Teddy Swims
2024-07-29 01:54:49
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Doug Barrington and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Welcome, I'm Lily Padman and you're Doug Barrington. I want to be, I want to be- Doug Liman? Michelle-.
What if it was Doug Barrington and Doug Liman?
I want to be Michelle Montana. Do you know why? Tell me. Because my first street in LA was Barrington Avenue.
Oh, so there's your farm-.
And you lived off Montana.
I didn't live- I wish I lived off Montana. Mother, you lie, you-. No, that's where the rich people live.
You told me you lived off Montana.
No, I didn't. In Santa Monica. No, I lived off of Broadway, in between Broadway and Santa Monica Boulevard. Montana's, where the nice people live.
I guess I'll be Michelle Broadway then.
There you go, Michelle Broadway. That sounds slutty. Yeah. I grew up on Barrington.
You were Doug Barrington.
Yeah, right, right, right, right.
And so I will be. Michelle Broadway, Montana, hyphen.
Michelle Broadway. Okay, great. We sorted it out. I wonder if you're a listener and you're like, you guys, it's time to hang up. Just say your names and get out.
No. That would be a fair, would that be a fair criticism?
No.
Okay.
Okay, Michelle. Michelle's got boundaries. Yes, she does. And I respect them. Thank you.
One of her boundaries is Broadway, which runs east and west in Santa Monica.
I wouldn't mind having a-.
Pseudonym?
Not, what's the other word for it?
Nom de pleas? No, it's like persona, but- Yeah, alter ego?
Alter ego, thank you. That's the word I'm looking for. An alter ego, Michelle Broadway, Montana.
Oh, you're adding all of them now.
Yes, she's hyphened. Because she came from a family where the mother refused to give up her name.
The mother was stubborn. Yeah, so I love her.
I wanna be her.
Yeah, okay.
I'm gonna be her.
Great, Michelle Montana, Broadway. Broadway, Montana.
This is what happens when you hyphenate people.
Yeah, that's y'all's fault. As long as I get both names in there, you should be happy. No. Yeah, why'd the order matter? You're saying one order's better than-.
What if we said Dax Shepard Randall?
Great, enjoy.
Okay, I will.
We have a sweet boy on today. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet boy. His name is Teddy Swims, but I think it should be Teddy Sweets. Oh, yeah, I like that. He's so sweet.
He's so fucking sweet.
Yeah, this was fun. It's so talented.
Yeah, outrageous, outrageous, raw. You, of course, like everyone else, fell deeply in love from his last album, I've Tried Everything But Therapy among those songs. ♪ I lose control. ♪. He's so fucking good, but mostly he's a sweet, sweet boy.
Please enjoy Teddy, Montana, Broadway Swims. ♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.
♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.
♪ He's an armchair expert ♪.
Get a car lift going, I see, man. That's sick.
Oh, thanks for noticing. I mean, you would understand. This is a dream of all dreams. Yeah, hell yeah, brother. I have a fucking car lift in my garage.
Hell. yeah, brother. That's awesome.
A horsepower sitting on it.
That's what you like to see, baby. Success, baby. We love to see it.
I gotta take you in a little bit. Okay. This would be really inappropriate if you were a female guest, but I'm gonna let my eyes start at your toes and I'm gonna follow your legs up very slowly and I'm gonna look at every-.
Do a body scan?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm immediately curious who some of these portraits are of. So let's start on your left leg. there. Who's that gentleman?
Okay, this guy is Chris Farley, dressed as Han Solo. Oh!
Oh, my God, incredible.
Wonderful, wonderful.
And I got a little Dave Chappelle right here. Oh! We love Dave.
He's the best. Have you met him and got to show him your thigh?
Yeah, dude, I didn't get to show him the thigh. I got to go to his Grammy party and he was doing this kind of like open jam thing, and I got to go up there and sing, and it was so sick, man. Thundercat was playing bass, Corey Henry's on the keys. It was the coolest shit ever.
Oh, yeah.
Ardor Day got up and sang. It was just star-studded over there, man. So I got to go up there and meet him.
Does he make you nervous?
He was already like three sheets to the wind and inviting people up. And he was like, Teddy, everybody says you're awesome. Let's fucking hear what this is about. And so I was like, dude, I got a tattoo of you on my leg right here. I wasn't gonna just drop trowel in front of him.
You know?
Sure, sure, sure. You gotta find out his boundaries.
Look at this, bro.
Yeah. It would have been a lot of production. He would have known for a while what was coming. It's better to have drawstring on and just drop.
Yeah, exactly, baby.
He makes me nervous. I'm saying that I haven't even met him, but I know he would make me nervous. I'm very intimidated.
I was thinking I was gonna be, I think it was just the environment. If it was just me meeting him, like walking into his house or something to do something like this, I would probably be freaking the fuck out, for sure, you know, but it was just such a big party going on. So it was easy to just like, hey, man. And I got called up to the stage to sing. I immediately knew I was gonna crush that.
That's the gift you have, I don't. I don't have anything to come. wow him with, right? I think. the reason he intimidates me, it's anyone that I've labeled so cool.
It's not like talent. I've met a lot of talented actors, but it's the cool factor where I'm like, I feel so fucking dorky around this guy.
That's how I felt meeting John Mayer. That is the coolest fucking guy I've ever met. He's just cool as hell. It's like, he's like, yes. And I know a lot of things must bug that guy.
I mean, he's got problems, surely, but he just looks like he's just the coolest. Like nothing gets by him. He just looks like he's fucking chill. And you're talking to him, asking questions. I just keep asking questions.
I was like, dude, if I'm wearing you out, please let me know. Cause I just was like, what about this? What about this? How about this record?
Poppy energy.
I could not stop.
No, you gotta help me understand, because, and this is not shade to John Mayer. Truly, I think he's talented and everything. I wouldn't be intimidated at all. I don't think he was the dude in my high school. I was like, hey, what are you guys doing after school?
What is it about him? Is it the career? Is it the laundry list of A-list dating partners? he's had? What's in the mix?
When I was first coming up, playing and singing and stuff, from Room for Squares on, he's just always been one of the guys. for me. Everything he's done too has been completely alone. I'm a huge collaborator when it comes to writing and using my guys to write and play. And he's done everything by himself.
That level of trust you have in yourself to write the good thing and not have any outside opinion and to nail hits after hits after hits, and never listen to a label to say, oh, we've got to do this more poppy, or go into this side or pitch you a record and say, how about this little shit pop record? And he just doesn't seem like he's ever quite given into anybody else's opinions. His integrity is just firm.
His conviction and self-confidence is the thing you-.
Yeah, it's crazy.
I also find that musicians in particular really do respect him.
He's the musician's musician, the artist's artist, but also has the hits. Whatever thing about trying to be like a big artist, you can do it the John Mayer way and really never give up your integrity and make things that are good for artists to listen to, singers, to listen to, players to listen to, but also still get a number one slot by doing that. And I think he's what that is for me versus like, I'll take the shitty record and I know this is gonna be the number one single. I try to avoid those at all costs and just try to do it the way that makes me feel like my integrity's intact.
The Mayer method. Yeah, the Mayer method. The John Mayer method. Absolutely. You should write a book called The Mayer Method.
But we do have to take what you just said with a grain of salt, because we met one time recently and you claimed that Without a Paddle was a seminal movie in your life and that I was very a part of your childhood. Absolutely, man. So we need to just qualify that. I think that's a good counterbalance.
Dude, I love you and I'm so glad to be doing this now. Me too. Because it came in hot, dude. As soon as I saw you standing there watching me, I was like, Dax, Dax, Dax, dude, I love you, bro. You're my fucking hero, dude.
I loved it so much because what you were helping me through was I was having a moment where I was like, man, I am 49.. Everyone here is young. Everyone knows what's happening. I'm starting to not know what's happening. And then I see you and I'm like, this motherfucker.
Well, there was a great conversation I had and needs to be said. This is with another gentleman. And he said, just wait till you hear him sing. He's gonna blow you away. And then you finished and I was like, my God, you were right.
That just fucking hugged my soul.
Incredible, incredible.
So then I'm thinking like, God, I'm so asleep on this genius. Now, mind you, when I hear the song, I know the fucking song. I just didn't put it together right away. And then I'm like in a shame spiral that I'm so disconnected. And then you came up and you were so kind to me.
And I was like, oh, look, I'm still have a place here.
You actually made my whole night. Dude, always. I'm glad to hear that, man. That makes the world of me.
It was really a lovely moniker.
It was a Spotify party. We were both there. We were posting it. I have no excuse to be out of the loop. So I'm embarrassed for sure.
But I was like, I don't know him. And then you started singing and we were both like, oh my God.
Yes, that is good. It actually fills you with deep shame that you're not on to it.
Yeah, totally.
I'm glad to hear that, but not the shame part. I love that. I'm grateful that there's always ways to get out there. And you hear it firsthand. And I think that's the most beautiful thing that we try to do is just every place we can be, whether it's a 200 cap or anywhere.
Yeah, we were like 12 feet away. If we wanted to rush the stage and stab you or something, you were very vulnerable to our attack. We were very close. We were. Yeah, I was quite moved by the whole thing.
And I'm just like you, I will go out and let it rip on people. If I see someone I like, I'm like, buckle up.
If I'm too much for somebody, then they're just not for me is what I think. I come on hard and strong and fast. And I'm just like, I love you. One thing I've been trying to learn in my love life is to not do that. You kissed me once.
Are we in love forever? I've had to stop doing that. That's been a long learning lesson, but we take it slow in the current relationship. I mean, it's been really rewarding.
I think there'll be an explanation for that. as we walk through your whole life. Yeah, probably. I can relate, big time. Georgia, you're with a fellow.
I'm from Georgia.
Oh, right on. Where from? Duluth. Yeah, a lot of my homies are from Duluth. You know Duluth.
I sure do.
I've been constructing a mental image of it for the last 10 years. we've been friends. I have yet to go, but I've heard so many details. Is it a haven of malls?
There's a good amount of malls. A lot of them have shut down during the pandemic and stuff. And I think some are making its way back. I'm actually going back on Friday. My aunt's getting married in Monticello.
It's gonna be a hilarious wedding. So she's marrying this lady and I'm ordaining the wedding and I'm gonna be doing it on the dock. And I think they're rolling up on a jet ski.
Oh, this sounds like something out of Eastbound and Down. It's gonna be absolute white trash. Yes, absolute white trash wedding. It's gonna be sick. Anytime the bride and bride arrive on a jet ski, you're seeing something special.
Steampunk theme, they said. I don't know what the fuck I'm gonna wear.
What does that even mean? Yeah, how does one dress for steampunk? I mean, Rob would have a great answer. What should he be in? Suspenders, leather pants.
But it's like gears and stuff. Mechanical things added to that, yeah. Almost Mad Max-y. Yeah, yeah, that kind of thing. Oh, that'll be fun.
Have you started writing the, not your nuptials, but your ceremony?
No, but I gotta call her eventually and ask, like, what do you wanna do? Are you just trying to fly through this thing? Or do you want me to do some scripture or something? Because you never know, sometimes people want, even if they're not Christian, they want some Jesus-y part of it.
Now, listen, I'm gonna advise you to prepare basically two versions of this, because you have to account for the fact that there's at least a 15% chance one of them will sustain a pretty serious injury, pulling up to the dock. Exactly. Because jet skis are highly unpredictable and they often end in failure. So you need to have one that's like, let's get this done because the ambulance is waiting. And then you need one.
that's, they made the perfect entrance, they docked it beautifully, it didn't tip over, no one's wet, let's settle in.
And we're probably gonna have to cut from the video where I'm trying to pull them up on the...
Yeah, you might wanna wear life preservers. As part of your steampunk routine.
Maybe make it look like a bulletproof vest or something. Try to go for that kind of look.
50 cents slash, wow, buoyancy compensator.
Oh man. Okay, so tell me about Conyers, Georgia.
Oh man, I wouldn't say it's a beautiful place, but it's my place. I love it there. And I went to school called Salem and was a big theater kid. Our place was really tight knit. My mom, my dad, both sides of my grandparents, my great-grandparents, all from Conyers.
There's this one little diamond of area and my grandparents, my mom's mom and dad, who are Pentecostal pastors, lived right there.
That's the south side of the diamond for the most part. Yeah, yeah.
And then on the north side of the diamond, there was actually my mom's granny's church that they used to go to. And then my granddad's church was a little ways down the road. And so all around the sides here are my granddad's brothers and sisters, daughters and kids. outside of the diamond. There's another kind of diamond around it.
My whole family's right there.
Wow, so you're surrounding the whole area.
Yeah, and so I always lived with my dad as much as I possibly could, because he was in Covington or something. And every time you do anything wrong, there was like 40 people just like.
Someone could see you in every corner of the county. What kind of population are we talking about?
I couldn't tell you the population. I don't know, but I would tell you that there was times in my life where you can't throw a rock far enough without hitting a curb or a dims down in that town, because we have generations. So I would have to do like family trees to date. somebody. You know what I mean?
Yeah, oh God. Sure, sure, sure.
23 of me posted on your chest.
It's scary, yeah. We're thinking that down.
18,000.. 18,000.. Okay, because it's only 24 miles east of Atlanta, but was it rural?
The older I got, the more it became. More suburban-y in a way, but when I was younger, I remember my grandparents having chickens and stuff like that in their small yard, but over the years, more people came in, and it's right next to Covington, too, which is a little further east. And Covington, over the last few years, has been doing a lot of filming, and Tyler Perry's kind of the one that spearheaded all that stuff, and then Vampire Diaries and a bunch of things started getting in, so Covington's becoming this huge place of filming.
That's so weird. If, like Highland, Michigan, the town next to mine, became a hotbed of Hollywood activity, I would have a hard time understanding that.
But I think in Georgia, there's a bunch of tax-.
Incentives, yeah. So, mom and dad, were they married?
They divorced when I was probably three or so, so I don't remember them quite together. As we're talking now, they've weirdly been like kind of dating again, weirdly, as I'm 31.. Oh, wow. And it's been really weird.
It's gross, right?
Yeah, they came to our show in Vegas together and then they called me on the phone. He's like, baby, it's probably weird hearing us together. And I was like, dad, I don't know how I feel about it. If it makes you happy. And he's like, is there one thing to say?
if I'm just hitting it? And I'm like, that's way worse, dude. That's way worse, bro.
Well, I don't know. We gotta really think this through. No, that's wrong.
Whatever makes you guys happy, but I'm not trying to parent trap you guys or anything, so fuck that.
I'm the same. So, my dad left when I was three, but they remained really great friends. And they'd be together. And even occasionally, if they were being mildly affectionate, I'd be like, guys, don't even think about going back down that road. Why?
It's a weird, gross feeling. It's like your brother and sister are gonna get- I don't know. Yeah, it's weird. It doesn't seem natural.
It doesn't. It was always just yelling about this or that forever. And so they always kind of just despised each other in a way.
You don't have to name names, but did someone get sober in this equation?
None of them really ever had a big drinking issue or nothing like that. So that's been great. My mom was married to a guy from the time I was four to about 18, who was a massive alcoholic and had dad and dad's, dad and mom. They were a big line of alcoholics, but my parents, they'll smoke some weed here and there. My dad would get down every once in a while.
As needed.
Yeah, I've never had alcohol abuse within my parents.
Oh, that's lucky.
Yeah, that's really beautiful for me.
You had a lot of church, obviously, between the grandparents. Yeah, with my mom.
Yeah, but on my dad's side, it was never that way, which was great. On the weekends, I'd go over there and we could do whatever. We could eat all the ice creams we want. I mean, we was watching Martin, my favorite show. I got a picture of Jerome back here on my side, right?
He's my everything.
Was dad spending money differently than mom? Because we'd go to my dad's on the weekend and he drove a Corvette, he had cable TV, we could order pizza. It was like he was rich, even though he wasn't.
It was very tough on my pop's side. My mom, she was with a guy who was pretty well off. He was gone all the time working. But my dad, on the other hand, he got with a woman who was schizophrenic and bipolar and had two more boys that are eight and 10 years younger than me. And so she was always in and out of prison and methed out.
And that was really tough on them. And so me and my older brother helped my dad raise my two little ones. And he was always waking up at like 2 a.m., going to bed at 10 p.m., trying to do homework by himself. My dad is truly the greatest man I've ever met.
Oh, that's lovely.
He'd put these four boys on his back and just chug through it. Oh, man.
How much older is your brother?
He's about 14 months older than me.
Okay, so really close.
Yeah, he's my best friend. He lives out here with me now.
And so, growing up, what kids were you in the social hierarchy of that world?
I've always just kind of gotten along with everyone. I've always been that way.
You have a very sweet face. It's the opposite of punchable faces. I appreciate that. You're familiar with punchable faces, you have the opposite.
Yeah, I've just always been able to get along with anybody and everybody. You know, it's just been easy for me.
And was your older brother bigger than you?
They're all bigger than me. My shortest little brother is, I think, still 5'10", but the rest of my family's in six foot. I got stuck at 5'7".
Well, I bet you got the singing thing. So it all comes out in the wash. Was your brother protective of you?
Absolutely, man. All of us. When I first had this thing picking up and going off, we'd started our merchandise business and I just employed my older brother to do it, because it was kind of like he didn't really get to start a life until just this last couple of years, when my little brothers got older. Because, as I was going doing this and my dad was trying to put my little brothers through high school, Kaylin, my oldest brother, was their mother for so long. He had to kind of take care of all of us in a lot of ways.
While you're surrounded by sweet men,
that's not always the case. Women, on the other hand, have been a little treacherous. I think I've continued to pick those. It's such a different thing than what a lot of people go through, because I have loving, gentle, hugging, kissing men in my life. Not so much that way with women in my life.
Your stepdad, would he fall into the great or not great category?
He's an awful person. Okay. I loved him when I was younger, but he was just an alcoholic and he was gone all the time and he was working, and he's really abusive and I haven't heard from him since. He raised me from four to 18.. He was a second dad to me, you know?
And one day he was just gone from my life and my mom's life and all of our lives, and I'd never talk to him again. And I do carry some resentments in ways towards him because he was a part of my life for so long and then he was just gone. And I was just like, how do you raise somebody? And I know you and my mom split up, but no, like, hi, buddy, or I love you, this isn't your fault.
Disabandonment.
Yeah, I think it really did fuck me up. I still think of that sometimes.
Well, you start rewriting the entire history, right? Which is like, oh, he was only ever nice to me because of mom, now he doesn't have mom, so none of that was sincere or genuine. But also, you're smart enough to know you lost him to addiction. Some point in your life, you might even have compassion.
Yeah, I know as I'm on the road and how easy it is to fall into this spell of just drinking every day. And last year, all year long, when we was on tour for nine months, it was almost like a nine month bender of just anything to keep this dopamine flow going. That's been the hardest thing for me this year is, as we've been touring and trying to like get to this point of staying calm and being able to like, okay, we don't need all these people in the green room. We don't need a constant party every day. We don't need this dopamine.
And I was talking to Bert Kreischer the other day about this re-entry thing, because we got really into this thing about when you get back from tour. And I just got back like a week or two ago and I find the first couple of days I'm home, it being kind of depressing. And I just get in this place and my baby starts to be like, you're not sad, you're just used to this level of dopamine that hits you when you're in front of thousands of people and you can't sleep.
Adrenaline.
Yeah, the adrenaline junkie you turn into. And then so, when you get home and you're not getting this constant affirmation, like, yeah, you're the best. You kind of get in this like, shit, man, I don't know. Am I okay? You get in this turmoil spot.
It's so easy to just like.
Well, I know how to regulate.
And I have to try to do things like get sun, go to the gym, try to get my life back in order for a week or two and try to get a routine going again. But then you're back.
Get stable and then do it all over again.
I'm grateful, though, the best job in the world.
You're like coming off of cocaine, but you don't have any downers and you're just in your hotel room. So it's like, what are we gonna do with all this?
That's the feeling. And then you're laying there till 3 a.m. And even if you got to get up at 6 a.m. to go radio, you're like, I can't turn this adrenaline off. And there's always a mini bar to start tapping into or something to get you a little bit more tired.
That's just a tough thing to do. I try to do the first two or three weeks of this last Europe tour sober and bring my PlayStation and just get something to focus my brain into, because there's always Kyle from the second grade somewhere and he happens to be in like Manchester.
And you're like, what are you doing here?
We gotta get hammered tonight. Of course. There's always one, and it's tough.
And then for me, the justifications became more and more preposterous. Yeah. Yeah, they were kind of legit at first. And then it was just like, I mean, it's almost 11, 16, whatever the thing is.
But it's chemical, that high, the drop of being on stage and having all those people, it's an actual chemical drop. They're just like, oh, that sounds hard, but it's physiological.
Absolutely.
Of course you feel that way. It's not weird that you do. It's your chemicals, all of ours.
Well, and it all makes sense when you look back at how almost, I don't wanna be careful with my wordage here, but every performer I loved growing up was struggling with it.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
I don't know the one that was like the Billy Crystal of rock and roll, who somehow was doing it from a healthy place. Maybe, we don't know. And managed it beautifully.
Yeah, maybe, but he was like going to play a freeze tag at the end of the show with his friends. You know what I mean? He was going and partying.
Oh, maybe Paul McCartney. He seems to be the guy who escaped.
He's still with it. I'm sure he's had his time.
Even these ones you didn't think. Like Prince and Michael Jackson, both OD. They both died of drug overdoses. However, you wanna qualify it. Well, he had an opiate prescription.
Oh, he was just trying to go to sleep. Whatever the case is, like, these are two men who died.
I think, the more I do it, the more I realize like, oh, that's why we're all alcoholics and drug addicts. That's why we can become that so easy. Yeah.
So my probably number one guy I love is Waylon Jennings. And also my fantasy of his life is number one, which is on the road, up for six days on speed, writing, music, playing for people, sweating bullets, and everyone in his life's being let down, but the music's so good, they all overlook it. I was like, I gotta figure out something I do. good enough that everyone will let me live as shitty as I want and not kick me to the curb.
I missed Waylon Jennings a lot when I was coming up. I didn't quite come up on a lot of his stuff or his life or that matter, but I definitely could understand that feeling. That's what I thought I was doing with this career originally was like, I thought I could just be a degenerate all the time. And now it's like when you got a 3 a.m. lobby call to get to a radio station, I'm like, what the fuck is this?
I did not sign up to music to do this bullshit. I wanted to stay out till three. I wanted to be up till 9 a.m. A rock star. And then sleep till 4 p.m.
and hit soundcheck. That's what the vibe was, what I was walking into, but it's not that. You can't avoid adulthood with anything you do, I don't think.
Yeah, once you're inside the fantasy, you're like, oh, this isn't quite how I pictured it.
It's beautiful, but it's like, fuck, man, sometimes I just gotta wake up and feel like shit. or wake up, make sure I don't feel like shit.
I would argue, too, your specific story is a very extreme example of it, too, as far as the highs and lows. We're only one year out from Lose Control coming out.
Yeah, it's like a week from now or something?
Yeah. Wow. Doing well, making baby steps, baby steps, getting closer, getting closer, and then the floodgates, most listened to song of the year.
Obama's favorite song. Yeah, that was sick.
That was such a cool moment for me. I was lit up about that. Y'all made his little playlist, it was so sick. That song just goes to show you how the old way of doing something still works, because I had thought for so long that maybe a good song wasn't enough to just go anymore, because there's like 100,000 songs that come out a day on Spotify, right? A lot of these are backed up by trends via TikTok, Instagram, whatever have you, and when those trends start to happen, those songs start to hold up their hand, and it does make the playing field very even.
A 15-year-old can record it in his bed and do what I could never do when I was 15 or what I could do even now. So I think it's a beautiful way of even in the playing field, but when I look at that song in particular, it's not been a flash in the pan, and it's been not backed by a trend, but also us going to every place and touring on this song for over a year and hitting every radio station and shaking every hand and asking them to play it, and meeting and bringing them to the show, having a drink with this guy from the radio station, making great friends with them and working the song, and you could still work it that way. The promo is so important. Meeting those people are so important, because the next song, they're like, that's my boy, Teddy. I want that guy to win.
And whether the song is trash or good, it has to be good to some degree, I'm sure, but I think now, when you make those connections and when you go over to the UK five times, six times in a year, and you meet all those people and you shake all those hands and even your label people, you're not just a name that slides across their desk to them. That's my dog, I want to win. And when you get that real personal connection with people, then I think that will always take you further in life.
I would find it more satisfying if I were you as well that it wasn't even in a genre that's working at number one. It's not like you. listen to that and you're like, yeah, that's the one that'll catch on. It's not resembling any of the other top.
It just went last week, number one on R&B radio. It's already been number one on pop radio and it's number one on Billboard and rock radio. it's worked at and every different place it could be.
Okay, but back to Kanye, you were playing football as a little guy, and then you eventually discovered musical theater in 10th grade?
Yeah, 10th grade I got in.
But who were you? socially? Everyone kind of liked you, you were a good time, Charlie?
Yeah, absolutely.
Did girls like you, yet?
I was always nervous about that. I had a bunch of girls that were friends and I was always kind of like a serial dater, where I was just jumping into a relationship and then be in that for two, three years and then jump right into another one. And I kind of did that for a lot of my life.
Starting in what grade?
My first one I got serious about was ninth grade. We were together for, I think, two, three years.
That's a long time in high school.
We were broken up for like all of three days when I got into another one for like another three years. It was insane. It's been that way, except for where I'm currently at. I took months off before I dove back into something. because I've just been that way.
Like, oh, I love you. I can't help it, I fall in love so quick.
Now do you, well, we'll get to that, I guess. But when you start doing musical theater, you do Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Yeah, the first one we ever did actually was a show called Damn Yankees. So me and my best pal Jesse, who still plays with me, his dad was a guitarist and sang, and their whole family was big into music. And when I first started hanging out with him, I was the first time I ever saw somebody play and sing. He was in his basement and he had his PA set up and he started singing, ♪ Won't it get over that? ♪.
And I was like, dude, your dad is bad ass, bro. ♪ Seen a million faces. ♪. Yeah, it's so sick, bro. So me and Jesse started playing all the time and we sucked so bad originally.
What age is this?
13,. we were coming right out of eighth grade. We get dropped off at the movie theater and take that 20 bucks our parents gave us and not go to the movies, do what you would think 14 year olds do with $20.. We just sit out there and sing acapella, trying to harmonize, trying to sing for anybody that let us sing. And his sister got us in a theater when I was in 10th grade and I remember still to this day, us doing the Damn Yankees show, and I had two lines, I think, in it.
My mom was crying so bad when I told her, I was like, I don't want to play football anymore. I'm done with football. And she pulled out all this old memorabilia, you know, where she had the magnets and all my trophies. And she was like, why would you do this to us? We play football.
Why would you do this?
Was your brother playing football?
Well, my older brother, he never played, but my two older brothers.
So I guess we're not all playing football. Why do you suppose that was an important endeavor for her?
I don't know, my dad did and my other brothers did.
It's a Southern thing.
And we always did. since I was a little kid, since I've been like five, she watched me on the football field.
But do you think she was worried about you missing out on the teammate experience? I'm trying to imagine what it is she thought football was giving you.
I think it was the fear of change that I was going to do something else, but it wasn't. until I did that first show and I'd sang my two little lines and I'd get out and my mom was like, baby, I'm so sorry. That's where you belong.
Oh, she flipped.
Yeah, she flipped so sick. All she had to see me was on stage.
Two lines.
And just be like, wow, baby, you go for it. That's good. You know, she was the sweetest after that.
Oh good, you won her right over.
Yeah, right over.
And then you started singing in the chorus in high school?
Yeah, funny enough, my senior year, I was kind of really falling behind. I was such a bad student and we had this credit recovery thing where you would go in class and you could do a few weeks of online bullshit and get your credits there. So I found this thing called Alpha, Omega and Conyers, and it's basically you go pick up work every week for like eight weeks and you'd read a chapter and you could pretty much Google all the answers, do the test on the back and then turn it in. You get credit. So I went over one summer going into my senior year, did all my senior core classes and all my credits.
I was behind because I was still practically in 10th grade, going into senior year. So I was like, okay, if I just do all these, I can come back and not have to do anything but theater. So I'd already had my credits. And so I remember the principal calling in the office and talking to my mom, and she was like, I'm not signing off on this. You just coming in here to do theater course, show, choir and video production.
That's not gonna happen.
You can't do that.
And I was like, well, I already got the credits.
So I am doing that.
So that's what I'm doing. Yeah. And she's like, well, I'm still getting you in the classes. And I was like, well, I'm not doing. And so I stayed all my core classes.
My senior year, I just didn't go to it. I got zeros. I graduated at the bottom of my class, but I did graduate. So fuck her. You know?
Yeah, you did it.
Because she couldn't say I couldn't do that. But they passed a law in Rockdale County. now that they can't do joint enrollment in places. I think I ruined it for some of the kids that were getting college credits.
And maybe for the best.
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
Did you have any fantasies about like going to do musical theater? Yeah.
I still one day wanna pursue that again eventually, but I've kind of put myself in a box on roles I can play.
With the tattoos. Yeah.
There's gotta be a specific role now if it comes to acting again.
I was thinking that.
Well, when did tattoos start?
I got my first one when I was 16.. I got it covered up. It was a cross and it had my last name and a bander. It said Demsdale. And it said established 1992..
It was so corny, bro. And I cut the sleeves off my shirt. Like, yeah, dude. By the time I was 18, I was like, what the fuck? This is so stupid.
It's not that I don't think kids should get tattoos. It's just that they can't pick a good one. I'd almost sign off on it, but they need, like a panel of elders that approves your tattoo.
I agree. And not that I'm the one to take advice of tattoos from, but I think 16 year olds might be too early.
Kind of the first one. you see, you're like, that'd look awesome.
Doesn't really matter what it is, you see.
And I thought I was having the cross in my name and, like, you know, I was like, You really thought it through. Yeah, I tried anyway, but I just wanted something.
You know what's cute, Monica? I heard him say in an interview that what he wanted to be when he grew up was tattooed. That was a destination.
Yeah, that wasn't a real job, obviously. Doing tattoos is one.
Receiving money, yeah.
I remember my mom used to give us $10 at the end of the week when we did our chores for the week. And so on Sunday, we'd have to go to church and then we'd have to give 10% of our tithes and offerings, which is a good thing. And I appreciate that principle now, but giving up a dollar out of $10, I was like, fuck, I'm broke now. And my older brother would always give $5 because he's a fucking overachiever. Wow.
Yeah, what a weenie.
I would go to the Mexican restaurant every Sunday or Henderson's and they have those fake tattoo machines and I put them quarters in and just cash out, slap them, stand in the mirror all over my body.
Feeling awesome.
Yeah.
And did you feel protected by them? Like, what was the draw?
I don't know, I just felt tough. All the people I looked up to had tattoos and they were badasses. My first concert I went to and fought this bug for was 2007. Warped Tour. Paramore was there, Circus of Five.
I probably was there.
Yeah, he was there. Boys Like Girls, Coheed and Cambria. There was so many great bands at the time that were just my world.
And what actors did you think were cool?
Adam Sandler is my fucking dude.
Not Jack Black.
Jack Black is my dude too, but Adam Sandler is, I mean, I get that's quite a classic Billy Madison tattoo and Carl Weathers from Chels Peterson from Happy Gilmore right here. My dad raised me on nothing but Adam Sandler and Martin Lawrence and Chris Farley and SNL cast.
You want to know a trip, Teddy? The CEO of Ford right now is Chris Farley's cousin. No way. Jim Farley. And we interviewed him, and it's uncanny.
Yeah, they're so similar. I was tripping out, thinking at times I was talking to Chris.
I think that blood really runs thick in him. Yes, very specific. Yeah, I just recently listened to the book, The Chris Farley Show. His brothers got together and wrote, and it's beautiful if you haven't ever read it.
Oh, I haven't.
Oh, it's about his whole life. The ending of it is just the last words he says in his life is just so sad. He's been up for four days. His prostitute is leaving his hotel and he goes after her and he collapses. And then she takes his watch and stuff and leaves him a note.
And last thing he says to her before she goes is, please don't leave me. And then they find him dead the next evening.
Yeah.
Yeah, such deep loneliness.
God, it's so sad. I mean, especially if you were struggling, his story would just have you in absolute tears. It's so powerful and sad.
Yeah, it is. There's a lot of things in that stew. It's not just addiction. It's also these highs and lows we're talking about. This kind of untenable high of public adoration.
And then, yeah, loneliness, and then an ability to connect with anybody, but also not being with anybody ever.
That's so. much of it too, is that ability to always want to please and want to be around. And as soon as people are around, you gotta make them comfortable, but then you kind of feel more alone in a lot of those rooms too, where you're just always turning it off and turning it on. That's the biggest thing I struggle with, too, is that there's times I'm like, oh, fuck, I can't deal with all these people, you know? But as soon as I do, it's always the turning it on is the hard part.
But once I'm on, it's like, how am I gonna get this off? There's just this black and white thing that's going on all the time in your brain. There's no in between. It's just on or off.
What kind of things were you struggling with as a kid? in high school? Sounds like you had friends, you fucking finagled the school system, you're performing, you got a good dad.
A lot of what I struggled with is a lot of stuff with my mother and I wanted to live with my dad and I don't wanna like, I don't know if I'm ready to quite talk about certain things with my mother and her man. She married and that whole side of the family. It's not something I've really publicly spoke about and I don't know if my mom would be like-.
Yeah, you don't wanna hurt your mom's feelings.
But we went through a big, really tough time and with her decisions she made with that man and I had to get out of there and there was a lot of times where they were doing fine, but I'd rather live with my dad and struggle in the hood and raise my brothers. And it was always a love there that I was getting. Love was so much more than just this fake picture of what a beautiful house and a beautiful life looks like. I think there was a lot of it too. in regards to my upbringing in church and seeing the inside and outs of it.
A lot of smoke and mirrors to it. Not that my granddad was ever not who he said he was. There was also some things about it that was so strong, like this is right and this is wrong. There's no gray areas. Black and white.
He believed everything was right, and if you didn't believe it exactly how he believed it, the way he believed it, then you were just wrong and you were going to hell.
Right, it wasn't just a disagreement. It was, you're amoral and you're gonna end up in hell because of this difference.
Yeah, and if you don't believe it, just like he did. I mean, he was headstrong so much that he wouldn't even go to a restaurant where there was a bar in it. He had a wood shop. He would never take money from the church. as a pastor.
He's like, we don't do that. He was working on building houses. He was a carpenter. He had to be exactly what he read. Jesus was.
And sweet man, but if it wasn't this way. I remember one of the first things he said to me, he wanted me to come sing at the church when I really started getting music. And he was like, all these kids out here nowadays, break dancing and hip-hopping, and all that for the Lord. And I was like, Pop, nobody's broke dancing. My mom was growing up, dog.
We're not break dancing for the Lord. All's over. break dancing for the Lord. Let them break dance for the Lord, man. It's not a sin.
It's not bad to do rap songs for Jesus. If they want to do that, let them kids do that.
I mean, the songs will probably be bad, but there's nothing wrong with it.
And my mom was always thinking I was up to something. I knew that came from a place of her just trying to seem like she was perfect, but also she was a pastor's kid. And now that I'm older, I'm like, oh, you were a fucking wild one. And you were thinking I was doing shit that I was not even doing. She was thinking I was into all sorts of drugs at like 12, and I was like, Mom, I don't even know anybody that does that.
I haven't even seen anybody doing crack in front of me. What do you think I'm doing? They'll leave my window shut, like, oh, I know what you did. You snuck out, you jumped down here, you jumped off the roof. I'm like, no, Mom, I'm just walking out the front door if I'm going anywhere.
I got into boozing way too early. When I was at my mom's, they had a bar downstairs. You know, my stepdad had it. I could just go in there and kind of fill up a water bottle. I had been probably drinking since I was like 10, just slugging them back on the bus, you know, and being a little hammered at school.
And I'm like, it's seventh grade, and we're like.
What comfort did it give you? The only time I was really optimistic in life was when I had booze in me.
When I think about why I started drinking or why I started smoking cigarettes, it was truly to be cool, you know? And that was all there was to it. I just wanted to be cool. And I was hanging out with these kids and they were smoking weed and I wanted to smoke weed. And if I could be the one to get the alcohol, then I was a fucking legend.
And I could get it at any point. No telling what we were drinking. We were just mixing shit up in a water bottle. And like, I was bringing it out to the boys and we're walking through the neighborhood, like slugging it back. Or, hey, mister, and somebody at the gas station, like, hey, mister, can you get us a 40??
Can you get us a pack of cigarettes? And there's always somebody that would.
You knew better than to say, hey, ma'am. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Ma'ams weren't buying too much. Hell?
no. Booze and underage drinkers. Okay, so music takes off. You start really committing to it. You start messing around with the piano and the ukulele.
You're watching YouTube to learn singing technique. Which, by the way, is kind of mind-blowing. that, yeah, if you're born in 92, this is-.
It's an option for you.
It's a total road. I wouldn't have had that.
Yeah, it's a perfect time. I think it's super powerful. That's why I think kids these days are so much more well-off. You know, you can school at any moment, and there's an 11-year-old doing what we think we are good at way better than we'll ever be at it. Their access to information and being able to learn and play is-.
Study it.
So much harder than what even I had. I'm grateful for that. I could just Google, you know, if I wanted to watch Marvin Gaye and watch him live, I could see videos of him sitting there singing and watch his mouth and what he's doing, how he moved. And I could watch Grammy performances of Michael Jackson. I remember the first time I saw Michael Jackson do that one where he beats the record.
He gets seven Grammys. He goes on to get an eighth one that same night for Thrill and he's like, I promise that if I win another Grammy, which is seven, which is a record, I take my glasses off. And I really don't want to, but I'm only doing this for Miss Hepburn, because she's a dear friend of mine. And he just pulls them up and everybody's like, ah! And he puts them down and he just waves and he walks off.
And I was like, that is the most gangster shit I've ever seen.
I know. Can you imagine having America excited to see you take your glasses off?
He was so sick. He was so badass to me. And I just like knew from that point, I was just watching him. I was always like, God, what a fucking badass dude.
Did you watch that greatest night in pop music? documentary on Netflix?
Oh, I have not, no.
Oh, my God. Your head's going to spin. It's about them coming together to make We Are The World. You've got, like Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie, kind of orchestrating everything. And it's every single greatest singer alive in this one room.
The kind of two undeniable standouts of the doc are Michael Jackson. He's somehow on his own. Everyone else is together, but he's on his own. And when he sings, you're like, yeah, that's it. There's just really no comparing.
Bob Dylan, he's not that kind of singer. So he can't really find his way into this song. and they're all struggling, they're all struggling. And then Stevie Wonder imitates Bob Dylan to Bob Dylan and they're on his back. And when you're watching it, you think it's Bob Dylan singing.
So Stevie Wonder singing in Dylan's voice, explaining to him what notes he should find to work his way into this song. And he kind of saves Bob Dylan's performance. And you're like, okay, well, that guy's just a phenom.
What a monster, man. Stevie Wonder. Yeah, Song of the Key Life, number one for me. Man, I'd love to be breathing the same air. He's the one.
So you joined a bunch of bands. I'm imagining it takes you a minute. A, you're probably just saying yes to any opportunity that comes your way. These dudes want you to sing with them? Great, I'm in.
How do we get from saying yes to everything, being in a hair metal cover band, being in an R&B band, being in an alternative rock band? How do you discover what you're really supposed to be singing?
I had the same guys. It was kind of a tight knit community of musicians. And a lot of kids were doing metal from when I got out of high school till even now, you know? And I was still in a metal band called Airs at the time. And this band called Wild Heart.
Me and my buddy, Addy Maxwell, who plays guitar for me still and writes a lot with me. So weird, man. I had everything kind of happen to me at once. This girl I was with at the time had left me. My car had broken down.
My roommates had moved out. I walked like the last two miles to my work and the place was closing down. Everything just hit the fan at once and really bad off at the time.
What age is this?
I must've been 26,, 27.. This was right before Teddy Swims really started happening. And at the time, I was with this girl who had a child and her baby. daddy wasn't around. And I was even about to go get this full-time job and was trying to think.
I was like, you know what, man? Maybe I just need to raise this kid. He's worth it. And I almost gave it up. And all this shit just hit the fan all at once.
And I had called my dad and I was like, man, can I move there to your house? And I just really need a place to crash for a couple months. So I put my mattress basically on the floor in his garage and just trying to camp out there. And there was no carpet or anything. And my buddy, Lee, who had recorded most of my metal bands, was actually in Loganville.
He was right down the road from my dad's house. And so we started just kind of messing with stuff. And he got me in this band, Wild Heart, and that started going somewhere. And me and Addy started doing hip hop music because he was making beats for some rappers and sending it out. And we decided to make a hip hop song.
And we did one song and my pal, Tyler Carter, was in this band, Issues. He comes over and he's doing a solo tour and he hears our one song and he's like, man, this shit's badass, dude. Give me like 30 minutes of music and you guys come on tour with me. I'm like, we only have one song. He's like, I'm going to the UK with Issues.
And it's only four minutes long, so.
He's like, I'm going to the UK with Issues and I'll be back in a month. You have a month to get like 30 minutes of music. So me and Addy grinded out a bunch of hip hop songs where we're rapping on these songs.
Is the quality going downhill quickly?
It's getting better.
Oh, it's getting better. Yeah, it's getting better.
We're getting better at rapping. Addy's crushing it. I'm okay, but it's not my thing. I'm here to say. But this is my opportunity to go on tour.
So fuck it, we're here. So we get back, we have this thing trying to figure out our name. I was going by Swims by that time and it was just someone who was a meat played. this character of this rapper. Tyler's like, well, why don't we just put Teddy in front of?
everybody calls you that? And then, boom, you're Teddy Swims. And I was like, dude, I really kind of fucking hate that. And then he's like, well, it's my tour. So I'm putting it on the flyer.
So it was Addy Maxwell and Teddy Swims opening up for Tyler Carter.
Jayton Collin Dimmesdale.
Yes, sir.
Jayton, that's a pretty unique name.
Yeah, it is. I've never met another one.
It is, neither. But you were going by, Teddy?
Yeah, I've always been called Teddy, because while I was waiting tables and stuff, Jayton's hard. They're like Jake, Jamie, Jason. So my look is just always, oh, there's our Teddy.
Oh, like Teddy Bear?
Yeah, and that's where it just kind of came from.
Jayton, that's so sweet. I've always been Teddy.
Yeah, yeah, okay. We ended up doing this tour and this was March of 2019.. And then we get back and the Teddy Swims thing was kind of cool. Maybe I could do shit as Teddy Swims. And I just used the name Teddy Swims and uploaded a Michael Jackson cover of Rock With You.
Watched it this morning. It's incredible.
June 25th of 2019.. And that was 10 years after he died. And so we wanted to just pay homage and it started going crazy. And we were like, guys, why don't we just turn this shit into Teddy Swims? Let's see what happens here.
And we kept doing the covers. And most beautiful thing is my manager, Luke, who lives out here. He hopped in a car and drove a Prius with a U-Haul in the back of it all the way to Georgia. And we moved into this little house in Snellville. It was a five bedroom house.
Me and all my friends, about 12 of us moved into this place and we built plywood walls and built two studios in there, split rooms into two rooms. I was like, dude, if we get six months, we started making our merch and distributing it out of the garage, filming our own stuff, singing and recording our own stuff, playing and writing our own stuff, doing the covers. I quit, my job, was getting floated by my boys. And just six months of this, guys, this will work. And I kid you not, December 24th of 2019, a day less than six months, we get signed to Warner Records and I get this fucking million dollar deal and put all my buddies on salary.
The manifestation of just you and your friends coming together and being like, guys, we can do this if we just all put our heads together.
Yeah, it's kind of the full commitment moment.
It feels like you're so behind on life. It's always at the 28,, 29,, 30 mark, you're just like, God, I'm so far behind. And the kids that are coming up too, that are making music, like you got Billie Eilish crushing at 16.. I'm like, God, what the fuck am I doing here?
I'm a decade older than her, what's going to happen to me? Why pick Rock With You? I want to applaud that. I think Off The Wall is the best of all those albums.
Yeah, I got it hanging on my wall now, man. Rock With You, weirdly enough, because it was that time we had found the stems of it online. Sometimes producers want to just take something and mix. My producer was just going in and he had found the stems of it and was like, I want to mix this out. Which is really cool, because you can hear Rod Timberton, when you get all the stems of the song, you can actually mute a bunch of the stuff, and there's the original mumble track of it too.
He's like...
And he's just like kind of doing the mumble,
where they wrote it to.
And it's so cool. It's like they had the instrumental done and he went and made up the melody with his mumbles, and then they went and wrote the words to the mumbles, which is so sick.
And is that in the finished song?
The mumbles are, but when you get the stems, you can hear that they kept that in there. It's so crazy, because it's similar to a lot of times we do the same thing, where you just kind of come up with a mumble of the melody first, and then sometimes you might be almost saying a word and you're like, what are you saying there? Oh shit, that sounds like you're saying this. And then you come up with some beautiful words. My song, The Door, for instance, my buddy just already had the beat and the mumble of it.
And we'd kind of just, oh, it sounded like you said, started writing to this.
You reverse, engineer it, kind of.
Yeah, and so it was cool to see that happen and see that was still the way that it was done. Yeah.
Now, Rock With You got, I don't know, 10 million views or something, or maybe more. When I looked at it this morning, it had 2 million views, but you're still the one by Shania Twain. Seems like a very from left field choice.
Oh, my God, I need to hear that.
And that one has 167 million views. It was a monster, yeah. Yeah, that's probably the one that gets Warner Records' attention.
I think the biggest thing is because the original version we did of it, I dedicated it to my mother and I was like, this goes out to my mom, you know, I love you, and it touched people.
It's kind of a mystery, because Rock With You seems more in tune with you. It just doesn't seem like you're gonna sing that. I think there's also some of the mixed messages of looking at you singing. that song is very interesting.
That's the thing that first worked out for me on Rock With You is, once it hit this, 500,000 views, people were looking at my face and my whole thing going on and singing that song. They were like, okay, either this is gonna be funny or this is gonna be really good, or it's gonna be both. And it ended up being, I think, quite funny and actually good. People were like, I did not expect this guy to sing this way. So we kind of leaned into that gimmick so much.
And it's been a thing that's really pivotal in my career. Real music videos have never worked for us. Just playing the song really quite works for you. I just find that it's always when somebody says like, listen to this guy. Okay, now, look what he looks like.
It's always been my thing. And so we just totally fucking peddled to the metal on making sure my face is in everything and why I'm singing. So people were like, whoa, that's a good voice, but I don't think it's as good as the juxtaposition versus what I look like. People were fucking stunned and it's helped me out so much.
That makes sense, yeah. If you look the part perfectly, it would be a foregone conclusion. So there's nothing novel or interesting about it.
WWE, you gotta work the fucking gimmick. You just gotta have some gimmick that gets people's attention.
But do you think it's by design a little bit, even just in life? Do you like presenting one way?
I had a buddy of mine, my best pal from school, Julian Seltzer, man, he's my dog. And he told me one time, it was a few years ago, before all this, he said, you're really an icon. when somebody can dress as you for Halloween and people can know it's you.
And I remember hearing that and being like,
okay, what do I gotta do from here to make sure that's the case? And I've spent forever trying to be like, okay, what do I like? to put a little bandana on, grow my hair out this way, tattoo my face? What do I gotta do here to make me different? Yeah.
But I definitely put a lot of thought and effort.
Certainly people went as you to Halloween last year. Yeah. Have you seen any pictures?
Yeah, I have a picture. Also, my buddy, Kurt, my door manager, his little cousin, they've written all the... And I had this one, I can't remember the family on Instagram. They did a video, it's lose control. And he's like, kind of mouthing it.
They came to my show and my meet and greet too. And he had us all dressed up and shit with the tattoos going, and they drew them on. It's so cool, bro. Watching kids do that, especially. Yeah.
It's so awesome.
Obviously, I have tattoos, but I have no face tattoos. What's the chat in your head as you go in and you're like, wow, we're gonna go all in on this.
Well, the first one I got, so it's his home at last up here.
On your hairline.
My granddad had passed away. It was really the first time I'd ever saw death right there in front of me. So he was in his room and they had separate rooms within their 52 years. You know, eventually, I guess, you just get separate rooms.
She got sick of hearing about it. Yeah. She wasn't doing it right, probably.
So I'm sitting in there playing piano. Like I said, we're all in this diamond. So there's like 50 of us. by the time I get there. Everybody in the family is so quick to go right there.
So my grandma was trying to be all strong and she sits there with me after everybody walks out of the room and she finally breaks down and she said, he's home at last, he's home at last. And then she goes, but you left me behind and sobs and sobs. He'd always told me to never get my face tattooed, because the calling of God is without repentance, son. You don't ever want to get your face tattooed. And as soon as he passed away, I just got one in commemorance of him, just to be like.
A little bit of a-. I love you, brother. That's it, I love you and I fuck you. I love you, pop. You're the fucking man.
If heaven exists, and he owes me an ass whooping when I get up there, you know? And then from there, I just kind of got a little carried away. Now I just fucking get them. Sometimes I just get the itch. And there's been times where I've been on the road too where it's been bad.
Like last October 5th, my bassist's birthday, we had a tattoo artist come in and he wanted to get like a little party hat right here on his wrist. And I was like, just do it on my face, dude. I got this dumb ass party hat right here. I was so hammered. I wake up the next day, like trying to lick it off.
And I was like, oh shit, when did I get that, dude?
Okay, so that one you regret.
I mean, it's there, it's whatever. I did immediately have regrets to it. And they were like, Beau, you don't remember? all night you're walking around, just bouncing your eyebrows like party jumping, party jumping, party jumping, party jumping. I was like, dude, y'all should have put me to bed way earlier than, why the fuck was I doing that?
What a piece of human trash I was.
Yeah, because I guess I sometimes assume the saddest thing when I see people, like, let me put it this way. I have none on my left arm. Well, I have a couple, but I'm not covering my left arm because I actually like how my left arm looks. I got a good vein in my bicep. I'm like, well, I don't want to cover that up.
So what I know is that if I really like it how it is, I'm not drawn on it. So then I reverse engineer that. Sometimes, when I see people with a ton of tattoos on their face, I'm like, they didn't think there was anything to lose.
I can see where you're coming from.
Maybe it's just me being older, but first of all, when I look at dudes with tattoos, I think they're like me, which is I got fucked with and abused as a kid, and I want to send a message not to fuck with me. I want to be tough.
Maybe there's a piece of that too. I've been too approachable sometimes. Maybe there's a piece of it inside that subconsciously I do want to look tougher. Maybe there's always this piece of me that feels like I'm judged for being this and I want to turn people's minds into not judging a book by its cover. I've not put a lot of thought into much of it.
So I wouldn't say it's a deep rooted thing, but also, when you bring those up, I'm like, yeah, I mean, it could be a subconscious thing that I'm doing that I couldn't tell you you're wrong about, but I didn't go into it thinking that I was compartmentalizing or overcompensating for anything.
Yeah. How about this, though? So the other thing was I wasn't very into punk rock as a kid, and what I liked is there was like a costume. So I had the crazy hairdo that would distract you from me. I had crazy clothes on that would distract you.
And this character I was playing was seen as super confident. Girls were like, oh, this guy is so confident. He's got this crazy hairdo. no one else does, but it was a total illusion.
That's a lot to do with it, 100%. That confidence level is something that I've worked on a lot. Over the pandemic, I was so fortunate, and I have a tattoo of him right here, Diamond Dallas Page, man, one of my heroes in my life.
Who's he? I'm sorry.
Diamond Dallas Page is a WCW legend, like a old wrestler. And he started this thing called DDP Yoga, and it's this mixture of yoga and calisthenics. It saved a lot of people, gotten a lot of people that were injured, back on the field. There's this guy, Arthur Borman, you can check out on YouTube, and this guy was 300 something pounds and was on. Walker.
Ended up doing DDP for this little time and his whole body healed, and it's miraculous, man. It was running 5Ks after that. and it's rehabilitation and calisthenics, and it's changed so many people's lives and it's been a beautiful thing. I spent about six months or so with DDP and we talk once a week and he just got this thing and to me, it's like, it's really the story you tell yourself. Once you own this six inch piece of real estate between your ears, and there was so many things I was doing.
With regards to my weight, when I was coming up, I really had a lot of insecurities and a lot of beating down of myself, and it was also what was fueling my alcohol and my drug abuse. It was definitely because of a lot of insecurities that I was scared. I'd even watch some old plays and I see myself doing this number while I'm doing plays and not really being confident on stage. And I used to hate watching myself or hearing my voice, and there was the time that I went through with him that I constantly have to tell myself these little bitty things. Like when you look yourself in the mirror and say, I love you, you are beautiful.
It took me forever to get to a point where I even want to take my shirt off in front of people. You know, I even just the other day I did this shoot, I had to be just kind of shirtless. As confident as I feel with my shirt off now, doing a shoot that's gonna be on a Times Square billboard.
or something.
Oh, my God, scared to death doing that. There's 50 people on this shoot that are just staring at me like, okay, now, turn this way. And I've just never been that exposed to a people's like eye. They're like, come here, let me get some makeup here. Let's get some more oil going right here.
They're finding problems, they're making adjustments.
Oh God, pulling my shorts down. I've never been in that place. It was really big eye-opening thing for me. You have to accept yourself, and that's like the hardest thing in the world to do. And when I see people like my beautiful girl now, she's just got the perfect body.
For her to have body dysmorphia, we all have that. And there's nobody more beautiful that doesn't have the same thing going on. When I stopped feeling so alone in that and I started just accepting this as what I have. So I do think a lot of this was to take away from the, especially these tattoos all in here. It was distract you from my gut or my boobs to kind of give you something else to look at.
There was a lot to do with that, for sure, brother. Of course.
And what's funny is, I think, that the route to liking yourself, Monica and I have too many conversations about this, but if you're comparing yourself to Brad Pitt, yeah, you're out, I'm out. There's nothing we can do if we're comparing ourselves. But if we remember that, actually novelties, what's so beautiful.
Yeah, come on.
In specific, like, no, no, that's what you look like. And you, as defined by who you are and your character, you're the physical representation of your spirit. And we can all come to think everyone's super attractive. If that inside's good and you recognize like, oh, I'm the only one who looks like this. Anytime I can really hone in on that feeling of like, this is the only one.
That's awesome. It's not Brad Pitt, but I'm the only one like this. And you're the only one like that. Monica's the only one like that.
Although I am starting to wonder now, with AI and the sim, that there's just like 10 cookie cutters. We're all just 10 cookie cutters with like a little bit of different hair.
I can see that. There are certain types. Yes. A big thing for me too is I stopped worrying about what I look like in pictures now because I see myself on stage and people post these pictures of me and I'm just up there like looking crazy. Sure, sure.
And so nowadays I don't really worry about the way I look, because you can't control the way you look. The way I look at myself in the mirror is probably even still a fixed up version of myself. I know before I even walked to the mirror, I already got the face picked out and I don't even know I'm choosing. Right, yeah.
I'm cool Joe today.
As soon as I leave the mirror, this little sucking I had going is immediately out.
You're so right. I don't think any of us have any true idea of what we look like.
No, we don't have no clue.
This'll comfort you. Bradley Cooper was on here saying that he genuinely thought, when he won Sexiest Man Alive, that it was like a bit that people were fucking with him. He sincerely thought that. You're like, well, that's comforting.
He is sexy.
Yeah, he's sexy as a motherfucker. My God.
Yeah.
Okay, let's get to you writing. Lose Control because you're prolific. You have that six months of focus. You get signed, you have two EPs and then, within two years of that, you're releasing. I've Tried Everything, But Therapy, Part One, your album.
You're writing hundreds of songs, right?
Yeah, I just got back a couple of days ago from another writing camp. We were there five days and split up into two rooms with eight of us and turned out by 20 songs. Writing Lose Control, I think, was the one that we'd kind of been building this sound for a long time. I was also in a really toxic thing at the time with an ex I was with. It was bender to bender, and I think we both kind of got to this place of being really codependent on this lifestyle we were sharing, and these high, high, these low, lows.
Lifting each other up out of shame all the time, or piling on shame all the time. Leveraging each other's shame against each other.
That shit, exactly, bro. You know that too well. We kind of were into that place and, weirdly enough, we wrote that song, and The Door too, which is top 42, on the same day. I had broke down that day and was just sobbing and sobbing about the situation, because it just seemed like it couldn't get better, and every time I was doing something, it was like, where are you, what are you doing? I was coming to a head with her and our situation.
By the way, that's already a familiar pattern, because mom thought you were doing bad stuff you weren't doing.
Yeah.
So, like, the familiarity.
I think so.
Yeah, we mistake familiarity, I think, a lot with... Comfort. Comfort and love and all these things.
I think there was just always that piece of it. There's a lot of patterns that I will say that I chose in toxic relationship I had with my mom at some point in my childhood.
Yeah, that's what we do.
Yeah, we all do that.
It's so weird too, because we had written these songs about this certain thing, and it's so nuts that we wrote The Door, for instance. The night I saved my life when I showed you The Door and I wrote this song and I was talking about this song and I didn't even realize, because I was just numbing myself to the situation. Like, I knew the song, Lose Control, was gonna be special. I knew it was gonna change my life. I knew we had nailed it, but it wasn't.
until way later after it come out and I got out of the situation that I listened to that song and then I listened to The Door and I listened to a lot of those songs we wrote then and a lot of that album, and I was like, my subconscious was telling me what I should be doing and trying to save me, and I was just numbing it, not even hearing it for what it was. I heard my own words back to me a few months later and just broke down in my car like, what? Where was I for myself? Myself was talking to me. I was putting things into words that I needed to hear with friends that wanted to also tell me what I needed to hear.
And I was so numb to that.
I love the idea that songs can do this because I write, and often I've written on experiences I've had, and as I'm writing them, I don't really understand them. and then I read what I've written afterwards and all of a sudden I go, oh, okay, now I actually understand it, but I had to write it first, and that's cool that a song can do that as well.
I think that's the beauty of writing, though, because I find that if you're going through an issue and you come to me, I got the exact advice to give you, but if I'm going through that, I'm a fucking wreck.
Yeah, of course.
And so I think it's just turning yourself into something that you can read. that gives you advice to yourself.
You need some distance from yourself.
Exactly, when you turn your words into a friend that somebody else would say to you,
then you're like, oh, thanks, bro, appreciate it.
You're so close to the thing that separation from yourself is really truly like, okay, I see it now. I'm having nightmares every night and I'm freaking out about this thing. I didn't know that it was that cut and dry in my brain, but I had clouded it up with so much shit and I was running from it so much, and I just couldn't catch up to myself.
It's kind of crazy how brilliant the subconscious is.
It's mad, dude.
Well, it's there to protect you too. Sometimes we're not ready to feel it or understand it. So when you're ready is when you can hear it. So maybe you just weren't there yet.
Certainly not. To some degree, I wish I would have listened to myself sooner, but it's so great that I did go through those things and I was able to talk about them in a way and put them in a song in a way that was actually super life-changing for me and turned it into such a positive thing. And now I touched so many people and I hear beautiful stories about it, touching people's lives and changing people's lives. And when we play those songs or they come on in a party, everybody can celebrate to this absolute pain and turn it into something we can revel in and we can celebrate this pain and agony. And that's such a beautiful thing.
Well, you give people the gift of not feeling alone, because they can feel what you're going through.
And they do the same for me, dude. And it's a powerful fucking thing.
2.6 billion streams. It's fucking nuts.
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