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Time Marches On with Matt Shelton of Letter Kills · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Simultaneously, Epic and before.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: In 2004, the band Letterfill emerged with the pandemic and inspiring album, The Brick.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: The lead single don't believe challenges its listeners to believe in something more than just other people.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: A higher purpose, a higher power, with the interpretation beholded to its end listener.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: On this episode of the podcast, I am privileged enough to speak with Matt Shelton, the lead singer of Letterkill.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about that band's journey, his journey, and where things are going next.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is one of my all-time favorite albums and all-time favorite bands.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mike.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Normally, when I have a podcast guest on my show, we start off with this big fancy introduction.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: We have the formalities, but I'm gonna break cadence today because one of the greatest things that I can recite as far as nostalgia goes, coming up in the late 90s, early 2000s, especially as a former band guy myself, everybody was kind of compartmentalized by genres, by styles, um, by subgenres, and so on and so on.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: In 2004, an album came out that really spoke to me because it was a rock band just being a rock band again.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that band was Letter Kills, and that album was The Bridge.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a band called the Regan era at the time, citing my 80s influences.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it was great to hear a band that was just putting forth stuff.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to describe it, but it was very akin to what I was into, like guns and roses, like anthems, raise your fists in the air.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very privileged to have my new friend Matt Shelton from Letterkills on this episode of Caught on the Mike today.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: How are you, my friend?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Good, Mike.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, man.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: What an intro.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh that sets it up really well.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: You should do that every time.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: You should talk about letterkills every single intro.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: If people let me, I probably would.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: They'd be like, man, enough about your your personal music tastes already.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: So how are you doing?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: How's things going in Fort Worth, Texas?
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you're at right now.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is, man.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's where I I grew up.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh things are going well.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm married, uh, been married for 17 years, got a six-year-old daughter named Flora, and um, we live in downtown Fort Worth.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: So life's going good, man.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just playing music, working at a church, and uh that's about it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is amazing.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Let's set the table with your origin story, how you got into music, and where you found yourself up to the moment when Letter Kills was formed.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I uh started playing guitar when I was uh 12 years old, got a guitar, my first guitar for Christmas, and uh first song I learned on the guitar was uh Come As You Are by Nirvana.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I was swept up in all of the uh early 90s glory, and um uh when music started to have feelings, um, and uh that just kind of took over really any kind of desire or passion I had.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was really into sports at the time as a kid, and um so played in bands all through high school, just kind of as a hobby with my best friends.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in at one point, I think four different uh punk bands and um playing as much as I could in uh little dive uh clubs anywhere that we could get as high school uh kids.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh I graduated high school in 2000 and uh really started to think about okay, how do I how do I actually turn this into something?
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: How do I make this something that I can do um and get it to more people?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I quit my band because that's what you do when you want to uh you know start pursuing music and um got an opportunity to go play bass uh for a band that was starting up in Southern California.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh a guy named Mike Kelly was passing through, who I'd met as he had toured through.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: He, him and Tim Cordova, who was the lead guitar player for Letter Kills, they had a band, a hardcore band that they were in together called Point of Recognition.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, some early, early 2000s, late nine uh late 90s hardcore um coming out of Southern California.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they wanted to start a new band that was just um kind of more of a pop rock uh type band, and they were looking for a bass player.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they uh the singer Mike was passing through Texas uh to see his girlfriend in Mississippi and ran into him at a venue and he said, Hey, come out to California, we're starting a new band, we need a bass player.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: I told him no.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't really I I always wanted to be kind of the front man, that's kind of what I was I feel like I was destined to be.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um so I told him no.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: And for two weeks, I just was haunted by the question, why not?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh then decided to take him up on it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I bought a one-way ticket to California.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot more to this story, I'm just kind of flying through it, but uh to get us to letterkills.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: So um bought a one-way ticket, hit up Tim, who hadn't heard that I'd been invited to join the band at this point.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he I was the first to let him know uh that Mike had invited me.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he was like, Well, great.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Well, when you know, when do you want me out there?
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Well, we got a show in two weeks, you know.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get on out here, we can put something together and and uh do it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: So they had just started writing.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: The day that I was scheduled to fly out that morning, um, I called Tim and this is pre-cell phone, so I'm hitting him up in his apartment and um in uh Temecula, California, or Marietta, California, and uh said, Hey, my flight gets gets in it this time.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Can you pick me up?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Hey, I got some bad news.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Mike's uh gonna stay in Mississippi, he's not coming back to California, and uh so there is no band to join, there's nothing really for you to come out here for.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh, but I had already bought my ticket at that point.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I just asked him, I was like, Well, since you're just starting a new band, why don't we just start something together?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be down for that?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll come out and I'll sing and I'll play bass and we'll just kind of roll with it and figure out from there.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: So uh flew out to California, met uh our drummer Paul, who is a drummer for Letter Kills.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: He uh met him at the first our first practice, and uh it was very much a meet and greet uh situation.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Didn't know either of them really well, didn't know drummer at all, and um yeah, and we took it from there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: We started as a three-piece, and uh the rest is history.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, what was the process like putting those first songs together?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Was it stuff that you had already kind of had in the works in a notebook someplace?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or how did you structure that first set of songs for Lettergales?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was a combination of that.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Tim had already kind of been working on some songs for this new band that he had the idea of the band um that he had, and him and Mike had worked together one song that ended up being um Lights Out.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first the first track on the uh the album The Bridge, and um I so I I kind of rearranged the melody a little bit to kind of make it my own, uh, wrote my own lyrics to it.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm really it kind of goes back to the idea of even the front man thing.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have to I have to really believe what I'm singing.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: I it's really hard for me to kind of um sing someone else's song.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm a four on the Enneagram for any of you Enneagram people, and so it's very important to me that I connect with the music.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so wrote my own lyrics, kind of worked it out from there.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we had kind of that idea, and then also coming from as a songwriter, I was always writing for all of my bands, and I had some songs.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had this acoustic project that I started called Friend of August when I was about 16, 17.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: And the and I had written two super, and they were really dashboard confessionally, just me and an acoustic guitar type thing.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh two of the songs ended up uh being letter kills songs.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was uh on our original three-song demo that we that got us signed on Island F Jam, and it was a song called Seven Months, and I think you can find it online.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can find it like Google search uh Seven Months Letter Kills.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh it's a power ballad, it turned into like this super big power ballad.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of helped us start to see that November rain, that guns and roads just kind of start start to come out in us um musically, and we really liked that.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: We really liked it being uh influenced from that.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh it came out really naturally for us.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's that's that was a starting point.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then actually making the record on the bridge, um, a song called Carry You and uh real you know, heavy guitar riff on the verses, and then just kind of a soaring um you know uh melody on the on the chorus.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that chorus, uh My Son Let Me Carry You came from an acoustic uh song I'd written when I was like 17.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's um and so I just kind of applied that that to the song.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started that way, just kind of mixing and matching.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Tim was six years older than me, and he uh grew up playing guitar in the 80s, and that's all of his um I kind of really thrived off of his rifts, and so like he would kind of come up with these uh just really motivating and inspiring like guitar parts, and uh I would kind of take that take the energy of it, and then I would kind of add a melodic element to it um on the chorus.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So what would be an influence at that time that would surprise people if you shared?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think at that time, man, I feel like we all were pulling from different places, and I think that that's you know, I was pulling from you know, Johnny Cash, um Bright Eyes at the time was lyrically a really big influence for me.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and just writing uh writing things that mattered, you know, about things that mattered, especially in rock and roll.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um rock and roll is notorious for not having great lyrics.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and I I I really wanted to try.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if how I would I would argue that I did not achieve it, um especially that early, early in my uh in my songwriting days, but uh, but I was trying.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Like that's that was my goal.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is like I really wanted people to not just uh be able to turn this on when they're on a boat on the lake, but they would also be able to like really sing it by themselves in the car and connect with it, and it means something to them, you know.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and so I was pulling from that kind of world.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tim was pulling from a more metal, you know, Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, Motley Crue.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: So Motley Crue was actually a really uh uh big driving factor when it came to how a song felt for us.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted our songs when we played them to feel live, like it sounds when you listen to a Motley Crue song.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: When you listen to a Motley Crue song, or um it's just or a Guns N' Roses song, like there's just an energy to it.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we wanted to feel that way when we played, and so that was really important to us as well.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Man, I can like relate to this.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's we're similar boats on different seas, my friend.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like, and I remember, you know, back in that era for myself with my own projects, it was I have not really thought about that until you mentioned it, but listening to old Motley crew records, how every single one felt like a live performance, even especially before the Bob Rock produced albums, you know, Bob Rock made everything feel a little bit more mechanical, but before that it was nice and raw.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: So getting to that point where you did the three-song demo um and started shopping it around, you know, how did that process work?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we I moved out there in 2002, May of 2002.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: We were three-piece all summer just writing stuff, and we had played a small little show in Temecula um with another band, I think they were called Roxwell, I think is at the time.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's been 20, you know, 20 years, but um and Dustin, our our rhythm guitar player and our bass player Kyle and Larry Kills were in that band.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I I just remember um you know, me and Tim just loving these two guys, they stood out like in their band.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so we just started like uh, you know, side stage.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, why don't you why don't you come play with us?
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you you know quit playing with that band, quit messing around and come play with a real rock band?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we um uh recruited them uh into uh letter kills in August.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it was uh this is how things aren't supposed to happen, but we formed in August, played our first five-piece.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: I became just a front man, stopped playing bass, uh, let Kyle take that.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh played our first show, August 10th, 2002.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And in Temecula at that time, Newfound Glory was living in Temecula.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and also Finch was living in in um, I don't know if you're familiar with them, draft records bands.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and uh, and they were um all in Temecula.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Dustin, our our guitar player was good friends with the Finch guys from going to he went to high school with them.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so as we started playing around in Temecula in August, like our first couple shows, um, we had put up three songs on mp3.com.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh in like a matter of like two or three days, it was like over a weekend, we had something ridiculous, like 90,000, you know, downloads at the time, and which was an insane number for online at that time.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um we were playing these little warehouse shows, and they were just kids were just flying out the doors.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was uh it was awesome.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really fun and exciting time.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh the shows were just incredible and electric and sweaty and fun, you know.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so at that point, uh, you know, the Finch guys are hanging out with us at the shows, and like so they go back to the to drive-through um their record label and basically told them about us and said, Hey, you gotta sign these guys, like they're killing it.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh so they invited us out to LA to do a showcase, which we did, and so they offered us a contract.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, being young and we didn't know one of our guys was 17 at the time.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, his parents had to like sign his you know contract with him, and so we didn't really know what to do.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a local promoter in Southern California um who had booked us already a couple of times.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_00: His name was Brian Valdez, and he he basically was looking out for us.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: He was just he was he's one of the good dudes, you know, in the industry that's just looking out, loves music and just wants to help bands uh succeed.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And so he knew a guy who knew a guy who introduced us to a lawyer in um in Hollywood named Scott Bradford, and we sent him the contract and the three-song demo, and he looked at the contract and he told us to give him a few days and to come back on Monday, uh, have a lunch with him, and we'll talk about the contract.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we come back a couple days later, we go up to Hollywood, have lunch with him, and meet him in his office first, and he had contracts laid out across his desk in his office from every every major label.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, RCA, Epic, Capital, uh, you name it.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, it was a a smorgasbord of of contracts.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he just looked at us and he said, I, you know, I told you not to sign it, and this is why I think that you guys can do better, and um, this proves it.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go to lunch and talk about it.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: So we went to lunch and he kind of gave us the the overview of what was happening and just said, Hey, spend the next couple of months like enjoying this, like let them wine and dine you and take you out and um just make the most of it, and uh, and then but really pay attention to who actually you connect with relationally and that you would want to hang out with, um, right, and that um uh that you think you you could build something with, um, and as opposed to somebody just trying to sell you something.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Island Def Jam uh was that record label for us.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we um their scout in particular, Will Westfall, he's the guy that found us.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh that Scott had connected with.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: He was the first guy to like come hang out with us and go to a show and see what we were like.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He was a big Deftones fan, yeah, and just really liked uh our live show.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that that meant a lot to us because we put a lot of effort.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Live was always important to us almost more than the record.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we just like I said, from those early listens to like Motley Crue and Guns N' Roses, everything just we wanted that energy.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We wanted to have that on stage and experience it with people um in a room.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he he saw that and he recognized that, and that's the thing he actually uh encouraged in us and honored in us and and spoke up about.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that meant a lot to us.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we we we connected with them, and uh, and so in November of uh 2002, um, we signed our contract uh over Thanksgiving uh with them, and uh that was pretty much it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that is amazing how that lawyer in that short span of time basically took your demo and shopped it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Three days, three day turnaround.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: That is fantastic.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, how the music business model has changed, and we'll kind of get to that later on down the line.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't it kind of funny how the dynamic is constantly shifting from live value to recorded value back to live value, and it's it's almost like it's it's a big cycle in a in a roundabout way.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are some of your observations on that?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think of a lot of it's no different than anything else that we're experiencing in you know in life in terms of what we actually want.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think you know, people don't know what they want.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so um they tend to want it's it's Damian Rice, I think, in one of his uh song lyrics where he says, you know, you give me the mountains and I want the sea.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's that kind of concept where we don't really know fully what we want because we're not um nothing fully satisfies.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so we get this idea of, oh, okay, I want to go to a live show.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then for whatever reason, we get tired of that, we get burned out on that.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's something really special about a record where you can be alone and you can listen to this, um, or you can sing along with your friends, you know.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh for me it was like, I mean, I loved, you know, looking at the liner notes and and reading who made the record and and reading the lyrics and like seeing what studio they were in and where like even location, like oh, they recorded this in in uh Washington State, you know, or um in Seattle or whatever that was.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: There was a whole experience to it.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I think just the with technology, and you know, we've all heard these these answers, I feel like a thousand times, but I feel like that's we see the ebbs and flows of humanity in general, and I think it's no different with music.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we ultimately want connection, and so sometimes we we we can find that, and I think we find it in both places.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is when we feel like we can only find it in one place, you know, we only we can only get it, you know, through through uh listening uh, you know, on Spotify uh when we're alone, or we can only get it when we go to a show.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the the perfect you know artist's goal is that when you go to a show, it makes you want to listen to the album because it's different.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it but it cues up things for you and connections in the album that you didn't get without the live show, um, or the and the other way around, where you're listening to the album and you're like, oh man, but I I want this connection uh with other people in the room singing the songs and uh um you know sweating it out together.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Adam and I, Adam from Story of the Year and I had a very similar conversation, and we were talking about the resurgence of vinyl because of the ritualistic aspects of it and looking at the cover art and just putting that piece of wax down and dropping the needle and how people have missed that over a certain period of time, and hopefully that brings things back full circle beyond the streaming stuff.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, of course, we can get back to that a little later on down the line.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: But I did want to get your thoughts on how that ebbs and flows while we were in the process of talking about the history a little bit.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you go and you record the bridge and it drops in 2004.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's talk about your experience after the album dropped, promoting the album, going on tour, and how your lives changed as a result.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: So we Well, when we got signed, the label was very aware that we were a new band.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have any fans or anything like that.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: So they sent us on tour.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: We, you know, um kind of spent the next two years really developing as a band and really particularly as a live band.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and we're just pushing a three-song uh CD at our shows and opening up for bigger bands and and things like that.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we grew a lot during that time.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so when we went in in 2003 um to uh make this record, uh to make the bridge, um, we we had kind of honed in on our sound, we kind of figured out what we wanted.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we were at this kind of a crossroads where we felt like we had played these songs so much uh that we were already kind of at the tail end of them, yeah, um, in our minds as artists, you know, and because we had been touring on them for a couple of years already before the music had even gotten out.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so we record this album, we feel good about it, um, we put it out, but we're already like a little bit ahead, like in our minds, like we're ready to like kind of get on with this thing, you know.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so we start touring the album.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And 2004 was just incredible.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was incredible for a lot of a lot of people.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It turns out that that was a really important, you know, historical, I think, music year.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's been documentaries even, you know, made about uh that uh time period, but I I think for us, you know, there was this element of like, okay, we want to get this album out.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: We're ready for people to finally have it in their hands, singing along with songs.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: We're ready to kind of step up, make that transition from an opening band to a headliner.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we had intentionally just been an opener for two and a half years.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh so we were ready, we're ready to take that step.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But with that step came this, like almost like a coming of age, I think, as a band, that meant that we all had to kind of start to ask the question like, what is it that we want to be as a band?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because we came together so fast.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, from the moment we were a five-piece, we were signed three months later and then went on tour.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we we were more business partners than we were friends.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we were more um, we didn't have that time to build that relational capital.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, because of I think what we were doing uniquely, like what you described in your intro, um, I think because of that, we had all been fed for management and from record labels and from press and from fans um that we were ushering in this new, you know, I mean, our album was called The Bridge because our manager, we were in New York City and and uh our manager was we were celebrating, uh I think Ellie Reed had just bought uh or taken over at Island Def Jam Records, and we had just performed privately for him because he was like he was wanting to check on his investment with us, and um, and went really well.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we were celebrating it and uh getting ready for the album to come out, and he was he had suggested that this he had called it basically you guys are the bridge because he, our old manager, he was uh um, I don't know how much if Adam's talked to you about this because story of the year, we had the same manager.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but John Reese was um he kind of came up through the Guns N' Roses camp.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: He was the uh tour manager for Guns N' Roses, yeah.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he recognized in us something that he saw in them, but he thought that we were gonna basically be the ones to bridge this gap from like this you know, rock and roll era of the 80s, um, and bring in this new um, you know, quality lyric, uh emotional connection type uh pop melody, um, more to a broader audience and kind of bridge that gap there.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's where the the title, the bridge came from was like we had kind of like began to live out this persona of okay, we are the bridge for this new rock and roll to step in, um, that kind of involves different eras all in one place.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I I that really messed with us.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it really starts to take a toll on like um when and you don't feel it until you've got to make something new, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we were recording, we made this record, we toured it, everything was great.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we toured the record for the next uh year, 2004 was great.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then 2005 came along, we did our first headline tour, that went really well, and that was a blast, and now it's time to make a second record.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when that's when you start gotta kind of step back and ask the question okay, what is it that we actually want to be?
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because this is who they're saying we are, and we didn't try to be this the first time, we just did it, right?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And now we've got to try to do something, and uh you've probably heard this from several artists before, but that's just that's it's an impossible task.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, just being a music fan, you and and a musician simultaneously.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: So let me throw that qualifier out there.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like you want to avoid the redundancy of doing what you had already done before, but you don't want to compromise what you've already done before.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it does mess with you in a really, really, really fierce way.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And there was this amazing bubble that you guys were a part of at that time in 2004 when Avenge Sevenfold was kind of starting to come into the mainstream.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: You guys, Mike M was coming into the mainstream, and it was like, man, rock and roll is back.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everybody again, like I said in the intro, everybody wants to throw it in a box, throw it in a genre, a sub-genre.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I imagine that that was pretty stressful trying to create a follow-up to something you guys had spent so much time on already.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and we had and also I think some of like our the age element came into play.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: Because I mean, you know, you have a guy that's 17 when you first get signed, and you make a piece of music.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how much does your music uh, you know, interest change between 17 and 22?
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like that's a big shift.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, musically, you go through a lot of like, what do I like?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, what am I into?
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so there was an element of like some of the when we tried to write, all of us were coming again from different angles, but it wasn't getting us the same results.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we tried to make that work because we all we all wanted to make it work.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I remember our first set of demos we sent, our first five demos we sent to Island, and literally the response, the response from our AR guy was, what is this shit?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is not like this is not what I signed.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this a joke?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you guys messing with me?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like, he literally thought it was a joke.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: He thought it you guys are messing with me because we had basically sent him these songs that were this really bad demo version of like a almost like a psychedelic, almost more towards like a Led Zeppelin uh Grateful Dead route than it was uh an Aerosmith Motley Crew, right?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Guns N' Roses route.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, and none of us were really happy with it either.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, that's the thing, is like we were just we were trying to to make it work, and so we spent about a year writing songs, and we uh I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if we wrote a hundred songs, you know, that year trying to find something.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Dustin at one point, a rhythm guitar player, actually uh left the band for a for a season because um he he wasn't really enjoying what we were doing, he didn't want to he didn't want to recreate what we were doing.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: He his musical taste had changed and our drummer's musical taste had changed.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and so uh it wasn't fun for them anymore.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're like, okay, well, let's just let's who whoever wants to keep doing this, let's try to keep doing it.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And and um, and we tried and tried to keep us together as much as possible, and it just in the end, uh we were all just left frustrated.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so there were some other things that we'll maybe we'll get to.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um but that's like uh, you know, writing those songs was just really, really difficult to recreate the magic of, you know, once you're you're put in that position of now you have to perform, now you have to do this, and we have an expectation, and it's a high expectation.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um for us, we just weren't ready for it.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we didn't know how to navigate it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: So if we were to do a compare and contrast, let's talk about like Finch, for example, the pivot that they made between what it is to burn and say hello to Sunshine, how it was such a like structural pivot.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I can imagine it was a similar boat for you guys, but on being on Island Def Jam, the stress must have been like so much heavier.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I couldn't I couldn't imagine, you know, being under the weight of that.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: So at that point in time, is kind of when you guys decided to call it a day, it was a mutual decision, I'm assuming.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So like uh there's multiple factors.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so like there are two things probably that we look back and we're like that would have could have helped us probably keep going.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is it like you said, being on Island Def Jam was a pressure because you know they um they were great and like literally we had no issues with them.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean they they've got to sell records, and if we don't, if we're not gonna do that, they don't need there's it makes zero sense for them to work with us, right?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't really have the freedom to to explore.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that was a time where we needed at least some time to explore.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we would have signed with maybe a a you know more independent label.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think we probably could have weathered that a little bit better, right?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we would have seen probably a little bit of a crash of like, okay, this isn't it, but we needed to know that that wasn't it, you know, um, to get to where we needed to go.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we didn't have that luxury uh being on island, and so um, yeah, so we I remember being in Paul's garage, that's where we rehearse um out in Temecula, and um uh we were in the kit, we we were kind of frustrated.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: We had tried jamming out some songs and and just weren't feeling it, and we were like nine to five in it at that point.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: We were like we'd wake up in the morning for eight hours, just go into the garage and jam out songs and ideas and do everything we could.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh went into the to the uh kitchen and me and Kyle were playing cards, and uh my dad had just had a heart attack at the time, and he had my dad's had multiple heart attacks, but at that time he had had a pretty bad one.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, I was uh a year into my marriage, and um I had been married a year before, and my wife was living in Texas, and I was essentially living in California, so that was really hard on us at that time.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and at this point, we had spent almost a year trying to make this record happen and just nothing was clicking.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so when my dad had that heart attack, I I was just like, you know what?
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I need to go home, you know, like I need to go home, I need to see my wife, I need to be there for her, I need to be, you know, I want to go see my dad.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he's gonna make it kind of a thing.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, I kind of left it open-ended and just said, hey, you know, if you guys have any ideas of making this work, like let me know.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm gonna go back to Texas.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that was, and that ended up being the end of it.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: We just never reconnected.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean we reconnected, but for music, um, it just kind of dissolved.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we we we did make an attempt to to call and ask Island to drop us um so that we could potentially go sign with uh an independent label.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um but um even that kind of went nowhere because the the at that point, the motivation that we and the belief, I really think that's what it was, like the belief that we could do it again was really gone from us.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um we we had we had kind of lost that um uh that spark.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there was a little bit of okay, I don't I don't think this is gonna happen at this point.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so moved back to Texas and uh kind of uh started uh the next chapter.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just gonna ask.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: So how did you personally push that reset button that brought you into the next project?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you took over lead singer duties with the wedding, right?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: At that point.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: So as soon as I quit Letter Kills, I I got a bunch of phone calls from bands that had lost their singers that were established.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a couple of newer bands that were starting out looking for singers, um, and uh that wanted me to sing.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: And at that point, like I said, it was I had just gone through this really hard, heavy thing.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and been away from my wife for a year and dad's in the hospital.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so it just I just didn't feel like I could step into that space.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: I really wanted to um um, you know, be there for my wife and kind of redeem some of the time we had lost and and uh and how that impacted our relationship.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just kind of focused on that.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I kept you know turning down these offers, you know.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, Dead Poetic had asked me at one point.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And um, there was a new band at the time there that called Forever the Sickest Kids that were starting up and they were looking for a new singer.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I I remember just thinking, like, I don't think this is the right fit for me.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and looking back, it was the right you know decision, um, even though they you know did did fine on their own.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um but so I was getting these opportunities.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_00: The wedding reached out to me, and they were this Christian punk band that like in this sub-subgenre of music that I I had no um interest in whatsoever.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so told them no.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and their guitar player Trevor started basically he decided once a week he was just gonna call me.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: So once a week for six months, he got my number from Matt Tyson from Reliant K, and uh, which I later gave uh really hard time about because he he would call me every week, and it got to the point where for the first few weeks he's like, Hey, come be our lead singer, come be our lead singer, and I'm like, No, not gonna do it.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, appreciate it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then it just he would call me, be like, Hey man, how's it going?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: You doing all right?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Cool, what's up?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so like we would just start talking and we we developed a friendship uh through those calls.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: And six months into it, the similar situation with the letter kills, I just was haunted by the question, why not?
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh I did have this looming answer of like, well, this was really hard on my marriage, and it was really hard on my own, like my own heart, even just to like invest right what I did with letter kills and just to see it uh end, kind of and not even like in a uh glorious way, you know, in a in a really kind of casual, okay.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess we can't do this kind of a way.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'll I remember taking my wife on a date and she looked at uh me across the table and she it's a crazy story, and she just was she's a tea was a teacher at the time.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: She just said, Hey, I like we're we're both Christians, so we we uh sure um believe in God and and talk to God and stuff.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he she was like, I was praying in this morning in in class, and she's like, I feel like God told me to tell you that if if you get an opportunity to go back into music, you need to do it.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, and this was like not something that she would say uh because of how hard it was um before.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: And um, without knowing anything that these bands were reaching out to me at all, I kind of kept that to myself because I didn't want her to worry about it.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so I was like, okay, well, I'm glad you brought this up because I got an opportunity with this band, and I'm not super into them, but I feel like I I need to take it.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so again, called them up.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, I'm ready.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: When you need me, they said two weeks.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: We went on tour, our first tour was ended up being with Reliant K and um uh yeah, and toured with them for six years, became so they're some of my best friends to this day, and it kind of redeemed a lot of my love for music and the belief that I could I could still do it, um, in terms of that I had a gift and that I could use and I could work at it and fight for it.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um yeah, it it really breathed new life into me in a way that I'll be a musician for the rest of my life, I think, because of that um, that kind of redemption element.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, in Letter Kills, we were in buses and hotels and crew and all that kind of stuff.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the wedding, it was sweating it out and sleeping in Walmart parking lots and 15 pasture van with a bunch of you know guys, and um, and it was awesome, it was really redeeming.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: How was that process of joining an established project as opposed to shaping a project from scratch?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I didn't like it for a lot of reasons.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: One, I I didn't really like the music a whole lot.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I thought it was good, it's not like that, it just wasn't like my style, right?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and and then kind of going back to the beginning, like I have to connect with what I'm singing about, and I did not connect uh with the lyrics um originally, and it was really hard to sing another person's uh songs, right?
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_00: That was a really difficult transition for me.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I try to make them my own kind of a thing, and um and uh yeah, and so the and it was it was also kind of difficult because the guys in the wedding were fans of letter kills, you know, and they were they were uh a little bit younger than me.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And so they had, you know, they they kind of they actually were influenced by their band was influenced by letter kills.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a weird dynamic when you you had previously impacted their sound.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: So they expected something of me too.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to we had to navigate kind of that that whole thing too.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to kind of find a new voice uh that fit what we were doing because it wasn't letter kills.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and yeah, so that was that took some time.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: And but I think through that it kind of helped me uh years later find my voice um and reconnect with letter kills in a way that I had been disconnected to where now I feel like the same person um in letter kills that I was when I was, you know, uh 22.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not you know, not maturity-wise, but like uh definitely as an artist, like I connect with a lot better.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, me and you know, I don't know if this is a separate question, but like uh that we would get to.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, me and Tim and and Kyle, the bass player, have been passing passing music back and forth um again for the first time, you know, in in 20 years, because uh there's kind of this like feeling of like, oh, okay, we've we've kind of settled in to who we are, we know who we are, and we're able to enter back into what letter kills was um in a way that we couldn't, you know, um, when we were still trying to find our identity a little bit.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a bad term, but it's kind of like trauma bonding where you all go through this big experience together that you have this lifelong long bond, whether you want it or not.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: It's there, so yeah, I I get that.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: So pushing you to now, you've been doing uh Panther City riots for how long now?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um my album came out a little over a year ago.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yep.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so was that something uh you started writing on after the wedding or yeah?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I left uh the wedding to get into full-time ministry and um work at a church in downtown Fort Worth and do the I oversee our music and arts.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh really kind of pastor artists and things like that a lot.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I you know can't stop making, I can't stop creating.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, so I was writing music and I I really missed live performance again.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you talk about the ebbs and flows.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like I it wasn't enough for me just to like go and record a song or something.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: Like I wanted to play on a stage and I wanted to, you know, sing songs with people, real people, and uh get sweaty and and play some rock and roll, get loud.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to yell, all that kind of stuff.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: So um, yeah, so I just started writing songs basically so I could play shows, and I wrote five songs because I knew I could get away with a 30-minute set.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote five songs and I got some friends together, and we just started playing shows.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I then it kind of bothered me because I I was kind of frustrated that I wasn't now I have this thing that is pretty good, and I'm not like doing it.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's like I don't care about it, you know.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like I'm neglecting it's this thing that's just there for my amusement.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, well, I mean, songs aren't just meant for ourselves, like they're meant to be shared, they're meant to be um, you know, like built upon and and and nourished, and you know, all this stuff.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided I was gonna nourish it.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna invest in it and put some time into it and uh record an album and play more shows and and things like that.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and I was really inspired um by music too.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was a the Jack Ansinoff um has a band called Bleachers.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: He's a he's a producer, and um, he was still trained back in the day, and you know, he was a part of fun, and um, and uh, but he started Bleachers, and that kind of stirred this rock and roll pop thing for me that that really got me ignited when I was in Letter Kills.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but obviously he takes more of a Bruce Springsteen approach.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, um, but that really stirred something in me, like musically, that made me want to make music again.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't felt that in forever.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's really what kicked up Panther City Riots was like this oh man, I I gotta make music again.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta play it and I gotta feel it and I gotta share it.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, so so riots kind of was birthed out of that, and that got me back into um you know, reconnecting uh with music in a way that I hadn't a while.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned Damian Rice earlier, and I absolutely love that because something tells me there's a side of you that's really into the singer-songwriter, like just a guy in his acoustic guitar type stuff.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: So who are some artists that excite you right now?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, I've been really listening.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: I like the new arcade fire record.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't get into them before this new record, but that he their their first single just I really connected with it.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but his lyrics and his his angst, and just I um not enough people are um it's like it's like a weird place to be sentimental and angry at the same time, and I feel like that's uh I really connect with that, like personally.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think uh so that new record is really good.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Same with the last the the last war on drugs record.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: I really connected with that too, especially getting older.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: These guys are are older musicians, and you know, you think about the 80s, this is a thing, so there's a little bit of a side show, but the uh the in the 80s, you look at these guys like Huey Lewis and these these uh rock and roll guys, Phil Collins, and they're they're older dudes that are like making this happen.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a 20-year-old, you know, kid that's like you know, making this happen.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we've as we progress, it just gets younger and younger, and there's almost like this devaluing of an older musician, unless you're already established as an older musician.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so I think I there's something about that's really inspiring about like the war on drugs and the arcade fire, and these guys in their 40s that are like writing really good rock songs and um that are meaningful and that and you can tell they've experienced life, yeah, you know, like they're coming from something, you know, and so that's inspired me a lot for where I'm at right now in life.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: I just turned 40 and um you know, I I I want to write songs that that inspire people and that really um uh where I can allow myself to feel uh kind of my life experience a little bit, you know.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: I was cruising Spotify, now I'm gonna sound like Uber Creeper here, as an olive branch off your riots project.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you had created a Spotify playlist, and I had found a lot of stuff on your Spotify playlist that said, I can so relate to these selections of music.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And like, like I'm a huge fan of Jason Isbel, and it you wouldn't know that from the projects that I've been in that I was into this alt country stuff.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: So hearing that you were inspired by Johnny Cash at one point in time and referencing QE Lewis and and a Damian Rice, it speaks a lot to the sincerity and the integrity of your writing process for your more well-known project, Letter Kills.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: How is that going to continue on as you create new music in the future?
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that I mean, I I feel like again, this comes back to a little bit of ridding myself of insecurities um as I get older and allowing myself to not be afraid to be influenced.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and not being afraid to show my influences because uh, and that's really what the you know bleachers taught me.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think I I watched an interview with Jack where he talked about how he was just tired of hiding his influences.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I I that I connected with that because uh what keeps me from writing and what keeps me from being sincere is this hesitation that oh, it sounds too much like this, or oh, it feels a little bit too much like this, or oh, I can't say that because of XYZ.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's like allowing yourself the freedom to be uh let all of your influences come out because we are individually individually, we are all so unique that you and I could write the same song and play the same song, and they would sound completely different.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: Even if we're playing the same instrument, singing the same song, the same lyrics, they're gonna be completely different.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: So just allowing myself to be um let my influences come out, knowing that sometimes you'll be able to point them out, but sometimes you won't.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but to me, that's where I find myself at the center of all of the things that I enjoy, right?
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, about music.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it it allows me to kind of um fill my music with that.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to, you know, spend the rest of my days doing is writing songs that um there's where I'm content with the song even if no one ever hears it.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I'm content with playing it and and uh listening to it um because I've connected with it as opposed to really worrying too much about like how somebody might perceive the song.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's it may seem uh obvious, but that's a really hard thing to do for an artist.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's limited to artistry though, right?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because you talk about it societally, the line that I like to throw out to people is you are an individual, so is everybody else.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: And the sooner that we all understand it, the easier it is for all of us to get along.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a society that is trying so hard to keep us divided, you know, whether it be politically, spiritually, any which ways, you know, respecting those differences is probably the thing that could bring us together the fastest.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: So again, going back to my intro, it's kind of one of those things where putting things in a box, genres and subgenres, was almost as much as a bad thing as it is a good thing because of that diversity that you can kind of speak to and experience through art and through music.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I gotta ask the big question.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um 2018, there were some social media stir whenever you started creating basic social media sites for letter kills that there was a potential re-emergence of the band.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_01: You said in an interview in 2012 that it would probably never happen again.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: Is that true?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to make it happen.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to say it's highly likely, it is likely that it will happen.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is unlikely that it will happen with all original five members.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's that's not a bad blood situation.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like we're all like we all still connect and still talk.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Paul and Dustin have kind of like pursued other musical paths um that it makes it really difficult for them to enter back in.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, whereas me, Kyle, and Tim are still um pretty much in the vein of where we were when we were in Letterkills.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And like I said, we've we've started kind of sharing music back and forth, even.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, we're we're we're trying to do what we can.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_00: We um got invited to a couple of festivals that we they ended up one of them.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they thought we weren't ready yet, so they kind of backed out.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: Another one timing schedules just didn't work out, sure.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh we are working really hard.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so I've been trying for for years to to make this happen.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I really want it to happen.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it takes a lot uh to to do it, you know.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: People I don't think people understand, like especially if you have if you're it's not what you do full time anymore.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we're trying to make uh we're trying to make a reunion show happen.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: We also would like to put out more music.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we would like to, you know, we've talked about in addition to uh we there's some songs that we never released uh from the bridge.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've talked about re-releasing some of those.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, people have been wanting a vinyl for a long time.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked about doing that.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh, but new music, new music is what inspires me the most.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, I want to, I want to, I always want to do something new.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: I want to, I want to be in, I want to be present, I want to be in the moment right now, where we're at in 20, you know, 22 and put out some what is letter kills in 2022.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to do, you know.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and uh and what's funny is like I said, because of the journeys we've been on, um, we've been able to kind of find ourselves in a place where we can actually enter in musically a lot closer to the bridge than we could even a year after it came out, which is crazy.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the stuff we've been sharing back and forth is, you know, it's pretty good.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: We're we're excited about it.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's make it a two-part question.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: What is your advice for making the world a better place right now?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and uh I I think love is the uh the love is the answer.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it is the it is the way to rid ourselves of ourselves and uh make the other greater, and when we each make each other greater, then we don't have to elevate ourselves.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when we elevate ourselves, that's what the problem.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so the second half of that question is how is your art going to influence that in doing your part?
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I mean, definitely lyrically.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of that in my songwriting is me fighting that.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in the in the recent riots record, um, the idea of the of even the name riots came because I was rioting with my own heart um in the songs, and so it's this this war against self, you know.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I that will be the rest, that will be my cry for the rest of my life.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, is just working to die more and more to myself and I love others well.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: Dude, I absolutely love that.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, I gotta tell you, the world's such a better place having you in it.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for all the art you've contributed.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking forward to what the future brings.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I can say it.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're friends now, brother.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, Mike.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hit me up anytime, man.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: So uh you ever make your way to Lincoln, Nebraska, you know there's a seat at my table.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take you up on it.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: In 2004, when Letter Kills was on the Nintendo Fusion tour, there was an off date where My Chemical Romance was doing a show in Omaha, Nebraska in a club.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: There was probably less than 100 people, maybe 150 people there.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_01: And my bandmates and I all went down hoping that Letterkills would be the opener, and we're so bummed out.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: But this totally made up for it.
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: What a great conversation with Matt Shelton.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you give him a follow on social media and follow Letterkills, search them out, and while you're being generous with the follows on social media, make sure you follow Caught on the Mic on all forms of social media.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Visit me www.cotonThemic.com.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate those five-star reviews on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm always willing to engage with my listeners and potential future guests.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: This has been Caught on the Mic with Michael Clark.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Michael Clark.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, thank you.