What does this album give us? Is it retrospective, or are you writing in the moment? Like, what is it?

Um, it is retrospective, and it...

I mean, essentially I'm, I'm talking lyrically I feel like in this album I'm exploring a lot of, um, loss and trauma that I kind of went through in the past five years, like, with relationships and, and with, you know, like, feelings about myself.

Um, bad, dark feelings [laughs] that I kind of had to reckon with, because I feel like when you're on tour, there's not a lot of room to really kind of, I don't know, like, you know, go through, go through the emotions.

It's like push, push, push, push, push.

And so I finally was off the road and had the time to really kinda, like, heal, and I think this album, writing all these, these stories, um, it was like a healing journey for me, and, like, was like a therapy essentially, and allowed me to get out all these, um, you know, feelings of, feelings of loss and feelings of, you know, not liking myself.

Um, and all these, like- You know, like, feelings about my body.

... do you recognize that person singing?

But I want to know what, talking about babies, what would you say to the baby version of you? Like the, like if you had to go back, what would be something that you would tell your younger self?

Um, okay.

If I were to have to tell myself something...

Even an advice.

I think just, like, keep pushing and don't let people... get to other people's opinions.

Cause I think it gets really, it's easy to get wrapped up in like what people say.

And I think blocking out the noise for me has been like one of the biggest lessons and just continuing to like be my authentic self.

I want to.

And what did you not have going into it that you thought you had?

their whole motto for the program I did is like, we are going to beat you down until you feel like you're nothing.

And then we're going to build you back up.

Like that was what they said to us on day one.

That was like the curriculum was like, we're going to make you feel like shit, beat you to a pulp.

And then by the end, hopefully you feel a little bit better than you feel now.

And all these kids too.

Yeah,

Yeah

... that is, that's my true, like, love and passion with music, is just being in the studio with my friends.

And I think I learned that early with this band, 'cause we would go into Jared's basement.

At the time, it was so new and so fresh and so exciting, and like, I had no idea what I was doing.

I just knew I loved to sing, and I knew that my mind, like, created melodies and lyrics.

The songwriting portion for me, like, really clicked kind of in that band setting, where we could just jam and be free.

Yeah.

I love it.

That's

amazing.

We're locked in.

We've known each other for like half our lives now, which is so wild to think about.

We built out a set of some of our original songs and some cover songs.

I loved the band dynamic.

I think, honestly, even more than performing, I just love collaborating so much.

Yeah,