know.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Never for me personally, and it did. It built a lot of tension in the band, I think. Well, looking back, I didn't know. Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Always uncompromising.

[Tim McTague]

Fuck the label. Like, literally.

[Chris Williamson]

Columbia.

[Tim McTague]

Our manager is not allowed in the studio. Nobody's allowed in the studio to this day. He's ever. You are not. You are not allowed in the studio because you are an outside influence. It's just us.

[Chris Williamson]

And you'll. Your eyes will light up. Your eyes won't.

[Tim McTague]

Yep. And then dude Chris told me he came over for beers. He's like, dude, the third track, like, maybe we should do all of it. And maybe that's like a protect, protection, protective coping mechanism. Because I am impressionable. I don't know why it's so sacred or maybe so hardline, but it's never ever what's successful. Like to the point where I've literally hit them and I'm like, I want to. Our last record, the one we just did, I was like, I want to go to the cabin and I don't even want anyone to be on itunes. I don't want to hear what Beartooth or Bad Omens or Rob Zombie or. I don't want to hear anything about anything. I don't want any outside influence. I want it to be two ingredients. Us and inspiration.

[Chris Williamson]

That's it.

[Tim McTague]

And if you let the song drive, it will drive, you know, And I've always. I've always been that way, like chasing safety. They're like, dude, if you do this again, we're going to get you on KROC and you're going to be the next Fallout Boy. And so we wrote to find the great line instead. Just the heaviest thing we've ever done.

[Chris Williamson]

I fucking love that album.

[Tim McTague]

And that was in direct response, in my opinion, to you guys trying to make me do this thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Go fuck yourself.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I love the album too. But at the time, just to be frank, I was. I was like, what? Why? You know what I mean? Because I am the polar opposite of him. And where I. I have now learned with under oath that I want it to be just us. And I think it's correct. I think it's the correct. But on a day to day basis, like, I Want to work with somebody different every day?

[Chris Williamson]

Well, you do.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I do.

[Chris Williamson]

And this that you've found yourself in your Batman, Bruce Wayne new lifestyle, you've found yourself.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, can you explain for the people who don't understand what the sort of velocity of Nashville songwriting at the moment, Please.

[Aaron Gillespie]

For me, I. So I do. I write five songs a week up to seven. So, like, I get up, I go to the gym, I go to the studio. Someone shows up. I've either met them before and written with them before or not. And you spend about an hour like this. You know, a lot of this stuff does come up. The same stuff we've talked about today because. And the artists now are so different than they used to be because they're dealing with, like, algorithmic issues like we kind of talked about earlier, and they're dealing with, like. Like a couple months ago, I saw a girl's250,000 album get shelved because she hadn't had a viral moment. And she cried on my couch about, what am I gonna do? You know, because. So, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a different song every day, and it's usually written and demo tracked in four hours. Right. And the Under Oath machine is. It's a slog for me. And I don't mean that in a derogatory way, but sometimes, like, what I've learned to do with Under Oath, this is what I do. Tim and I typically begin every song, and sometimes Chris will bring something, but we typically begin every song. And for me, songs begin with, like, a thought, sometimes a title, but most of the time a thought. Like, I want this to be like. Like. Like fast in double time. And in the end, it'll really sprawl out and do this thing, like, really edge theory. Like, that's how it works in my brain. And Tim and I have such a close relationship that we can do that together very quickly. And then I like to leave. And then he will brood and ruminate for days over that three minutes that I out with him 72 hours prior. And then I'll come back at the end and go, oh, he was right. And then I'll deal. We'll do the lyric thing, and then we'll do the vocal thing. But that's. That's the way that I.

[Chris Williamson]

But Nashville is like the fucking Ford production line when you start to spread it out. I've only recently begun to understand. First off, I've only recently begun to understand how many X scene kids are running the country Scene Crazy. What the.

[Aaron Gillespie]

All of them.

[Tim McTague]

What?

[Aaron Gillespie]

Our very first tour manager, a guy that we met in Virginia, it was in a shitty club called Alley Cats. Is Jelly rolls tormentor and sound guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Tim McTague]

And seen kids run everything.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Dan.

[Tim McTague]

Dan and Shea.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Friends.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Same kids they do.

[Tim McTague]

I mean, the guitar player for 18 visions is Zed's tour manager. Like, and I think. I really think it's an attractive quality to come from, like, the DIY hardcore scene, because we're the only genre, I think, that I can think of at scale that has to do everything themselves.

[Chris Williamson]

Has.

[Tim McTague]

To book your first show yourself, you have to carry around a diary, a freaking atlas, a notebook full of addresses. Who's getting what, like, in rap, in country and everything, and natural jazz.

[Chris Williamson]

It's jazz musician.

[Tim McTague]

It's built in a machine. It's built at EDM, it's built in a vacuum on SoundCloud until your first show's in front of 10, 000 people, and then you're like, what the hell? How do I get. How do I get T shirts made? Like, oh, we. We all own merch companies, bro. Like, we got you. Like, it's literally just a skill set that maybe is not even virtuous. It's just what you have to do, but once you've done it, that's valuable.

[Chris Williamson]

You realize how rare it is.

[Tim McTague]

And, yeah, you're a dime a dozen here. And you realize our scene literally is baby. And everyone else in the major world.

[Chris Williamson]

Who knew, dude, who knew that the sad emo kids from school were gonna.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Grow up and, dude, I work with artists on a regular basis.

[Tim McTague]

I don't know how sick. I don't know.

[Aaron Gillespie]

On a regular basis, I work with artists that have a label deal, brand deals, an agent, a lawyer, a merch deal, and they've never played a show.

[Tim McTague]

And then they come to Aaron to write their songs for him. That's not art. That's a business.

[Chris Williamson]

I mean, we're seeing this a lot at the moment, right? Benson Boone, Copying a lot of fucking stick at the moment for.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I talked to somebody about that last night.

[Chris Williamson]

Everybody is. And it's not too dissimilar in. In the world of content creation. Hey, how much truth is this person saying? Like, how much is. How much is this person saying what they believe? And how much is this person saying something which is politically or culturally popular or expedient or useful or strategic or molested, perverted in order to be able to get the outcome that they Want to align themselves with a particular person, how much are they causing. Sucking up to this or that or the other.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And how much authenticity is in here?

[Tim McTague]

I. I love your use of the word molested. I've heard you use that a couple times. And it's so jarring because that only triggers in. At least in the States, is like, weird stuff with kids. And you're right. It's like taking something and just distorting it and with it and. Yeah. I don't know. I think.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I try. I really try. And this is. I'm earnestly saying this, like, with all these people that get sent to me, I really try to, like, inject. And I learned that from him. I try to inject that art into song in a box. You know what I mean? And that's why we've got four hours.

[Chris Williamson]

Let's try and come up with something that's not totally meaningless.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

Because, you know, he's so good at it. Like, he's good at it, like. And when I say that's not art, that's a business. Everything about that is about trying to find the right product to sell the most units. But in. In that vacuum, there are actual artists doing the work, you know?

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. So, I mean, also, let's go.

[Tim McTague]

I don't think what he's doing is factory work.

[Chris Williamson]

Let's not forget with the fucking scene kids, whatever you want to say. Renaissance revolution, perhaps. The level of talent that you have to be able to play those sort of riffs and to be able to play those particular drum pieces. Like, that's got to be one of the contributing factors that it's technically quite a difficult music. And then you go up and you go, like, hey, man, like, you're ca dc.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But it's back to. It's back to what? It's back to what he was saying, though. Like, when people come to me and they can't believe. And I'm not pumping my own tires, but they can't believe that I'll just do it all right now. Like, what do you mean? You don't have to hire someone. I'm like, for what? Because we had to do it all ourselves. That's the scene. That's the scene. Kid Renaissance. And why the scene? Kids are running Nashville.

[Tim McTague]

He can record, he can sing. He could play bass, play guitar and drums and get you a full song.

[Chris Williamson]

By the way, I'll give it, like, a little bit of master as well. I'll be able to, like, just bounce it. It'll. It'll sound like it's demo, but like, it'll be. It'll be.

[Tim McTague]

Throw some samples on there.

[Chris Williamson]

The label. The label will sound good. They'll like you could you can.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I got a job. I got. I. I got gainful employment in Nashville and I'm successful in Nashville because of what you just said. Because Nashville was. Became such a song shop in the sense where you go to a songwriter, then you go to a producer. The producer would hire a band. I'll write the song with you, and I'll give you a demo that slaps. And then you'll call me in two weeks and say, can I have that demo? And I'll go for this number. You can have. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, but that's. But that's how. That's how we. That's how I'm interested.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm interested. You know, this. This very much is like kind of the, whatever, Batman to your Bruce Wayne thing. That you've got a lot of pressure, creative tension, working at a pace that sometimes can be artistically challenging, sure, for you. But you've got now this other part of your life. What sort of fulfillment do you get out of this other bit? Is there how much ick versus fulfillment versus artistic expression? Are you ever conflicted about that stuff?

[Aaron Gillespie]

Unroathed to me is like.

[Tim McTague]

This is.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Gonna sound so cheesy. It's the feeling of musical home to me. I can suck so bad in front of Tim and just say, I have this idea, like. And I. I like, for instance, Dangerous Business walking out your front door. You know, the time is running. I had this. The original idea for that song was insane. I wanted it to be about different languages and people groups. I wanted to say, they say they're French. They do this. It was ridiculous. Like, the most ridiculous. Like, but to me, like, that's free. That's the purest form of home. And music is where you can go and dare to suck in front of someone.

[Tim McTague]

Like, really anything.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Like, really dare to suck. I can say anything to him and he won't be surprised. I could promise you if there's a studio over here and you're like, guys, write a song. I go to Tim and I go, I've been listening to this one rap artist and he's got. He will go, I got these samples. You want to try them? And we would try to make a rap song, and it would come out as an under O song somehow in the end. But that. It's the true freedom that. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. The freedom to be able to suck.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Is because without it, I would implode.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. I mean, even going back to the question you just asked about, like, the authenticity and who's. Who's spinning things and who's in a position of like, this is hot right now. Let's cover that. Like, we were talking about this earlier, but, like, rock music specifically, to me, is very uninspired.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Right now.

[Tim McTague]

And, and, yeah. And, you know, to Aaron's point, to use his words, he's like, it's all sounds the same. It's all made by the same five people, and somebody's just waiting for the next Nirvana, you know? And there is the turnstiles, and there are all these. And then you zoom out and you're like, oh, but those are the biggest bands. But they've all been bands for, like, 10 years, 15 years. They're not. They're more our peers than, like, oh, the new crop are gonna do it. Right. And then I think about the comedy scene here, and I think that's the most punk thing happening in culture is like, Dave Chappelle, Tony, all those guys, Gillis, like, they are unhinged, and you can feel that they're not pulling punches. And I think people gravitate towards that, even if it's like, yikes, like, whoa. He said that you believe them. And I think that goes back to Aaron was talking about. Or you hear everyone believes our first three albums because they're true.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, well, how hard is it to get back there after you've spent such a long two and a half decades not knowing what real life is like?

[Tim McTague]

Oh, I don't think. I don't think you do. I think that's the beauty. Like, that's the beauty of the ride is like, you can ride a roller coaster once and have your mind blown. Tell me you can recreate that. If you got a free pass, you could just ride it ten times. Like, you only get the ride once.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We did a. We did Matt Edgar's podcast this morning, and it's in this, like, it's a little studio room, but it's on the back of a. I guess it's a.

[Tim McTague]

It looked underground comedy club.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Literally underground. Black Cement, Dirty as called like, Black Sheep. There was a spew in the bathroom when I went to pee.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, like, the place feels like a.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Like the places. Like the places we grew up playing.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And Matt is like, yeah, I, I, I do set here once a month. I was like, damn, it's pretty sick. What's that like. Because at this point, like, and then.

[Tim McTague]

He'S going on warp tour.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's like I, I saw, like, I literally thought about it today because we were talking about music and I literally saw myself in that guy. I was like, oh, you get to like, you get to become like a Nirvana.

[Chris Williamson]

Right now you're at the front of the scene.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

In the basement of some shit ass building over here.

[Tim McTague]

And it's like, that's the, that's the, that's the coolest part is like just seeing people go and go and go. And I think a big part of it too is like success, I think. Not that we were ever starving or we needed to make it because that was never the point. But there is something that's different about being our age now and being married and having kids and having other commitments where. I mean, I remember writing, writing on the walls. We all lived in a, like a commune apartment. Not all of us, but I lived in a two bedroom house with seven people and we had three people per room and one person in the living room is the best. But like, if we weren't just hanging out, it was just all music, had no girlfriend, had no mom. Our friends weren't fucking dying all the time like they are now. Like, we didn't have any of the. It was just excitement and limitless ceilings. I remember writing, writing on the walls. I still have the computer because I'm trying to get the hard drive out of it. In GarageBand programming, all of the drums, you know, bound, bound, Bounce like the worst. But like I had everything. Di modelers, all of it. And I just wrote the song. It wasn't like, yeah, we're in the studio, we have all this gear and it was just me just sitting. Everyone's downstairs playing Halo and I'm just upstairs like, where's, where's this go? How's this go? And like, we don't have that anymore. We have to literally like check with five people's spouses to see if these three weeks work for everyone. And then consciously go away from our homes and then go somewhere and try to simulate the isolation and the freedom that you had when you weren't isolated. You just didn't have anything to do. So now we need isolation to try to mimic the freedom that the synthesized.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Isolation is so different than.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's what?

[Chris Williamson]

Because, you know, it's. Do you ever remember when Tim Kennedy got waterboarded? You ever remember that?

[Tim McTague]

No.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, Tim Kennedy.

[Tim McTague]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. So Tim Kennedy wanted to show on purpose. Yes.

[Tim McTague]

Okay.

[Chris Williamson]

So he. I can't remember. This is a while ago now. He, I think, was making a point about enhanced interrogation techniques.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And basically said, I'm gonna let someone waterboard me and they can waterboard me for as long as you want. So towel over face, pouring whole things. I'm pretty sure the whole thing's videoed. It's on the Internet somewhere. And a lot of people gave him stick for the fact, well, yeah, you know, you're getting waterboarded, but you know that at some point it's going to stop.

[Tim McTague]

You're in control.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. So there's this degree of. I'm sure that it was still fucking awful and uncomfortable. And I'm pretty sure Tim said, like, go for as long as you want. Keep going. Like, do it again. Hit me again. Hit me again. But there is something about the lack of authenticity that I think was the reason that people tried to poke holes in it and said, hey, like fucking, you know, like, let's be honest here. Like, it is.

[Tim McTague]

These two things are. Laughing.

[Chris Williamson]

Your larping is enhanced interrogation as opposed to that. Who's to say that the fake version of it that he went through didn't last longer than some of the real versions of the. Whatever. Whatever. But the emotional.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Of like, oh, these people don't have my best interests at heart is kind of the same as what you guys are trying to create. When you go to the cabin in the woods. I think you went like three times, right. For this last point. Went up, went back up and then went back up. Different producers, second tie, et cetera. Yeah, yeah, I know you did your research.

[Tim McTague]

I like it.

[Chris Williamson]

So I think it's an odd realization that the start of something, the liberation that you have there, you know, if people are to look back on any whatever career it is that they've got now, go back to university or go back to college or whatever and think about what was. Like, when was it really, really good, dude, you know, we had to hand that project in and it was like midnight on the Sunday and we slept. It slept. We all did Domino's and everyone slept under their desks. And then we got up the next day and we did it.

[Tim McTague]

We.

[Chris Williamson]

We fucking made it, man. Like, that was what was cool. And again, this is an unteachable lesson. That luxury becomes as much of a prison as it is an enabler. Absolutely. Like, you know, you guys on a fucking double decker tour. But like Dan and Shay, I went to go and hang with them after they played in Austin and they've got like two and I'm sure, you know, like the most fucking insane five stars. Oh, well, you know, the way that we've actually done this bed is if you put it at the very back because no one has to walk past it. You can have like an additional queen size thing and it's over the back wheel, which means that there's more dampening and whatever, whatever. Like all of this stuff. And you know, it's cool as to see it, but there's a something about the like, rough and ready story having to get the orienteering out.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And we say it all the time. Yep, we say it all the time. The you remember the that impresses upon you and the shit that makes you you is like, bro, in the last six months we've played the Forum, crazy arenas, all these places. I remember, like, I can tell you this way that a place in 2003 smelled. You know what I mean? Like sleeping in the van in the gully.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, it, it.

[Tim McTague]

I think you dive into this a lot, but I know it's like kind of very. I would. I don't know if like Rogan esque is a good thing and you can edit that out, but like the idea of like the Goggins and these kinds of people where they're like similar to Tim Kennedy, like suffering is where growth comes from. So choose suffering. Choose something. Whether it be a cold plunge or this is where you're a run or anything, sauna, like do things that are uncomfortable intentionally to then allow everything else to kind of feel a bit normal. And I think that's what, that's the difference with your Tim Kennedy analogy is like me going in to a cold plunge is me setting a timer for four, three to five minutes. I'm in control. It's 33 degrees. I want to die. And it's not the same as me.

[Chris Williamson]

Falling through ice, as me being in.

[Tim McTague]

The Titanic fully clothed in 33 degree weather. And maybe I'm only in there for two minutes. That two minutes would scar me compared to the five minutes that I willingly do upon myself. Although the environment's exactly the same as far as physically. And I think in a weird way, like, we try to recreate stuff like that, but like when it actually happens naturally by life, like, that's what forms you. You know, you could try to heat up metal and try to distill it and try to purify it and do this and like, yeah, like, let's. Let's go do something hard again. Let's go to a cabin and. And act like we're single and alone and maybe even try to go crazy a little bit to see what comes out. Like, we're doing an experiment on ourselves, but we're really just attempting to set ourselves up in the closest form that resembles something that came natural so that we can receive transmission.

[Chris Williamson]

Your laughing is an older version of you.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim McTague]

Eating five or a younger version.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. Of course.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You know what I mean?

[Chris Williamson]

Having Elon's fucking Skynet Global link course.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Happy Van Winkle, whiskey. The whole thing.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah. Now it's the same as when we were doing it in an old storage space, except for there's a movie theater, a hot tub, a grill, and he brings 15 bottles of whiskey. And we make old fashions every night. And by the way. And by the way. And by the day. And we have a car, and we have three cars. Actually. Like, I bought my first car when I was 24. I drove the band van around as my person, because we were like, literally. I did not own a vehicle or car insurance.

[Aaron Gillespie]

One guy had a cell phone until we were all 22. So one guy had a college fund that we depleted. We spent all of his money.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And we used his phone.

[Tim McTague]

Thank you, Dave and Karen Brandell. But, yeah. And you want to recreate it, but you. You can't. And I think I've heard you talk about this, or someone was talking to you about it, but talking about slumps and, like, almost how, you know, years, three, four or five of doing this podcast or whenever it was something in that realm, it's like. Like, that's where it started to get stale. And, like, how. How do I excite it? And, like, that's. That seems to be everyone's real question and possibly the most important answer that nobody can answer. I mean, even today, I forget who it was that asked it, but they're like, you've been with the same woman for 18 years, Mike. Yeah, I'm actually. I've only ever been with my wife. I've only seen one human being naked ever in the physical, obviously. And. And he's, like, kind of dumbfounded and then goes, so, what do you. How do you make that, like, special? And just kind of like, how do you spice it up? I think was the bigger question.

[Aaron Gillespie]

And what is it like over time?

[Tim McTague]

And. Yeah, and. Because I think we all think about things in, like, a. It's constantly degrading. And the first six months of a relationship, step one is always the best. The. Infatuation the, the romance is there. There were flowers and fresh cooked meals and the sex was great. And now 10 years in you got a couple kids like. And that's how everyone views it. And in a weird way, like I'd rather just age gracefully than try to recreate being a horny teenager.

[Chris Williamson]

But that's a really interesting question that I've thought about a lot that there isn't. I don't think there's a particularly healthy conversation around how to age gracefully as a man.

[Tim McTague]

There's nothing, and I mean not for anyone.

[Chris Williamson]

I. Well, no, that would be true. I think the reason that it's particularly interesting, it's tiny little bit like maybe novel, is just that the conversation around women aging. Because the world places an awful lot of value on women's youth, the way that they look in terms of youth. And that's why cosmetic surgery and makeup and facelifts and all this stuff exists. In order to hold on to that right, to not to not grow into it, to, to go back. And that has to be tough for chicks to deal with. But I don't think that there is a. I simply don't think there's a conversation around what it's like to age as a guy. Physically, mentally, emotionally. Like what does that mean to transcend? It's like, yeah, you know, we understand what it's like to have the super arrested development of like the adult man child, you know, like the 35 year old infant. Yep.

[Aaron Gillespie]

There's a movie about it where some, a couple hires some woman to break their son out of that 40 year old guy living in this house. And I can't remember what it's called. Okay, it's gonna drive me crazy.

[Tim McTague]

But yeah, so go on though. I think I know where you're going next.

[Chris Williamson]

It's just not a. It's not a particularly well trodden path. And I don't think that there are very good archetypes for. You know, I'm 37 and the first time I think I noticed age was probably about 34. And I was like, huh, workouts actually take a little bit longer to. Is that fucking gray hair in my beard? Like it's one. I mean, that's kind of cool, I guess, like, but you know what I mean? And you think, huh, I haven't really ever heard. And then when you start to roll in, okay, what does it mean about relationships? What does it mean about your role in the world? How are you supposed to show up? Because like, am I gonna be the fucking leanest Most jacked, strongest, coolest, newest guy, band, singer, songwriter thing. I'm not hot anymore. Okay, so what does that mean? Am I supposed to try and recreate that old thing? Because we valorize success, especially first time success and descendancy and trajectory so much.

[Tim McTague]

Correct.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, well, what does it mean? What does it mean to sort of graduate? What does it mean? What does it mean to. To move on from that?

[Tim McTague]

Well, that's why I think a lot of men, older men, like, don't have, to your point. Like, there's no archetype, there's no, no mentors. And it's like these people retire and then they go back to work. Like, men don't even know how to stop being this one thing. You've been doing it for 50 years. Like, you know, what is next? What is the next chapter? And it's there. There isn't one. And that's why. I think that's why, you know, episodes like the Dry Creek, Dwayne. Yes.

[Chris Williamson]

Nailed it, dude.

[Tim McTague]

I said Triple D earlier is, is. Is cool because he's an old guy and he almost feels like he's so different than me that it feels like my grandpa or my dad talking to me about how to go about life versus, you know, peers, people that are my age, your age, our age. And it's like, okay, what happens at 50? What happens at 60? Like, what do you do with that? And it's like, there's such an emphasis on, to your point, recreating that it's like TRT therapy and this and this and this and all the things. And all we're doing is kicking and screaming, being dragged towards death, raging against entropy, and doing the best we can to stave it off rather than walking with the current and going, here we. Here we sit.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Well, having no examples too is, I think, is the, the biggest, like, Dry Creek, Dwayne, is, Is really. It really appeals to me.

[Chris Williamson]

But to you, I could see, I could see you in Wyoming wrangling a horse.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But to you, that might not appeal. You know what I mean? Like, you might want to age and go out a different way.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

You know what I mean? Like with. And I'm not saying like, with, like, with women. You can, you can see it in television and media. Like, you have the woman who's like the gardening lady and she ages that way. The yoga lady, like cat lady. Some of, Some of the wives in our band, some of the, they're, they're like, they're getting in their mid-40s and they're becoming yoga Teachers and stuff. And it's a beautiful thing to watch.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But men like. Because there's archetypes, like it's either dry, quick drain, you play golf and rot.

[Tim McTague]

Or you become Elon Musk or die trying, or you go back to work.

[Chris Williamson]

You do the permanent munch.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Those are, those are, those are the three options, you know, And I, I think what helps me is having anything that can take me out of thinking of me is a good thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. That was.

[Tim McTague]

And I think having kids and having. Knowing that I'm gonna be a grandfather one day, like they're. My path has already been laid out and so it's. I don't know how I'm gonna get there. And I hope I'm valuable and can contribute when that time comes. I'd love to be the grandpa that's fit enough to be able to throw the football with his grandkids.

[Chris Williamson]

Think about this. I know that you both have got challenges to do with fuck. Like, you know, we, we nailed it. We made the world a better place. We gave songs that sort of brought people out of themselves. We helped them to understand bits of their life. We, we. We created collective effervescence for like millions of people across a huge, huge, huge fucking career.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

But I missed some of my kids upbringing and all the rest of it. But think about what it's going to be like when your kids have got grandkids and granddad has got the sickest stories. Like, granddad's cool. Yeah. Granddad knows the world. He can tell you about Delhi and he can tell you about Jakarta, and he can tell you about what it's like in Adelaide in the winter. And he can tell you about what it's like to go to Dublin, Ireland, and have. I've been. The Guinness fight. Let me tell you about the Guinness factory, you know.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Dude, that is a worldly patriarch in a family.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Is like. That's where like druids come from. You know what I mean? Like.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Anchor of why the. Why you're there.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Big hopeful. That's a big hopeful piece rather than being the dad who rots in the chair.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. And I mean, I think I. Yeah, it's. It's always I. We're. We're. We're breaking something. Every day we're breaking something. We just don't know what we're breaking yet, you know? And I think that's the exciting part of life is it's not color in these lines. And then beautiful picture comes out. Color in these lines. Another beautiful Picture comes out, everything's in its right place. Like there, there are things that I've probably done or will do or I'm still doing that are hurting someone somewhere. My goal is to make sure that I do less of them and recognize them as they come. And then I think by the end of it all, you just look back and go, we all did our best.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

You know, that's all you can do.

[Chris Williamson]

I think another way to look at that, the breaking things is a. An interesting and interesting way to frame it. Another way to frame it might be there's a price that you have to pay.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

In order to do things. There's a price.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Right.

[Tim McTague]

There's a barrier to entry, to be.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a cost doing business. Yes, yes, correct. There's a cost of doing business for this thing. You want to be, you want to make music that changes a portion of the world. Okay, cool.

[Tim McTague]

I have to go to a portion of the world.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a fucking price that you pay for it. Yep.

[Tim McTague]

And I think that's fine. And for me, personally, I don't know if the price necessarily is as valuable as the outcome. I don't, I don't know that those correlate. Like, if we had to start over and someone said, here's a crystal ball, you're going to start now. And if you do what you just did for the last 25 years again, by the time you're 75, you're going to be sitting down with a very old Chris Williamson and you could have the whole ride over again. I would say, no, I'm good. Like, I like the beauty of things being temporary and it's like. And the contentment of just going, yeah, we've, there's, there's two ways to look at it. We're playing the Norva again. We played the Norva in 2003, 2004, and now it's 2025. I'm still at the Norva. Or. Holy shit, the Norva sold out again. 20 years later.

[Aaron Gillespie]

The Norva is sick, by the way.

[Tim McTague]

No, yeah, I know. And yeah, for me it's always the second one. It's like 2018, whatever. These people are still coming to see us and it's. But it's all the same. And what I'm not interested in doing is trying to be that like sad 55 year old rocker who can't let it go and be a career musician. Like, that doesn't interest me. I don't. If we happen to be here in 10 years talking to you and still playing shows. I will gladly do it, man. My, I'm not intentionally sabotaging anything but I think the open handedness of just like whenever this is ready to go. I've had more than my fill. I've been beyond blessed. I've had more memories and lifetimes than I ever thought would be provided.

[Aaron Gillespie]

If it all goes away, I try to remember how blessed and fortunate we are to put like the Norva thing. I was, I was.

[Chris Williamson]

Where is Norva?

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's in Virginia Beach, Virginia, isn't it?

[Tim McTague]

Norfolk.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Norfolk, yes. My, my ex father in law. I, I've been blessed enough to, to co parent my first child with my ex wife and I'm still close with her family. I was there just there this weekend and, and they live on the other side of the country. My ex father in law who I'm close with, he's, he's dying of emphysema. He's in his 70s and he smoked cigarettes for like 50 some odd years and he carries around an oxygen tank and these guys all know this but he's like, he's an amazing guitar player and he played in bands all growing up. That's what he did. Bar bands, you know, like gigging. And he never, he never made it. He was never in anything that blew up or sold records or was a real living. I had a conversation with him on Saturday afternoon outside at a barbecue at a family member's house. And he goes, I put it down. I did it. I stopped and I'm happy about it. And I'm like head stopped playing because can't breathe. He's like I put it down. I, I don't, I, I, I finally did it. Because when you saw him a few months ago, he was still lugging gear to venues in 70 with a, with a oxygen tank.

[Tim McTague]

I mean yeah, but holy.

[Aaron Gillespie]

But what was beautiful, it was it I got emotional about it because he's like I did it.

[Tim McTague]

Closure.

[Aaron Gillespie]

He's like my time is over gracefully. And you know what he said? And I thought I like I literally when he started the conversation I was like oh, he's gonna be like I never made it. None of this ever amount. And he literally was like it was so fun and I'm so glad I got to do it and it me up because I was like we're over here bitching about the Norva, you know, or whatever.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Tim McTague]

And a theoretical moment. By the way, I love you Norva.

[Aaron Gillespie]

We all love the Norma. But he, he never played for more than four or five hundred people ever.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you find it difficult? It seems like Tim's got a very balanced, that open handed, impermanence sort of approach to things. But I get the sense that you're a little bit more conflicted. Not necessarily about that precisely, but generally, what does this mean? Sense of purpose? Where's it coming from? Given that you've got someone who is kind of like a purist in no one else in the fucking recording studio. But also with regards to this, that's kind of a little bit like being with the. The LeBron James of impermanence a bit. You've got this like. But, you know, this Buddhist guy sat next to you and that's your first tattoo in one, in one form. Is that like, maybe I should be like that? Maybe it'd be easier if I could let go. Does that cause.

[Aaron Gillespie]

A little more so when I was younger because like I told you an hour ago, this motherfucker's been bent like that since the beginning. Like, been like this since 2003. 2003, when? 2004, when it was like I grew up in a trailer on food stamps. 2004, someone. We literally started making like real money, like buying house money. And he is over here, like, well, you know, if. Like whatever. Anyway, there's been times where, to answer your question more directly, I've wished I was like that. And there's been times where I've gone, he's a idiot. He doesn't know what he's. He doesn't know what he's got. And he's squandering it with his psyche. Like, and it's. And then now where we're at. Now at where we're both 42 years old. And where we're at now is I look at him and I go, that's a beautiful thing. And I'm glad that he's able to do it. I'm glad that he can hold everything with a greased hand, you know? And I, I hold on a little tighter. And I think the reasons I hold on tighter are irrelevant. But I. Maybe they are relevant. But like, it. It's just an acceptance that I. You have. If you don't. It's like being. Like you said earlier, it's like being married to four other people and if you don't accept some of their quirks, you're really on the brakes, you're in trouble. You know what I mean? Like your relation. This doesn't work. And it's a constant. Marriage is hard. It's work. It's beautiful.

[Chris Williamson]

Work.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It's one of the most beautiful works you can do, in my opinion. But it is labor. It is a labor that you do. You. You get up every day. And as cliche as it sounds, you choose to love that person, and you choose to love the things about them that you don't agree with, number one, and that you can't see eye to eye with in any FaceTime. And that's just what it is. And there's things about the greased hands thing, the open hands thing, that I'm like, do you even care about what you're doing? And then I'll. You circle back around and go, I get it. And. And some. Some days I wish. I. I wish.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, I think. I mean, that that's a. A. A rational question. But to your point, even earlier about, you know, you pop in and get all the ideas out, and then I'm the one stuck for three days, like, brooding. It's like I. I think I earned the right.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yes.

[Tim McTague]

To qualify that statement with the fact that I am, if not the one of the hardest working people in the band.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, you're the finisher.

[Tim McTague]

For someone who, quote, unquote, can easily get painted is like, oh, he doesn't care. He's squandering it. Like, why am I working so hard? And it's because this has meaning, yet it does not define me. And that's a difference.

[Chris Williamson]

You've got a really beautiful mindset when it comes to that. It's very impressive. You know, as a fellow obsessive, it's. It's difficult to find that level of equanimity. Right. To be able to deploy everything, but to have it come from a place of just. I want this to be really good as opposed to if I don't. This defines me, and it is indicative of my self worth. And if I can't make this fucking melody, this track, this fucking fill, this whatever, this part, this vocal, if I can't make this a success as beautiful as whatever it might be. Yeah, then I am. Then it means this about me then. And I'm gonna be. I have me homeless and alone and under a bridge with a gluten intolerant. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, all of these things are gonna happen.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. I learned about this thing the other day that was. That was pretty interesting. Hedging your identity. So the healthiest and happiest people in the world apparently have multiple different places that they take their sense of self worth from. And yours might be musician, father, husband, friend, bandmate, Leader, confidant, you know what I mean? All of these different things. If someone else might be a Brazilian jiu jitsu grappler, but also they're a salesperson, also they're a pool player. Also they're a pool, you know, whatever the fuck.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And I think I was thinking about this literally on the way in. I wrote a huge message on the way in about this, that the price that you need to pay to be the best in the world is to probably sacrifice absolutely everything else in order to be able to. To get there. Now, this is the best in the world under a very, very narrow domain. Yeah, right. It's a very narrow window, which is you will perform in your chosen pursuit to the best of your ability. And the reason that you have to sacrifice all of these other things is that if you don't, you will be beaten by a person who's prepared to sacrifice all of those other things.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Like, make no mistake, if none of you guys had got married, none of you guys had ever decided to have kids, done all the rest of this stuff, I mean, who's to say that it hasn't informed you artistically? It's kind of the weird leverage thing, how art works, that sometimes stuff which is suboptimal actually ends up giving you a step change in terms of both sides. But let's say that it's something a little bit more linear, like football. Right. Or powerlifting or some shit like that. I always use this example, but Eddie hall, world's strongest man, 2018, 19, British guy, he's stood there on the winner's podium and he's got this trophy and he's throwing it in the air and he's saying, nana, this is for you. His grandma died, like, not long ago. Nana, this is for you. Tears streaming down his face. And he does this interview afterwards and he says, if I hadn't won, I would be dead. Divorced, with no relationship to my daughter because he was 6 foot 2, 200, and like fucking like £400. £400 plus pounds. He was on so many performance enhancing drugs, his blood pressure was through the roof. All of these different things. Spending all of his time training and being obsessive. So his wife and his marriage fucking falling apart. Wasn't seeing his daughter at all because he spent all his time in the gym obsessing over winning this thing. And you go, okay, that's the price to be Eddie Hall.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you want to be Eddie Hall? Do you want to be Eddie Hall? Because that's the fudgeing price that you need to pay in order to be that. Right. And this is where, this is kind of the lesson that I keep drilling into myself. It's largely like this whole body of work for me has been like a thinly veiled autobiography. And like what I'm trying to drill into myself is, okay, what is the metric of success? Like what, what is it that you consider to be successful? Because if it's the most plays, the most money, the most followers, the most whatever on the show, being known or validated or liked by the most people, that's going to pervert your direction and it's going to cause you to like, you can end up, if you do that, you can end up at a place in life not only that you don't want to be, but one that you literally didn't even mean to get to. Yeah. And you can turn around and go, holy fuck. Like I got to the top of this huge mountain. I was supposed to be on that meadow over the far side.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Supposed to be down there. And you're trying to shortcut that. But. And here's the question that has kind of been in the back of my mind for all this conversation. I wonder how much. And it speaks to your ex father, ex father in law's point, which is what you thought he was going to say too, which is this unrequited, unfulfilled level of success. I wonder how easy it is for, or how much easier it is for you guys to be able to talk about, you know, like the ease, the open handedness, all the rest of it. Because you like thoroughly chasing safety in many ways created a sound that 20 years later is now the ascendant or partly an ascendant sound that's coming back around, right? That is like how, how much did it shape the next fucking however many decades of rock in lots of different ways. And to be able to. We've played like, is there a fucking country on the planet that's not at war that you guys haven't played in? Probably not. Like, you know, every single place of every single show of every single tour of every single. Everyone, anybody that's in the rock industry knows the name of that. It's okay. So it's all well and good going, you know, Like I just, I'm open handed with it, man. And like it's easy. But the real rubber meets the road when you go. You never played to more than 400 people in your entire career and you were never recognized and you never got a record label deal.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And I Think that. That again, this is an unteachable lesson being said by people who have got to some form of success within their industry to be able to tell people further down, hey, man, you can chase it, but I'm telling you, your problems are still going to be your problems when you get to the top. And they're going to say, fuck you. Watch me dance through this minefield.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, it didn't work for all of you.

[Chris Williamson]

Watch me do it.

[Tim McTague]

I'll be different. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I mean, that's all. That's all life is, is us looking at celebrities overdosing and all these people and rock stars never being good dads or good moms or good partners and cheating and. I mean, even Dave Grohl, that came out.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, like. Like, what a hero fallen from the.

[Tim McTague]

Top and literally, like. And that's kind of felt impossible.

[Chris Williamson]

That's kind of broke people.

[Tim McTague]

That's my thing, though, is like, why are we making these people our heroes? It's. This is not new. Like. And I don't know, like, it's just a weird thing to be. Like. I look up to musicians that inspire me musically. You know, Run the Jewels is one of my favorite bands or groups. And, like, I listen to a lot of hip hop and then a lot of, like, weird stuff that. That is, you know, down here.

[Chris Williamson]

Direct.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah. Well, there's a band like, Howdy H O V D Y. You've probably never heard of them. I think they're from here. They're in Nashville now. I love them. They're great Porsches like that. And, like, they're not my heroes. They inspire me. But, like, to put someone in, especially for musicians, to have someone that you idolize, that is just doing what you're doing at a 10x scale and not recognizing that it's just 10 times more.

[Chris Williamson]

Fucked up than the bigger pay to get that.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, it's just like, you don't want to be that guy, and if you could be that guy, you'd be miserable. And I think every. I think the universe, if there is a God or an energy or a spirit, it's trying to tell all of us who all of the time, go grab a cigar with your friend and don't break nothing and stop trying to be Elon Musk. There's nothing logically in my brain or heart which is more important or my spirit, whatever you call that, that says the opposite. There's just nothing. And it just. It kind of just ends there. I mean, three and a half Hours later, you can end it on like, this poetic, like, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, like, if you can synthesize all of it down, like, that's what it is. I don't want to be in Nashville writing more songs for more people. I don't want that. You know, I don't want to be more famous than I am. I love going to Target with my kids and just being a guy nobody knows, you know? Like, it's not about climbing the ladder. Next, next, next, next, next. And I'm not saying he is either. I'm just saying I'm just naturally wired to just be like, man, the simple, the peaceful. You know, we used to take fishing poles out. Like, we would just get out of the concrete jungle and just go to any lake and just fish, pack some beers. Let's get out of here. Like, the nature, the mountains, the cabin, like, everything that we are doing, even collectively, I might be maybe trying to forcefully do that. And some people are like, I guess we'll go to the mountains. But, man, like, when you're there, it's like, different.

[Chris Williamson]

It's.

[Tim McTague]

Than being in la.

[Chris Williamson]

It's the beauty of enough, right?

[Tim McTague]

Oh, beauty of enough contentment. That should be a whole other podcast, even.

[Aaron Gillespie]

I. You know, I was listening to a podcast the other day. I think we listen to the same one with Bono, and Bono's polarizing for a lot of people, you know, Like.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know much about him.

[Aaron Gillespie]

For music people, he's polarizing because.

[Tim McTague]

Are you. Are you serious?

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know much. I mean, I know he's like. I know his music.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Oh, okay.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know much about.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. I've never read an interview with polarizing.

[Aaron Gillespie]

For a lot of people because a lot of people hate modern YouTube. But something that was really in. In he's player.

[Tim McTague]

Old stuff. Just like.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Yeah, he's been involved in a lot of causes, you know, but with enough being enough. Like, something that really got me that he. That he said was he. And he seems to have this huge ego with the glasses and he's mono and he says our band, like, we started this conversation. I thought it was so cool. He says our band is a democracy. And he's like, that's one of my biggest pride things that I have about what we do. You know what I mean? And for me, like, the fishing, the, The. The. The cabin, the. The contentment. Like, like, if you put something on under Oath gravestone, for me, it will be that we did our own shit, our own Way democratically. Even when it was impossible, even when it seemed impossible for us to do it in a democratic way, and even sometimes at our demise. Like, if we would have made Chasing Safety part two, would. Would I be richer? Probably. But I'm glad that we did.

[Tim McTague]

Would you be happier?

[Aaron Gillespie]

That's. That's exactly it. And Bono, I think Bono in the vibe I got is. I think he's happy because those other three guys in his band and him agree and they fight to do it like we do. But they can say, yeah, this song should be this way or whatever. This.

[Chris Williamson]

Ultimately you're gonna know, right. At the end of the day, maybe there's a certain level, very low level of self reflection where people are able to kind of continue to masquerade as a thing while being a different thing in private.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And continue to do things ostensibly out front for one cause, whilst secretly believing something different or wanting something different privately. But ultimately, I think you're gonna know. You're gonna know whether or not you fooled yourself. You're gonna know whether or not you lied about this thing. And that's cool. Like you can look back on a string of miserable successes or inauthentic successes. Right. That were crafted in a manner that kind of fugazi'd people into believing that it was you. Yeah. And you know, again, you unpack that.

[Tim McTague]

A lot though, right? Because you have like imposter syndrome. I hear that come up a lot. Like just, are you wise? Are you this driven? Are you fit? Because, you know, people like, where's it coming from? Yeah, yeah, but, but I think. I think at scale over time, you will be found out.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, Naval's got this wonderful line. He says you don't need karma to deliver spiritual justice. All that karma is is people repeating their patterns, virtues and flaws until they finally get what they deserve. If you roll the dice enough times.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Eventually you'll be the same.

[Chris Williamson]

The thing. The thing that is coming for you will come for you.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And sure, some people. Some people can dance through the minefield and not kick it. Right. But there are people in your industry. There are people in my industry. There are people in my old industry. Yeah. That I know. I'm like, hey, man, like, I get it. You might be making it work, but you're a piece of shit.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Or you're self deceptive, or you're obfuscatory, or you're. You're unfair or whatever. Right. You're mean. You're mean. You're a mean person. And sure, maybe you're Hot now, maybe you'll be hot forever, but like, unless you have a fucking half inch deep level of self reflection at some point, it's going to come back around. Yeah, it's going to come back around in your fucking nervous system. It's going to come back around in an existential crisis. Or you're going to roll the dice one too many times and Snake Eyes is going to come up and your wife's going to catch you fucking cheating. Or your bandmates are going to realize that you've actually been doing this thing all along. You've been like, you've been fucking skimming transaction fees off the top of every bit of merch that we've done for the last fucking however long. Like whatever it is that you do.

[Tim McTague]

Yep.

[Chris Williamson]

You'll repeat your patterns. And I think the goal is. It's what Dwayne says. He's like, I like me, I buy me a beer.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And you're like, you want to be a person that you can buy a beer?

[Aaron Gillespie]

Triple D, baby.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Boys, this has been unbelievable. We've done three hours.

[Tim McTague]

Hell, yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

It was an honor to do it, man.

[Tim McTague]

Yeah.

[Aaron Gillespie]

Thank you.

[Tim McTague]

Thank you for real.

[Chris Williamson]

Appreciate it.

[Tim McTague]

Sick.

[Chris Williamson]

Appreciate it very much. Well, let's go and eat some steak.

[Tim McTague]

Let us go.

[Chris Williamson]

When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books. The most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting, but there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found. And you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time around great books that aren't going to completely kill your memory and your attention just trying to get through a single page. Go to chriswillx.combooks to get my list completely free of 100 books you should read before you die. That's chriswillx.combooks.