Darro | The Hidden Cost of Chasing Music Through Surgery and Setbacks

0:02 SPEAKER_02: And I'm back today with an artist out of LA.

0:16 SPEAKER_02: Join me as I talked with Zero just and a little bit of what makes Zero first. What is on three?

0:34 SPEAKER_02: And topic rate is unhybridse of genre of ultimate. So it's known for hypnotic instrumentation and captivating vocal range. Join me now as I welcome Darrow. What's up, Rock and Metalheads? This is Sheet Reds with the Sand coming at you today. And I am excited to announce the super cool guest who I have just met, but in listening to his music, I'm really excited. And we're going to talk about his new release that he just came out with. So, ladies and gentlemen, I'm introducing Darrow to you out of LA.

1:08 SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me.

1:11 SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely. I'm so excited to talk about your new release that you have and what it what went in behind that. But I was really, I was intrigued by your story also. You've you've really overgrown so many things. And I think that it was so awesome. And I just wanted to be able to talk with you and get to share that also. I think that is uh phenomenal, everything that you've been through. So go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself, Darrow.

1:39 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. So um I grew up on the East Coast in Pennsylvania, and I want to say I got into music at a very young age. My my parents were, um rather, my dad was in like a Cambodian wedding band here in the States. And so like on certain weekends, they would just play like little local weddings and events and stuff like that. It's a very small community, but from a very young age, I was exposed to bang. And I remember like after they would have like band practice, I I used to like sneak down because they used to do it in our house.

2:11 SPEAKER_00: And so I used to sneak down to the basement after they were done, and I was like five, six years old, and I would just go bang on the drums. Like I would I would sit at the top of the stairs in the basement and listen to like what they were playing, and then go back and then go downstairs like after they were all done and try to memorize and like replay the stuff that I was hearing them play. And I didn't know, like, I I just assumed that everybody was doing that. Like I assumed that any anybody that was interested in music was already doing that type of stuff.

2:38 SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't until I got a little bit older and I was messing around with all the instruments at this point that my my dad and I probably my uncle were like, wait, can you play that again? Like they just must have like heard me messing around on the instruments downstairs. And then they they realized that like I kind of figured out how to play some of the songs that they were playing. Um then my dad tried to teach me how to play like guitar, but he's not, he wasn't a very like, he wasn't a trained musician, none of them really were.

3:08 SPEAKER_00: And so the lessons failed horribly, and it actually turned me off to playing music for a while. Like, like, believe it or not, uh I tried taking lessons, like my dad tried giving me guitar lessons when I was like 10 years old, and it just wasn't clicking, and in fact, it made me not want to play it anymore. So I wouldn't call it a break because I didn't consider myself a musician. I just wasn't noodling around anymore. And so by the time I was like 14, 13, 14 years old, I was in like middle school, freshman year, high school, and I made some friends at school that also played instruments, and then that was really what blew the lid off for me was realizing, oh, like I can play this with other people that are into the same type of music that I'm into, which was at the time pop punk alternative, like rock emo.

3:51 SPEAKER_00: That's kind of that that's what was big around the time too. And so when I realized that I had other friends that would play the guitar and play the bass, and I was like, oh, it was it was over. And so I was I was upset. I was obsessed. And I got so serious about it because I mean I realized that was the most serious about it because everybody was talking about going to college a couple years later, like fast-forwarding a few years later, we're like at the end of high school, and everybody's going to college, and I really haven't thought about it that much.

4:20 SPEAKER_00: I was just obsessed with like doing a band project. And so, in an effort to stay with my friends, I ended up like going to the same college that they went to undeclared, undecided, and literally spent the entire first year of freshman year basically skipping class and just practicing music in my dorm. Yeah, my my roommate at the time, who's who's now a podiatrist, uh he he still he still will like obviously as a joke, he'll still text me and be like, hey, remember that time you like like screwed up my my midterm because you were up playing guitar to like four in the morning?

4:59 SPEAKER_00: Like, like he'll he'll randomly text me, like, like, yeah, I failed my test because you were just like you and you were just playing guitar all night. We have fond memories of that. But yeah, so like I realized after that first year, I'm like, if I'm just gonna flunk all my classes to play music, why don't I just make my classes music classes so that I won't flunk them anymore? So I realized I really needed to lock in and really practice my my technique and my craft and like music theory and all this stuff so that I could go to music school.

5:28 SPEAKER_00: And then it wasn't skipping class, like it was class. And so that was really the goal was like I just wanted everything that I was doing to be completely surrounded by music or have to do with music. And it was around this time that I decided, or rather, I had gotten serious enough about it to to actually decide to go to music school, and they ended up transferring to uh Berkeley College of Music in Boston, and I spent about four-ish years there. I got my bachelor's there. I caught the music production audio engineering bug there as well.

6:03 SPEAKER_00: So, like at the same time as like I would say learning my craft as a performer, I was also like on the other side becoming like a producer, audio engineer, or whatever, because they are very much to have the same side of at least nowadays. It's the way that I see it, it's just like production and songwriting and performance are all really just the same thing, just different sides of it.

6:25 unknown: Okay.

6:25 SPEAKER_00: And I just mostly like really wanted to know. Like, I just I guess I would call myself such a big nerd when it comes to music. I just wanted to know how everything worked. I guess that's kind of how I've always been. Like even when I was a kid, like banging on instruments, I was just trying to figure out why it does that? Why does it go up when I play the piano this way, and why does it sound like it's going lower when I play it this way, and like why do these notes sound good together, and why does this one sound crunchy and things like that?

6:49 SPEAKER_00: And I was just like putting the puzzle pieces together of how everything worked in my head. Um and I guess that's kind of why I was so obsessed with both production and songwriting and performance. So I finished my program at uh Berkeley and Boston, and then they actually offered me a scholarship to get my master's in Spain in performance, because Berkeley had a satellite campus in Valencia, Spain. And at the time I was like, I don't know, that's like I've never been that far away. It's out of the country, it's gonna be like a year and a half.

7:20 SPEAKER_00: But I also had just been going through like a really, I would say a pretty monumental breakup for me at that time. Like at that age in my life, it was kind of like I know for some people it was like, oh, this is the age where okay, I'm gonna graduate college and now I need to like settle down and get married, you know, all those things. And I was almost on that path, but then you know, we we had broken up, and at that point I was like, I didn't know what I was gonna do. So like Spain, here I come.

7:46 SPEAKER_00: So I went to Spain to get my master's because I didn't know what else to do. Uh and it was great. I mean, Spain was amazing, it was such a such a it was such a different place that I've ever been used to. Um I it's a beautiful culture, it really is. Yeah, so relaxed. Everybody is just kind of living their life, and I to me it felt like they were way less stressed than we were in in America and I really envied that. I will say there were some frustrations, but being an American operating in Spain, it's like, you know, they the siesta culture is real.

8:22 SPEAKER_00: They're not necessarily taking naps, but they are definitely just like not open for certain hours of the day. And one of the most frustrating things as like American from like big city, or not even a big city, but just like having that mentality was like, dude, on a Tuesday at one o'clock and I need to go to the bank to withdraw money, nobody's open. Literally, like banks are like everybody's closed for like three hours a day. I just like, I was like, freak. I was like, how does anyone get anything done around here?

8:50 SPEAKER_00: I'm just like, the answer is they don't. They just don't get anything done. And then and they're okay with it too. They're just like really, really okay with taking the time with everything. And that was something that I really, really envied. But during that time that I was in Spain was when I started realizing I had the health issues. And that was when I started really experiencing like the symptoms from what when I had the brain tumor. And I didn't quite know what was causing it. I had some issues with my jaw, was was was really bad.

9:23 SPEAKER_00: Like I was having a really bad uh bite and really bad TMJ. And I realized that the only way to really fix it was to get jaw surgery. And in the US, jaw surgery is like a hundred thousand dollars, most of the time not covered by injured.

9:39 SPEAKER_02: It's scary involved, too.

9:40 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's oh my god, it's still to this day, of all the operations I've ever had, the jaw surgery is by far the most traumatic I've ever had.

9:48 SPEAKER_02: Really?

9:48 SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, way worse than the brain surgery, way worse than radiation. Like it's the it literally is like it without without diving too much into like the gruesome details, like they effectively like broke my jaw into six on purpose, into six pieces and removed bone and then rotated and pushed it back and then steel plated it all together and then wired it all up. And so it was like it it literally felt like after when I woke up from the surgery, it felt like I had a different person's face on me.

10:21 SPEAKER_00: Like because the muscles had gotten so used to being the way that they were with my previous bite, when my bite was corrected with the bones, the muscles were not used to it. So they were trying to pull my jaw back to the way that it used to be, hence why everything was wired up and like steel plated or titanium plates and screws and stuff. And so it literally felt like I was flexing my jaw when I wasn't, and it was impossible to relax for a while. But that that wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was really psychological.

10:51 SPEAKER_02: I had to Yeah, I can't imagine. I mean, uh how I guess before going into the the journey that you had with the brain tumor and everything, you said that this was kind of like the start of it when you started having issues.

11:03 SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

11:04 SPEAKER_02: Did you did you have any I guess any time for that to even sink in before you have the jaw surgery?

11:12 SPEAKER_00: No.

11:13 SPEAKER_02: So And done in Spain, or did you come back to the States?

11:16 SPEAKER_00: No, I got it done in Spain.

11:17 unknown: Spain?

11:18 SPEAKER_00: Because it was way well, yes, it was way cheaper. And this is the thing that I I don't know why I don't think about this more often. I know that people have people talk about stories about like they fly out of the country to get medical procedures done because it's cheaper. And it it really is true, and it's not like for the most part, it's not a hoax because I some people will argue, oh, well, so the doctors in the US are better. I'm like, that's propaganda. Some of the best doctors are in Asian countries.

11:43 SPEAKER_00: And in fact, the when I went to Spain to get my jaw surgery done, they were the only country on the planet at the time that was doing this procedure called surgery first. And so it's quite innovative for what it was then. Now it's a lot more common. But historically, for this the type of jaw surgery that I needed, which was like a double jaw surgery, you would tip, yeah, typically you would have to have braces for two years, then have the surgery, and then another year of braces. I was only in Spain for a year and a half, and I'm like, I don't have three and a half years for this entire procedure.

12:18 SPEAKER_00: But they were practicing this thing called surgery first, where you literally get a week of braces, and that wasn't even to do anything with the teeth, it was just to get the actual like wiring or whatever the glue and the pieces onto your teeth. So then when the surgery was done, they would fix the jaw, and then the braces would come for about a year and a half afterward. And the theory and thought behind it was because everything is healing after this jaw surgery, everything is moving really, really fast, including your teeth.

12:47 SPEAKER_00: And so it's like super accelerated braces treatment because of the hyper healing that's happening. And it totally, like, for me, it totally worked. Like, I probably could have gotten slightly better results with the braces plus the jaw surgery and then more braces. But in terms of cost, in terms of lifestyle, like in in timing, and just like there was just no time. There was no possible way that I was gonna be able to afford to do all of that and like spend all that. And plus, the, you know, every I don't know about this, but different regions have different types of tools and hardware for for their orthodontics.

13:23 SPEAKER_00: So I actually didn't finish my braces treatment before I moved back to the United States. I still had like six months of braces treatment left, but my program ended and my lease ended, and I wasn't, I was like, I was like, I had an internship in New York City that like I I landed after graduating, and I was like, I don't want to like, I'm not gonna fly back and forth to Spain to get my braces done. So I like for some reason I just thought I can just finish my braces treatment in the States. And then I came back and I realized, hey, yeah, no, we don't have these tools.

13:52 SPEAKER_00: These are completely different tools, we're just gonna have to rip these off. So I came back to the States and they just literally took my braces off. And it wasn't like complete. And the thing that sucks is that when I paid for the treatment in in Spain, I paid up front because that's kind of how you do it. So I effectively just didn't get the last six months of treatment there because I just left the country and there was no getting their money back or whatever from that. But I ended up just finishing out my races treatment with like Invisalign when I was here, like afterward.

14:19 SPEAKER_00: Okay. And, you know, it was I would still, after all said and done, it was still a third of the cost as it would have cost in the United States. Like obscene, obscenely way cheaper.

14:31 SPEAKER_02: And it was more innovative and uh So was it completely out of pocket for you or was there insurance involved?

14:38 SPEAKER_00: I was it was out of pocket because I was not a citizen in Spain.

14:43 SPEAKER_02: Citizen, okay.

14:44 SPEAKER_00: So I was still under a student visa and we did have health insurance from the program, but it was not something that was comprehensive enough to like cover something like that.

14:52 SPEAKER_02: Sure, that makes sense. Yeah. So how long were you down once you like what was the recovery period for you with the jaw surgery?

15:00 SPEAKER_00: To be honest, I it's really hard to say because I had the jaw surgery. So clinically, it's supposed to be like the first six months is the worst. And then the following six months is like medium to bad, and then the next two years is like pretty light and moderate, and you would still see facial changes, but they're much less noticeable. I would say that I didn't see my face stop changing until like three years after the surgery. Like I got the surgery done in 2017, no, 2016, and it wasn't until like really like 2020, 2019, 2020, that I looked at my face and it looked the same as it did the previous year.

15:45 SPEAKER_00: The first six months was bad. It was so bad. I can't imagine it was such well, part of it was I didn't know that the jaw issue was caused by the brain tumor, right? So the other thing that the context behind this is that the brain tumor was in my pituitary gland, and that affected all my hormones, including my growth hormone, which caused my jaw to overgrow and have a bunch of issues. So when I got the jaw surgery done, there was no thought that there was some sort of tumor issue happening.

16:17 SPEAKER_02: There's yeah, something in the background that was like a comorbidity or yeah, and so I was just worried about that.

16:25 SPEAKER_00: And obviously I was a bit younger, so it was more pressing for me. And I was, I had literally spent like the last seven, eight years like studying music, and I was like, all right, I'm ready to go be an artist now. Like, I want to go release music, and then boom, all these problems came out. Um, and so that was really frustrating for me because I just wanted to like get out and start doing stuff immediately. And then my body was like literally breaking down, and so it was really hard for me to balance like the drive that I had to like go be an artist, but then also like, hey, you need to like take a break because you've been ignoring these problems for like seven, eight years now.

16:57 SPEAKER_00: And so it kind of just all came to a head, and really what so I got the jaw surgery done in the middle of my my master's degree program in Spain, and then like six or seven months. I think I had jaw surgery for like six or seven months. It was really bad, really swollen. I couldn't chew, my jaw was wired shut. I almost dropped out of school. Like I was in a very, very, very dark emotional place. And it was, I was just struggling a lot. It was really, really hard. Uh just not.

17:24 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you're in a thorough, yeah, you're you know, you're your your hometown.

17:29 SPEAKER_00: So yeah. And so that was really, really tough. But I decided to stick it out because I said that if I was gonna go back and finish, then I would like, okay, I really gotta go do the music thing. Like, if if I already like kind of almost died doing this, like I'm what else have I had to lose type of thing. But then towards the end of the final like semester at school there, I started having vision problems. And this was again at the same time as me still healing from the jaw surgery. I'm like, what's wrong with my eyes?

17:54 SPEAKER_00: I thought that I had like an eye infection or I thought I need a new contact lens. But I I was so close to to graduating that I was just like, well, let me just finish and graduate and then I'll come back to the United States and then I I'll go see an optometrist, an eye doctor there and have them see what's wrong. So I do all that, graduate, and I come back home only like six or seven months after my jaw surgery, still very far away from healing fully, still pretty swollen, like my face was still different, way less swollen.

18:24 SPEAKER_00: I used to look like a basketball, but it was still like noticeable, right? It was still noticeable.

18:28 SPEAKER_02: And did you were you still wired shot?

18:30 SPEAKER_00: Did you I still and and every few months they had to like loosen the rubber bands at first it was wired and then it was rubber bands. Um, but still it was just like keeping the tension there. And so every few months they put thinner rubber bands so that I had more uh room. But yeah, I like whenever I had to eat, I would have to take off the rubber bands and the the wiring to eat and chew and stuff like that. And that was so weird. It was such a weird feeling to take off the rubber bands, and like I felt like my jaw was gonna fall off.

18:57 SPEAKER_00: Like there's nothing holding it together type of thing. Um but yeah, so vision problems started happening, and then I moved back to the United States, and I'll never forget. I remember it was I came back on a Saturday, and I took all a Sunday off to like jet lag and and like, oh yeah, I'm back in the United States now, people are speaking English. This is so crazy, it's weird. And then on Monday at 11 a.m., I had my eye doctor appointment, and I drove straight there. I was like, hey, something's wrong with my eyes.

19:22 SPEAKER_00: I've been out of the country for about a year and a half, like, what's going on? They couldn't find anything. Nothing was wrong, like there were no infections, there was no nothing, but they had me do this field of vision test, and they were like, Well, you failed the field of vision test because my peripheral vision was just kind of gone. And it was gradual, so it's not like I noticed like one day I woke up and I could only see like 80% of my view. It was like, it was just so gradual over time that I didn't notice it until it was already like noticeable.

19:50 SPEAKER_00: And they're like, Well, we can't find anything, but there there could be something else underlying. So we're gonna send you to the emergency room. And I was like, emergency room for what? An eye infection? And they were like, Yeah, just tell them you want to get an MRI. And I was like, okay. So I went to the ER and got a love of American healthcare because I literally waited in the ER for like nine hours to be seen. It was, it was like the longest I have ever waited to be seen. I've been to the emergency room a few times.

20:17 SPEAKER_00: I've never waited more than like three or four hours, but this was literally, I didn't get seen until 10:30. My appointment was at 11 a.m. So I literally went from my 11 a.m. doctor appointment to I was gonna grab lunch right after the appointment. And they were like, actually, you should go to the emergency room. Uh, we're gonna write you a note. They'll see you right away. And me thinking, oh yeah, that's good, that'll be great. I walk right in, I show them the note, they're like, okay, great, sit down.

20:43 SPEAKER_00: And then I waited for eight, for nine hours. And it wasn't until 10:30 that they found that they saw me. They took a bunch of blood work, asked me a bunch of questions, and then they were like, Yeah, we're gonna get you an MRI. And I was like, that's strange, but okay. And then they at the after the MRI, they said that they had found like something at the base of my brain. And I was like freaking out. I was like, what are you talking about? Like, I thought I was here for my eyes. Um, and it turns out that that I had a brain tumor, and it was getting so big that it was like suppressing my optic nerves, which was causing my vision damage.

21:14 SPEAKER_00: And so I bounced after that, I bounced around a few different doctors in the area because it was quite a rare type of tumor. It wasn't cancerous, but it was a functional tumor. And uh and so it was wreaking havoc on my body, but it wasn't cancerous, but it was very dangerous. And so they were like, We well, we need to send you to Pittsburgh to because that to UPMC, because that's like on the East Coast, one of the best facilities for this type of tumor. And luckily it was still in Pennsylvania, so my insurance was going to cover it.

21:43 SPEAKER_00: So I think about a month and a half later, I was in in Pittsburgh getting operated on, and that's where they where I had the surgery and they removed the tumor. Um and that was when my body like really changed. Uh, that was when all of the other problems that I had been experiencing up until That point, like things that I didn't think were related, like really besides the jaw stuff, but like bad headaches, really bad joint problems, like lots of random swelling throughout my body, really bad emotional mood swings, like a fight or flight, all these different things.

22:13 SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is just how I am. And then I remember waking up from the surgery and not feeling any of it. And it it could have been the drugs, probably was a lot of it was the drugs. But I noticed that, like, even after I was weaned off of like the drugs from the the surgery, a lot of those things never came back. And it was only then that I realized that, oh, if my hormones are regulated, I'm a normal person. And I remember like, I specifically remember one day waking up and feeling like how I felt when I was like 17 years old.

22:42 SPEAKER_00: This is like eight years later, eight, nine years later. And I was like, I literally felt like, whoa, this is I remember feeling like this, like just nothing, just feeling nothing. Like, you know what I mean? It's such a weird thing to think about. Like, because we only have our own experiences, we can only think about how we feel. But like I just remember thinking like, wow, like my neck doesn't feel super like tight, and like I I like my joints aren't aching, and it doesn't feel like like I'm gonna tear an MCL just walking up the stairs.

23:11 SPEAKER_00: Like it was just so strange that to realize such a small little thing was ruining my whole body.

23:17 SPEAKER_02: And how it was heavy for so long, and it just you know gradual, gradually it sounds like grew, and you just accepted it for well, I you're you know, you were still growing at the time too.

23:29 SPEAKER_00: So growing pains, right?

23:32 SPEAKER_02: Crazy. Yeah, yeah, literally for you.

23:34 SPEAKER_00: Growing pains and so yeah, but yeah, I mean that's that's what happened. And then after the surgery, I actually ended up having to push my internship in New York back another semester because I had to recover from the brain surgery. And I remember, my gosh, that first three weeks after the surgery, I literally was completely bedridden. Like I could not get out of bed. I dropped so much weight too. I remember I was struggling with weight at the time too. I think like I had for the previous two years prior to that, which if most people don't know, if you don't know this, it's almost impossible to really lose weight if your hormones aren't balanced.

24:14 SPEAKER_00: It's like it's one of those things that people just, oh yeah, calories in, calories out, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I'm like, yes, but that only works if your hormones are regulated. Like that is assuming you have a normal functioning, balanced set of hormone levels. And like when people talk about like GLP1 and OZMP, I'm like, that is a hormonal drug. The reason why it allows you to drop so much weight is because they are injecting you with hormones. Because that is, at the end of the day, that's really what controls everything.

24:43 SPEAKER_00: Your entire body, like how it reacts to everything you do, hormones. And if the hormones aren't balanced, none of those things are gonna work. And I didn't realize that because I had spent the previous two years trying so hard to lose like weight that was impossible to lose because my hormones were just completely, completely screwed up and and then when I had my hormones balanced, I didn't even have to try. It just it just all came off. Like it literally just came off on its own. I had, I think I dropped like 40 pounds in two months.

25:14 SPEAKER_00: It was so drastic.

25:16 SPEAKER_02: Uh drastic.

25:17 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then when I moved to New York, like I was literally almost almost a skeleton by the time I had moved to New York. And so I had to like relearn how to like I had to relearn my appetite. I had to relearn like working out, I had to like do all this stuff over again. So I kind of had to start over a little bit, like as an adult.

25:34 SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah. I can see that. Well, talking, I mean, you're talking to someone who is, you know, always wanting to try and lose weight. So I could tell you my hormones are out of whack, and that's due to my age.

25:47 SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's another thing too.

25:48 SPEAKER_02: It's that's definitely it's older that you get too, it's it's harder to to lose that because of the the hormones.

25:55 SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I'm getting that too.

25:57 SPEAKER_02: Trying different things that uh that I can try to restore some of the hormones that I don't have that I had in my youth. And uh yeah, like the GLP ones and things like that. That's it's kind of scary. You see people just dropping weight, yeah. You know, almost it seems like overnight, but at the same time, what are you sacrificing for that? And I was, you know, I was gonna take I was really close. I even bought an injection kit and I just can't do it.

26:24 SPEAKER_00: Is it the injection or are you scared of the actual drug? The drug. Okay, okay. That's the thing. I I don't know either, and I feel like it's one of those things that yes, it's existed for a while, but the recent explosion in popularity makes me more scared because it has been around for a while and there's a lot of data on it, but uh it's one of those things where it's like now it's being considered a miracle drug, and I think people are abusing it for sure. I think that's good.

26:52 SPEAKER_02: You start taking it and you know, say that you do like the results, but what happens when you stop taking it and what's that going to do to your your system? Not just your physical appearance, but you know, I'm worried more about like what is the effects gonna have on your system when you start and then stop stop taking something. I mean, it's pretty powerful if you're you know, you see the people that are losing the weight drastically. So what's the reverse? Yeah, literally, what's what's what I don't think I'm I'm yeah, I'm too pussy to to try it.

27:21 SPEAKER_02: So I'm yeah, I'm I get it. I'll just try other different methods, you know, the harder route if I have to.

27:27 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Speaking as speaking from somebody that has to literally inject themselves like every few days, it sucks. I hate it.

27:34 SPEAKER_02: I did, yeah, Darrow, I did I did read some of that about you. So you have to inject every every few times a week, like every other time.

27:41 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about once a week. Yeah. Once a week. Yeah, it's big basically after the tumor surgery, it's it wasn't that it fixed everything, it just stopped all the worst symptoms. But the the damage caused by the tumor is kind of permanent. Okay. And so like it's just lifelong medication, basically. Like there's some medications that are like, I need to take this every day, or I could have cardiac arrest. And then there's other medications where I should take this every day, because if I don't, over time, cardiac arrest, you know?

28:11 SPEAKER_03: Okay.

28:12 SPEAKER_00: So there's like a short-term killer where like, yes, I have to have this every day, otherwise my body could collapse. And that's not that like drastic or dramatic, but it's one of those things where it's like if you do something long enough, it becomes part of your daily routine, you start to take it for granted. And there have been days where I'm just like, oh, I completely woke up. Like, I wake up and I forget to take that important pill, and then I'll like feel really weak throughout the day and unfocused and kind of shaky.

28:39 SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, did I take my pill today? And then I'll take it. And then within 10 minutes, I feel like, oh, yep, yeah, I forgot to take that. And I was like probably 15 minutes away from passing out. Like, but sometimes it's like, or am I just hungry? Or I just did I not get enough sleep. And so it's like when it becomes something that is so normal to you, you start to forget that you have to do it for a reason. And so that's like the thing that I'm starting to learn now because I've been doing it for so long.

29:04 SPEAKER_00: Whereas when I was first starting it, everything was so fresh and like, oh, this is so important to me. Like, I need to make sure I take care of this. Now, because I'm so used to it, I'm just like, it's kind of fallen into the background. So sometimes it's, you know, sometimes it's I just have to pay attention a little bit more. Um, but I think that's just part of like, you know, having spent this much time with this disease, it just becomes part of your life.

29:27 SPEAKER_02: Are you currently out on tour?

29:29 SPEAKER_00: No, currently not. Uh we You had one.

29:32 SPEAKER_02: I saw where you had one back in 2024. Have you had one since?

29:37 SPEAKER_00: No.

29:38 SPEAKER_02: Okay.

29:38 SPEAKER_00: Yes.

29:39 SPEAKER_02: Well, how do you balance, you know? I mean, these everyday things that you have to take care of for your health, how do you balance that when you know you're you're an artist, you just come out with your new EP, and you know, you're you're just working your tail off. What are is there anything specific for you that helps you to, you know, keep all those checks and balances going?

30:02 SPEAKER_00: You know, it's a really good question. Um I want to answer it truthfully, but there's a lot of imposter syndrome driving it. To be fair, it's like one, it's I've kind of always just been doing a lot. I don't know how else to describe it. I've like, if you ask anybody that has known me for any period of time, especially during those years, like during the college, like seven, eight year period where I was just like locked the fuck in.

30:29 SPEAKER_02: Um you're very driven. Yeah, as soon as you started telling me like how you wanted to learn all the different facets, you know, just of like this talent of where it comes from and all that, I think, okay, this dude's a very driven person.

30:41 SPEAKER_00: So they they feel upset. I I guess like they'll they'll straight up tell you, like, like, and and to be I'm at a point now where I'm like in I'm in my 30s and I'm like looking back and I'm like, I could have, I could have maybe backed off a little bit. I could have like maybe taken like one year and spent time with my friends. Um, because when I think back to it, there's like this five or six year period. By the way, I'm like really close with my friends from home. Like my homeschool, like hometown best friends were like a very, very tight group of friends.

31:11 SPEAKER_00: And there was about a six, seven, eight-year period there where I like literally didn't see any of them. And I think back where I'm like, well, the reason why is because I decided to go do music and they like lived, you know, pretty normal US American dream lives. Like they went to college, got normal jobs, they're getting married and buying houses and stuff, and I'm struggling in LA, like putting food on the table, whatever, whatever. But there was a period where I felt like I was sacrificing so much time with them to go do what I wanted to do, because like the only thing I could do was music and is all I wanted to do.

31:47 SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, like some of my friends were very driven and passionate about music too, but not necessarily enough to get up and move across the country several times to chase it, right? And so I felt like I was dis or rather distancing myself, not on purpose, from them. And I kind of wish that I could take a year or two of that back to because now I'm living in LA and they're all still back in Pennsylvania, and I see them maybe once or twice a year, and it's only at a wedding that I see them.

32:16 SPEAKER_00: And when I'm around them, I feel human, you know, I feel like, oh, this is like, yeah, this is what life is about. Like besides the touring and stuff like that, the normal human side of life that I'm just like, oh yeah, I miss my friends, I miss my hometown. But then like when I go on tour, it's like, oh yeah, I really miss touring, I really miss playing. And so like they'll tell you, like, during that time, like I was, I was just not, I was missing from everyone's lives, basically. I was just like out doing my own thing.

32:43 SPEAKER_00: And the only times I would check back in was like during holidays when I would see them and they'd be like, What are you doing? And I'm like, Well, I'm going to school, I'm double majoring, I'm working a full-time job, I'm working a student working job, I'm teaching guitar lessons in a different city outside of Boston. Um, I do a weekly church gig and I play like guitar in a church band every Sunday morning. Um, I also audio engineer some live sound events in Boston a few nights a week. So literally, I was working like 17 hours a day, like going to school, um part-time, two part-time jobs, a student working job, full like a full-time student, all this stuff.

33:16 SPEAKER_00: And I was in the summers, I was studying too. Like I wasn't taking summers off. Like I wasn't going home in the summers. I was just staying in Boston, taking classes to graduate faster. And so literally for like a five, six period year period, I literally did not take any breaks. Um, and I think during that time, part of it was because I was that was when I was having crazy like hormonal brain tumor issues. And part of that was probably like adrenaline was just always pumping through my body, like cortisol always pumping through my body.

33:46 SPEAKER_02: That makes sense.

33:47 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I was just when the surgery happened, I think it's when it all hit me. Like when I, when I took that, those two months off, and I I when when I say I basically slept for two months, I literally like slept for like two months straight. I felt like it was all catching up there. And then it didn't, I was part of me was afraid that after the surgery that I would like lose that drive or that passion or whatever. Um, I was like, what if that was from the brain tumor? What if all that like drive and passion came from the brain tumor?

34:15 SPEAKER_00: Nope, that wasn't the case because literally, like I I left my hometown before I finished healing to go back to to go to New York. I I didn't intentionally do it, like I didn't say fuck healing. Like it was just like, oh, I'm probably good enough now. Like it was more like that. And so, and I wasn't, I wasn't good enough. I learned that very quickly when I moved into my apartment in New York, and I realized that I was like, oh, I'm something's off, like something doesn't feel right. Like, because it takes about a year-ish for all the hormones to settle after the surgery.

34:48 SPEAKER_00: And so my hormones were still fluctuating a lot, and so I would feel completely different symptoms on different days and not know why. Um, and so I was trying to figure out what was happening to my body after the surgery, how it was healing, and also still trying to figure out what hormones I needed to be regulated, all while like taking on a new internship and like taking a new job and learning a new city and all this stuff. And I probably should have waited another six months before coming to New York, but I didn't.

35:17 SPEAKER_00: And it was because I was just like, I was just so ready to get started. Like I was just like, I had written like a couple of demos and and songs while I was in music school and then was gonna release them, but then I ended up having to get brain surgery. And then I was like, Well, I'll release them when I'm in New York, and then I'll build a band in New York. And then I did all that, but it was really hard.

35:37 SPEAKER_02: Uh it was Darrow, I don't think there's a whole lot of people out there who would be able to say that, hey, uh I put this on hold because I had to have brain surgery.

35:47 SPEAKER_00: Honestly.

35:49 SPEAKER_02: No, so I I think you have a pretty, pretty good damn reason there for uh some of the things that you had to to switch up, you know, with the timing.

35:57 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the thing that's tough though is that like it's not necessarily one of the things that I even I mean, I yeah, it is when you think about it. Maybe it's because I've spent so much time with it that it's diluted the the impact of that story, you know. To me, it's just like, yeah, that was a Tuesday in 2017. Like, but I guess I've been living with these diseases and these issues during or pr prior, during, and post that like it all just feels the same to me.

36:26 SPEAKER_02: And well, and along those lines too, you know, then you work through COVID.

36:31 SPEAKER_00: Oh my god, COVID was a whole other thing, too.

36:34 SPEAKER_02: COVID comes up almost every interview that I have because there's always, you know, there's always something that the the artist was going through pre-COVID and then post-COVID.

36:43 SPEAKER_00: You know, that's actually a really good point because I I don't necessarily, and I probably should, I don't really correlate the two at all. But they were all happy. So surgery was around 2017. I moved to New York at the very end of 2017. Really 2018 was when I I felt like I was starting to really live there. And then the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020 is when COVID hit, and New York was hit pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah, and I had, I would say that by the time So you were still in New York when COVID hit?

37:16 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So 2019 was when I released my first single, You're Not Insane. And that was like the summer of 2019. And I remember that at that time period was when I f really actually felt normal for the most part. Like this was about two years after the jaw surgery, about a year and a half after the brain surgery. I had been under like pretty consistent hormonal like treatment for about a year now. And I felt pretty normal. I felt like I could do the things that I wanted to do and not like suffer while doing it necessarily.

37:49 SPEAKER_00: And so that's like I did my first music video there, and like like we were playing shows and I was working full time, so I was doing what I wanted to do. It was still hard. Like it was still a full-time job plus band plus you know, rehearsals and then all the hours. Yeah, but I wasn't like I wasn't like dying medically at the same time anymore, right? So to me, it felt like, oh, this is great, like I can do this. Like, and people were still looking at me like, dude, you're fucking crazy. Oh, by the way, I was also getting a second master's degree at this time.

38:20 SPEAKER_00: So I went to NYU at this time part-time. I I don't know, I don't know why I did this validation. Uh, but I was getting a master's in music technology at the time and very different school, NYU from Berkeley, because NYU is a very like research heavy, like technical school, whereas Berkeley was very performance, performance artistry um based. And so it was actually really hard for me to switch from like the Berkeley brain to the NYU brain because their education is just very different from each other.

38:49 SPEAKER_00: So I was doing that while working full-time, while doing the band and the music stuff and all this stuff. And it wasn't like end of 2019, I felt like I was catching a stride. I was like, okay, like I, you know, struggled a few things with this song and like the promotion with this, but I'm I'm learning how this works. I'm learning how the release cycle works, I'm learning about PR, I'm learning about like Spotify and editorial playlists, and I'm learning about like YouTube, all this stuff. And the next year, like the beginning or yeah, I was at the beginning of 2020, I had all these plans.

39:20 SPEAKER_00: We were setting up my first, I was setting up my first tour on the East Coast, and um, I had met some networking connections people that were like willing to help me and like invest in the tour, even. And I was like, this is crazy. And then COVID hit and canceled everything. Like literally, I had a three-week tour half booked, literally half booked, like half of the venues were booked. We had some guarantees for some of them. Um, I had like fans and bills, like I had a rider, everything already set.

39:51 SPEAKER_00: And then within two weeks, all of it was canceled because of COVID, because we didn't know what the hell was gonna happen. And then it wasn't for another two and a half years that we were able to tour. About two years after that, like 2022, we were able to tour again. And by then, literally, I would say 80% of the venues that was on our original tour all gone. All closed down. Um, the remaining venues were no longer doing the type of shows that we were planning on doing. Like before, it used it used to be back in the day, you used to be able to fill out a venue with just three or four bands in a night and not have to have anything else afterwards, right?

40:26 SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, like you go to a venue and they have like four or five different events happening from like 12 to midnight, and then there's an after party in there. And so it's like they'll they'll have a three-band bill and then a three DJ bill, and then an after party, which is like, and then of course there's no pay. There's like the guarantees are not there anymore. The venues have to book multiple, multiple acts. They have to book DJs because they know people will come and drink and dance. And so, like, the entire live local live music scene collapsed, right?

41:00 SPEAKER_00: And then it turned in, and it was also the same era of TikTok, where all these artists were blowing up on TikTok, young, like Gen Z artists blowing up on TikTok, many of whom had never played a show in their lives because they were 14, 15 years old during COVID, and now they're 17, 18 years old blowing up on TikTok, and this is their first time going out playing live shows. And of course, they're not going to be put in MSG, because MSG does still exist. They're gonna be put in the smaller venues, but the even smaller venues that would normally book bands like me at the time didn't exist anymore.

41:33 SPEAKER_00: So the ones that were left over that would normally book us were now only booking these big guaranteed artists because they blew up on social media and which pushed out local bands from being able to book their normally trusted, tried and true venues are now being catered to Live Nation or AG or whoever. And then because those are signed acts or big acts that are getting booked in these what would be considered smaller venues three years ago, are like, you know, medium-sized venues for these new artists, they're bringing in their own opening acts that are not local as well.

42:08 SPEAKER_00: And so the entire touring industry just kind of basically decimated local bands in in almost every region. Um and it hasn't recovered since, really. It really hasn't. It's still kind of the same. I think there's just there's still just as many artists, but there's so many less local shows, right? To tour without support, like label support or or whatever is gambling now. Where it used to be like you could break even, you could lose a little bit, but now it's like you are guaranteed to to lose money.

42:38 SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not necessarily, it's not affordable anymore for sure. Right. I remember looking at the the rates of which, like, you know, like lodging rates and gas rates from our originally planned 2022 tour or 2019 tour and then 2022, it was like 3.5 times more expensive for like maybe like we had maybe 22 dates the first time, and then we brought it down to like 16, 15 dates, and then we still canceled two of them, and it was still twice as much than before. Yeah, it was so expensive.

43:11 SPEAKER_02: I'm yeah, I I mean I I can't say that I know or pretend to understand what you know the the bookers and the promoters go through when you know they are trying to book the local acts. I feel like in here in Ohio, though, we do have a pretty good support for that for getting local acts booked. And even even where I'm at, you know, even though it's a small town, we have less than an hour away where we've got venues that are still open, but they're catering to the local crowds. They'll bring in some of the national national acts beautiful that are have been in the industry for a long time and some well known artists, but they're also allowing the local bands to play too because just everything changed post COVID.

43:52 SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And you you can't overlook the the local bands. But where was I going with that? Well, I think just like With you know the the booking and the promoter and all of that.

44:05 SPEAKER_02: The issue too is with ticket sales. And I don't know if it was like that before COVID. Maybe it was, I don't know. But I know that uh you know, some acts if the tickets don't sell that there's not enough sales prior to the show, the shows are getting canceled.

44:22 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. Yeah, yep.

44:23 SPEAKER_02: And I think a lot of that here too.

44:25 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. That that happens, I think, that's happening more and at every level, right? There's especially for local shows, and this was a big thing in most major cities, especially New York and LA, but in New York, even prior to COVID, there was still a lot of pay-to-play. It's like like a production company, hey, we have this venue for nine for like 10 Friday nights this fall. And then they will just like send a big email blast to every band that's ever booked with them before and say, pick a slot on any one of these Friday nights at this venue.

44:57 SPEAKER_00: And then you can pick a time, and then there's three other times for that same night where other bands can also put in their own times, completely random, too. Like they will they sometimes will try, hey, this is a kind of a rock type of night. So let's make sure we only take bookings for rock for this specific Friday because we have two people that already pick these two slots on that Friday. But the deal was always it doesn't matter if you sell tickets or if you give us money, it costs$150 to play that night.

45:22 SPEAKER_00: So you could either sell$10,$15 tickets or you can just Venmo me$150 and sell the tickets yourself, right? And it's still like that. It's still like that in LA and New York, maybe a little bit less because there's less venues of it, but it's that's kind of always been a thing. However, I had definitely noticed a drop in concert ticket sales and everything too. Like I think uh I'm not really sure, like yes, part of it's COVID, part of it is is obviously rising costs and things like that. But what I've noticed since moving out to LA is that I think more of the people are saving their monies, saving their money for festivals than they are for concerts.

45:59 SPEAKER_00: Because even though it is expensive, really expensive to go to a festival like Coachella, it's gonna cost you, if you're not local, it's gonna cost you a thousand dollars. But you can see five or six or seven artists that would cost more than three, four hundred dollars a ticket in that weekend, right? Right, right. A bunch of other artists, and that's like well, warp tour is doing that right now, too. Like Warp Tour, you could get an entire warp tour weekend for like less than$200, and you can see Blink 182 plan and like Oh my god, that would be awesome.

46:31 SPEAKER_00: I've always wanted to go to Warp Tour. That's it's amazing. Highly recommend, highly, highly recommend.

46:36 SPEAKER_02: I definitely spent a lot of money because we have incarceration that comes through here.

46:40 SPEAKER_00: Well, that's also really good too. Incarceration.

46:42 SPEAKER_02: So yeah, that definitely it's the wall of it.

46:45 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but no, work tour actually these last two years have been really affordable. The when we were young It's just the money that you spend when you're there. Yeah, yes, exactly that too. You have to kind of be in the area and and all and it's different now, right? Like warp tour now is different from what it used to be, obviously, because I wouldn't really call it I think I saw somebody somebody on a meme or or uh an interview said that they shouldn't call it Warp Tour, they should call it Warp Festival.

47:11 SPEAKER_00: Um Warp Tour has always been about really the small bands traveling from city to city to city. And it's literally a traveling group of bands, like 15, 20, 30, 40 bands going from city to city to city, they make their own way to that city and they play a show and then they move on. There's literally like 20, 30 bands touring all the time. Now it's just three or four locations, and they're not, and it's not necessarily that it's not a tour because there are a few of them, but the bands that they're catering to and the audience that they're catering to is more our generation millennials and stuff, and they're really just like the big names are the the headliners, are the ones that are selling the tickets, and then all the up-and-coming bands are getting put on them.

47:55 SPEAKER_00: But even the up-and-coming bands, I think, need a bigger slot than they are, because it's like I know bands that are on the B and C stages that I'm like, they've been around for 17, 18 years. How are they not on the main stage? You know what I mean? Well, it's because the main stage is repaired for all-time low, and like, you know what I mean? Simple plant, like, and not to say that they don't deserve those slots because they definitely do, but those bands are so much bigger now than they were when Warp Tour was in its original idea that the level of production is completely different now.

48:28 SPEAKER_00: And basically, like, I don't know if you remember the very short-lived When We Were Young festival in in Vegas when that first popped off. Like, no.

48:36 SPEAKER_02: Because of South Familiar.

48:38 SPEAKER_00: So, so there was, okay. So this the reason why this was such a big deal was When We Were Young, is that's what it was called? It was it was called When We Were Young. It's put on by it was put on by Live Nation. It was in Vegas. Um, it's in the same, it was in the same festival grounds with Stagecoach. And I think it was Stagecoach, maybe not, but it was it was a couple of things. One, it was probably the first of its kind to be like a emo alternative pop punk festival, not like incarceration, where it's like a little heavier based, or like, or like I guess also you could say like like So What Festival or or Forecourt in Pittsburgh were similar, but like when we were young was put on by Live Nation, which almost guaranteed really big acts, right?

49:18 SPEAKER_00: And so in the first year they had oh, the reason why it was such a big deal was because the first year that they did when we were young festival was when My Chemical Romance announced their first comeback. And so and that was their first show, and that was really the only show that they had announced at the time. So literally at this time, you know, 10, 15 years after MCR broke up and they've ended their whatever, they announced, hey, we're coming back and we're gonna play the Black Parade album at When We Were Young Fest in Las Vegas.

49:47 SPEAKER_00: And of course, MCR has literally only blown up since even more since they like uh retired or whatever. And so these tickets were like$400 for a single day festival, one day.

50:01 SPEAKER_02: My goodness.

50:02 SPEAKER_00: Yeah. And there were two days of it. There was a Saturday and a Sunday, and it wasn't like two different days. It was the same show two days in a row. You buy one ticket for Saturday, or you buy one ticket for Sunday, and it's the same show both days. So you're not, you have to choose who you're gonna see in the first day for$400. And people were like, especially people my age, like who had been like lit, some people have never seen them play live. Some people who are like, I can't believe I'm gonna die, never having seen my chemical romance ever play.

50:31 SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean? Some people became diehard fans of them after they retired. And so you have people that have been working and now they have jobs, real adult money in Live Nation is like, hey, if we charge$400 for a ticket, we put MCR on the bill, I guarantee you. They sold out in five minutes, like so fast. They sold out so fast.

50:49 SPEAKER_03: That's insane.

50:50 SPEAKER_00: It was insane. And people were flying all over the world, just literally, probably most likely just to see my chemical romance, just then. And not to say that the other bands on the bill weren't worth it because they were. I think Paramore was also on the bill, like, or it might have been in the year after, I don't remember. But like they had it, they only lasted like three, three-ish years, but they did that first year. And of course, the first date that I was there, I actually got a ticket for the first date, and uh it was canceled because of wind.

51:18 SPEAKER_00: And so literally didn't get to see them play, literally did not get to see them play. And I remember half of my friends flew from Pennsylvania to Vegas, and we were all there for the Saturday show. And we I remember Saturday morning, right? Saturday morning, 9 a.m., we were waiting in line to get breakfast somewhere. And like, we're gonna get breakfast and we're gonna walk to the gate and then get our passes in. Literally, as we're waiting in line for breakfast, we get an alert on our phone saying that the festival was canceled out a day due to wind.

51:50 SPEAKER_00: And I remember like I just looking out and seeing like everybody, by the way, Vegas at this point was completely taken over by emo goth people. Like before it would be like normal people, tourists and stuff, and then all of a sudden it was just a sea of black. Like everyone's wearing black, everyone's like in like like something you don't really see in Vegas very often. And then like what year what year were these going on? This was 2023, 2022, 2023. I think it was 2023. And I just remember like looking up and seeing everybody look at their phone and just like flipping out.

52:24 SPEAKER_00: They're like, Are you fucking kidding me? Are you serious? Like, some of these people were like flew in from Australia for a one-day festival in Las Vegas, and like not like obviously hotels were booked to all hell, flights were booked to all hell. So like they were only there for that one day, and that was the one day that was canceled. And because of the way that their ticketing and everything was set up, uh, they couldn't get put on another date. There was only Sunday, which was already sold out.

52:49 SPEAKER_00: So nobody from Saturday could go to Sunday unless they bought a Sunday ticket, right? Whereas any other festival, if that first day is canceled, you may get a partial refund, you may not, but you can still go to the other days of the festival and see whatever, right? But because of the capitalist nature of this specific festival, it was one day, a single-day festival with all like so many heavy hitter bands that a lot of these people probably have never seen in their lives and would never get to see because they would have to choose between so-and-so and so and so.

53:20 SPEAKER_00: But it was the success of this first festival that I think is that's definitely what brought back Warp's Tour. Because I think after the first two years of when we were young, they got a lot of I would say hate, but a lot of just bad PR because of how expensive it was, because of how clearly corporate greedy it was. Plus, Ticketmaster and Live Nation, nobody like there's there's there were no secret, everybody hated them at this point too. And there was this like, I would say, cognitive dissonance of like the culture of emo, DIY, punk musicians selling out to corporate live nation, whatever, whatever, right?

53:58 SPEAKER_00: So there was that aspect of it as well.

54:01 SPEAKER_02: Just put a very bad taste in for the fans. I mean, it was total, total huge disservice for the fans. So it doesn't sound like anything of it was set up to benefit the true fans. Yeah. Like you said it was corporate greed.

54:14 SPEAKER_00: Yes, very much so. And that that caught on quite quickly. And I think that was when Kevin Lyman decided to bring back Warp Tour in like 20. I mean, last year was the first one, it was 2025.

54:28 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I feel like it just came came back around.

54:31 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this year was the first year that they did it. So 2025 is I think what when we were young happened for like two or three years, which so like 2022 to 2025, and then Warp Tour happened. I remember there was that last year, Warp Tour 2025 might have been the last year that When We Were Young existed. And I think everybody just was like, well, Vegas is only three and a half hours away from LA. If you're gonna go to When We Were Young festival in Vegas and spend four or five hundred dollars, why not just spend$200 and see basically all the same bands, but for half the price and spread out over two days in Los Angeles instead?

55:05 SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, LA is expensive, but there's more to do than just gambling and drinking, right? Vegas is that's kind of all you can do. And that's not necessarily the culture of the people coming to Warp Tour or when we were young. Some of them, yeah, obviously we've grown up and we party and stuff, but the culture has never been around that. Um, whereas Warp Tour, uh, you know, the way that it was set up, it was like it's it, it's much more evident that they know who their target audience is. Whereas Live Nation was like, we're just targeting corporate emos toward corporate millennials who like put away the the the fishnets and they put on like and ties.

55:44 SPEAKER_00: But like, you know, warp tour was catering to the people that were still like that, but also younger generations of kids that were still coming up and like, you know, with the with the price ticket being cheaper, and they were still putting smaller bands too. And so I think that was just very clearly and very obviously the winner. I think the fact that Kevin Lyman was still fronting it and keeping their their branding still aligned to the the ethos of the community was I think f like paramount in keeping Warp Tour or rather bringing it back because it's kind of bigger than than it was.

56:15 SPEAKER_02: And not bigger than it was, but it's huge now compared to to Yeah, it is because I mean you have it was, you know, we're we're talking uh I feel like at least 20 or some years ago when Warp Tour first came out. And then so you have all of us that uh went when it started, and then we've aged, and we also have our kids. Yeah, and you know, maybe even grandkids by now.

56:37 SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.

56:38 SPEAKER_02: Depending on rewratten life that, you know, can all take part in Warp Tour. So I think that's cool about uh, you know, some of those festivals that they bring back. I did hear, did you hear the Ozfest is coming back, but it's only gonna be in Yeah, it's gonna be a one day and but it's gonna be in Birmingham.

56:57 SPEAKER_03: Okay, cool.

56:59 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that's really cool. Uh I was hoping to be a you know, a city to city tour like how they used to do. But any it, you know, nonetheless, at least it's they're bringing it back. So that's cool. Yeah, that's maybe that's better, you know. So let's talk a little bit about Darrow and your new single that you've got out. So you came out with your brand new EP called Pretty Privilege, and you also have the uh you also brought back uh the focus track back again.

57:33 SPEAKER_03: Yes.

57:34 SPEAKER_02: So is back again the one with the music video where you're traveling?

57:38 SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, that's that's the tow truck one. Thank you. That one was crazy.

57:44 SPEAKER_02: And you know, it uh it was just really relatable. It's like, yeah, bye, I'm I'm leaving you out, not coming back.

57:50 SPEAKER_00: I mean, honestly, it's it's really tough because what music videos have been now compared to what they used to be years ago are different. Um part of me, I can't break that part of my brain because I think as because of when I grew up as a millennial, I still value like high production value and like really aesthetic, cinematic looking shots. I think the newer generation, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, don't really care as much. Maybe because it feels like you're being sold to. You know, I can totally understand that.

58:18 SPEAKER_00: Uh so like in an age where it's like somebody could totally AI generate a video like that. And for the most part, if you do it well enough, could probably be pretty unnoticeable to most people. It was a combination of one, I really wanted just a freaking real normal music video again. It's been a while since I put out like an actual conceptual narrative music video. Like my last song, Over You was just a vertical video of me performing a bunch of shorts that were full length and it was cut together.

58:48 SPEAKER_00: The video before that for what's good was just me and a like a white psychorama, and it was just a one-take. And it wasn't even, we weren't even planning to shoot a video that day. It was just, I just like, hey, throw on the song, let me just lip sync to it. And then I had my producer, Miami, he was like in a mask and in a guitar, and we just like found random props in that in the in the room in the venue and just like put them in the white psychorama just to make it look colorful. And then afterward, I was like, you know what, we could just use this as a video because this was that time where like people didn't really care so much about music videos, all about vertical short form content.

59:23 SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I should still have some type of video. So I was just like I hired an animator and had them like draw and scribble over it and kind of make it look a little bit like Scott Pilgrim, which was really cool. But it still wasn't like I used to do videos where there was like a concept and a narrative, and like there's a story, and there's like B role and A role and cinematic shots and like makeup and effects and stuff. And I used to go really hard on that because I just love building and telling stories, but I hadn't done it since I moved out in LA.

59:50 SPEAKER_00: I guess I did do that with uh Miss Song Jomo, which is like a pool with a bunch of blow up dolls and stuff, but that was still kind of in the same vein of like, let's just do some random shit. This was the first time in a while that I was like, you know what, I feel really strongly about this song. I'm about to drop an EP. I haven't done a really high effort, high production value narrative music video in a while. And I was like, this is the type of song that that would work for. And so me and me and Mike, my director or videographer, we were just sitting here.

1:00:21 SPEAKER_00: He had flown out here and we knew we were gonna shoot a video. And I had a completely different idea, right? I don't even remember what the original idea was. There was something to do with the desert, just because I was like, I haven't done a desert music video yet. I've been in LA for like years now, I haven't done one out in the desert. Everybody, it's like you gotta have one, right? It's like a rite of passage. Um, like in L you have in LA, I feel like if you if you are an artist in LA, the rite of passages, you gotta have a pool music video at some point, a rooftop music video, and a desert video.

1:00:49 SPEAKER_00: Like, you gotta have those. And that's just like part of the portfolio. Yeah, it's just like a rite of passage, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I'm just making this up. That's just how I feel. And so I was like, well, I haven't done the desert one yet. And we were just like thinking about it, listening to the song, and he was just like, yo, what if you just like took a bunch of shit and like put it on the back of a tow truck and then like just wrote it around as if like you were just living on the truck.

1:01:13 SPEAKER_00: And so we just like came up with a bunch of concepts and ideas and thoughts, and I'm just like, well, we could make it so that I'm like literally living a full day on the on the tow truck, and like, you know, I can get like a bed and a couch and like a nightstand and all this stuff, and I'm just like, I play video games and I could do all this. And I was like, well, I don't want to use my own furniture and bring it out into the desert and then bring it back into my house. And I'm like, why don't I just check Facebook Marketplace?

1:01:39 SPEAKER_00: So literally everything that you see in the video was all acquired on Facebook Marketplace for little to no money at all. So I spent the entire like two days. So we also found a tow truck driver on Facebook Marketplace, and I messaged like 10, I messaged 10 of them, and only half of them got backed, and only one of them was like down to do it. And uh it was a nightmare, honestly. I almost canceled this video like three, four times because it was just so.

1:02:04 SPEAKER_02: Well, I noticed that you mentioned you you had the tow truck driver listed by name in your card. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:02:09 SPEAKER_00: Because he was such a good guy, he was such a cool guy. He was just so like, he was so down to do everything. He was just like, he was, I think maybe I don't know. He's he was born and raised here, so he's pretty local. And when I messaged him, he he didn't really like respond right away. So I figured either he was busy or he thinks I'm bullshit. And so I sent him like mock-ups of photos, like, here's what we want to do. And then when I said to the mock-ups, he's like, these are fucking sick. But then he probably was just like, this guy's not doing that.

1:02:34 SPEAKER_00: There's no way he's gonna pull this off. So for the first like three days, I was like losing my mind. I was like, if this guy doesn't pull through, all of this is canceled. And I had already spent two, I rented a U-Haul for a couple of days because one, we had to drive about, I don't know, a hundred miles to get up to an area where we would have open desert, open road with like no interference.

1:02:59 SPEAKER_03: Really? That far?

1:03:00 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, LA is LA is expansive. At least the LA area, like this was we had to go out of the valley up into Lancaster Palmdale. Plus, it was like a hundred degrees that day. It was like 98 degrees. So I almost canceled because of that. And I knew that we were going to need a lot of help, at least enough hands. We had such a skeleton crew. We originally had a drone operator who canceled and didn't come. Uh, we actually had two. We had one, and then a backup, they both canceled. Like the first one, like, yeah, I'll be there.

1:03:27 SPEAKER_00: And then literally 10 minutes before we were leaving our apartment with the U-Haul, and we had like my girlfriend's Honda, her CRV. We were literally pulling out of the garage to drive, and he calls and says, Yeah, I'm not gonna make it. And I was just like, I was like, should I just cancel this whole thing? And then he and then my and then Mike like called another, he was like, I know someone else that might have a drone, and they're like, Let me get back to you. We waited about an hour and a half, and he was like, Yeah, I can't make it either.

1:03:54 SPEAKER_00: So I'm just like, so we showed up really late, and part of me was really nervous this whole time that the tow truck driver wasn't gonna show. But he ended up showing, and part of it was because I was like, hey man, how much do you make in a day, et cetera, et cetera? I was like, Well, how about I pay you this much? This will probably cover all the toes that you would do in a day, and all you gotta do is just drive me around and shoot a music video. And I really wanted to make sure that it was a private, like tow, like he owned his truck, like he wasn't part of a company, all this stuff.

1:04:24 SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Yeah, it's my truck. And and so when we showed up and he was there, we immediately started like like setting up the tow truck, and he was like, dude, this is awesome! Like he was he was so pumped about like the fact that it was actually happening. I think there was a little bit of like like skepticism there, but then when he showed up, or when he saw us show up with all of our shit, and like he was like, Okay, no, this is these guys are serious. Yeah, yeah. And so immediately, like the flip switched, and he was like, dude, he was he was straight up, he was like, because we did not get, I mean, this is how all music videos shut sh uh shoots go, but we only got like 30% of the shots we wanted.

1:05:02 SPEAKER_00: Like we were planning on meeting at two, we showed up at four. We didn't, we didn't hit record until like six.

1:05:09 SPEAKER_02: Damn.

1:05:10 SPEAKER_00: Golden hour was between six and eight. So we literally had like I was talking when I was when I was editing the video with Mike, we were like FaceTiming, and he was like, dude, we only shot three hours of footage. I was like, what are you talking about? And he was like, if you look at the timestamp for when we hit record and the timestamp for when we hit our last shot, it's about three hours and 37 minutes of footage. And almost half of that, more than half of it, was all B-roll. And so there's literally like two shots of me like actually lip syncing A-roll, and there's a bunch of other band shots that didn't look really good because we wanted to shoot the band shots at sunset, but we just ran out of time.

1:05:45 SPEAKER_00: And so we ended up having to shoot the band shots at night with an improvised lighting setup. And so we did not get nearly as much as we wanted. And I was just like, I was like, I knew that I didn't get everything I wanted, and I knew that other videographers probably would have been like, It looks like you guys didn't get enough shots because there's so much potential in that idea and that setting. Right. That like for for us to only have like three or four main shots, for anyone that doesn't do music video production, maybe they don't notice.

1:06:13 SPEAKER_00: But for someone that spends time like doing and thinking about storyboarding and stuff, they're like, dude, you guys could have done so much more with all that. And I'm like, I know, we just didn't have time. And we didn't have people. We had like four people there. Like every single person there was very responsible for a specific job. But there was barely anyone that we barely got any BTS. Like it was just, but this is how all of our videos have always been. Like every single time we shoot a music video, we're like, man, we could have hired someone just to shoot BTS.

1:06:40 SPEAKER_00: Like, no, if we hired someone to shoot BTS, they would have just ended up being a helping hand so that I wouldn't have to do all this myself. Because I was, you know, that's just how I am. But I'm literally like re- I'm changing clothes, rechanging the set, fixing the light bulbs, changing the Bluetooth on the song, adding the click to the song. I'm like, I'm also like besides Mike, I'm also directing people like I want this shot. I want you to zoom in at this point, like I want to move this over here.

1:07:04 SPEAKER_00: And I'm like having to do this while also act as the artist.

1:07:07 SPEAKER_02: So it's like the production that's mentally taxing, you know, on top of just having to, you know, be in charge and have wear those multiple hats. A lot of people don't realize, just to the average naked eye, what what goes on. And, you know, even if you don't see those behind the scene moments, but knowing, you know, as the artist and then your crew, you guys all know. But to try and explain that to somebody, it's not even worth it. Don't even try to explain it to them because you're gonna, yeah, you'll be talking for hours and hours just explaining stuff.

1:07:41 SPEAKER_02: It's like that for you know, content creators that are out there. It's what you see, the finished product, even if it's maybe like 60 seconds or less, you have no idea what all went in behind them.

1:07:52 SPEAKER_00: It was insane. Like, like I literally spent the entire day prior just driving all around Los Angeles picking up all of the props you see. Like, and I was very specific about what I wanted. Like, I really wanted an old Macintosh computer. I really wanted to wanted an old like tube television, like a CR TV, because I really wanted it to look nostalgic. Yeah.

1:08:14 SPEAKER_02: So I'm like, I love the couch too, because the couch that you have it, it's still really a good, it's almost like a good balance with between the the desert, it still gives you like a good um, what do I want to say?

1:08:26 SPEAKER_00: Color theory.

1:08:28 SPEAKER_02: I think so, yeah.

1:08:29 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it pops. That was I was very specific about the yeah, yeah. And like the truth, that was actually one of the things I basically set dressed from Facebook Marketplace. Like I was looking up furniture and I was like, I want this piece, and I like I would take, I would literally take the image from Facebook Marketplace and like put it into Canva and like just looked at like a storyboard or or a vision board of like what all the colors would look like because all the hair and the yellow couch, very like bright contrast, and then like the trunk that we used was this old like wooden blue trunk that we had, and like like the pink flamingo pole.

1:09:06 SPEAKER_00: I really specifically needed a really was because like if the desert in the background is just like very bland and like tan, the colors on the tow truck have to pop. We also got really lucky with the sunset era, like the sunset time. We knew that it was gonna be really beautiful for like for golden hour, but there was a part in the video where I was singing the A-roll, and the truck turns a little bit, and then the way that the sun was facing us shifted because we turned on the lane, and then it hit like it hit me at a really like very interesting angle, and it became a shot.

1:09:43 SPEAKER_00: I was like, Oh, that's our A roll, that's our A roll right there. And it was just literally timing that we just happened to be on that road and turned that corner at that exact time when the sun was coming out, and I was like, we gotta go back and forth on this road for like the next 20 minutes.

1:09:55 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then like without memory all of the headaches that you went through and putting that together, it looks very authentic and it looks like you were you're really leaving town. You're like saying, Hey, I'm not coming back. What went in the lyrics that you wrote for the song? So where did that ideation come from?

1:10:14 SPEAKER_00: So I we me, Miami, my my producer, songwriter, co-writer, uh Miami is genius, right? He's one of the most genius songwriters I've ever worked with. And that was actually part of the reason why I moved out to Los Angeles, was because I wanted to write with people. My previous two albums I wrote completely solo. And it was great, it was fun, and I felt like I learned a lot, but I also felt like I was becoming stagnant. So when I moved out here, and I my sole purpose was to work and collaborate with other producers and songwriters.

1:10:40 SPEAKER_00: And working with Miami, he really understands where I'm coming from. I think because he also lived a very similar, he's he's a couple years older than me, a few years older than me. I think he also went through a lot of the same like artistic struggles that I went through. So he really understands like my mentality, my mindset, and also the struggles that I go through. So, so we were, we actually wrote this song because the riff, the the hook for the song, the you don't gotta tell me nothing, heard it off our mind.

1:11:10 SPEAKER_00: That was actually an outtake from another song that we did, What's Good, which is the other song on the out on the EP that uh I think is a big one. We actually finished that song and he was like, he was like, he was like, yo, go back into the booth. I was like, okay. And he was like, I want you to sing all these words differently. And so we sang a completely different hook for what's good over the instrumental of what's good, and it worked really well. And I was like, do we just change the entire song of what's good just to include this hook?

1:11:39 SPEAKER_00: And we ended up deciding not to do it. We ended deciding to release that song the way that it was, but then that hook still remained. And I was like, what if we took that hook and made a different song out of it? I was like, we would have to change all the instrumentals underneath of it, but like I think it's a really good hook. And so I went over to his house and we just like spent like 20, 30 minutes just like coming up with different chord progressions to put underneath of it. And then like over time it just transformed into what it was.

1:12:04 SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and it was just like there was a lot of different elements that we wrote that ended up not being part of it, and it just ended up becoming its own thing. And one of the other things too that we were doing, he was like, All right, so for the last two songs, you sang pretty aggressively pop punk. He was like, What if with this one, instead of continuing the aggressive vocal fry, we did something more like poppy? Like, what if we did like the kid LaRoy meet state champs? And I was like, Okay.

1:12:29 SPEAKER_00: So we try, and this I've never really sung like that before. I've never really sung soft poppy like that before. Um, and he was like, This fits your voice a lot better. And I was like, all right, let's give it a shot. And I I'm really happy with with how it turned out because it's I to me it still feels pop punk, but it feels like really modern, I guess. I don't know. Like if the Kid LeRoy and Neck Deep did a song together or something, I don't know. But yeah, I was just really happy with with how it came out, and like I have no one to think except for Miami.

1:12:59 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's definitely I like the tune. And um you said that uh here too in the press release, sonically it's more pop forward than my previous releases, but still hits that summary pop punk vibe with powerful raw guitars and edge. And in thinking of where you're at now in 2026 compared to where you your musical influences have come from, the the early emo era, uh, do you feel like the uh the music has changed much? And if so, in what way?

1:13:29 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, definitely. I mean, even across the release of this EP, it's changed a lot. I mean, part of it is just because I'm very slow at releasing music nowadays. Part of, I mean, a lot of the issues or challenges that I have with being solo is that I'm solo. So, like I don't have a band, I don't have anyone to split costs with. A majority of the reason why everything is slow is because I'm funding everything myself. And so moving to LA, like essentially having to start over with my momentum. I had a decent amount of momentum in New York before I left, but when I moved out here, I kind of felt like I had to start over.

1:14:06 SPEAKER_00: And like, you know, I had to get a new job and it paid less in my job in New York, and then I had to get a car, so that's another monthly payment, and so like life just and of course it's post-COVID, so everything was just astronomically more expensive. Um so part of the challenges with me was just being able to release music consistently because I just didn't have either money or time or both. And so I was just literally drip feeding releases as much as I could over the next two or three years.

1:14:33 SPEAKER_00: And when you spend that much time in between releases, like the music and sonics are gonna change just because whether or not I'm sitting on something for a while and I'm just tired of it, or trends change and I like realize, oh, I like this the way that this is gonna sound better if I did it this way. And that was difficult for me because I felt constantly felt like I was chasing myself rather than putting out a sound that I was like, even like with back again. That's I would say the this most recent song is probably the least amount of time that I've had it sitting before it was released.

1:15:07 SPEAKER_00: Like with previous songs, even for like what's good, I that song was done seven months before it dropped. And so my brain was already like a year forward in terms of my style and my aesthetic. And so that's also difficult for me too, is to like have to kind of feel like when I'm promoting a song, I don't say revert, but like go back to a different part of my artist life that I was in. Sure. And so trying to balance all of those different like sonics out is is a little bit difficult when you spend so much time in between each release.

1:15:39 SPEAKER_02: How do you feel about uh where it seems like it's becoming more of the acceptable standard to put out a release here and there instead of a full-length album? What are your thoughts on that?

1:15:52 SPEAKER_03: I think it depends.

1:15:54 SPEAKER_00: I think it depends on the genre, right? Like obviously in my sphere of genre, it's I think it's well, I think everybody's releasing singles, right? I think it's because it takes so much time and effort to promote a release. I would say the other thing too that really, really caused this is, or rather, the thing that's leading to this release, modern release schedule of doing singles instead of albums is Spotify. Big, big, big footprint and honestly a big uh I don't want to say culprit, like it's a bad thing, but they're a main one of the main reasons why people release this date now.

1:16:29 SPEAKER_00: Um and the reason why is because of the editorial playlist pitching. Currently, like when you release a song on Spotify, like if you upload it to like DistroKit or CD Baby, um, it shows up in your Spotify upcoming releases, and you're allowed to pitch a song for editorial playlisting, like New Music Friday or whatever, but you can only pitch one song per project. So if you release a full album of completely brand new songs, you can only pitch one of those songs. And the rest of those songs for the rest of their life can never be pitched again.

1:16:58 SPEAKER_00: And so the only way to maximize the chances that you would get to do this, to do so, is to release singles because every new single is a is a new project. And so they will release singles every 30, 60, 90 days where each one of them has a chance to be pitched for editorial playlisting, which for some artists can literally make or break their entire careers. It's kind of like a lottery ticket. And uh so instead of people releasing full albums where they can only pitch one song and the rest of them just don't get any editorial chances, they're doing singles at a time.

1:17:31 SPEAKER_00: And what they're doing is this thing called waterfalling, where they'll release a single and then when it's time to release the next single, they'll upload two songs as a two-song EP, which includes the previous song, which can't be repitched, but the new song on that project can be. And so they'll just do that's what I've been doing. So everybody will start doing this, and I think that's really what led to people releasing singles. Plus, there's the attention economy where like attention spans are super short, nobody has time, nobody has the attention span to listen to a full-length album anymore unless it's one they're familiar with from back then or whatever.

1:18:06 SPEAKER_00: Um, so it's rare, it still happens, but I think it's a lot rarer for people to to release full albums because the attention is much shorter, and it's not just music that is vying for our attention because everything's on our phone, so it's like YouTube. No, it's everything is vying.

1:18:22 SPEAKER_02: And content. So, you know, the pitching that you're yeah, a lot of content can go into just one song alone that you know, yeah, especially if it goes like you're you're handling that. I mean, that's a a job in itself, right there, just handling the the social media aspect.

1:18:42 SPEAKER_00: Tell me about it. Tell me about it. I don't have I'm like I I grew up in that spot where like I'm very, very tech savvy, but I still have like a quality over quantity mindset. But right now, the way that the industry is, at least with like the not the industry, but the way that the algorithm is, it's more geared towards quantity over quality.

1:19:03 SPEAKER_03: Quantity, yeah, I know.

1:19:04 SPEAKER_00: But but what we consider quality is different now, right? Like I can like very different, yeah.

1:19:11 SPEAKER_02: And I have to I have to say before this thought leaves my mind because I'm older, so I forget things sooner.

1:19:16 SPEAKER_03: No worries.

1:19:17 SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it for me it's been kind of harder because I'm Gen X, and we were taught that you know the quality is what matters. So you have to do it right and you have to do it, you want to try to do it right the first time. And if you don't, they always say try, try again. Yeah, but now it's almost the different, the you know, the other side.

1:19:37 SPEAKER_00: And what the thing that I want to point out about it, and this is the thing that I'm just starting to come around about, is what we consider quality in our era is not the same quality that is right, because for me it's like, oh, quality is a cinematic shot where everything's in focus and everything is bouqueted in the background and it's like super, but no, right now what's quality what's quality can for the algorithm is what keeps their attention. Does exactly that hook it's the first three seconds?

1:20:07 SPEAKER_00: Yes, literally, and it's and then you guys dive even deeper, like okay, well, what about the hook is quality? Well, does the music and the text do they line up? That's quality. Like it's a quality post if these three things align. If the hook is good plus the visuals are interesting, right? Because now, like what looks good is subjective, and then does it relate to the per like does it offer something to the viewer? Like that's what is considered quality nowadays, not necessarily how pretty does it look, right?

1:20:38 SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing that I'm having trouble shifting my brain into. It's what I think is quality is different from what the new era thinks is quality.

1:20:47 SPEAKER_02: And it could be something that you just rushed and put together, through together, and in your mind it's shit and it still goes viral.

1:20:55 SPEAKER_03: Yeah. Yeah.

1:20:56 SPEAKER_02: So it's yeah, it's there's a lot of mentality differences, especially amongst I think, generations too.

1:21:03 SPEAKER_00: And I think the reason why it's considered quality to someone else and maybe not to me, because I think it looks like shit, is because it's it doesn't actually matter what it looks like. The thing that gives it quality is does someone get value from it? Are they relating to it? And that like it's redefining what quality is, essentially. Whereas like for us for 20 years, seeing like cinematic movies and Christopher Nolan and like seeing growing up in that era, that's to me ingrained as quality. But newer kids growing up on TikTok and social media, quality is not how it looks, it's how does it make you feel, right?

1:21:39 SPEAKER_00: That's the big difference. And so, like, that's it's hard. It's hard to like transition to that.

1:21:45 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, it really can be. But at the same time, you know, once you start doing it and you can it, you know, if you can shift your mindset, then you can go with it, and then you just have to be able to, you know, willing to change. Yeah. And you know, just stay relevant. So tell us some more about uh pretty privilege. This is the release that came out on August 14th.

1:22:08 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, pretty privilege, it's it's such a interesting term for me because it's not like I'm trying to say, oh, I'm pretty, so therefore I have privilege. Like it's obviously supposed to be very tongue in cheek because it's pop punk. So it's like it's cynical. It's in a cynical way. And I think that's pretty obvious by the content. Like, I I feel like most artists aren't, at least in this genre, aren't that narcissistic. Um, I think it's supposed to give off a tongue-in-cheek, like kind of ironic sense of the word pretty privilege.

1:22:41 SPEAKER_00: But most of it was just because like living in LA and New York and like seeing and the acceptance, the acceptance. And really just realizing that like regardless of how everybody looks, everybody's still seeking validation. I've seen some of the most beautiful people here have zero friends. You know what I mean? Like, and then all of a sudden I'm like, okay, well, pretty privilege really gets you only so far, right? Like, and realizing that like validation comes from mostly from yourself than than anything else.

1:23:11 SPEAKER_02: 100%.

1:23:12 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's just I I think that there's a level of reassurance and self in in self-confidence that like I didn't necessarily have when I first came out here, and something that I've experienced as getting older and kind of not caring so much about what other people think because I'm realizing how much time, how fast time moves. So I'm just like, I feel like the era of my 30s is like cut out all the shit I don't care about and really only focus on the things that make me happy, aka my friends, like my childhood, things like that.

1:23:45 SPEAKER_00: And uh I think there's like the the the idea of pretty privilege is just like it's so surface level, obviously. It's very surface level and it only gets you so far. And if you don't accept you for who you are yourself, that privilege isn't really going to amount to anything. You're not gonna be able to act on it. If anything, it might become more coxtic. But yeah, I I've seen that all over the city, and it's really just kind of how the world operates in a lot of ways in certain areas.

1:24:13 SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's um, I feel like that becomes even more something more that comes about in thought the older somebody gets because you you're always looking back and thinking about, whoa, I used to do this or used to do that. And you kind of if you know, if you're somebody who can look back and kind of, you know, retrospectively see how you've changed and evolved through time, you can see where a lot of things that maybe you put a lot of put a bunch of weight into and value really are just maybe.

1:24:45 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not as important as you think. It's not gonna make as much of an impact in your life as you once thought.

1:24:51 SPEAKER_02: That you go through too. So it's a lot of times it comes with age, but it can also come with, you know, the amount of experience that you have as well.

1:24:57 SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that too, for sure.

1:24:59 SPEAKER_02: So what is something that you would want a new fan to walk away with when they hear Darrow?

1:25:05 SPEAKER_00: Oh man, uh let's say with uh pretty privilege. I would say on a philosophical level, I just hope you like I mean, I just really hope you relate and enjoy the music, obviously. And I'm hoping to play some shows this year, but also some things that people can confuse about is that I am a solo artist, but I do have a band when I play live. And that's sometimes like a weird, a hard concept for people to grasp. Like they're like, so when you play, do you play? Yeah, like that. Some people think that I just show up on stage and I sing to like a backing track, which I can understand because that is kind of like it's much more accepted to do so nowadays.

1:25:39 SPEAKER_00: It's just that the the genre of pop punk is so, you know, steeped in bands that people either think I'm a band or that I'm a solo act with and I just like sing lip sync over like fucking backing tracks or whatever. And I'm like, no, when I play live, I have a real band. I mean I play the guitar myself too, but I'm trying to do less of that and do more of the singing. But like, no, like the whole reason I did this was to play live music with a band. The only reason I'm a solo act is because I have so much I have control issues, and I just like I want to do things my way, really.

1:26:11 SPEAKER_00: That's pretty much it.

1:26:13 SPEAKER_02: Awesome. And are you on all streaming platforms, I'm assuming?

1:26:17 SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm on all streaming platforms. Spotify is my biggest, all my music videos are on YouTube as well. Um, Apple even titled and here in Amazon. Yeah.

1:26:27 SPEAKER_02: Do you have uh anything major planned for the remainder of 2026?

1:26:32 SPEAKER_00: I'm working on getting some shows together. It's tough because I'm trying to get my band in one spot, but my band, my really it's just my drummer and my guitar player right now, because they're the only ones in LA, are full-time musicians, so they're like, they all have like 10 other projects as well. The difficulty is that they are more of a friend group than a band group. And so the level of one, I'm very I'm high, I highly curate personalities. Like I don't accept people into my circle unless I like vet their personality and stuff.

1:27:04 SPEAKER_00: So I keep my circle really small. Therefore, they they're they're homies. So like some of my best friends here. But also like that, that also means that they treat the project a little bit differently than I would treat it. I take it very seriously. They they they they also take it very seriously, but it's like not a moneymaker for them. So they have to get paid for the other things first. So it's a little bit difficult trying to line up all of our schedules. But I've been trying to get some shows booked for like October.

1:27:31 SPEAKER_00: So we'll see.

1:27:32 SPEAKER_02: Okay, cool. Well, I'll definitely be paying attention. And I would love to spread the word when you start to get some of your shows booked, and you know, even with more releases. So I think that you are really talented and um in just talking with you tonight. I'm really grateful that I got to meet you and talk to you and hear your story. You're you're a pretty cool dude.

1:27:53 SPEAKER_02: And your drive alone, it's there for a reason. So don't ever doubt it in talking when you're talking about how you wish that you maybe you would spend more time with your friends at home and things like that. Don't don't beat yourself up for pursuing your passion and doing what you have. So and if it doesn't make sense now, it will eventually stop it.

1:28:18 SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.

1:28:20 SPEAKER_02: All right, Darrow and T-Stread's audience. You heard it first from Darrow. He's out of LA, and make sure that you check him out. Like you said, he's uh available on all streaming platforms. And if you uh want to hear what current pop is doing in 2026. And Darrow, thank you so much for joining me.

1:28:39 SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a good question.