When Tim Hause put out his debut album, TIM, a couple of years ago on Blood Harmony Records, the label that he shares with his older brother Dave, it served as a bit of a watershed moment in the careers of both Hause brothers. While the album was written largely as a collaborative effort, Dave was largely not present for the sessions, as Tim recorded it with Will Hoge in Nashville. As Tim explained it when we caught up last week, “(Dave) wasn’t there for the first one because I felt like I had to sort of like earn my stripes on my own or whatever. And it was kind of a bummer, but I’m glad that we did it that way now.“

When it was time to record TIM‘s follow-up, the younger Hause brought big brother back into not only the writing but the production and recording folds as well. “Dave sort of was like a co-producer on this one,” Tim states. “It was awesome to have him involved.” Going into round two, Hause knew he wanted to make a higher-octane record than he did for his debut record. The brothers Hause returned to Nashville to work with their “Southern cousin” Will Hoge again, as they had on TIM as well as on Dave’s Blood Harmony and Drive It Like It’s Stolen. Hoge’s sonic bread-and-butter might be more traditional Nashville-style Americana, but at his heart, he’s still a rock and roller, meaning he had just the right ideas on how to approach Hause’s souped-up sophomore effort. “I said to Will ‘I want to turn the gain up. I want it to be a rock and roll,” Hause explains, citing touchstones like Green Day and Jimmy Eay World and Weezer’s Blue Album as the sonic divining rods he wanted to employ. “Will was like “I know just what to do!” So, it turns out, did the elder Hause brother.

“We made the record in Nashville,” he explains, “but it wasn’t the kind of usual suspects that played on it.” Independent from one another, Dave and Will, it turns out, both had the same drummer in mind to serve as the backbone to the musical structure they were building: none other than Atom Willard. Willard has long been known as the heavy hitter behind such bands as Rocket From The Crypt and Against Me! and, more recently, Alkaline Trio, a band that happens to be one of both Hause brothers’ lifelong favorites. “Atom has this energy in the room with anyone,” Hause reports, adding that it “doesn’t matter how high the stature of the session player is. When he’s in the room and you’re playing guitar with him, you are fired up. All the guys light up when they hear those drums.” Chief among those other guys in the room was another familiar face from the annals of recent punk rock history, Willard’s Alkaline Trio rhythm section comrade Dan Andriano. Daunting as it might have been to have two-thirds of one of your favorite bands in the studio giving life to the songs you created, Tim insists that the familiarity he’d already had with Andriano especially helped that dissipate. Not only has Andriano been one of Dave Hause’s good buddies and occasional bandmates (see: The Falcon) over the years, Tim’s been in that circle for a time as well. “We did a tour with Dan (a few years ago,” he explains. “I played keys with him, sang with him and played some guitar, and so over the years, (we’ve spent) a good amount of time together and have a friendship.”

Rounding out record two’s sound are the two-headed guitar attack of Nathan Keeterle and Kyle Cook. The former is a Tennessee-based guitar wunderkind who, despite still being in his twenties, has played on records by the likes of Darius Rucker and Chris Shiflett and Jelly Roll, which I’m told is a big deal. The latter is, well, he’s from Matchbox Twenty, a band that certainly knows a thing or two about guitar-oriented rock. Hause went into the project with a profound confidence in the material he’d written, a necessary part of the process always, but especially when you’re going in the studio with such a group of heavy hitters. “I gave them a lot of runway because I had a tremendous amount of trust in the whole system,” he says. “It all came out so much better than even I really anticipated.”

The fruits of their collective labors will be borne this Friday – Valentine’s Day – in the form of Pre-Existing Conditions, the junior Hause’s sophomore record that consists of ten tracks that are raw, honest, compelling…and very much rock-and-roll. Much as the senior Hause’s sophomore record Devour did to his stellar debut record Resolutions a dozen years ago, Pre-Existing Conditions raises and resets the bar that TIM initially set two years ago. Yes, I’m positively comparing Pre-Existing Conditions to Devour, and if you know me well, that’s about the highest of praise I can give a record.

But I digress. Pre-Existing Conditions starts with “Here In The Bluelight,” “Make It Take It” and “No Call No Show,” a trio of songs that find Hause turning his songwriting mirror inwards, focusing his pen on some of the fears, doubts and insecurities he’s built up over the years and how they manifest themselves in daily life. Then comes “Tyrannosaurus Rx,” a song that starts to delve more into the struggle of the pre-existing conditions that give the album its title and central theme, albeit in somewhat of a playful fashion. At its core, the song is about the push-and-pull relationship that many people have with their care providers, particularly those in the mental health treatment world.

“When I play the song live,” Hause explains, “I usually say “oh it’s about, it’s about a crappy psychiatrist. My psychiatrist is great, but this is about a crappy one who all he wants to do is (up your meds) and that’s really not how mine is!” Still, it reflects the internal struggle that many folks have when hearing even the best of practitioners advise you to increase the amount of medication you’re taking for fear of feeling, well, for fear of feeling “crazy.” Hause explains rather candidly that he was diagnosed with Bipolar II disorder close to a decade ago after a hospital stay that was the inspiration for Pre-Existing Condition‘s cover art. “I was in a really bad way,” he states, adding “I just kind of lost my mind. I was hallucinating, and I didn’t sleep for days and days.” Hause credits his devoted family and tight circle of friends for closing ranks and helping him get the help that he needed. Although, in what seems to be typical Hausian fashion, there’s a bit of dark humor behind his condition. He explains: “It’s funny because in health class, when we did the mental health unit…I had a particular aversion to (bipolar disorder). I thought that that would be like hell…and fast forward all those years later, it turned out it was!“

That dark humor has helped Hause through what seems to be an extraordinary number of catastrophic deaths and losses in his three decades on the planet, starting with his mother when he was only eleven years old, a time that was chronicled on the soul-crushingly heavy TIM track “4000 Days.” The grim reaper shows his ugly, hooded head again on Pre-Existing Conditions on songs like “Summerkiss,” which could be interpreted as being about the loss of a relationship or the loss of a family friend. Though it was admittedly inspired by the latter, “I had the self-consciousness about making (another) song about death,” he tells, “so I thought maybe I can tie in like a summer love as well and have it be sort of ambiguous.”

Then there’s the semi-tongue-in-cheek “Fear Ate My Faith,” a personal favorite, that deals head-on with not only feeling like a harbinger of death, but with the cold reality that being the youngest child in a family of five presents the very real likelihood that one day, he’ll be the only one left. “I sent that to my family and was like ‘Hey, I’m going to kind of joke about you guys dying before me. I just don’t want you to be surprised about it‘,” he laughs. “They’ve called me an emotional assassin at times, so I know that I have to kind of prep people for that.“

Which brings us, of course, we have album-closer “Catacomb (Only In Dreams)” – a track that tells the story of the loss of Tim’s lifelong best buddy Shane. If you’ll recall from our chat a couple of years ago, Shane’s house essentially became Tim’s second home after his mom passed away twenty years ago, a place he’d go to hang out and find a home-cooked meal while his dad worked to find normalcy after the loss of the family’s emotional epicenter. Fast-forward a decade, and Shane’s life met a tragic end when he accidentally drowned in Philadelphia’s Schuylkill River after a night of traditional Thanksgiving Eve revelry. Shane would essentially vanish without an initial trace, leaving Shane’s mom to reach out to Tim right as he was sitting down to celebrate the holiday with his family. “I was just sitting down to my Thanksgiving dinner. And I got a text from her saying, ‘Hey, have you seen Shane? Did he crash at your place last night?’ And my heart just sank,” he explains. “I think that some of the losses that I’d been through, especially my mom, have kind of colored my perspective on life. And I kind of just knew that something was terribly wrong. If he wasn’t at Thanksgiving dinner, it’s like, “oh, shit, something is going sideways.”

It would take more than five weeks for authorities to recover Shane’s body from the icy December waters of the Schuylkill. It would take incalculably longer to process Shane’s death in a productive way. One such start was helping with the Philly-based A Piece Of Shane Foundation, a charity geared toward raising money for artists in need. “For instance, there’s a school whose music program had a fire and all their music equipment got burned up,” he explains, “so we gave them a grant.” (Shane’s mom is the president of the charity; Tim sits on the board.)

Another way was through the “Catacomb” track that brings the album to a close. It’s a bit of an on-the-nose retelling of Tim’s way of receiving the news that Shane was missing, the horror story their lives became during the month-plus-long search for him, and picking up the pieces once he was laid to rest. The track was recorded live in the studio with Hoge at the helm, prior to Hause explaining the song’s background to the performers. After tracking, one-by-one, the players returned from the studio room to the control room. “Atom sat down next to me and was like ‘Wow, that is some potent song,'” he reports. “I told him the story and he said ‘Oh my God!…I’m going to go back in, I want one more take.” That second take and all of its immense weight and goosebump-inducing gravity is the one you hear on the record. “That was just such an amazing example of there being some type of magic pixie dust in the air.“

To mark the release of Pre-Existing Conditions, Tim has put together a rock and roll band that’ll play a few celebratory dates in the Northeast this week: Malden MA on Thursday, Brooklyn on Friday, Philly on Saturday and Asbury Park on Sunday. It’s different than the band you hear on the album: Luke Preston (who plays bass in Dave Hause and the Mermaid) handles lead guitar, Nick Jorgensen from Mercy Union plays bass, while drumming duties are handled by Francis Valentino, who has most notably played for – checks notes – David Lee Roth. The band will also appear in full form at this year’s Sing Us Home Festival, the third installment of the weekend-long concert series the Hause brothers throw in their hometown of Philadelphia. This year, in addition to appearances from both Hause’s, headliners include the likes of Frank Turner and the almighty Bouncing Souls, a full circle moment for Tim Hause, as his first appearance on a record is the version of “Manthem” on the Souls 2005 live double album. There’ll undoubtedly be more solo shows and duo shows with Dave, but given the nature of the album itself, if you live in or around one of those areas, you deserve it to hear the songs celebrated in full, amped-up fashion. Until then, fire up Pre-Existing Conditions (if you ordered it from the Hauses themselves, you’ve certainly already got your copy), and check out our full and incredibly honest and in-depth interview below.

(*NOTE: The interview below has been edited and condensed for content and clarity. Yes, really.*)

Dying Scene (Jay Stone): So congrats on the record. Congrats on Pre-Existing Conditions. I really, really like this record. I mean, I really liked Tim a lot obviously…but I really, really like this record. I have been listening to it kind of just on repeat. 

Tim Hause: Awesome. Yeah, I’m really proud of it. It seems like a jump for me. It feels like a level-up. And not to take anything away from record one. Everybody’s got to make a record one, and I’m proud of the way that one happened. But just pretty much every facet of how this one was done, I’m just really proud of and really pumped for everybody to be able to hear it in its entirety.

I was going to say that it felt like a level-up, but then I almost wondered…I was like, “wait, is that sort of a backhanded compliment?” I don’t really know. Because the first record is great. But yeah, it seems like everything just sounds better. 

Yeah, yeah. No, it doesn’t (seem like a backhanded compliment). I don’t take it that way. I always think that in life, if you’re not trying to level up, then you’re probably backsliding, which I’ve certainly been guilty of in various realms of life. But I mean, in terms of career, you hope that you’re always, you know, moving forward and improving and getting better and honing the craft. But yeah, what an experience. It was great. We made the record in Nashville, but it wasn’t the kind of usual suspects that played on it. There was there was a dose of that. There was this guy, Nathan Keeterle who I think the secret is sort of out around town, but I think he’s twenty-eight or twenty-nine. 

Really? 

I mean, we had Tom Bukovac play on a couple of records, and he’s kind of like known as “the guy” in Nashville. You know, I think he played with like Willie Nelson. He only really does shows of that caliber at this point because he’s so busy with his YouTube channel, which he calls himself Uncle Larry. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that.

Yeah, yeah! 

And then he does really high-profile live gigs. And to be quite honest, I think Tom is in kind of a league of his own. But Nathan…Nathan might be in that league or he’s knocking on the door. I mean, he’s amazing.

I heard someone else refer to him almost in those exact words. It was Chris Shifflett, I think, because I think he played on one of Shiflett’s sort of country or sort of Americana albums. And I didn’t realize the kid was only like twenty-seven or twenty-eight. That’s wild. 

He played on a Shifflett record? 

He played on like a Jelly Roll record or something like that, too. 

Yeah, yeah.

He played on I think it was the most recent Shifflett record (Lost At Sea) because he’s kind of gone the Americana way recently. I heard Shifflett, I think, in some press article say something about that he didn’t really play guitar much himself on the record because Nathan and I think there was somebody else that played with him too (*editor’s note: the other person was Tom Bukovac. Duh.*)  Like they were just so good. And I think Nathan was playing slide as well, especially and like they were just hitting home run after home run that Shifflett – for a guitar guy to be like, yeah, “I don’t really need to play here.” It’s pretty awesome. 

It’s amazing. I mean, he is unbelievable. And I guess, well, that shows how little I know about the music industry, that I don’t even realize that the secret has been out. I know it’s some big gigs, but yeah, the Jelly Roll thing is that’s a huge, huge deal. And yeah, I mean, he’s just amazing. He’s like …he’s like a Martian being here to play guitar. (*both laugh*) 

Is he from Nashville? Do you know? Or does he just do the thing? 

Yeah, I think he’s maybe not from Nashville, but he’s from Tennessee. Maybe like a suburb or something like that. I mean, he’s just unbelievable. Amazing guy. And it was cool because, you know, it’s the same kind of effect that I went into this with. I said to Will: “I want to turn the gain up. I want it to be rock and roll.” I gave him touchstones like Jimmy Eat World or Green Day or Weezer. Like, Weezer’s Blue Album is a really meaningful record to me. And those were kind of like the sonic fields that I wanted to be kind of foraging in. And he was like, “I know just what to do.” And, you know, Dave sort of was like a co-producer on this one. He wasn’t there for the first one because I felt like I had to sort of like earn my stripes on my own or whatever. And it was kind of a bummer, but I’m glad that we did it that way now. And then it was awesome to have him involved. And they both cast Atom Willard as the drummer without knowing that the other one had cast him as the drummer. 

Oh that’s funny!

Yeah. So that was really cool. And then and Dan (Andriano). So to have like two-thirds of Alkaline Trio, which is just one of my all-time favorite bands, to be playing on it, that was really special. And Atom has this energy in the room with anyone. It doesn’t matter how high, you know, the stature is of the session player. Like when he’s in the room and you’re playing guitar in the room with him, you are fired up. You are pumped. And it’s just like there’s an infectious sort of thing that goes around in that room. And you could see it, see all the guys light up when they hear those drums. Yeah, it was great. 

And he plays so heavy. It’s like you have to be sort of sucked into it. It’s going to raise…you talk about raise the gain on the record, but it’s going to like raise the level of everybody because you have to like keep up with him. 

Yeah, yeah! But you know what’s wild is that it’s so loud, but it’s not overloading any of the microphones or anything, which is why because like the power is there, but it’s not so much attack that like the recording itself, like the engineering part of it struggles.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

It’s amazing.

Is that sort of a pinch-me moment? Because we’ve talked before about Alkaline Trio being like one of those signpost bands for you, at least in punk rock. Is that sort of a pinch-me moment to have two-thirds of them in the studio playing your songs?

Yes, I’d say yes and no. I mean, yes, because yes more of like the reflection and looking back, but no, because I went in really confident with the songs. And, you know, we did a tour with Dan and I played with Dan. I played keys with him, sang with him and played some guitar. And so over the years, just spending a good amount of time together and, you know, having a friendship has kind of like not totally made that that feeling dissipate, but it’s kind of just become normal in a way. But in the reflection, it’s definitely been like, “wow!” for sure, the pinch-me thing is there.

And that’s before even mentioning Kyle Cook from Matchbox 20? Like of all random things that have come up. 

I mean, Kyle is fantastic. And that was so cool because, you know, sometimes these like guitar players can be snooty about their boutique pedals. 

Oh, yeah. 

And Kyle came in and like every pedal on his board was like a Boss pedal and he made them sound amazing. Like some people, some guitarists will kind of thumb their nose at those (sorts of pedals) and like they’ll kind of be uppity about it. And he just came in with those and he crushed it. I mean, there’s some of this stuff. I had a couple people tell me that one song in particular, “A Wake,” was one of their favorite vibes, like guitar vibes that they’ve heard.

Absolutely. Yeah, that’s on my list. 

Yeah, and that was like all him. I kind of directed him a little bit because I kind of like I wanted to have some certain thematic things that were references to the person that it’s about. And once I said those things, he immediately knew where to take it and just was like unleashed. And it just it all kind of like fell into place really, really quickly. It was awesome.

Is what we hear close to what you had in your brain or your demo versions of these songs? Like did you give those guys a lot of runway in the studio or did you kind of like paint by numbers it? 

Yeah, these came out in my mind, the way that I envisioned them. They actually came out better than I envisioned any of them, and I think that that’s a really rare, rare thing. Like, however many records I’ve made now, is it like nine or 10 or something? I’m in that area. I’m almost at double digits. Maybe I’m at nine. And like, it just is not an easy thing. You have something in your head; you have a picture of what you want the song to be. And, you know, a lot of times it changes. A lot of times, like, it’s scary to put a demo down because you realize what the song isn’t. You have these ideas for what it could be, and it just misses the mark. And, you know, you hear it back, and you’re like, “oh, shit…Now I’ll do it again. And now I’ll do it again.” You’re just slowly rolling the boulder uphill. And with this one, I just gave them a lot of runway because I had a tremendous amount of trust in the whole team. And then it just all came out so much better than I really anticipated. And really, that’s true of every facet of the record, the way that the cover came together. It was just so cool. I’m so happy with it and so pumped.

Yeah, there are a bunch of songs I wanted to talk about. As I go through the list, I tend to make notes and then I’m like, “man, I feel like I want to talk about all of these songs!” Because there’s so many cool things and cool little notes, cool little like that echoey sort of vocal and guitar sound on “A Wake” is like unexpected. It’s really fun. “Fear Ate My Faith” is such a cool song. “Catacomb”, like that song kicks me in the stomach every time I hear it. 

Yeah, that one, there’s a really cool story with that one. I don’t know how much I’ve spoken to you about this, but in 2014, the day before Thanksgiving, I just turned 21. And you know, everybody comes back home from college or whatever. And my best friend growing up, he lived across the street from me. So when my mom died – I was 11 when she died – and you know, my dad was kind of reeling. (The Hause) parents had more of the old school, like gender role thing going on. They both worked, my dad was a breadwinner and like my mom kind of handled everything else. She was like sort of the liaison between him and us in a way and like really the emotional epicenter of the family. And then when she died, (my best friend Shane’s) house would be where I would go to get like a home-cooked meal. And I still have a really wonderful and special relationship with his mom. She’s the president of a board that we’re on together. It’s called A Piece of Shane Foundation. They were at Sing Us Home last year and they’ll be there again this year. We raise money and we do all these fundraisers and stuff for artists in need. Like, for instance, there’s a school whose music program had a fire at the school and all their music equipment got burned up. And so we like we gave them a grant. And so we pay like if somebody’s gear got stolen from a van, like we’d swoop in and, you know, you could either apply or someone on the board would be like “hey, this scenario happened, can we jump in and help out?”

That’s so great. That’s awesome.

But anyway, like I would go over there for like a home-cooked meal. That was like sort of my second family. They took wonderful care of me, like especially after my mom died. And so fast forward 10 years later. He and I were best buddies. He was home (from school) and went out for a night of drinking, as everybody does the night before Thanksgiving. It’s like the big party night. And I got a text from (his mom) on Thanksgiving. Like I was just sitting down to my Thanksgiving dinner. And I got a text from her saying, “hey, have you seen Shane? Did he crash at your place last night?” And my heart just sank. I think that some of the losses that I’d been through, especially my mom, have kind of colored my perspective on life. And I kind of just knew that something was terribly wrong. If he wasn’t at Thanksgiving dinner, it’s like, “oh, shit, something is going sideways.” And, you know, fast forward 38 days, he was missing and there was no trace of him.

I think he must have like gone to the river to take a leak or something. And it was like right around the time that the bar closed and he was not seen. And there was no footage of him for a long time. It took weeks to uncover, like there was a bit of footage where you could kind of make out that it was him moving towards the river. And it took a volunteer dive team going in and pulling him out. And that was like, you know, after 38 days or whatever it was, 36 or 38 or something. I think it was 38. After that amount of time, that’s kind of the best you could hope for because if he is still alive, he’s not going to be in good shape. He’ll be kidnapped or something. Your brain starts to do all this stuff. But it was like our lives became a horror show, you know? The stuff that you see on HBO or in the movies or something, our lives became that. We’re hanging up missing person posters all over. It was really a horrific time.

And it was weird because, you know, Scott Hutchison, I think I’ve talked to you about him, but he kind of died in a similar fashion. He took his own life but it was very triggering when that happened because there was a similar image of him moving towards the water.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember that. Yeah.

And it was so…it just harkened back immediately to the image of Shane moving towards the water, and I just couldn’t. And it was some years later, but it was like, breathtaking when I saw that image, because I’m like, “oh, my God, that’s an insane parallel to my friend.” And so what happened with the song was, you know, we the guys were tracking it, you know, the full band take of the song in the studio. And they came back into the control room and like sort of one by one, they were like, “man, that is some song, dude. Holy shit.” And Atom, he sat down next to me. And maybe he was the last one to say it, or they kind of came in one by one and didn’t know that the other one had said the same kind of thing. And he sat down next to me and he was like, “wow, that is some potent song.” And I said, “yeah, man, I don’t I want to tell you what it’s about without trying to, you know, drag the mood down, because I know it’s kind of a downer to bring this up, but I think it’s meaningful for you to know.” And I told him the story and he said, “oh, my God!” And he just said that they thought that they had the take and he was like, “I’m going to go back in, I want another take.” And after I told him that story, he went back in with one more take. And then that was the one.” And that was just such an amazing, like, example of there being some type of magic pixie dust in the air. That he heard that, was able to like internalize it and then emote it on the drums after hearing that, was just such a special thing. I’ll never forget that five-minute sequence of events where I told him that story and then he just went back in and crushed it. It was just… it was awesome.

Actually, somewhat surprised to hear that that’s how it came together, because that sound like that song has such a powerful sound to it that it almost sounds like you recorded it all together on the floor in the studio and maybe put vocals in afterwards. But especially like that at the end.

Oh yeah, we did. That’s how it was. That’s how it did happen. They all got it. Once they heard the story, they all said “we’re taking another we’re taking another pass at it.” Which is just so cool. So, so, so cool. 

Yeah, that song gives me goosebumps. I mean, I knew the story. I remember when that happened just from me…I guess we actually knew each other back then, 12 years, 11 years ago, whatever it was. But I remember when that happened. And I think we’ve talked about it at some point along the line. And as you know, probably from when we saw you out in Shirley last year, that my wife’s mom passed away the Thanksgiving before last. So obviously that night had a lot of emotion in it, and then hearing that some and “Summer Kiss” – which is obviously about something different but the theme is the same. She texted me the other day something like “well, I’m crying on the train, thanks Tim”!

Oh, that’s awesome. 

Like in a good way, right? 

Yeah, yeah. That one is sort of like, I think that every now and then, you know, there’s been so many deaths in my life. And I think that every now and then I’ll go to write, and that’s kind of a natural lean. And I’ll get self-conscious about it, because I’m like, I don’t want to just be the death guy. Like, I don’t want to only write songs about this, but it is. So with that one in mind, our friend Lindsay Summer, who passed in November as well, in a freak kind of capacity, a couple years back. Dave had to leave a tour. 

Yeah, when you were here.

Yeah, it was that time. So like last time when you when you guys came to see us, that was sort of like an exorcism of sorts for me, because it was like a gauntlet the time before to get through emotionally. Without my brother, my heart was kind of elsewhere. So that was really meaningful to come back to Shirley and come back with him and having grown since then and whatever. But yeah, this past September was 20 years since my mom died. And then this past November was 10 years since Shane went missing. And so that was that was intensely on my mind this November. And then, you know, obviously, like the Lindsay thing always comes up. But, you know, “Summerkiss” is a song I’m really proud of. I think I had the self-consciousness about making a song about death. So I thought maybe I can tie in like a summer love as well and have it be sort of ambiguous. Is it about death?

It seems like there’s a double meaning there, yeah. 

Yeah, and sometimes you have that kind of grandiose, you have a grandiose kind of goal in mind for a song and you wonder like, OK, can I actually pull this off and serve both masters? Make it so I’m landing the plane on both of these metaphors? And it doesn’t always happen. And when it does, it’s a really good feeling. And for that song, I’m really proud of it because I think I think I was able to do that. 

You even sort of joke about the and maybe joke is the wrong word, but on “Fear Ate My Faith,” you make reference to being the “kid who walks through the valley of the shadow of death.” You sort of – tongue in cheek, maybe – but refer to yourself sort of that way. And we have talked about that before. So hearing that line initially, I was like, “oh, I know exactly what he’s going for here.”

Yeah, there were a couple songs that I had to send around and give trigger warnings to people, and that was one of them.

Yeah I can imagine.

I sent that to family, and I was like, “hey, I’m going to kind of joke about like you guys dying before me. I just don’t want you to be surprised about it.” I said, “it’s kind of a joke. It’s kind of tongue in cheek and also kind of not.”

And you’re also the youngest of five. So, I mean, natural progression of things. That’s what happens.

Yeah, right. In their minds, that’s how they hope it goes, too. So I’m not really talking out of school, but I was like “I just wanted to let you know that.” They all kind of laughed about it. They’ve called me an emotional assassin at times.  So I know that I have to kind of prep people for that. And that’s how I was with the song about Shane. I sent it to his mom and I sent her the words, had a conversation about it and just said, “hey, look, I know that this is really going to be a tough one to listen to because it’s going back to that time that was just so dark.” I knew I needed to write the song. I actually had the song before record one, and I just didn’t feel like it was time. And I’m so glad that I waited, because now it’s you know, I told you the Atom story, but also having it be around the ten-year mark, that’s a landmark anniversary. 

Did the song change at all? Where you had a couple extra years to think about it after you wrote it, did the tone change at all, or is it pretty much the way you wrote it? 

It’s pretty much the way that I wrote it. I think there’s a couple things that changed and then also I was more confident and self-assured with some of the lines I was questioning. Before, there were a couple things where I was like “can I say this? Can I sing this and can I do it convincingly?” Having the experience of making the first record and then having the experience of going out and playing all those songs live, it’s a very vulnerable job that we do. You’re kind of baring your soul to people right in front of them. Having more shows and more repetitions under my belt got me to the place where I could deliver the vocal the way that it needed to be delivered. I was really proud of that. 

You should be. There are so many feelings on this record. I know at one of the more recent shows, I said to either my wife or maybe my daughter, that watching you play the last couple of times by yourself, your vocals have sort of gone to a different gear I think. There’s a different sort of rawness in your vocals now that gives so much meaning and depth to a lot of the songs. Songs that are already crazy deep anyway. Like, you’re not exactly writing about tiptoeing through the tulips. You really dig into a lot of the vocals I think more than on the first record. 

Yeah, for sure. That was something that was really cool, because on record one, it was kind of a vocal boot camp in a way. There were times when the engineer and Will, that duo, were really pushing me. They were like “no, it’s not right. No, it’s not right. No, it’s not right.” Over and over and over again. It was awesome in the long run. It sucked in the moment but it was awesome in the long run. That was one of the things that Will said on this record, he was like “man, you have just leveled up with the vocals on this record, that it took you a fraction of the time to do them and they were better than what you had on record one.” I think that one of the songs that he said he was most proud of me for was “A Wake.” It’s so meaningful to have a guy who you respect and look up to share that. We might be buddies and sort of like brothers in a way, but it hits different. I have full faith in Will and I really, really look up to him as a songwriter, as a guy, the way that he carries himself in life, the way he carries himself as a dad. He’s an awesome guy and someone you’d want to model your life after. When he says something like that, it does really matter to me. It’s really impactful.

He’s one of the good ones, for sure. He’s one of my all-around favorites. One of the other songs I wanted to pick your brain about is “Tyrannosaurus Rx.” Obviously there’s the image on the shirts which is great, but I’m wondering if you could talk about the imagery and the story behind that song, because it’s really interesting and honest.

I think I had a snippet in my notebook that said like “Tyrannosaurus Rex” and then I thought that, “oh if I delete the e in there then it’s like Rx. Oh, that’s kind of interesting” and then I was also having a back and forth with my psychiatrist about, you know, he kind of recommends that I go up in the dose and I’m very resistant to it, even though I’ve actually gone through with it and been better off for it. So I don’t like to throw him under the bus, but I try to go as little as I need to have a healthy and happy life. Or maybe not happy but content. I don’t know what happiness really is. I think maybe happiness is kind of fleeting or something. But anyway, this is an ongoing sort of conversation that he and I have. He’s kind of like, “well, with your condition and your metabolism and whatever, you really could go up in your dose” and I kind of always am like “no.” 

It’s the eternal struggle, right?

Yeah, which is funny, I don’t know exactly why. I think maybe there’s a little pride there or something or I don’t know what it is but I went through with it and you know, it turns out he was right. But, it’s a better song if he’s wrong! (*both laugh*)

Oh absolutely!

If I’ve got an axe to grind with him it’s better off so I usually when I play the song live, I usually say “oh it’s about, it’s about a crappy psychiatrist, my psychiatrist is great, but this is about a crappy one who all he wants to do is (up your meds) and that’s really not how mine is!” He’s really great at his job and he works with me and we have a great relationship but yeah, I just, I think I maybe I was like frustrated and thought I could write about this frustration and this kind of push-pull between us and I could couch it in this sort of like, you know, accusative way or whatever. 

Yeah, that’s that eternal struggle. I think what’s different between behavioral health – mental health- and physical health is usually like if your primary doctor tells you to go up on your Coumadin or whatever, like your blood thinners, you’re like “well okay, he knows better than me” but then when it comes to behavioral health stuff or addiction medicine, we’re always like “no, no no!” Whether it’s because of like the idea of being labeled as ‘crazy’ or whatever…I mean when you boil it down, that’s what people still think. Like, we can reduce the stigma all we want to but people still boil it down to “crazy” and you start to thinking “no, it’s fine, I can do this on my own…”

You know it’s funny because there’s always that thought of like “am I crazy?” The answer is yes but you know, so is everybody else.

(*both laugh*) Yeah, right.

I guess the caveat and I think that my philosophy on the whole thing, and mental health in this day and age is that you know we’ve just made so many advances technologically speaking and this sort of technological revolution that we’re in, we have no idea what it’s doing to our brains yet. And clearly we haven’t evolved with the rate at which we’re progressing and so I think that there’s this divide between the reality we live in and our evolutionary trajectory. I think that so much of the time so many people I know really should try being medicated. I know it doesn’t work for everybody and I know that everyone has their own journey and path with that, but I think that right now in this weird window that we’re in where we’re doing this kind of foray into AI realm, on an evolutionary level it’s so far beyond what we’re wired for, so we’re gonna have to take a long time to catch up. I don’t think we’ve we’re there yet.

Feels like the more we learn specifically about brain chemistry…I mean that’s been at least peripherally the field I’ve worked in day-job-wise for 20 years now… I feel like brain chemistry wise we’re so, like… there’s a Don Henley song with a lyric like “the more I know, the less I understand.” (*both laugh*) Like, the more we learn about sort of how the brain works we realize like “oh shit like we don’t really know how the brain works but now we don’t know all these  different things!” We unlock enough to realize that oh we’ve only kind of scratched the surface, right? And so even with medications you’re like “well what class of medications am I going to be on? Is my thing depression or is it depression masked as something else? Is it attention deficit disorder or is it anxiety or is it some combination of all of them?” And then you get to feeling like a pincushion. Like, there’s a lot of anxiety with day-to-day life in general but then add to that trying to deal with and dig into your own shit… You write about yourself pretty honestly. When you started writing songs, was that a conscious thing, that like “this is an outlet for me, I need to write about this shit.”? Because some the way that I hear your lyrics is almost … I don’t want to say journals because they don’t listen like journal entries, but there’s definitely like some processing going on in the lyrics to your songs. You’re almost like working through the issues that you’re writing about in the music, if that makes sense.

For sure, yeah. I mean, I’ll just put it right out there and be very open with it. I haven’t veiled it enough in the writing to, like, dodge it. I’m pretty open. Like in “Fit To Be Tied” or “Tyrannosaurus Rx” I’m pretty openly like going into a manic realm. I’ve been diagnosed with bipolar disorder – bipolar 2 –  and like we were talking about this psychotic thing I had, the medicine that I take for that part of my brain is an antipsychotic which definitely it comes with … I don’t know if it’s a stigma, it’s just like when you know that that’s the class of medication, there definitely is like “Oh shit well, if I’m on an anti-psychotic what does that mean?” And it’s like “well, it’s kind of just an umbrella category,  it doesn’t mean you’re psychotic.” But, it also means that you could be, you know? But then it’s like “what does psychotic even mean?” and then there’s that whole negative connotation. But yeah I’d say like you know that’s a part of my “pre-existing conditions.” That’s why I have the hospital bracelet on and I’ve got the thumbs up (on the cover). It’s like “hey I have this but you know, I have a pretty great life too!” Part of my makeup is that sort of struggle and who knows, we don’t really know how that happens. We don’t you know for instance if we took out some of the tragic things like if my mom hadn’t died or if my buddy didn’t go missing or whatever; if you take out any of those pieces in the Jenga tower or whatever, maybe it doesn’t fall down. But those pieces WERE taken out and it DID fall down and I lost my shit and then I sort of had to work back up. And thank god for my family and my friends in my circle because I was in a really bad way. I was like 22, 23, something like that and I kind of just lost my mind. I was like hallucinating and I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep for days and days and days. It’s funny because in health class, when I did the mental health unit, I particularly had a thing with bipolar disorder. That was a part of the unit in health class in 10th grade or whatever it was, the teacher was doing the percentages and he said “you’re in a class of this size there’s a chance that one of you is going to have this or two of you are going to have that” and he went down through all the different disorders. With the others, I thought I could figure those out, but that one I really hope I don’t come down with was bipolar disorder.

Oh that’s really interesting!

Yeah, I remember it being that I had a particular aversion to that. I thought that that would be like hell and certainly, you know, fast-forward all those years later and it turned out it was hell! (*both laugh*) I think that manic depression if you want to call it that, or bipolar disorder, it’s got a long history in rock and roll and it’s got a long history with artists and I think there’s something about a brain that goes that far to both extremes. I think that in a certain manic state or in a depressive state, you’re kind of aware of certain frequencies that if you’re in your right mind, you’re not aware of otherwise. I know that maybe sounds a little woo-woo or whatever, but it’s just true. Actually that’s where the lyric “if I can’t get out of this ditch / I better make a home of it” came from.

Oh interesting. That makes total sense, yeah!

I think that you’re in such a state and your feelings become all that you can see, and it does kind of lend itself to songwriting in a way. I think that’s why this record has “Tyrannosaurus Rx” as a lynchpin for that part of things. And then a lot of the other songs are about certain deaths or events but they all have that throughline. “Who Let The Dog Out” has the same kind of thing where it’s more depressive but then there’s a little kind of sparkle of crazy in there too. Actually that’s a true story with the squirrels. We had squirrels living in our old house and they were driving me crazy. That’s the way that I’ve been able to process things and it’s been a great outlet. And it’s also that music is a safe place for me to let that part of my personality out. I think that in the aftermath of being diagnosed or whatever, I think that I like to have things a certain way and I like to keep myself under control. I think a lot of people that know me well, when they find out that I have (bipolar disorder), they are very surprised because I’m pretty even-keeled. And both things can be true. I think that’s when you’re dedicated to treatment and wellness and really taking it seriously and not fucking around with “oh I’m not going to take my meds” or any of this kind of heroic bullshit or whatever. And I get that there’s tendencies. I have those tendencies too but I’ve just been really hyper-committed to staying well and honestly, it’s a lot. Our health care system is such a labyrinth and especially when you’re at your worst, to try to figure that out just makes you crazier, so I really do all I can do and by the grace of God or whoever, I’m like so thankful that I have my family. I don’t think I would have made it through that time without them, you know? It was awful, but yeah they were able to kind of like circle the wagons as a family and, you know, took the necessary steps and I’ve had a really healthy, pretty successful life ever since, you know? Some people don’t get a diagnosis until later. Like, I’m 31 now and over the last like 10 years or so, if not for having that diagnosis…It was tough to go through and you’re wondering like “oh, is that who I am? Who am I?” There’s a lot of identity stuff that happens but ultimately, you’re still you no matter what the diagnosis is. Now you just have more tools to know how to be. Mental health is such a finicky thing and there’s all the societal attachment to it or whatever, and it makes it difficult to see clearly. What’s also nutty about a musician’s life is that it’s pretty much bipolar. (*both laugh*) Like with touring, for example. Because we have the label and the festival and all this other stuff, it’s like we’re always changing hats. Your performance thing is really only just for that hour, and the rest of the time, you know, you’re a driver or you’re a merch seller or there’s all different kinds of things and that almost is bipolar by nature. 

I kind of wonder if that makes it easier for you to adapt to that lifestyle in some way because your brain kind of wants to anyway…

Well that’s the thing is like, in some weird way, I almost view it as a superpower because I’m able to do things that certain…like when I tell people about the nuts and bolts of travel and when I tell people about staying up for however many hours or not getting any sleep or whatever the case is, when I tell people that don’t live that way about that, they are like “ohhh…” because they have a completely different assessment of what they think a touring lifestyle is. And then when you tell them, they’re like “oh there’s no way I could do that.” I think that in some weird way the brain chemistry allows me to thrive in that. But I mean it’s kind of unclear. This is an ongoing discussion with the therapist (*both laugh*) 

I can imagine, yeah. 

It’s like something we’re working through actively; is this exacerbating my life and my struggles every time”

But I wonder if you had tried to have a nine-to-five cubicle farm job, if your brain would allow you to even do that? But then I guess it becomes chicken or the egg, like “does my brain allow me to tour or does touring allow me to have the brain that I have?”

Right, exactly. Yeah I’ll get twisted up in a pretzel thinking about it.

People talk about – as I sort of did – the way that your lyrics are shaped by the mental health issues that you are dealing with, but sonically or musically, when you’re writing does whatever sort of part of the cycle, for lack of a better word, that you’re in…does that change how you write music? Like do you find that you write more up-tempo or down-tempo or odd time signature music based on what’s going on for you?

I think so. I also think that it is dependent on whatever the idea is, and so for a song like “Tyrannosaurus Rx,” I wanted it to sound unhinged. I think, you know, mission complete. It sounds unhinged. If you listen closely to some of the stuff that Dave is doing vocally, he went full – like, this is a derogatory term and I probably shouldn’t say it – but he went full loony bin. I feel like I can say that because I’ve been there. (*both laugh*) But like he went fully crazed..

And you can hear it especially when you listen on headphones.

Yeah yeah! He’s doing all kinds of shit and sound effects and it sounds like he’s running up the walls, and that was the desired effect. So I think that there’s an inextricable link between the two but it also is really dependent on whatever the topic of the song is. I don’t want to be like sort of enslaved to either thing, but yeah I think it absolutely comes out. “Who Let The Dog Out” is for sure a period of depression and working through depression, and I guess, yeah the instrumentation is sort of led by whatever I think the song needs. In that case, that’s what I felt like it needed.

So that means you tend to be like a lyric-first songwriter? Or I guess an ‘idea for a lyric’ first songwriter?

I think that that’s what really gives the weight to any idea; any melodic idea. I feel like I can kind of just, even on the spot, come up with a melody that is compelling, but to me, it’s not worthy yet until there’s like an idea attached to it. It definitely has happened the opposite way, where I have a great melody and then like I’m searching for whatever will give it its real due; which is like yeah the idea that attaches to it. So yeah it happens for me in any type of way. There’s been all kinds of different ways that I’ve kind of stumbled into songs. Melody can happen first, but I feel like it doesn’t really get its wings until there’s like a thought behind it that makes sense 

I believe you told me this but you’re playing the upcoming run of shows – the album release shows – as a full band?

Yeah, full band 

That’s got to be exciting. Have you done the full band thing?

No, not really. I only did it on one show. It was the first year of Sing Us Home, and to be quite honest, record one with a full band was awesome, but this record is a full band record. 

It’s a rock and roll record.

Yeah! And it’s great Luke (Preston) is one of my best buds. He’s going to be playing lead guitar which is really exciting, because, you know, he’s played bass in The Mermaid but he’s just an amazing guitar player too and really talented performer. So he’s going to be on lead guitar and then Nick Jorgensen from Mercy Union is going to play bass.

I love Nick!

Yeah, I love Nick. Doing that tour in the UK was so fun and I just bonded with those guys. 

He’s such a good kid. Like, I’ve known Jerry forever, I’ve known Rocky not quite as long as Jerry but I’ve known Rocky for a while, but a couple of the last times that Mercy Union came up here or even when we’ve gone to Jersey, getting to talk to Nick more has been great. He’s such a good human, it seems. 

He really is. And just has like the right kind of energy that you want in the in the car or in the van. So yeah, Luke and Nick and then Francis Valentino who drums for David Lee Roth is going to be playing drums.

Oh, some little guy named David Lee Roth.

(*both laugh*) Yeah, that guy! It’s gonna be cool. I’m really excited. We just we have one rehearsal and then we’re gonna just rip it and and see what happens. I’m really really looking forward to it. It’s gonna be fun. I hope that people show up. I mean first time headlining in places that aren’t your home, it’s kind of like “we’ll see.” It’s an experiment in a way, but you know I wanted to celebrate the album coming out with a rock band.

It needs it.

Yeah and I just think like…I’m able to deliver the material in a solo capacity too, but just for this, this is the celebration of it coming out like I better come correct with a band. So yeah, we’ll have this band together for these dates and then for Sing Us Home as well.

Oh awesome!

Yeah!

That’s really great. I’m excited for you. I’m excited for people to dig into this record and I hope to give it a chance because it’s really, really good. Like, you did good man.

Thanks, man. Yeah I’m really proud of it. It’s funny, we did like a little bit of a radio campaign with this one and it’s like, I don’t even know what any of this means, but like there’s been certain reports that have come back and songs are kind of sticking at certain stations, which is really cool, you know?

What songs do you give them, the singles basically? 

Yeah we give them the singles. We give them “Make It Take It,” “No Call, No Show” and “Summerkiss” I believe. And maybe “Fear Ate My Faith” went to some heavier playlists and such, streaming and stuff. It’s been really exciting. I’m not sure what to think. It was funny because having Kyle with us at the studio, he sort of told us what happened with Matchbox 20. I don’t think it happens these days now, but he said it was exciting to sort of see some of the radio reports because basically like, there was one station in I think Alabama that latched on to to a song of theirs. Maybe it was “3 AM” or something but there was a song that they were working and it didn’t go over well and then like a certain station –  I’m probably butchering the story – but like a certain station picked a different song and like it just lit up that station and then it was like wildfire and then they became Matchbox 20. Radio doesn’t work that way anymore but it was kind of like “oh this is cool, like who knows if one day I go to some of these kind of like bizarre places where it’s kind of connected; like if there’s a following there or something.

Like being big in Japan…

Yeah, right 

Like people like Dave doing okay in Germany, you know? It’s bizarre. It will never make sense to me who gets popular like grand scheme of things but especially who gets popular in certain markets. It’s always fascinating to me.

It is, yeah. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, and we drive ourselves crazy trying to attach rhyme and reason to it.