Alex Warren On Getting to Know His Dad After His Death

Welcome to all there is. We've had a lot of really memorable and moving guests this year, but the conversation you're about to hear with singer-songwriter Alex Warren is probably one of my favorites. Alex is 26 and he's been selling out arenas around the country. He was nominated for a Grammy this year for Best New Artist. You probably know his big hit, Ordinary, which he wrote. Here's some of it. What I didn't know about Alex when I first heard that song is that he lost his dad when he was just nine years old. His dad's name is James Ward Hughes and he died from cancer. Alex's mom, Lisa Struggle, was severe alcohol addiction and was abusive to Alex. She kicked him out of her house when he was 18 and she died three years later from liver and renal failure. Alex talks about his losses during his concerts and every show he plays, he says he still looks out into the audience hoping somehow his dad will be there. Alex is just released his second album called Wild Child and will play some of the new songs from it that he's written about loss and grief and we'll also hear from his dad who left videos for Alex that he's just now started to listen to. We sat down together earlier this month in New York. Were you always able to talk about grief about loss? No. Growing up, I was surrounded by so many people yet I felt so alone. I almost felt like everyone wanted to console you but they just didn't know how. They didn't understand what you were going through and didn't let people console you. That's a great question. I don't know. I think I was so focused on figuring out what losing my dad meant that I didn't really have time for anything else. At nine years old, I just wanted to make sense of it all and I think going through something that traumatic, it doesn't hit you until much later. I think I was like 13 when I realized it. My dad died when I was 10 and I remember a friend of mine from school wanted to come over and I was like filled with shame for some reason. I was angry that anybody would see and would like see my pain and I remember not letting him come over because I just didn't want anybody from school to know even though obviously they all knew. Yeah. When I returned back to school which is like a week and a half later, I walked in and everyone stood up and clapped and that was really strange for me and I just balled my eyes out and walked away and I think I just didn't like the idea that that was kind of the solidifying thing that my dad was gone, that people were giving me different attention. I was really, really confused after that of just being a heavily bullied kid to all this I never one like stopped. I kind of was angry at stopped and made me different. Were you able to talk about your dad? Every time I tried, everyone would go quiet. I wanted to speak about my dad and it always just kind of went the wrong way until the point where I stopped talking entirely. I just didn't want to bring it up. I didn't want to be that kid who quieted the room that way and I inevitably forgot him. My dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he was given a certain amount of time to live and I think I put myself in his position a lot and I think about what your life would be like if you knew you were dying and he had four kids and he wanted to see them grow up as fast as he could and so we just got talent shows and surfing and doing all these things and it's so scary I think where he had to like leave subliminal messages on tape recorders and write us letters and he left me a letter and it's so devastating reading it. He was so in denial. He did not think he was going to die. He thought he could beat it. He thought he could do anything and in this letter he finally admits defeat and instead of saying it's been a pleasure to be your father he said it was so nice to get to know my son and I thought that the way that he had said that was so definite of I'm not no longer going to be your dad. Oftentimes I think when I talk about my dad I say it's my he's my dad not he was my dad and I often think about grief. I think about the kid who was scared to talk about it. It's not promoted in a beautiful light because any time you get to talk about it it's kind of this melancholy sad thing and I think the grief is almost beautiful as well. I've seen this reiterating so many times but you get to grieve because you got to love. Grief is love when something happens in my life I measure how exciting it is based on how happy my dad would have gotten when he experienced it you know. I'll play a show and one of my dads like Fratt Bros who I never met will be in the audience with a sign being like I went to a fraternity with your dad and they'll be like you know he would have bought out this entire row and been so excited to watch you play on stage and I enjoy it so much yes because it's a dream of mine but also because I know that my dad no matter how many shows I've played would be in that audience every single night he would quit his job and travel the world with me. It's the coolest thing in the world to realize that whoever you've lost is shaped who you are today without even being here. I've heard you say that you still look in the crowd looking for him every night. I'll never see him but it's like you learn how to ride a bike and you look back and you look to say I did it and I think for me they died before I could say that and so for me specifically my dad introduced me to music he introduced me to my favorite musicians and I hope that one day maybe I it's so stupid to say out loud but I would hope one day I saw him you know and it's just it's never going to happen which is a sad truth of it. I recently made contact with a woman who turned out to be my dad's closest friend and she actually had saved all the letters he had ever written her and so I've been able to go through and read all these letters and it's so incredible because it's I'm hearing as a voice like I didn't remember my dad's voice and I'm hearing it in these letters and he's writing about me a lot and my brother and he knew he was going to die like your dad did in my dad died of heart disease at 50 his dad died at 50 so we always knew when he'd had a heart attack like two or three years before he died so he was desperately like trying to hold on until like I was eight or nine when he thought it'd be I'd be old enough to like not be kind of really damaged but it's so incredible to kind of hear his voice in these letters and learn about him in a new way it's like meeting him and it's the most extraordinary thing it's such a beautiful thing I have a better relationship with my dad now because I was you know eight nine years old our stories are so similar this year's the year that I decided I'm going to start to get to know my dad which is such a funny sentence to say out loud but I think my entire life I I wanted to forget really badly I didn't want to attack these feelings that were coming at me as a kid and now that I feel like I'm getting ready to be a father it's kind of bringing everything at me in a way actually have kids I'm gonna ball like it oh but I read these letters and I have the same handwriting as him wow say psyched that's like one of my favorite words I'll be like dude I'm so psyched and he writes that just like me and sadly I did not know my father and as I grow every single day I learned something new about him I find his old friends I read these letters he wrote his friend and they bring them to me and so you've been reading his letters yes my my dad's best friend he knows how much I love learning about my dad now he brings me these letters and he's like your dad loved writing me letters it was his favorite thing to do and he loved his kids and my annoying thing is I haven't found a single bad thing about this guy you know like that's the thing is like he's been a superhero in my life as time has gone on and as I learn more about him it's almost and I think you might relate to this he felt like someone to look up to but not someone who was real like my dad I learned so much about him and how great he was we grew up in Philly there's a he had a apartment in Jersey and so I went to his apartment in my off day here he loved the beach and there wasn't a beach in Jersey so there's this makeshift pool that they have in it's got beach on it and I went there and they kicked me out but I was sitting there like being like this is where my dad walked and it's just so cool to get to know someone and realize that I am that person's son and who this person is even years after he died 16 17 years ago and somehow I smile like him and I write like him and I talk like him and I say these things like him I don't know my dad but I'm learning about him and I think that's the coolest thing about loss I was driving the other day and I was thinking about this and I had imagined if he was in the back seat of my car right now what did you say I just started bawling thinking about it I don't know what I would say would it be you the 26 year old talking to him or would it be the nine year old I think it'd be the nine year old I think so too it would be the 10 year old because I would I would crawl my dad's lap yeah this is sad it's really sad but it's it's healthy I think that these are the questions and also the conversations that people don't have and I think that oftentimes no one's willing to have you know yeah that feeling of being in my dad's lap which I vaguely recall but he wrote about it so I remember it in that way when I think back that's what I They missed the most and have sort of been searching for, I think. My dad was such on a pedestal for me. He was this extraordinary, like, racontorious, born, born, a town in Mississippi, educated himself and was just funny and a great storyteller. He would have definitely, like, been the king of all podcasts. I feel like our dads are best friends. But what I love about reading these letters is that I also now see him. As, as weak in places and I see him as insecure and, you know, I viewed him as this incredible success. He wrote a book. He was a writer. Not many people read the book and it crushed him. I see his insecurities and his sense of failures and loss and disappointments and I, I like that. They're daring. Yeah. I like that person. It makes him more real. It makes me feel less like I got a strive to be the best little boy in the world and, yeah. I also see what an incredible parent he was because my mom drank, not to the extent that your mom did, but enough so that I did not bring friends home because I didn't know what the situation was going to be. Yeah. Dinners were very, very awful a lot of times and a lot of silences. She just was pained and she just became slightly a different person. It's almost like you had more than two people at once. Yeah. Totally. But just how good a parent he is and was comes in in these letters and I'm so glad I had that because it was life saving. It is pretty nuts to think that, "Hey, our stories are so similar," but be I think that it's such a unique situation that you and I are both in because oftentimes when people lose someone there of age that they're cognitive enough to understand it, I think when I lost my dad that I was trying to figure it all out, I still haven't brought myself to watch all of the childhood videos. Really? I heard about these. Your dad made videos talking to you in the future. My dad knew he was dying. He had beaten kidney cancer once and he beat the second time and then it got into his lungs. And once it's lungs, it's terminal and he would film these videos because every time he got it someone was like, "It's, you're not going to survive it," and he survived it. So he got this sense of invincibility that he could beat this. So he started filming these videos, talking with us, showing us what kind of person he was and he loved pranking my mom. He loved surprising us with like going to Lego land in the morning so it was right next to our house or he'd wake me up at 4am because he had work at 7 and he'd take me to the skate park and surprise me with donuts and we'd go to the donut shop together. That donut shop is down the street from my house. I still go to this dough. Same people who are working and everything. There's a picture of my dad up and it makes me happy every time I walk in there. What's special about it all is that once he got terminal, he's talking to me and there's this little kid and he's like, "Alex, don't give up and you're doing amazing. I'm no longer in the frame." And you start to realize that he's not talking to 8 year old Alex. He's talking to Alex who's watching it on the screen and he ends it with Alex, I love you and I miss you and it's so horrible because you watch these videos and you watch this kid who has no idea his dad's dying. I mean, how should he? My dad hit it and you watch this kid. He saw a camera come out and he just just flips. He's trying to impress his dad but my dad's like looking at me going, "Alex, I love you and I'm not giving him any attention. I'm looking somewhere else and you don't know how badly I want to reach there. Take the camera and shake this kid and say, "Tell him you love him," which sucks and I know he knew it but I can't imagine how scary he was to leave and know that my mom was an alcoholic and before he passed away, he asked his best friend to watch over us because he found alcohol in her the seat and just to know that there was a sense of safety for your kids that you couldn't provide and you were dying and it was just so scary and I just wish I could have said that. So it's beautiful. It's also terrifying. It's like, I get to watch his videos but I also can't help but to just be mad at myself. You know? It's not my fault. I was a kid. Yeah. But it's still what have been nice that my dad could have died knowing that his kids loved him. Which he did. But you know. Yeah. He's right if I should. Please. Okay. Okay. We've got our new. Alex's family witness. I haven't seen this. I haven't seen this. All right, Alex. How old are you today? How old are you? Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Four. Five. Okay. Let's see you do it, bud. Oh, cool move. I like that. Look at me. Nice job. Come to Alex. A little wild man. All right. Whoa, hey, you okay? Turn around. You all right? Yeah. You are tough. Okay. Goodbye. All right. Bye guys. Say happy birthday, Alex. Happy birthday, Alex. Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Who? Happy birthday me. Yeah. All right. Say thumbs up. Okay. Bye. It's so cool because like I've never seen that. My team has seen all the videos and so when we played the show, my live show, I have a bunch of childhood videos of me and my dad's voice in this entire album and when I played the show for the first time, I had never seen the clips and I just bolded my eyes out. It's so funny because everyone's like, oh, there's not a perfect God in how to be a parent. I think that there is and I think it's the videos that my dad made. And so when my wife gets pregnant, I'm going to sit down and watch all seven years worth a footage that he had filmed. And I think that that's the perfect, how to guide on how to be the perfect father because I think that my dad was on the new album. You have a number of audio recordings from your dad that you put together and it's an introlude on the album and it's called, are you having fun, Alex? Yeah. I forgot what his voice sounded like and I thought these recordings were gone because my mom, when she passed away, my family walked into her house and it was just another, like, things were everywhere and we thought we lost the footage and they ended up finding it. I was on tour and my producer surprised me with the interlude, which is my dad's voice for the first time. Is it ready if I play that? Please. Hey Alex, go out, man. All right, whoa, hey, you're okay. You all right? You're okay. You all right? All right, nice job. What are you up to, Alex? Are you making music? It's pretty incredible. It's pretty everything. It's hard not to think that he's in the crowd when you hear that. Yeah. Are you making music, Alex? How did it sound to you? Familiar? It was just like he was talking to me. Maybe you can relate to this. I think that I'd be on stage and like I said, I'm looking for him but I also like have him in my ear of what I thought it was and even though I forgot what he sounded like it was almost like I'd always wish that he had said those words. My mom growing up, the alcohol changed her and it was abusive and it was an environment that promoted any of this and my dad wanted me to be a musician and when I finally did it and I had a Grammy nomination, everything I just wanted to call him and say like, hey, I did it, you know? And so this tour was my first arena tour in this moment that I really was like, damn, he would have loved this and this was the conversation I wish I had. I just felt like it was something I needed to hear. F*** this is sad. Isn't too much. No, this is awesome. What I like about this so much is these are things I think people should talk about. These conversations you learn about yourself, I don't talk about these things. Like I'll be on stage and I'll talk about my story in hopes it helps other people but I don't get in detail this much and I think that after this conversation there's a lot of things that I learn about my grief that I didn't before, whether it's therapy, whether it's a loved one, whether it's Anderson Cooper on his podcast, you need to talk about these things. I think it's special. Yeah. The loneliness of loss and grief for me has been crushing for a long time. I had no video of my dad and then just last year I got an email from a lady in public television in Jackson, Mississippi and my dad had done a public television interview and it found it and they digitized it and she sent it to me so I want to show it to you. Clean my dad. I'm at home anywhere I am. I really am because whether I'm in a big city or in the country I am the same. same person, and in New York City, for instance, my kids and I go into the park, and Central Park in New York is a marvelous place. We have a spring that belongs to us. It belongs to us because only we know about it. We go there, and we clean leaves out of the mouth of the spring. And when the water gurgles gratefully out and goes anything, we have affected this. So we have had something to do with the soil and with growing things. And that exists in the city as it does in the country. What's so crazy about that is I had no memory of that thing that he was talking about about going to Central Park and clearing this stream. And as soon as I saw it, I remembered it. And a couple of months before I got this video, I have a place in Connecticut, and I've been out in the forest with my kids and we've found a stream. And every weekend, we've been going back to the stream and clearing. For reasons I'm not entirely clear, we've been going back to the stream and clearing leaves out. And I remember watching the water flowing out into the larger lake that it was attached to and thinking, oh, that's so cool. Like seeing the water gurgling gratefully onward, I think is my dad said. The cycles of history that repeat in families through generations, I think, is so fascinating. Well, it's interesting. As you know, with that accent, you have the same timbre, which is like in your voice, the way you talk. You have obviously inflections and things like that, but you and your dad have the similar tone and timbre that really, like when I hear that, I can hear your voice just in a different way. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's pretty nuts. What is the tone? So like you talk from the same place in your voice as he does. It's interesting as a singer. You notice those things because obviously when you start to add those things, I do the same thing with my dad. Like the way that I talk right here is exactly how he spoke. And it's just interesting. We're like, you probably have no idea how that happened. Yeah. That's nice. It's so interesting. The song Wild Child, you wrote this from your dad's point of view. My dad's favorite artist was John Mayer. Favorite artist. I get in the car and we start playing room for squares. The entire album and when you passed away, I got back in his car and that album was playing. And forever, I just had thought of John Mayer as this connection to my dad when I wrote Wild Child. It left a minute and a half guitar solo because it had to be John and it could only be John. And I had never spoken to him a day in my life and I'm DMed him and I said, John, you're holding up my album. And I'm never going to put this out unless you do this. And I need you to do this guitar solo that I put this spot specifically for you. And he responded and he said, I'd love to do it. And his image, dude, he's the best. I put my dad's voice on the song so I could give him credit and if you look at the credits of my record, it says my dad's name and John Mayer is right underneath it. And this song that is in my dad's perspective, it's my dad. It's his voice and it's his favorite musician. That song will live forever. That song will outlive me. That song will outlive generations of me and the fact that that's kind of a beautiful way of controlling something that you can't control is so cool. People die twice. They die when they die and they die when you stop telling their story. And so every single time I write a song, every single lyric that I write, every single song that I sing, every single video that I see, I think of my dad, I can't control the fact that he died, but I can control how his legacy is looked at after that. The coolest thing to me is like, he's a part of my businesses. My LLC is my dad's name. James Ward Hughes, and so whenever someone asks me who James is, I love to tell them the story. Wait, is that a tattoo? Yes, my dad's name. What was your dad's name? His name is Waya, which is my son's name. I love that. Well, more with Alex in a moment. I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life Podcast. We're going to talk about rethinking how we die, how we think about death in the first place, greatly informs how we live. Our guest is Dr. B.J. Miller, he's a hospice and palliative care physician. We are aging as a people. This is a worldwide phenomenon that we are aging in there for getting closer to the end of life on some level as a group. It's not at all surprising that you'll see a revving up of interest, services, and also sort of anxiety that pushes us away from the subject and makes us cling to life. Kiss into Chasing Life, streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts. My wife has been a huge part of my grieving in a sense of she's kind of, man, you looked, I mean, brother, I were in a car and she was like, yeah, that's no problem. No, seriously, I'm not kidding. I don't understand the person who's like, oh, I have to, I have to go do this with my wife. It is, I get to do this with my wife. My wife is the best cook I've ever met, the best person I've ever met. In her free time, she saves horses. She's quite literally a real-life Disney princess. My wife is the coolest mother f***er I will ever meet my entire life and I will stand on that tentose f***ing down that that person is like my person. She knows how much my dad means to me. And so for my birthday, she surprised me. My dad, when my mom got pregnant, had to sell his dream car, which was a Mitsubishi 3,000 GT from 1994. And my wife found the car and surprised me with it. Not the actual car. The actual car. Wow. There's not a better person in my life and I will say this to the day that I died. My wife is the reason why I'm able to grieve. She's the reason why I don't feel alone anymore. She loves it when I talk about my parents. She slept in a car with me when I was 18 years old. She didn't have to. She moved from Hawaii. She had a family back home that she could have been with and she chose to sleep in a car with me. Not knowing where the next place was. Not knowing you had been kicked out of your house. Yeah. You had loved your house and your mom was abusive and you were in a car. My mom, the minute I turned 18, came into my room and she goes, "It's time to leave." And she just starts wailing on me. Just like full. Just starts punching me and everything in my brother who just came home from military to Marine. He didn't know one believed me that my mom was abusing me. And that grew a strain with my family members. He heard the noise he got up and he came into my room and he saw my mom, and I refused to hit her. So I always was just like, "This, my mom's just wailing on me and he puts her in a truck holding. He goes, "You're not going to do that anymore." And I remember, I just ran away. My mom had said, "Never come back." I don't think she realized I actually wasn't going to. And she sent the police after me and told them that I had abused, I hit her and all these things. It was this thing of me hiding from the police and hiding from my mother and eventually I got a salvaged Volvo and it was like this $300 car that I was able to buy off of a friend and that's what my wife and I slept in. It's the coolest girl in the world. There's a lovely waiting video and I just took an excerpt from your vows. I just want to show that. When I was young, I learned quickly that the things you love can be gone in an instant. And ever since then, I made myself a promise to never let anyone get close to me. But then I met you. When you found out I was sleeping in my car, most people would have ran away. And you jumped in the passenger seat. She jumped in the passenger seat. I don't care what, I will never write a single thing better than that. Oh my God. But that is also something you did. You told yourself you were on your own. I think that you lose enough people that you start to just think that it's inevitable, you know? It's so cynical. After losing my dad and going through that with my mom, I genuinely was just thinking that like there's certain cards dealt for certain people. You know? And I genuinely believed that. I thought that my life was supposed to be like that. And I think my wife changed my perspective on what life was supposed to be. Everything that has happened to me in the last few years with this career, with my wife, with my friends, I have everything I could have ever wanted and more except for my parents. And I often think that there's some trade that I made or that this isn't meant to be or that this is all going to disappear one day instead of just thinking that this is my life now. And I think it's this horrible mindset that I have to get over, but it's something I've kind of been conditioned with in my life. Things like this don't happen to me. And every single day I have a sold out show and I go to people show up thinking just one day they won't. Just thinking that none of this is supposed to be mine. And it's just weird thing where I feel like I'm living someone else's life. I understand that 100%. I don't get it. I completely am of the mind for everything we'll be taken away and nothing is safe. That has been my world view my entire life. But it's awful. It's horrible, but I used to think it was just me and it's nice to know, I mean, it's shitty as it is. I think I'm saying, I guess anybody, I mean, I think with early loss, but there's early loss and there's your life falling apart. And I think that it's hard to separate the two. I think that losing my dad felt like I lost something and I think everything that came after that, especially grieving it felt like my life fell apart. If you grow up not being able to rely on the adults around you, either because they've died, even in or they're abusive and drinking and, you know, not being a parent. Yeah, not being a parent. In my mom's case, I mean, my mom was an amazing person and like not, not at all abusive and she was a wounded child. She had a terrible upbringing and knew nothing about being a parent and would desperately want it to. And I was sympathetic to my mom. I was very. much the parent and like, want it to do everything that good to help her. Question for you? Yeah. Growing up and practically raising yourself, how has been fatherhood for you in that retrospect? Is it healing in the sense that you're able to provide your children with a life that you thought you could have never had? I mean, it's healing in every regard. There are moments where I'm like, I'm amazed at how unedited and carefree they are. And I'm so grateful for that. I see my brother's face in my four-year-old because he looks like my mom as well and I know how much my dad would just love that I have these two little boys and my dad really wanted boys and I really wanted boys and it is the most healing, incredible experience. I just want to play a little bit of eternity because I just think it's so beautiful. It's my favorite song I've ever written. When I need since I had you here with me, since I had to learn to be someone you don't know. To be with you in paradise, what I would sacrifice, why'd you have to chase the life somewhere where I can go as a fuck this world alone? It feels like an eternity since I had you here with me, since I had to learn to be someone you don't know. It's really sad. Yeah. I will say that that is probably my favorite song I've ever written. My favorite song to sing. Oftentimes when I play the show, that's the one where I kind of just tell everyone that every night I sing as loud as I can, hoping my parents can hear me, and tonight all I ask is that you sing this song as loud as you can, hoping whoever you've lost can hear you. It almost unifies the room. I felt so alone yet I was surrounded by so many people and I think when you're at a show with 15,000 people around you, it's so easy to kind of be like, "Well, I don't know if I'm safe here." We do the segment in the show and I would love to have you one day where I literally just ask everyone if you've ever lost someone to raise your hand and the lights come on and you see everyone in that room raise their hand. I think it's so powerful for everyone else to see something that I think that took us a very long time to understand is that you are not alone in those feelings. I thought for a very long time that it was just me and then later realized how selfish it was of me to think that I was the only one capable of going through that. There's something so wrong with how everyone views loss and I think it's because socially we've just been taught that it's something you don't talk about. It's my private business. Why do you need to know who I've lost? And I think that that's a recipe for someone to go down the wrong hill. I have three other siblings and I've watched grief hit them all different ways. Grief is beautiful but it can be wielded so dangerously. And I think that whether you talk to a professional, you talk to a friend, you talk to someone you love, it's important that you just talk. And we're in a society right now where I feel like it's not promoted to talk regardless of who you are and what your gender is. And you almost just don't want to talk at all in the fears that you're not safe to. Talking is the only thing I think that really helps with it. This is helpful. This last year has been the most emotional part of it somehow at 26, yet I lost some 16 years ago. I can't imagine what you're going through as well. This conversation. I haven't talked about it. But even this conversation, seeing those videos like this is just me. I feel like it's just so helpful. I have a video of you on stage talking to the crowd about this and I was so struck because it's just not talked about. So let's play you on stage talking. I lost my dad. Grief is unexplainable. How do you tell a nine-year-old that the most important piece of them is gone? I just knew my life was different. I did it. I thought it would kill them. I thought it would be easy. The people told me what it never did. Well, this is one of those things that no matter when it happens, who you are and how many times it happens, it sticks with you. To this day, after losing my dad and my mom, someone dies. I can stand here and be strong, but I feel so alone. It's something that's so strange, because it's wrapped by so many people, but that feeling, that feeling's gone, one day knowing that person, one day being able to hang out with that person, I can't tell you how many times I forget the way my dad smells. Forget the way he looks, forget the way it's like the hug a matter a long day. I can't help, what's cool about this room is I explain it to myself, I explain to a lot of other people too, and I'd love to take my own advice, but I won't ever want to look at being in raise your hand if you've ever lost someone. I'll look around, this is a room where you're not alone. It's beautiful. I think I give advice a lot, I give a lot of advice about loss and I don't take it, and I think that it's hard, man, it's really hard. I think that it comes in waves and I don't know, I wish I could explain it better. I play 190 shows a year, and every single one of those shows I talk about that, and none of it's ever planned. I just start speaking, sometimes it's horrible, sometimes it's great, and it's the one time I think that someone looks at someone on that stage and views them as human. When I was growing up, I didn't have someone like that, I wanted someone like that so badly to tell me that this is normal, what I'm feeling, and to be able to do that for 15, 20,000 people every single night and be able to tell them that you aren't crazy, you aren't different. This is something everyone will go through eventually, and to see a room full of people raising their hands and know the person you're sitting next to who maybe you haven't even spoke to, that you share this bond with them is an extraordinary thing. What people don't realize is I can see everyone. I think growing up, you go to concerts and you think that that artist can't see you for some reason. When I play these shows, I can see everyone, and so when everyone raises their hands, that's one thing. I see a nine-year-old kid raises hand, I just start bawling, and I think that that's one of the most important parts of my show. The biggest thing for me is healing is being able to see everyone kind of understand and go through something. In the beginning of the show, I asked all the guys who were dragged here by their significant other raise their hands, and they raised their hands and they've got a beer and whatever. I think it's fun because at the end of the show, you start to see that those guys who were obviously just like, "I wish this was Zach Bryan," all of a sudden, be crying at this moment or learn something about themselves. That's the whole point. If I can get out of 15,000 people, at least three of those guys, be like, "You know what? There's something I haven't explored here. I think that it's a win." We'll be right back with Alex Warren. There's another beautiful video of you on stage singing "Save You A Seed," and I cry every time. I cry and where the audience picks it up for you. I just want to play that. Please. It made me cry when I saw it. [Music] I cry a lot on stage. I realize that. That one's hard. That song specifically, too. I'll save you a seat next to me. You're always at the table. I hope you're proud of what you see watching what the angels. You're written in my soul. It's your blood that I believe. Wherever you are, wherever I'll be, I'll save you a seat. I think it's important. I saved them a seat of my wedding. They were at the front row and it was just two empty seats. It's important to keep them apart of your life. When I hold my baby for the first time, I'll save them a seat there. Whether it's figuratively or physically, I think that that's so important. My kids are going to know who their grandparents are, because I'm going to talk to them about them. Something I was so scared of is something so beautiful now where I get to keep them alive. My kids will tell their kids about their great grandparents and play them the songs. I don't know. I don't think that this is something I can do that will keep their legacy alive, make music. These songs will live forever. Past me. You wrote about it, having child. You said, "This isn't I miss you more." Well, she has your eyes. Well, she makes me realize all the things that you've had once. Well, I'd be ready when the day comes, when the world fits in my arms. When I have a kid, they're going to have things about my dad, inevitably. My brother is a spitting image of my dad, which is the trippiest thing ever. You sound like him. It's just like this thing where it's inevitable and I don't know what to make of it. I'm so excited to be a dad. I think that I'm going to be the best dad and I know for a fact my wife's going to be the best mom. You talked about your first album as it feels like a man who's broken and this is one as a man who's trying to heal. Do you feel like you are trying to heal actively? I feel like it wasn't possible for me to grieve or to get to know my dad in a sense, because I just wasn't willing to. And I think that as I mature and I'm married and I'm ready getting raised, start family, I think that there's a level of me that wanting to get to know my dad is so important. And now that I've done that, I've kind of opened Pandora's box in the sense of just now everything's happening. I've even had a different perspective of my mom. I think that it's so easy to look at someone like my mom and be like, okay, well, that person inherently was bad. And I don't think my mom was bad at all. I think that my mom was so in love with my dad that when he died, she also did. My mom died the day my dad did. You know, and I think that whoever she was after that was just broken, you know, and she knew she was dying. She knew she was killing herself. The perspective I have on my mom is that she loved my dad so much that she wasn't willing to live in a world without him, whether that was leaving your kids. And I think that there's a level of, I don't know what I would do if my wife died. I can't ever judge someone for that. I was a can't judge a woman who had to raise four kids by herself in the middle of a recession after losing the person she loves. As a son who went through that, I have to be like, you're not a good parent, but there's a level of grief that I can understand. As we're sitting here talking about our grief, how am I supposed to judge someone else's? I think that is someone who's trying to heal, not someone who's broken. Do you still feel all of anger? No. I haven't felt anger towards my mom for a very long time. I remember before she died, I just was driving and I randomly just thought of my worst fear was dying alone. I'm at a stoplight and I remember this so vividly. I go, my worst fear is dying alone and I want to text my mom thinking that she could be. I don't know why I thought about my mom. I don't know what happened. I said, hey, thinking about you and I sent her a picture of me in Rome and I was like, I think that you would love this and I never got a response. I'm turns out that my mom was dying alone and I think that there was this feeling of anger and this feeling of loss and I was angry at myself and I was angry at her and I was angry at everyone and ever since then I just have mourned. I've mourned the loss of my mom and I've also tried to learn what that looks like compared to my dad. My mom had a disease and so did my dad and why am I so quick to be like, I love my dad and I miss my dad but so quick to judge my mom and I think that there's something that I need to work out there that I don't have it figured out yet. I think that my mom was an amazing person but she was a different person when she drank and she just drank all the time. Did she drink before your dad's death? She drank when he was diagnosed terminal. My mom and dad would post on these forums. My mom specifically was in like these grief groups where she'd post and I read them and my dad was so in denial. My dad did not believe he was dying all the way to the end. He would not. No except that. No. He like flew to France trying to get experimental treatment. There's videos of him on the news where he's trying to raise awareness towards his cancer trying to battle this and he was so in denial and my mom just wanted help and I think that that made my mom feel so alone. As my dad was just so like I'm going to beat this and I think my mom wanted to try and figure out what to do and I was just two people at a standstill who couldn't figure it out. Who couldn't figure out what to do when you're dying and and she started drinking and started drinking and driving. She started taking her kids to school drunk. She started staying up 12 6 7 a.m. drinking and going to bed in the middle of the day and missing pickup and we had a walk home and yeah you had a grow up alone. You had to raise yourself. I hope you see somewhere that in your relationship with your parents is stronger than it's ever been. You feel that they are watching. I talk to them every day. I wake up, I go to bed before I eat, before I go on stage, before I do anything before I fly, before I drive, before I surf, I talk to them every day. Whenever I'm back in town, my mom and dad are buried at the same place and I'll go and grab their favorite food and I'll go sit down before Grammys, before any award show I'll sit down and I'll tell them as if they've missed everything. You actually feel like talk to them? Yeah. I'm the crazy guy at the grave sitting there for an hour just telling them what they've missed and my wife. Again, the best person in the world, I started bawling because there wasn't flowers there and I didn't have time to go and without telling me she hired a service that would clean the grave and bring flowers every week. It just didn't tell me. So like every time I go there's flowers and it's clean and I used to clean it myself and I just bawled one day and she just ran and we did that. Yeah, now I go and I lunch and I talk to them and I give them updates on my life and Grant and Ashley and Lauren and it's cool. It's like, I have parents again. It feels like that. I had this religious thing that I was just battling my head with if God was real, why would He take all these things away from me? I was like 12. And now it's just something where I think that my relationship with my parents and with God and everything has just been so strong because I just talk. The question of why terrible things happened? Is that something you wrestle with or is that some of you found peace with? I always wrestle with it. I mean, look at the world right now. Why do terrible things happen? I never get an answer on that and I think that for me, everything bad that's ever happened in my life has led me to where I am today. I would say the best thing that's ever happened to me is my wife and I would have never met her if my parents didn't die. And I think that that is so heartbreaking that I had to lose the two most important people in my life to find what I would argue is my life. And it's a thing I battle with every day of, you know, like everything bad has ever happened to me has led me to something amazing. You said on Father's Day, you said, Dad, you told me everything I know today except how to live without you. You may be gone from this world, but you're still everywhere in mind. Yeah, I think, um, sorry. How did you learn how to live without him? I haven't, like I said, I talked to him every day. Everything I do is with him. Every show that I play, I'm thinking about him, every lyric that I sing and this whole entire album is about him. I don't know how to lose him. Nor do I think I should. I talked to him and I can imagine him talking back and I have these full conversations in my head. One minute I have this awesome conversation and then I think I wish I could see you and I start bawling my eyes out because he's gone and it's just this weird whiplash of just, you're here and you're not, I'm talking to you and I'm not. I just want, I just want advice. I just want someone to talk to. I just want my dad. I can't imagine like if, when I have a kid, dad, how did you do this? How can I, how can I be like you? How can I, you, you were this perfect person in my head and why am I not? When my dad died, I asked everyone about him and everyone says that he was the nicest guy in the world and he couldn't make a friend anywhere and he always had the greatest perspective on things and so every day I wake up and I go, how could I be more like my dad? And so my perspective on things, how I treat people, what I do, how I do things, everything I do is to be like my dad. So I don't know how I could lose someone of everything I do is because of them. I mean it when I say, all I do is think of my dad. What would my dad do? Is there something you've learned in your grief that would be helpful for others? The one thing I'll leave everyone with is I think that you should talk. Talk to yourself. Just set up a camera and just speak. Imagine you're speaking to someone, just say how you feel. I think that so many people, when you lose someone, whether it's because of bad reasons or good reasons, you kind of just move on with your life because that's what you're taught to do. And whether it's professional, a friend, a family member, a random person on a subway or you just randomly go, well, my dad has that. I think that regardless of what it is, just talk. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for having me. If you have thoughts you'd like to share about the conversation with Alex, you can leave us a comment on our grief community page. Sinan.com/all there is. You can also leave comments on our voicemail box or if there's something you've learned in grief that would be helpful for others, I'd love to hear from you there as well. Leave us a voicemail at 404-827-1805. On Thursday, November 5th, we're not gonna have an episode of our streaming show All There Is Live, but we will have another episode of the podcast. We'll be sharing my conversation with rapper and producer Lil John. His 27-year-old son Nathan died in accidental drowning in February. - When I finally got the news that he was found, it felt like a part of me had been ripped out of my body. Part of me was gone. Every now and then knocks me back. I just cry, you know, just to know that you can't have the conversation anymore, that you can't hug 'em, you can't kiss 'em. That's where it hurts the most. I know he's gone, but I just can't accept the heat. - Gone. - That podcast will be released Thursday, November 5th. Thanks so much for listening. Wherever you are in the world and in your grief, you're not alone. - Get ready for election night. CNN is available to stream live now with an all-access subscription, plus get exclusive content and interactive Q&As with CNN's journalists. Subscribe now, visit CNN.com/allaccess.