Benji Madden and M. Shadows (Rerun)

- Endless summer escapes start here. Travel the worlds of Netflix IRL. Inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Brave the upside down. Face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games. Shop exclusive merch. And enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com/house. - But speaking of the Rev, that, I mean, the memories, I still have random memories. And I feel like that was one of the things that I think brought our bands even closer. I think at a young age, having never, - Never having to suffer a loss like that. - Never having a loss like that. And I think going, you know, watching you guys go through that was, for me, I think it was like a bond, a bond. It's just something that just like really bonds you. And I'll, I was telling my wife a story like maybe like a month ago, just random thing popped into my head and I still laugh about it. - We agree on a lot from our last conversation two years ago or it had to be two years ago. - Yeah. - When did the record come out last? - Two years ago. - Two years ago, okay. So our last conversation, our first conversation, how long ago was our first conversation? 22, 23, 24 years ago? - That's just sad. - I can't even think about it. - 24 years. - Yeah, so. - That's older than some people. We've been friends on this planet. - Yeah, it's, it's, it's, and we feel like the same guys and it's just. - Yeah. - It's like you close your eyes and you wake up and 24 years later. - But that's also one of the things I appreciate about you especially, all the guys. But I just feel like you're like, we've, I mean, obviously all of us have grown, married, kids, all of it. But every, it doesn't matter if we haven't talked in nine months, two years, whatever, it's the same. - Yeah. - There's room. - Yeah. - I appreciate that in life. But I was thinking about that. First of all, I said it on text today with all three of us. I said, it's a miracle that the three of us could get together. You're busy not only being a dad, having a family, running one of the biggest rock bands in the world, but also building businesses and doing all the things. We're doing the same things. The three of us getting together and actually being able to take the time, not that we don't get together or talk, but to actually film it, take some pictures, and memorialize it for the world. No one thinks to do that most of the time, but for us to be able to do it is special and kind of a miracle that we could all make our schedules work and do it. But then what I was thinking about was, over the course of our relationship, a similarity between all of us and our bands as people, aside from having some values as people, like being standup guys, I'd say everyone in your band, everyone in our band, like all just decent guys, you know? Decent? No, like good people. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, I get it. But the idea that we're stronger together and we pool resources and we try to help each other figure things out is a good idea, but it's very hard to execute on that when you think about bands as different organizations, companies as different organizations, and then people as different organisms. Actually putting that into action takes a lot of goodwill, self-confidence, and understanding of the imperfection of it, like the chaos of it is. When I started this podcast, you came in, no questions asked, you sat down in the chair not knowing what is this thing, does it have legs, will it become, you just did it because you could contribute your, you contributed to it. Like you put a brick in the wall, right? You helped carry, you helped push the thing. And you've always done that for us as a band, but think about if we zoom out how hard it is to get anyone to see what you're doing and then contribute, whatever, right? Whether it's retweeting you or actually coming on and filming, whatever it is, it's a contribution. I always take that so seriously because as entrepreneurs, we know how hard it is to get anyone to go like, oh yeah, like tell me about your thing, let me see if I, but finding ways to contribute to each other's world with no real understanding, it's not a transaction. It's not like there's a payoff. The payoff is is that we all succeed in life and we continue to all rise and we kind of all rise together somehow. I believe that, but also individually, your success is my success. Like when you're more successful, I know the guy who's more successful and I can get on the phone with you and ask you, how did you do that or whatever. But like, I just think when I zoom out and I think about our relationship, aside from friendship and history, just knowing each other, you're on a very short list of people who aren't asking, well, let's, you're not transactional, you're not trying to make a deal and not trying to do that. You just jump in if you can, if you think that's a good, I think I can contribute. And if you can't, you say it. And there's like a real, I just think our relationship is rare. There's certainly like, I find it's easy. And I find that like the list of people in my life that like see me and believe in me, it's a short list of people. - I think also too, I think you have, you're able to have the closest, most longstanding, easy, friendships, think about it, with people that don't need anything from you. - Yeah. - So like, you know what I mean? Like, you know, like if you have friends who you're always having to solve their problems, it's like tough. It's tough to have a close relationship in some ways. - We don't rely, we don't have to rely on. - I also think the thing that I will always say that I always feel like why, you know, us and our bands always have had like this, like sort of like longstanding bond, that doesn't require maintenance, is I think that both of our bands have always operated from like a place of abundance. In the rock world, it's very rare. Like you always kind of have the vibe in the rock world where like, if you're winning, then I'm losing. - Right. - Or if you got that, I didn't. And I just think-- - That's not actually the truth of life. - It's not the truth. It's not the truth of life ever. And that the sort of, that like, I guess you call it the abundant mindset. Like it's that there's really this world, there's, there's so much, there's like, if you win, I win, you know? And I think that like, for whatever sort of like natural instinctual reason, all of us just sort of like saw the world that way, operated that way. So there was never anything where it's like, if you said no to something or I said no to something, it's never ever been feelings hurt because it's like, all of us are just moving and all of us actually, it's that thing of like being able to have friends who don't need anything from you. Everyone knows, you know, all of us have, families, all of us have shit going on and everyone respects that. So it's kind of like when this is nice, when it does line up and we can do stuff. I think that it's, it's a, it's always a pleasure because, because of that mindset and because of that, I think that natural, just like, I think disposition. - Yeah, I also think that, you know, from day one and then everything from, you know, the way you guys see the world and try to solve problems, right, that's what you guys did early on. And it was outside of Good Charlotte. You use that as a place to get somewhere and then you can start solving problems that are, you know, with veeps and all these cool things you guys have done. It doesn't matter if I'm doing one thing and you're doing something else. It's the same mindset. - Yeah. - Of like stirring up the pot a little bit, you know, not being afraid, not being afraid, and also knowing that everything's not going to work and we don't judge each other on successes or failures. It's just that we're, at least we're out there trying to mix it up and make the world better for artists, right? It comes from a genuine spot. - Always. - And you need people that get into a place of power or a place where they can kind of move things because of the weight of whatever their projects are, whether it's Good Charlotte or Avenged Sevenfold, and you can move people into a direction that is healthier, whether it's through streaming, you know, the veep stuff and the video stuff, whether it's through bit flips and blocked. And these are things that we've all dabbled in with each other and talked to each other, but you guys go hard in one way, I go hard in another way. And at some point we just have a lot of respect for each other's, you know, obviously musicality and the music. Yeah, and you're right, it's easy. You want relationships that are easy. And you know, - We've got the fucking time. - When you were talking about it, I think the biggest thing is that you know you don't need to call somebody that's not me, an assistant or a manager and try to get things done. Just call Matt. And I don't need to let anybody in my life know what I'm doing. I'm just going to do what I'm going to do. I'll let you know later. If you need to know about it, right? Like I will probably let management know at some point that I did this and shot something. So they should look for it. - We always say, oh yeah, by the way, Revolver cover coming out. But also this is the thing is the three of us are very similar. We're unmanageable. - Yeah. - You can't manage us. - I know. - But we need teams. - We need teams. - We got to build teams. So we find the teams that can tolerate who don't have ego, who don't need to be the man. That's the, those are the managers that get on my nerves. - Yeah. - The gatekeepers. The gatekeepers that need to be the man. - Right. - Guys who could sit at the table with us and talk things out are the guys we need to work with. - Well, and that's the thing that I think like we've all had the spirit of, because naturally by trying to make things better for artists, that's just weirdly, it sounds really weird, but that's disruptive. - Right. - Oh, totally. - Like it's so, it's weird that that's a disruptive, like that's disruptive. So, and naturally like all of us, like, you know, like maybe, you know, we leaned a little more punk or a little or pop punk. you leaned a little more metal but all of us like we're just like disruptive it all came from punk and we're all warped her together i mean that's that's the our ethos when we went over to ozfest there was the main stage and there was a side stage we played warped for four years before that and we were getting hazed and we had friends everywhere and everyone was cool and everyone was equal and it was a different thing and so we went over to ozfest it was we had the ethos were already firmly in place from you know our forefathers of punk rock right which at the time were poser punks it was yeah the no effects is the bad religions it was well this isn't exploited and this isn't you know the damned or whatever but for us that was what we grew up on and we were learning from those guys and everything was equal like everyone ate the same junk you know and not no offense kevin lyman but you know whatever the catering was and everyone was getting paid very little yeah but it was a but it was a punk rock summer camp right and it was like then you go to something bigger and there's like a hierarchy and that was weird to us so we've always just kept the punk the hardcore punk sort of you know vibe because that's like where we feel more comfortable that's where we grew up you know that was such a fun place to meet yeah for sure you know because we were both kind of outcast first time we ever spoke yeah actually the we were the pop guys and we were and we were the guys that were screaming we wanted to be you know i just looked around and i was like i want to be huge yeah yeah kind of by mama house but you guys were you guys were a different thing on there right it was like there was there was a different type of success when you guys showed up it was like uh you could see just there's jealousy there's animosity and we were like we were already on the outcast we weren't even like taken seriously at that point you got to think kevin lyman's throwing us on as a favorite of lewis posen at hopeless records and we're screaming and it was the first band that had been on that that was just playing metalcore right and it was just like it does not compute this is why people hate it on you and if they still do i don't even know if they do or they don't i'm sure we all have our version of people who are like whatever but what you guys always had was self-confidence yeah you got on stage and you did your thing and you weren't trying to be like anyone else and you actually weren't trying to get anyone to accept you yeah that's the difference when you don't beg everyone to like you it's a longer road but in the end people get to know who you really are and then they accept you or they like you most of the time they like you because originality is hard to find but i find people that are begging everyone to like them short term it's hard to find people that are begging everyone to like them and i find people short term it might pay off long term it's it's a way winners are going to win and losers are going to lose yeah you know like and that just goes back to the that's the quote of the like but but winners are going to win and lose let's wrap it up but yeah no but but but but hear me out because it's not a dig on anybody when you have like a back to that abundant mindset when you have an abundant mindset a winning mindset you're not trying you're not worried about what everyone else is getting you're happy for them you're building your own you're building your own shit you're going to win some way shape or form if you're looking around at what everyone else has got and you're and you're mad at them or you're jealous or you're you're throwing your rocks or you're hating on them you're going to lose i don't want to say what my version of winning or my version of losing is but i didn't i don't want to stay playing clubs forever you know the same you know people they might appreciate that it's great but i think like we have like growth mindsets it's not even about it's not even about like the like whatever like indicator people go by where it's like how much money you're making so whatever it's not even about any of that it's a feeling of like oh we're like all of us right here in our 40s are doing not the same thing we were doing when we're 21 we're doing the version of it now and i just think that like i said for any band out there or any artists out there because you always you know a lot of a lot this whole thing you set up was because we have these conversations off the camera with artists when they come through is winners are going to win losers are going to lose be a winner and you're going to be a winner don't look around at what everyone else has got don't judge what everyone else doing like do your shit and i think that's something that naturally i think both of us sort of again that's why we could be friends and why we could easily so easily different worlds different grew up in different places could so easily support one another but also you know when you you know it that thing like that feeling you know um it's hard to put into words but you know when someone fucks with you and when they don't yeah you know like when you know when someone fucks with you and when they don't yeah you know like when you know when someone fucks with you and when they don't you and when someone doesn't fuck with you yeah like i just know it i feel it it's like a vibration you have always fucked with us before we even before we even were near each other's stages i remember i talked to you on the phone i was on i was getting tattooed by adam barton oh remember in 2000 yeah that's crazy and he was like my friend i matt is a singer of event sevenfold and i was like oh i like event sevenfold it was like your first record or something it was like yeah yeah yeah after your first record yeah adam did the art for it and our first record adam did the art for it and i was and he was like you guys should talk you'd like each other or whatever and he put you on we got on the phone or something yeah because i was hanging out with him all the time he tattooed he did both my arms yeah and um adam's funny he's crazy but hardcore guy was in a band himself uh what was the name of the band he was in like he he was temper i don't know if he was in it all the time anyways you got on the phone with me and you were nice and i just knew it there was no guard up there was no too cool there was no whatever yeah and it was just like i was at a time where we were like trying to make our way we were touring i think we were like touring with mxpx at the time or something and like i was already encountering the reality of life versus what i thought when we were back in southern maryland trying to make it yeah and i thought everyone's everyone's gonna love me everyone's gonna celebrate when i make it and we got a record deal and then we were on tour and we were encountering like it was a it was a cold water in the face for like the first two years of being in the world in band world and so we were on the phone and you were you were you were cool as shit you were nice and i knew i liked you and then we got to meet each other for real and all that but like i knew you fucked with us that's it like i just and i i definitely met people that were nice but i knew they didn't fuck with me yeah it's hard to explain i can't explain it but you just know when you find your people yeah yeah i'm drawn to things that are like unique and stand out right and good charlotte stood out not only for the music and i always go back to the music is really important right it's like you can tell these are good songs this is this means something right and then there's like the whole thing on top of it that just feels looks and just it's different yeah right and even as i'm older i i'm just drawn to things that are original that sit outside the sort of box of what west lang west lang well anyway that jacket's sick yeah it's sick like the west lane stuff is sick so this is like an amiri west lane collab and west i met from you guys i met from west from you yeah yeah um but the thing is is that originality meets originality where it's at and west wouldn't just do someone no oh my god no no so west like west was a hard yeah he's a he's artist but it makes it so much better right so much better you know how many years did you talk to west where you guys every year that i met him like so like seven eight years and by the way and it was always because it's either the grateful dead or nobody right and he did the grateful dead and that was it like right and and even that was short like he did the special whatever y'all are the new grateful dead yeah exactly that's what i'm saying is is it sounds crazy but avenge sevenfold when you think about cultures and cultures that seep out because you could say metal or rock and roll but at the end of the day it's a live music culture yeah i can't even say those words anymore i just don't even know what to describe people what are you when i say metal i feel like i'm cheapening us or and not to cheapen that genre genre is amazing yeah but i just i just think it's we just do something a little different you can't box it no you can't box it so to me it's like the fact that you guys collaborate with west lang says everything about where the band sits in the kind of timeless music culture of music and not putting it in a box yes there's some metal there's rock and roll there's also uh a little bit of country there's a little bit of everything in there because it's just music yeah someone like west um i didn't look at it as like it was going to help us in any way other than i love his art so much that i wanted to introduce our fans to that and i wanted to be represented by like when i when i first saw his stuff i said i would do anything to have one avenge sevenfold shirt with a piece of west lang's art right and now we've got a full album cycle and the guy is the best we love west yeah but i love his art and i love his music and i love his music and i love that he has this he loves it too by the way i think he does yeah he does but i love music i know he loves music his ability to hold a high standard for himself for his whole career is what made it so attractive to me right to like want and that's that's what i like i like when things are outside the box they're unique and they and they play by their own rules i think you guys have done that i think there's a very few handful of bands that do it and you're right there's a bunch of artists that are playing chase the ambulance right what worked before what worked before and i think that's what made it so attractive to me and i think that's what made it so attractive to me and i think that's what made it so attractive to me and i think that's what made it so attractive to me the current trend you're always a year behind yeah um so i don't know i i just i'm just drawn to it and i think that you know as we've gotten older i don't even know like what you were talking about with it's funny because we wanted to be the biggest bands in the world but we went the exact opposite way about it right you would think the how do you become one of the biggest bands in the world oh you do the things that all these other bands did and for some reason i think that's what made it so attractive to me reason our bands did the opposite which is how you kind of get around to that point right which is i don't know what was it's just something inside of you maybe it's like that that punk rock rebellion of like i'm not doing that because everyone else did that i don't know what it was i can't even get inside my old brain and what i used to think but i do know one thing avenged sevenfold always did is we did the unexpected and we were completely unapologetic about it and i'm so grateful now being 43 years old that every one of our records are like this little time capsule of doing something that was not popular at the time but they all came around at some point and were able to be respected because they they're just unique to that time period and i think as you get older you just have to keep pushing even harder because it's so easy to kind of fall back on eight records and go oh well like ryan downey told us this you guys have that every every opportunity to be boring and you've rejected it and i think you know rewriting something or you Set it up for you and how you want it to be tour the way you want to tour tour when you want to tour you make the songs you want to make record them the way you want to do it be where you want to be be where you want to be that way whenever you're there you you really not only do you enjoy it but everyone else there can feel it if you want to be there or not yes and there's a vibration that happens when someone doesn't want to be there right when someone doesn't fuck with you yes there's that vibration as a singer when you're having a bad night and all i do i want to do is get the hell out of there this is not working yeah then there's the nights where it's on fire yeah and i know that there's no way out of this and i know that there's no way out of this and i know that there's no way out of this and i know that there's no way i can fake the bad nights and be a good night yeah a better pro probably could i'm like you can read it on my face i am so bummed that this isn't working out right and then when the good nights are good it's like i am the king of the world this is amazing and everyone you can just feel it coming from everyone and i think you know with records you with everything in life you have to be the same way i mean we have one shot at this thing right and just you got to try to be happy and be creative and i think through the years i think it's interesting too it's like where we've come to at this point and why would you know the editor of revolver call us and ask us if we all want to do a cover it's interesting because if you looked back i don't know 25 years ago it would never happen but we've all three of us sort of with the same mentality and just not really giving a fuck about anything other than just forward progress in life period i think that even goes through to like our like just journey as like men and wanting to be like good dads and wanting to be you know uh that mentality is the same in our music we've met i think at a very interesting like point now like with you know and now when you think about music like there really isn't the genres are not as it's it's all fine they're not defined you know and i think that like that's something that i just love to see love to see happening and i think that you know sitting down today it really sort of like captures that like if you look back 25 years to now i like to think that all of us are part of helping evolve that 100 and all and also helping for the bands that are getting started right now well also i was just thinking about it i i don't know why in my head i had a picture of of a table of guys who could sit here and all contribute to this conversation and a few guys came to mind and i was wondering if you guys had any other people that come to mind but in my mind there's guys that come to mind uh sam from architects could sit at this table and have these conversations there's a lot i but i like giving credit out there to other guys and bands that i see being themselves and doing interesting shit on their own terms at their own pace i think poppy sits at this table yep easily i think we're very lucky to be surrounded by people who are a lot like us like that they see the like you have to make your own way the sooner you make peace with that in the future the sooner you make peace with that in the future the sooner you make peace with that in these creative endeavors we do bands businesses right like with bit flips you didn't ask anyone's permission you didn't go around and try to get someone to believe in you first you just started fucking doing it and then you were finding people that understood it and bringing them on and like building this team it's very hard it's chaotic and it's it's also there's so many waves uh we were talking about we were texting this the uh yesterday or the day before there's so many waves of the way that things change and i want to get to bit flips what i'm interested to hear if you think like who are the other personalities and and figures that you think have the same conversations or or kind of live people that just you admire respect you say wes lang you say people like doesn't have to be musicians but i think out there there's a lot of musicians i think like alone's one of those people post yeah yeah so i don't know any of the people you i know who they all are i don't know them personally there's certain people we just respect immensely in the industry and i don't know who they are right that are creatives this guy lance drake that did um our vr concert very smart creative guy west has obviously comes top of mind as far as musicians people i really respect what they're doing i don't know julian casablanca's but i love the voids so the voids to me is i think they're the greatest rock band in the world whatever they are like it's just so creative and interesting um it really gets my mind going um i think bring me the horizons done a good job of being you know forefront of whatever's happening now and that sort of thing pushing the envelope um so i'm sure there's just a ton of people that are just in their own little pockets doing their own thing i like talking to anybody that's just kind of can see the the kind of the whole thing happening from a higher perspective right and i always think about looking down on the music industry what we were just talking about in the back room always being behind right and they've and they've really flubbed a lot of things that were very easy to see coming um in retrospect and one of them one of the things we were talking we were kind of correlating it to the idea of blockchain and the financial systems and right now you're starting to see rumblings of the dollar and you're starting to see oh i can move money quicker with stable coins like the blockchain is useful it's not a total scam it's all these things that 10 years ago you could have said and you're getting laughed out of the room right even now there's people that just don't believe it till it happens technology has done that with the music industry with streaming it was not a problem until you were buying stacks of cds this big and ripping every single thing off of limewire and napster and all of a sudden they said oh my god this is a problem we didn't get ahead of this and then they had to make you know amends with a guy that just went ahead and did it anyways which was daniel elkin spotify right and all of a sudden you're playing by his rules he's the billionaire and the music industry is trying to just be on board get some equity and say please look like put us on some playlists if you're an artist that can kind of see the you know from 500 miles above you're gonna have to ask yourself okay what can a label do now what can the industry do what can they give me and what is what is it worth do you have mtv do you have radio do you have drivers should i be paying a record label 75 cents to my dollar for everything you do can you do anything for me what genre am i in have you been able to do anything in this genre or is it a genre that is more word of mouth or is it a tiktok genre that they take it and they put gasoline on it you have to you have to really think about these things then have the balls to not go to your family dinner and go i signed to a big record label and so your grandfather your parents are impressed and go no i'm staying independent because x y and z right i understand it but there's a there's the big dick play where you want to go you think you made it because you signed it validation but you have to ask yourself do these people even know what the fuck they're talking about they don't um i always tell this story i've told a million times dave farrell playing him life is but a dream those guys in a restaurant and he's like would you care we were in a restaurant there's probably 100 people in there he's like how many people in this restaurant would you care about their opinion of your record and i'm looking at these people right and you you're looking like zero zero like he's like and this you know you kind of extend that across the world and that's art you put it out and there will be people that connect but you can't go on their terms they have to come to you on your terms and so i think i think the biggest thing with musicians is teaching them that yes you may not make it and maybe you will make it but you'd rather fail on your own terms then fail in a system where they shove your record into a back room and it never comes out or they do some stupid edit or they make some they tell you to make some stupid music video and you don't back it and all of a sudden you're in a situation where you fail because of these people's ideas that have nothing invested in you other than can we call our our shareholders at the end of you know the quarter and do we make money or not but also winning if you win that way too yes right you feel like a friend broad it doesn't mean that there aren't people that will contribute good ideas that you'll back that's different if you go and put on a birthday clown costume and you go and have a hit song and then you got to wear that birthday clown no offense to the birthday clowns no offense to the birthday clown by the way the guy with the birthday clown uh you know idea doesn't have to wear the birthday he doesn't have to wear it or the the clown outfit yeah and all of our dumb costumes we always came up with ourselves that's why they were so fucking cheap here there you go like i just want to live video we threw that together the night before remember yeah that was fucking crazy by the way crazy outfits are in the spirit of rock and roll i mean i remember we were just trying to outdo ourselves on stage yeah like i bet you won't wear that i bet you won't wear and that's fun right different that's not a label telling you like hey guys here's the story on your chest yeah yeah it's the motivation behind it you know i think um it's just the thing that people connect to is as if you're being authentic or not right if we looked stupid 20 years ago it was on our turn that's right that was my decision that's right yeah it's funny you know but you know sparrow yesterday we were riding in the car and he goes out of nowhere he said um he said you know that if you google liberty spikes uncle binge is like half the page that's awesome and i was like he's like where did he come up with that and i was like he just liked punk music like liberty spikes is an old thing it's as old as as punk and um and he's like really and i was like he's not like versed in punk as much and he's like really and i was like yeah yeah he just like he's a fan of punk and he's listening to punk and he did the liberty spikes and it just so happened that they got a picture of him yeah and he had liberty spikes or like pictures yeah for well for like you had liberty spikes for like a year of your life or whatever and i'm using nox gelatin oh god i was using uh aquanet okay i would use nox gelatin it was like a rock like the i i had liberty spikes for a while and my i remember going downtown with my parents and they hated the look right it looks loud and like have acne and liberty spikes and we get in an elevator with this couple and this guy's like cool hair right and i thought he really thought my hair was cool and i was like see dad and he's like he's like i don't know i don't know i don't know he's making fun of you yeah and i was like oh but um yeah nox gelatin because what would happen you put the jello in your hair and it would make it hard as a rock but then it would give you more zits yeah and so you know that was oh yeah and you'd have to leave it if you wanted it like on tour especially when you're trying to sleep oh you would leave it for i was there i remember a warp tour where i i didn't shower for three weeks it's pretty cool and i just and i just no but i did do i did do like outdoor you know i would like freshen up you know but like i didn't shower but uh but speaking of the rev that the i mean the memories i still have random memories uh and i feel like that was one of the things that i think brought our bands even closer i think at a young age having never um never having to suffer a loss like never having a loss like that and and um i think uh going you know watching you guys go through that was uh for me i think it was like a bond uh a bond it's just something that just like really bonds you and uh i i'll i was telling my wife a story like maybe like a month ago just random thing popped into my head and uh i still laugh about it the conversation i was we were me and jimmy were in vegas and there was some big shot there and he told me you guys talking talking talking it's like uh owned like some like like half the radio stations in the country or something i i forget i can't remember some important guy a very like like anyone else would have been like oh i'm sitting here randomly and um he was going on and on and and then um and i'm kind of like you know uh more diplomatic you know than jimmy was so i was like so i was like uh i was just like trying to be nice and i was like oh oh wow cool man you know it's going on a lot of radio stations oh yeah yeah and then you must be really rich the guy talking and jimmy just looks over and goes i'm gonna kill you not today not tomorrow not tomorrow but one day endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house one day he's so funny he's just kind of shaking his head he was so one day i'm gonna kill you oh my god and uh the the guy didn't know what to say got walked away fuck yeah yeah he saved you guys and we just laughed that was you know like his way of not dealing with bullshit didn't do too well at radio but no it was it was it was funny oh man just random memories uh but uh it's having having history is like you can't pay for it no you can't no you were there can't buy it there right there i remember another another band that you know during that time like we got really and we were really close with mike hem but they came to my house after jimmy and i remember just sitting with all those guys and i was like oh my god i'm gonna kill you i'm gonna kill you i'm gonna kill you they stayed with us for like a couple days you know just hanging it's like you really really realize your friends and the and the people that he touched and you hear all these stories but all these conversations that happen that you never knew about or these moments and and yeah it's it's always it's hard it's it's nice though to and that's what we are humans that kind of you rally around people at your wedding at your wedding yeah oh yeah that was great yeah that was great it was like 7 30 in the morning and me and me and jimmy were the only ones in the pool just like the two of us what do you want to do now at least we have video of him at the wedding and that's his beard was like he looked like a full-on homeless person the rev great the rev the rev yeah legend legend had a very low tolerance for bullshit yes it was just as funny as the cutting look cutting look if he if he didn't vibe with you if somebody was a liar yeah if somebody was bullshitting if somebody had you know it's just like like that guy right like he's flexing or whatever he had a very like direct way of cutting shit off or you know it's just like those those people that are it's like a i don't know it's like a purity or something it's like get the fuck out of here yeah totally but there's a very like childlike pureness yeah sure you know there was a funness to it yes you know he was the best and then then you have that those moments where he's on your side so you're you think it's great yeah he's like you know what i always found interesting about you guys is like somehow in the world you're an incredible singer i i love your like not just your voice not just the the the soul of it but actually the technical stuff you do that like you make look easy but it's actually like i'll try to imitate it when i'm singing along and i can't but then the other guys like the fact that me brian and jimmy grew up in that little man when your kids i know the fact that like i would i would put i would put you guys up like if we went to categories and just like went one to one right pound for pound pound for pound one what one one player at a time yeah like pound for pound you could you you got you could put you up against anybody and you met as kids in school i know like to me like i think about that sometimes that's like how that happens you know it's like my favorite thing about avenge sevenfold is usually you get a band that has the musicality but not the songs yeah or you have the songs but not the musicality right with you guys you have the songs and the musicality i would say brian is probably one of the greatest living guitar players i i i'm with him every day i agree i don't see any like i sit there and watch what he does i don't see any of his songs i don't see any of his songs and how he keeps trying to push everything forward and it's never he's never like rested on anything and he's always moving on if even if people are like it's not ego driven no no no no it's like purely like a like a he explores right he like really wants to figure out okay i'm kind of like i kind of like that tone but i can't get that on a guitar so i'm gonna run my guitar through midi and then i'm gonna have it come back and then like he's just doing stuff but doing that and riding earworms with your guitar lines because all his guitar parts those are two different things it's two different things to have to have the melody to be able to write melody like that and perform it the high level that's what i'm saying is like his guitar parts always scratch the itch for me he always he he's kind of allergic to guitar wankery and what you think is good for him right he doesn't he doesn't want to be that guy and so for him it's always a song first and he's he's a disciple of the beatles you know and like to him it's like we'll never write a song that good we'll never do that but let's try right and it's like all about the song it's not about it's more about production techniques and vocal melodies than it is about him noodling around the song and so i think having that mentality is just even with jimmy it was all so um musical it was like he was putting the drums as like a like another instrument instead of what can i do you know right and and i think that keeping that mentality was it was about and at the same time and at the same time he was a wild animal so it's it's not like he's through so it's not like he was like this like you know studio guy that was like he was a wild animal you you were capturing like when you guys you know did those records like you were literally capturing like footage of a wild animal yeah like like a bottle it's like but but you but he could go toe-to-toe with any studio guy any any like that's just why that's just crazy to me you guys grew up that you you know somehow these kids were just in the same spot well jimmy was the one that started it all for us because i wasn't a musician going into his room when he was in fifth sixth grade and he can play all the slayer records it just made me sit there and like oh this is crazy is he and then you know he's playing with all these he's at college going to colleges and in the their ensembles and then brian was obviously wanted to be a studio musician he didn't want anything to do with writing original music he didn't think he could but then he met jimmy and he's like oh jimmy can like oh i can do that too and then he started helping and then that became what the band was right it was like all because of jimmy it's because he was so musical and it was so so wild it was so abstract and not by the rules which was what was so cool and we can't forget about johnny we can't forget about johnny that's my boy johnny is uh he used to just come down the street and bug us every day and play primus with jimmy and then eventually he got in the band yeah so i don't know i think i think what a guys what a bunch of guys man i mean going back and and like looking at it all it's it's wild and it's it's fun but i and and the thing is you got to keep that spirit as you get older just don't do it yeah like i love that like maybe you guys can shed more light on this but you guys went away for a little while like what was the why and then what made you want to come back and do a record exactly what you're saying i think unconsciously and more consciously as we got older i think we felt like we needed to get back to life and then and i think you have like they always say you have a lifetime to write your first record and then you every record after that you're just writing records um in like a short period of time and i think like we went on the ride we had the experience and it was great as a band but then it became very hard to tolerate everything else and i think we refuse to submit to anyone's idea of us anyone's rules anyone's telling if you tell me to do something i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the opposite i think at at the point where in like 2013 14 we made the madden brothers record but you know we even say that that should have been a good charlotte record but i think at the time we got together in high school yeah we got together in high school we had to evolve as people apart and as a group and learn how to be in that marriage together and it's been a amazing journey together i fucking love my band uh the four of us since we were teenagers um is really special history you know sitting here talking about your own band what that means it's more than the music yeah it's like that's your history that's my when i think of like my past i think of my band i think of my that's my familial group yeah um because we all kind of come from broken homes and like that's our our core group our solidness but we also all had to grow up all his his parents his parents are still together solid but he understood our he was there on the ride he was he was there on the ride when like we were like moving around we were homeless we were living with people like he was watching that whole thing he's seen us all the way paul's always been like my day one like he's so solid and he knows me so well and we don't have to talk we don't it's just deep it's like brothers you know and billy was like this metal kid which i loved i i'm a huge metal fan and i think like you guys with metal we are with like like punk and pop punk you guys love the metal crowd but you're like you're not going to dictate what we do though yeah like we have to we're going to lead you guys and we i think we came we we sort of um when we came into it we got put into the you know the warp tour you know bad religion i mean back then it was a you know it was no effects social distortion pennywise it was a tough crowd it was a tough crowd it was a tougher crowd i think than you find now um it was a different culture now you know genres don't mean as much but we were always even as kids like yeah but you guys aren't going to dictate what we do you know even even if we could in a room as like the new kids or the smallest guys in the room i think our hearts we were lucky to have a little bit of heart to go like wait a second no like we like you guys but we like you we want to be friends but we're not going to but we're not going to we're not going to back down though and you're not going to dictate what we do and i think that like we kind of balanced each other yeah billy was like you know i think how i how i got into you guys uh was like billy was like i think you know was right off the bat introduced me to you guys and a bunch of other stuff would uh but um going away i mean i think you have these long childhood friendships i think we also needed to um reclaim our ourselves i think when when we got in the mix of everything in the in the business i think the only mistakes we ever made was trying to please people and sometimes you'll have like this big shot a and r guy who's like you know done all this stuff where you'll have you know a agent or a manager and you don't think of it when you're a kid that they just want you to do this so they can cash the check get the commission and you don't care about money and keep the train rolling and keep the train rolling and do as little you know not have to deal with headaches of saying no to people because that would be hard so i think we kind of got caught in some some places where we did some things that weren't authentic to us but it wasn't out of it was only out of wanting to be good partners and wanting to make everyone happy and just be like and have a career yeah and i think we were driven a lot of of like approval i think like whatever our self-esteem things we had to go away and work out you know like now in our heads we weren't thinking they they just got a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar check yeah so they're patting on the back in our heads they were like you guys are hard working you're talented you know and i think that was what drove us was like we wanted to i think we wanted we really did to this day i think someone patting us on the back is the biggest reward we could get but i do think that going away for so long was us we need to grow up and we needed to i'd rather if i go away and this thing doesn't last it wasn't strong enough to last if i come back and it's still here then it's meant to be and i really felt like we got to that place where we have the confidence and the confidence to be able to do what we wanted to do and to be able confidence to do what we want, when we want on our own terms. You guys have always looked up to you guys for that way. Cause it always felt like you were never went off that path. Yeah. It felt like you always made decisions and I always admired that. And I tried to be that way. Like Ben said, I think we did in a lot of ways of it. You know, I also think we needed to become the men we dreamed we could be. Yes. You know, it seems like you guys coming back, it feels a lot more confident and it feels like he could take it or leave it. We might show up. We might not, if we're there, it's a big deal. Yeah. If we're not there, it's, there's a reason. Yeah. Right. It feels like, well, I always tell people this, I go, how can you write records back to back when your only life experience in between your last record and your new record is just being on the road, being on the road. There's no, there's nothing at that point. You're just moving chords around and you're right. You're right. It's like, okay, there's going to be the same version of what it was. You have to, yeah, you have to go. You have to like, I always tell people, I go, you have to like, we felt like that before the stage, after the stage, we'd put a lot into that record and we took seven years off and it was. Every single experience was forming that next record. Right. And it wasn't, or you're going to get part two, right? You go on tour for two years, you come back. It's like, all right, what are we writing about now? And part two is not always bad, but you got to do, you can't do part two every time. No, you just got to do it. If part two is what you want to do, then do part two. I would say that this last decade, give or take, I arrived to for the first time in my life. I think in the beginning I was, trying to make it for some major reasons. Number one, poverty, just to get to a place. So that was my original, original mission was like, be okay. Then I discovered the art and I actually like writing songs and I actually want to be a good songwriter. Um, start chasing that. And I want people to like me. I had a low self-esteem growing up. I just had a lot of, we, we were, we, we had a little, little bit of a run. We always liked each other, but like we got picked on and all that. The nineties, you remember the night I didn't get picked on. You were, yeah, you were more of a fighter, but, um, well you, I got hurt a few times, but I didn't get picked up. Right. How we define picked on. Um, it felt to me like I was being picked on, but I'd say the last decade was the, and credit to my wife, credit to my kids, credit to my friends, my community of like finding my place in the world where I can stand by what I do. And I don't give a fuck what anyone thinks, unless I respect them. And they have some valid feedback they want to give me. Yeah. That's different than a comment. Yeah. Right. The, the peanut gallery is a different thing than your friends going, Hey, that thing you're doing. Can I get, can I tell you what I think? I think if you did this or whatever. So I think I had to grow up because at some point in life, no matter what you've been through, like you said, last time we talked on this, on this show, you said we're all dealt different cards, but at some point you have to look at the cards and play the cards you have and make the most out of where you were dropped on this planet and what body you were dropped in. And you have to, at some point, stop going. Why? And just start fucking going forward. And this is it. I get to be me. This is what I was. Take your, take your karma, like your karma, not in the sense of like, if I do good, I'll get good. The karma of just like wherever, whatever reason I landed here in this situation, my karma is in this lifetime. I'm going to, I need to work on, I'm going to learn this. The emotional journey and anyone out there listening, I say this stuff really so that hopefully someone listening hears this. You are not helpless. You got to fucking go forward and figure it out. I don't know what else to tell you. Shit happens sometimes and we are all dealt different cards. I will give my sympathy for a second, right? And I will listen to someone and go, yeah, that's bad. Sounds like bad luck. Okay. Now we just got to fucking go forward and figure it out. And I think we started doing that at a young age, but we weren't, we didn't actually realize how powerful we were, uh, at that. Cause we felt like we were surviving, but in our older age, we realized. how powerful those kids were that the same as your band just start in your fucking bedroom and start figuring it out no one gave you permission no one gave you any help you guys just did it and you didn't ask it's no one's really gonna say that that's a great idea and it's the same are you sure no sure right and it's the same thing you're doing with your businesses and it's the same thing we're doing with ours we're not trying to do anything other than what we think we should do because we want to solve a problem maybe we had right and that to me is what we started doing when we started mddn 12 or 13 years ago or however many years it has been now and so now it's we flipped it we used to serve the career because we were afraid if i'm not in good charlotte do i mean anything to the world am i important and i got over that i was like you know what if i'm not important to someone because that then i don't want to be important right and i don't care and then i started just doing shit that outside of good charlotte and then i came back to good charlotte with like real love and appreciation for the thing the right way like man i was waiting there for you yeah so uh let's talk about bit flips because i think while we while we're well you know while we have everyone listening um i think again you're doing something similar to what we're doing in terms of just like you basically building something you wish you had yeah i think that you need and that and we're we're now we're using it we're using it well yeah and and i appreciate it that you guys have confidence in trying something because we all know trying new stuff is tough in this industry but i think for me it's when i see the the hornet's nest of the music industry trying to figure out you know what's going on and what the next steps are i am super grateful that i live in a time where there is no like pure cut you know path to success there was a time when eventually we had our left foot in one way and and the right foot in the other and what i mean by that is we came up in 1999 you could still sell cds you could still buy space on the end cap you could still get at least enough radio play to see if it you know researched well you could you could go into k-rock and maybe get striker to play it you could we still had a paper mailing list at the merch table you guys were on you brought us on you still had the ability to do things with a half a million dollar music video budget right but at this time what was happening was the whole industry was changing not from the music perspective but from a technology perspective and technology at the end of the day is how we listen how we um you know how we adapt to what we're doing how we how we view this stuff so you have youtube coming online you have the internet being invented you have you know limewire and you have all these things happening in the music industry did nothing it sat there and now we have a situation where everything has been blown to bits and so you have to look back and go okay well how can these people serve me as an artist because i the artist should be working on the songs but once you have the songs done how can this person serve me in terms of a record label or management or agents whatever it is and what do they deserve for what they can and i agree with you there are people you want to listen to and i and i agree with like being a global brand like you guys are you got your band is global our band is global you do need like actual people like you know a thousand people around the world pushing and working you know you do actors yeah and they're transformers so they they have to exist and there's good ones and there's bad ones there's versions of it and i think and i think the world is getting even less of that i think it's getting so you know not to use the word singularity but the music industry is becoming so singular in terms of where you get it where you hear about it yada yada yada so our band because of a record major label and because of being on record labels and we give them credit where it's due in that time it got us to a point to where now we can kind of take all the the safety nets and the parachute off and go okay well what is in front of us now if i'm going to make a step from day one how do i make that first step and to me it's looking at all the new technologies blockchain really stood out to me as something because when i looked at the music industry i said there's a merch company that doesn't give us who's buying there's a record label who's not telling us who our fan is there's facebook instagram they're not telling us who our fans are in fact they'll change the rules on us and charge us that's how they make the money i am the product at that point right they are taking all the money then i'm looking at ticketing ticket master wouldn't tell us who is buying all of our tickets that's their customer not ours right and then i'm looking at streaming well who's listening well that's spotify's customer and that's titles customer that's not your customer well actually if you look at the all those companies are standing on the shoulders of artists and so when i saw blockchain i didn't think of nft price go up i didn't think of you know bitcoin obviously those are different conversations and we have you know i wasn't thinking of all these things i was thinking these are pieces of data the fan and how do you make the fans experience better while collecting that data and being able to reach out to them so that you can super serve them well and also we're the only one where the artists in general are the only ones that are going to be able to do that because they're the ones who purely genuinely like care above all about the fans experience right and we and we have none of that information yeah unless you get them to sign up on a mailing list right and then you're just sending them emails every once in a while is what it is so my idea with bitflips was to make an completely comprehensive flow of everything a fan would do with an artist listening purchasing going to events all of it and putting it on some sort of reward card right this is your user experience right this is your user experience right this is your user profile you get rewarded and then you'd go well matt how do you make their experience better well it's easy you give them your time you give them access to the front of the line which most of them want give them access to early tickets and you give them ownership of all these things now you prove that you're a fan and you have ownership whether you want to use it sell it or give it to somebody and the blockchain is the only thing i've seen that allows you to do that people can come at you all day and go make your own database oh yeah well how am i going to get the information from you all these companies that are taking it from us how am i going to have that user database and be able to give somebody something that's not like a a user code and tell them that they can sell that the person to steal it from you take it from you right so there's all these things that blockchain and we were talking about this earlier all i've seen in the press for the last 10 years that i've been involved in crypto is how bad it is and how much it's a scam today i'm starting to see all the we were too late to the you know the puzzle now you can move money around the world and it's how it works it's how it works and all of a sudden i'm like oh my god i'm not going to be able to it's a oh my god what were we doing we weren't paying attention and so i don't want the music industry to be again behind the times and then all these new artists are going to come up and they're locked into shitty deals giving 75 of their earnings away when the label really doesn't have the tools at that point to do what they can do themselves and give the fan a better experience so that's the thing yeah so and that's why i love bid flips and i think that um the thing for every fan listening has to know no matter who the band is no matter who the artist is nine out of ten of them have the same heart you actually just want the fan you want them to have early access you want them to have a great experience you want it's not a monetization a money thing it's an actual thing that you it's like when you're in the studio making these records and creating this to share with people it's like someone who cooks a meal and wants to watch someone enjoy it it's it's that's the experience of an artist well and let's be really honest here you go where is the monetization for revenge sevenfold the idea is that you made that amazing meal those people will come back yep and they're gonna want the next meal and the next meal we want to make people's experience so good of being this fan that being a fan anywhere else is like why aren't they doing x y and z because they want to buy the merch they want to rep it they want to have their communities of people that outside of avenge sevenfold they can go hang out with and meet up with and the feeling that you get when you see a fan a kid you know someone who has grown up wearing your merch at an airport or the best feeling in the world is more is more valuable than any amount of money you could ever make off of selling that right like and that's the thing i think fans need to know is that it actually means like you get something from it that money can't buy for sure and i think that's what bit flips is it's actually all the stuff you explained i think in articulated is important it's gonna work oh there's no doubt there's no doubt it's gonna work it's gonna be a climb it'll be a mountain it'll work at some point if it's us or if it's not us at least we started it and i know that sometimes people are too early to things listen i 10 years ago when i was getting into bitcoin everyone thought i was off my out of my mind right and you talk about it and you talk about the technicality of it what it is there's no way that's gonna happen the helicopter you came in on today uh it says i would never do that the bitcoin helicopter after kobe yeah but even that even that to me it's it's something that makes humanity better right we've all and not to go on a bitcoin tangent but we've all sent money to europe or to a family member somewhere and you've been completely destroyed on charges and it's gonna settle in three days at your bank and and bring in your passport to make sure you have authentication to get no we have a thing now that just 10 cents shoot money across to people we were sending money to ukraine during the war and they were sending pictures of them getting the money and then buying all the vests and protection for these families that were getting bombed by russia there was no way we get money at that point except through a cryptocurrency now so there's so many things if you just look at things in a different way there's use cases and and you know really smart people you have to you have to trust that really smart people are going to figure out the unlock right at the beginning it's always the internet in the beginning right the internet in the beginning was a shit show for investors everyone's buying pets.com and all this stuff and but with no idea well do you have a pet store do you are you gonna you know like right like what do you need this for well now can we even imagine the world without websites and the internet it's just we all live on it daily and it's at the time that was like oh it's a it's a fad it's what we it's like our whole thing with veeps is we believe okay the old record store experience that we used to have that's necessary go to the record store read magazines find a record see a band go and buy the record and you hold it and you pay for it you buy a t-shirt and you like leave the record store and you have this music experience that's gone there's boutiques yeah but it's not like what it's not the rich experience you had at tower records or at uh it's not quite well well all those you have to search it out you know and i think that there's a there's a there's a ton of like mom and pop shops keeping it alive but it's not quite as accessible if you ever think back when we were kids well it was mainstream and now it's a niche thing and then you go on amazon and it's junky and clunky and you can't tell which it's from where and who's it official is it official and different prices yeah and is it like someone just printing shirts in their basement and it's a very hard and amazon isn't managing that well because they don't know the music business music business is such an interesting so veeps we think of it as like if tower records mtv and netflix had a baby it would be something like a world where you go in and there's endless content all the concerts you watch documentaries and you see exclusive and you see merch so bands all have merch you see vinyl exclusive vinyl and just vinyl and collectibles and things like that and it's very much in step with the record experience online on the platform on your apple tv all happening in a modern way that we think is and unlikely will end up transacting in cryptocurrency and all that but for us it was like where does the music business well like you you said what 2002 maybe when we when we when we were uh able to take you guys on mtv where would we do that now well right you know it's like where where can we discover that isn't um you know like for us we were just like well i guess we got to build it yeah and i i think you know i i watched the uh i've watched a few things on veeps and it's the only place you can get things that i really want right like like the dying outward i remember the moment it came out that the countdown and i had i purchased that you know like there's a bunch of things on there that that's a good documentary it's great and i just wanted to and those are interesting people right you're like i just want to know what the hell's going on crazy yeah yeah yeah and so like i just think it's it's modern it's cool and and you need those curators you need that network effect and it's music first yes it's music first always it's not anything else it's little shows like this and big shows it's music first and it's a world so it's going to take a long time for it to emerge because it's a tree that's growing it's a big it's got roots though like artists really fuck with it because veeps puts artists first it's just period but that's why i like bit flips because i think there's a world somewhere in the future where those two things collide collide also too i think it's really important for bit flips like and i feel like you you need to do something on this where there's a link in the description or something for young bands because i think that i think that the the new bands that start using it early that start using it right away yes like right away from day one yes like to me that's where the younger generation they if you give them a tool they use it 100 most of these things that emerge come from things that start off that way right like it's with event sevenfold we've basically had to tie a thousand pound weight to us and drag it because a lot of these fans are either resistant or they're or they're older and they don't have the time for it yeah the adaption's harder right they understand their american press card and they understand american airlines but as soon as you have to you know the music thing doesn't it's it's brand new right it's like it's like why right and um i think that when you have an artist coming up going this is from day one this is how we do things you foster a community that just understands inherently and everything that comes out of that from day one is just it's inherent to what they're doing and that's usually what happens and it's like what they say right it's like the big companies it's the innovators dilemma right you have these big companies that can't move because they're so stuck in what makes them money and they can't move because they're so already and it's what the really smart people are working on in their basement on the weekends that's what becomes the next thing can you can you imagine if we all had bid flips from our first records imagine how big those user bases would be of like fans and how much you could super serve everything you would have so many people think about all the email lists and different iterations and how many fan clubs we've all started and they've dropped and they don't work or this or that the next 10 years is going to be about building and growing and then at some point you're going to have all these partnerships with all these institutions in different ways right yeah because everyone needs innovation and then at some point whether or not you're bought by someone because not because you want to be a billionaire but because the strength of together and the need to integrate is deeper than just the partnership right that's when a good sale happens when they need what you do so bad it just makes sense for this number of artists and everyone using it for you to be able to do what you want to do and that's when you're going to have all these businesses and you're going to be able to do what you want to do and that's when you're going to have all these that's probably the only situation where that kind of thing happens or you just build an institution but that's like that takes a decade and a half two decades right yeah but i know the reason i know you'll do it is why you're doing it it's not about the size of the money it's about the actual experience and the innovation and all the real ones have been towards user experience and that's it that's the key put that first and that'll it'll just keep being and it'll be built by the artists that use it like veeps the early seven years it was built by everyone who used it they're like this is broken this doesn't work we had a bad experience with this but they believed in it the idea of it is it easier to dream forward for something like bit flips or for the band endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upsets upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed food and drinks beat the heat play eat and shop on repeat at netflix house at galleria dallas bring your crew and save get your tickets today at netflix.com slash house um i think the band musically is the north star right like whatever the music and it kind of that's like so natural yeah i think you live and breathe it you live and breathe it and it's like this artistic expression nothing really gets in that that bubble of us writing and then in recording with people that we trust and love um but i think the music industry has been the most shocking to me because i've talked to a million managers now that i would never would have talked to and the the problem with something in the music industry is that you have to convince the manager who doesn't want to get fired and they don't want to do anything new because they can get fired too doesn't actually want to try anything new because they're they're kind of audience captured by their fans the reality of the work they don't want to deal with they just want to complain right you have fans that have heard so much bad stuff about this particular industry that they want to shut it down right away so the artist doesn't want that backlash and if the manager brought it to them the manager is going to be in trouble and then if you look at it from the label side they played that game for a minute when nfts were happening in 2001 and there's no one there really that saw it from a technical perspective they saw it as a like the how can we sell bullshit to people right they didn't see the application well and then think about how much they did that to people we're going to sell you 2100 records of our record on the blockchain and you all own the record and it's going to be a thousand bucks each and you just ripped off a bunch of fans for something that makes no sense anyone sensible could see that that was never going to be good right and so now you have this you have four groups of people that don't either understand it don't want to lose their job or don't want to try something new and are afraid because they've heard bad things so we have i have like a um multi-prong battle going on and so what i've done is just internalized and said we are going to make avenge sevenfold's death bats club and what we do so fucking good that it's just gonna have to spread like a disease from the inside and bring people on like you guys and other there's a few other artists we're talking to that can just handle it right and understand that this is new and this is going to be great and you're inside is going to be very cool and that's all i can do at this point because i can't go talk to these people and just have them give me the the bullshit and then know that they're walking back in a room and they can be convinced within one second by somebody on their team that doesn't know what they're talking about i've seen it so many times now you know it takes a lot of guts too because you know you go from having your experience in your band that's how you got into the music business to doing something like this and um it can be humbling because you know people get on come to the meeting or get on the or do whatever, and it's like-- - Well, show me. - Oh, it's the guy, yeah. show me what you're working on or but it's also it's the guy it's the guy from good charlotte or it's the guy from avenged sevenfold and they can't see anything other than that and um i think it takes how am i getting how do i make my money how do i make my money let me let's zoom out for one second we got to end this in a second zoom over one second do you want an ecosystem that the fan and you control so passionately that these people are just diehards and you're making more diehards every day you tell me how that's going to make you more money no i can't tell you how to siphon money off them from day one no i can't tell you to sell them a fucking jpeg for a thousand dollars and gonna hand you a million dollar check but what i can tell you is how to build something so that in 10 20 years you have such a robust ecosystem that they are happy you're happy and it's just flowing in a way that is just very natural well that's because we all think the same way the money is whatever it's a byproduct of things going well yes if you build disneyland if you build your version of disneyland that's what all this is for me that's what all this is for me is like trying to right you're right you just come into the world and experience that's what veeps is to me it's a world that's growing and every artist that comes in and starts to put their stuff in they see it like it's it's growing it's gonna take time i think we're 10 years away from it being like a full-grown like that's why i meant we might all be too early but we're always early we all might kickstart something and then you know it comes back think about all the the startups and the ice you know the ico icos the the nfts all those things that happened within 2021 to now and now look at now all gone all gone because they were just they saw it and it was too early and it was about the money it was about the money a lot of them yeah right but there's a lot of things that have survived and and the same thing's gonna happen with you guys and us and and at the end of the day i don't even care yeah i just i want to be involved in it right now i want to make my own little corner of the internet that's like really fun it's like an arcade from the 80s it's like it's it's compelling and i think that's the way to live i think for anybody out there it's like just do shit that's compelling um i think that you have to create music from the same place if you create music thinking about the money you're fucked the music's always been easy right when you talk about like what's the easiest thing the music's easy i get with my guys and we just start listening to things that we love and we're like what this this really blew me away or this was really interesting and we start like ideating and then like you you know i i don't give a shit what that how many tracks are going to be on it what that's all going to look like i want to get our boy wes lang and be like yo here's some songs what are we doing like that's a creative process and there's not one person outside of that band that has any say in it right and it's like that's easy like that's that's the fun part that's the fun part well thanks for coming thanks for having me i always love seeing you guys thanks to revolver for for the uh this idea yeah this idea great idea guys and um yeah thanks matt you're awesome bro you guys are awesome thank you for listening to artist friendly we really appreciate it if you like the show you can also follow us on spotify you can follow us on instagram at artist.friendly and you can watch us on youtube and veeps leave comments i always read them see you next time