Our music helped them to feel something positive.Ī good example of this would be this kid in London. We have been able to strike a chord with people who have their own sense of self, but were unable to access it. More than anything, I think that there is a common thread that runs through everything. I’ll hear the same tales from Dublin, Ireland that I hear in Louisville, KY. Unfortunately, the stories are often all too familiar. It would be very hard to specify a particular story because we get them all of the time. We were able to get a lot of fans in there though.Ĭan you share a story or two about a fan who credits your music for helping to get them through tough times? We tried our best, but there’s only so much time in the song. I wish that we could have included everyone. Were you able to include everyone, or were there just too many submissions? The powerful video that you made for the song had all of your fans wearing the shirts. It was beneficial for us because it showed that we wanted to get involved with a good cause and beneficial for them because we raised a lot of money for the organization. His parents reached out to our management about autographs and stuff, and I thought that it was a logical thing to try and get involved with their whole project. What happened was, one of the kids in the bully documentary had expressed interest in our band, and it was really touching. I’m not entirely sure about the actual amount that we raised off the top of my head, but I know that it was quite a bit, and we were very happy to do it. How did you get involved with The Bully Project, and how much did you end up raising for them? Last year, you guys did a special shirt for the song “Unbroken,” and donated all the proceeds to The Bully Project. Sometimes it’s hard for people to rise above things. I know that isn’t always easy and that there is self-harm in the world. I would advocate that you show me your smiling face, and how happy you can make your life. I never advocate that you should be lonely, or come to my shows and bring me your razor blade to show me that you don’t cut anymore. There is also a celebration of being an outcast, to the degree that you are segregating yourself in a negative way from people who may want to be your friend. I feel that there is a culture being built that is a celebration of agony.
That is something that causes great concern for me.
Do you find that your songs have been especially helpful to your fans that are being bullied or feel like outcasts?Ībsolutely! I think that it’s important to note that you touched on how a lot of artists are writing songs about bullying. There have been a number of artists who have written songs about bullying, but your songs seem to be more about empowerment. It’s interesting that you had the awareness at such a young age of having something to offer that others just didn’t get it. There was something intrinsic to me that they just didn’t get, which was ok. Pretty early on, I just started to believe that they didn’t understand me. I was a straight boy with hormones kicking in, and I wanted to talk to girls, but they weren’t interested in talking back to me, so there was a real sense of loneliness.ĭid you end up resenting the girls for ignoring you? It was a great cause of pain for me, and because of that, I didn’t really get the chance to talk to girls. They would always ask me to do the “Truffle Shuffle.” From 4 th grade to 7 th grade, I was overweight, and the kids would say that I looked like Chunk from The Goonies. I fluctuated in weight all through my adolescence. Wow, that’s shocking! I never would have guessed that you would have been overweight. This was due either to the way that I dressed, or because I was a little bit overweight when I was a kid, so I would get made fun of for being chubby. And the times when I wasn’t on my own, I faced some sort of derision from someone around me. It wasn’t that I thought that I was better than them I just didn’t associate with them in any way.īecause of the kind of music that I liked, and the different way that I dressed, it was kind of a perfect storm, creating a situation where I existed on my own throughout my schooling. I had a certain kind of disassociation from the other kids because I had more interest in sociology, ideas and trying to communicate those ideas to the kids around me. When I was growing up in school, I wasn’t the archetype of the classic American nerd I was just different. Can you talk a little bit about the bullying that you experienced as a kid and how you handled it?
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