The Ren Interview.

Justin Hawkins and this is Justin Hawkins Rides Again how comes he's wearing that jacket and hat combination that makes him look like an All-American hero or Murdoch from the original A-Team series uh the answer to that is I I just wanted I just wanted you to like me just trying to fit in all right a lot of you have been awaiting the release of this episode um because today I'm speaking with Rin and for those of you unaware Ren is a songwriter that's become incredibly popular over the last couple of years his songs and videos are receiving millions of views on YouTube um due to his incredible storytelling um I've reacted to two of his videos on this channel already and both of them blew me away Ren has had a tough life due to his battle with chronic illness I spoke to him while I was over in Canada receiving treatment thank you for all of your questions I hope you enjoy this interview um you can also listen to it as an audio podcast on whatever podcast app you happen to use but for now please to enjoy good day two one and all it is I Justin Hawkins and this is Justin Hawkins Rides Again long form um I don't know why I said it in that sort of radio DJ from the 90s voice I'm just excited because today I'm being joined by Ren and ren is an artist who we all love and admire and he's given up some of his precious time to spend talking to me about what we're going to talk about what are we going to talk about everything everything you want to know everything and anything Justin I'm going to talk about everything I can't wait all at once let's do it Justin Hawkins rights again again we've Wren only occurred to me to do that rhyme in the last moment there I would I would have prepared something and we could do something like a dueling banjos type intro scenario amazing have you got your guitar there yeah but whether or not it'll be picked up by the microphone is a complete different story hang on wait two seconds I'm gonna run off so Ren is 33 years old and he's from Bangor in Wales not with an H it's just Wales um and he was a member of the Indie hip-hop band trick the fox and big push which is a British busking band based in Brighton so do you actually live in Brighton or in Wales no I live I moved out of Wales I escaped when I was um when I was 19 years old um so I've lived in various places since then I lived in bath for a bit I lived in Brighton um I did have to move home to Wales during the sort of peak of my health problems for a long time um but for the most part recently in the most recent years yeah I've been in Brighton love it do you feel like um there is an oblique was it are you from a small town a very very a very small no I'm not from bank so bang is a little bit of a there's an interesting fact about Banger actually it's got the highest Pub to student ratio in the UK um okay um one Pub a piece so you never need to speak to anybody else while you're exactly mate um no I'm I'm from an even smaller place uh called dwiran which is on the Isle of Anglesey so I angle see if people don't know it's like the head on the end of Wales um and it's a very very we had one shop in the whole village and then there was a supermarket that you had to drive an hour to get to but then we had we had one shop in the village that shot down uh after so it was a very like rural little tiny place but that's where I'm from yeah wow and um so when you say escaped do you mean in order to pursue your music dreams or yeah I mean it's well I feel like because that that's the sort of story I told myself until I thought about it a bit more and it was kind of because nobody was really doing music when I was growing up it was none of my friends none of my friendships are cool and um but that forced me I think because I got into it through producing drum and bass music I heard I think I heard a song by Aphrodite this drum and bass producer called Aphrodite when I was about 12 years old before that I played guitar and stuff but I was just I became obsessed with this idea and I got myself a copy of reason I started producing and it wasn't until I was like I need to find a singer or a rapper and asking around and couldn't find anyone as 12 year old Welsh kid so I started doing it myself so really that isolation kind of forced me to start doing all these things singing and I was absolutely terrible when I first started I've got some recordings of my company I think I think your pipes around it's very very true if you hear those early recorders everyone's everyone's always like nah but I'm like no no really really was it was just persistence and time and [ __ ] because it's confidence as well though because I mean you've obviously got range and power and control it was it was really just that I just Relentless I I was upset I was kind of lucky that there are a lot of people I think when in that age they're still trying to figure out what the hell they want to do or what they want to be and um I've even had conversations with a lot of my friends who get quite depressed about trying to find their space in the world and who they are and I think I was quite lucky in ever since I started playing ever since I was thinking I was about 10 years old I was very sure of what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be and it was always something encompassing music um so I think rather than come it was just because confidence I think was something I had to work on as well when I when I first started performing I was shaking like a leaf man so it was more just pure determination that that I had to do it and there was nothing else I could do and um by the time I was in my 20s that was literally true because I'd neglected every area of personal development other than music solder so my practical skills applying to anything else like I can I can throw together a song but I put up a set of shelves and I struggle yeah I think that's uh so going back to not being able to find collaborators I think that that's the mother of um that's the necessity that's the mother of you inventing Ren who's basically a person who can do all of that yeah I get I suppose so yeah because there was so many things that I wanted to just just because I was I wanted to do so much and I guess I mean I was I diagnosed ADHD very young and I guess that was part of it that was I was always I wanted to do everything and and uh but but it's also a part of me that I love collaborating it's not so much that I need to do everything because I I love it when someone does something better than me it's fantastic because I can bring them in and we can create something I would have never be able to create by myself which is why I feel now blessed to live in Brighton where there's an incredible network of people around me it's a huge music scene in Brighton isn't there do you ever feel like um have you ever thought about living in London have you ever tried that I've spent a fair bit of time in London I find it I think because even though I was craving more going on coming from I'm quite anti-social little bugger and coming from a small little place I find London quite claustrophobic and one thing I find quite ironic about London is there's such a huge amount of people crammed into quite a small place in in terms of a capital city um but there's there's still there's still a feeling of almost like disconnection when I grew up in these small villages there's a lot of Hello who you know in all your neighbors saying hello to the Mars you sit on a tube in London and there's there's not a huge amount there's there's still this kind of feeling of Separation which I always found quite bizarre because it's not always like that when you travel to different European cities and not not always I think that there's there's moments to break through that um but for me I found that a little bit the claustrophobia and and the separation I found um when I spent elongated times in London I do love London because it's just such a big Hub of so much going on but I I think city in the world I mean that's kind of like I always think my experience of London was you go to London you're pursuing music you're sleeping on people's floors and there's a there is a community like a sort of subculture of struggling musicians who help each other out whilst also jealously kind of slagging each other off you know it's a really strange kind of um yeah you know there's there's two sides to it but it's but it is awesome to be involved in it and then at some point in my my in my life I had to stop sort of drinking and I had to sort of change all of my my social activity basically just stopped going out and then I was then I really felt lonely and I totally felt exactly what you're describing there because you know you just there's not really the same sense of community that you would have on where would you where'd you say it was an angle c angle c yeah well I suppose I never spent enough time in London to be able to dive into those little smaller pockets of subcultures and um scenes so so yeah I'm sure I'm sure there is like like in a lot of cities it's just digging around and finding the right little niche area so um that that's probably that's probably partly it because I never lived in London it was more just I'd go there for a week or two weeks and it was always like sort of Music related thing and um but yeah I feel like I found I really found my feet with all that in Brighton and um it's the same sort of thing there's this network of musicians and you get to know everybody from the 80 year old Busker on the street to to people who are coming up and starting in that new bands and stuff and it's just really nice um to be part of the community that feels like it's lifting each other up and yeah you do get the the odd people slagging each other off as well but at first that's all part of the parcel all part of the fun I think yeah man yeah of course good little if you can escalate that to a full-on feud once you once you make it that's that's the really thing yeah yeah nice no I can't wait for that I want them I want I want I want a musical Arch and I miss no I want a musical arch nemesis you know like a Sherlock Style just just because I feel like they spur you on I I don't feel like I've got that yet yeah who would be your Moriarty then who are you looking for oh I didn't I'm not sure who it is yet I don't want to pick someone in case or maybe that's a good thing to do because I know just plant a seed I think you should because then they'll be thrilled because you'll you basically you define each other in that instance don't you I mean blur without Oasis wouldn't be the same thing you know and vice versa and yeah back in the 80s versus Bros do you remember are you you're way too young to remember that but that's that was one I grew up with yeah I'm just gonna I'm just gonna I'm gonna have a think on it then I'm gonna pick someone I'm just gonna start immerses like mercilessly bitching about them in everything that I do I'm just gonna be like you know who I [ __ ] hate yeah that's almost I do yeah yeah and then do like a really awkward collaboration with them in a few years yeah yeah well where all the all the bad blood is some but then yeah yeah of course yeah it'll be a beautiful moment there's a movie in there somewhere you know when you're saying that you were shaking like a leaf when you first performed are you talking about when you're doing busking or like when you're playing but yeah so so that that was I suppose actually the first the first time I ever I was 13 years old and there was this house band at this gig that I went to and I was kind of thrown in the deep end a little bit and um that I was into this really uh sort of like emo band called AFI at the time and they had this song called Morningstar they were kind of like Post Punk very emo and um a fire inside that's that's the band that's the band yeah the singer Davey Havoc is good like yourself he's got an incredible range like high-end range and they had they had this song called Morningstar and that was the first song I ever performed live and um actually I think I think that one went quite well it was my my first experience where I really like not I actually known the second one as well I wrote a song about the fact that my mate because the first songs that I used to write were all just basically taking the piss out of my mates and I think that was a bit of a defense mechanism because for me if a song wasn't serious it couldn't really be judged on how good it is because it's it's meant to be crap so all the songs that I used to write um one of them snuck his way onto my first album which was street lights which I wrote when I was like 15 or 16 but they were it was just songs that were basically that they didn't really take themselves seriously and the second song I took my mate Chris who is my mate Steve's older brother he was old enough to go and buy his alcohol when we were little uh despicable youths um and and he but he was a massive lightweight and all of us were you know little teenagers who could drink more than him and and I wrote a song about him being a massive lightweight and that was the second song I performed live but again there was confidence within the silliness of it but but the first time I went buskin I remember it's just to turn up I didn't have an amp at the time like a buskin amp and I just you know I sat myself down the street there's a street and it's quite a daunting thing just to like because when you first do it now that I take to it like water and I'm almost more confident on in front of a mic than I am off it but back then it's like it's quite a daunting thing to suddenly just look out into the abyss of a crowd and then just start to sing and express yourself so the first time I did that I was nervous but I obviously wasn't nervous enough for it to put me off because that quickly became I almost it's an it's an odd one because I played quite big shows now but there's something about busking that I still absolutely love and I think it's just the fact that you can um you can reach such a diverse like you can you could reach an 80 year old woman going out to nipping out to get some tea bags due to like a toddler to the sorts of people who would turn up at your gigs and it's I think the thing about busking is that it's like it's the opposite of doing your own show in the sense that you haven't got a captive audience it's literally just people who are walking around and you have to engage you have to find a way to to connect don't you with people who just have no inclination that they they didn't come out looking for music you know that's it and they're they're stopping from their own free will then they don't have to be like a gig you know you've bought the ticket you're there but the people that stop on the street that they're only really stopped by your level of uh your I guess ability to engage as just a Street full of people and I got really addicted to that and I'm almost beyond that I got addicted to the psychology of it that okay if if two people stop that enables a lot of other people to feel like it's safe to stop it's like this the thing I don't know if they I I I love looking into the psychology of of people witnessing other people perform that was um it's why in in those talent shows they show somebody gasping or crying and then all of a sudden there's this thing that's ignited in your brain that makes you almost start to tear up just because you've seen somebody else there's a word for it um are you talking about a collective hysteria like this the thing that used to make girls and women scream at Beatles concerts in the 60s I guess that oh so no it's called mirror neurons sorry yeah it's called mirror neurons it's applicable in lots of different other areas other than just performing but yeah that's exactly it like somebody sees something behaving a certain way and because we're creatures of community then we start mirroring those behaviors so if you see somebody watch something and tear up you start to tear up and go bloody hell but your thoughts of this is so emotional and but yeah so so what I noticed is when you're performing and busking say the second you get more than a couple of people stopping and it maybe takes a little while to get those one two people to stop but once they've stopped you've got a crowd before you know it's a crowd of 30 people it's crowd of 50 people it's crowd of 100 people and it's yeah I find that stuff quite fascinating and do you when it's like a group of say two or three people do you really focus on them ones or are you looking to expand yeah and I I like I like to I like to perform it doesn't matter really how many people are witnessing it it's for me even even if nobody's there I I kind of still wanna I think I feel like I owe it to the performance to still give the same performance and um yeah and because I was never really one to be swung by or someone goes oh this important person's here you've got to really [ __ ] do a good job I've never really been I'm showcase the situation yeah exactly I never I never really like the pressure of those showcase situations because I was I've been in a few of those scenarios I I just and I think again that's why I like busking is because it just it's just everyday humans there's no there's no expectation and also you can make a song last for 10 minutes if you want out there as well it's not like everything to the queue and they're not going to ask for their money back exactly if people don't like it they can just bugger off and that's fine um yeah yeah I just really yeah I love it I think there's something about um what'd you say it was the mirror neurons mirror neurons I think that's it yeah that's a really interesting expression which I've never heard before but when I'm doing like uh when I do a gig and it's a support slot you know you're looking at a room full of faces that are just going that's not Guns and Roses or whoever it happens to be that you're supporting you know and there can be a level of disdain you know some eye rolls and oh come on looking at the watches but there's always like one or two people that are into it and I intend to sort of anchor my the attention or you know the direction of my performance to those little pockets of people that do it and I find that when I do that that mirror neuron thing expands those little pockets and then if you do your job properly there's a possibility you can get the whole crowd or at least a good percentage of it and I think that's something that I do I do that um in a cynical and a cynical way to try and win the day really no it makes sense there's this beautiful video on YouTube of uh it's a festival one and it's this one lone crazy person starts to get up and dance you might have seen it it went viral I think and then and then it for it takes a while for just one other person to join them but then as the time progresses by the end of the video you've got a whole bunch of people up in this vacant spot in a field dancing but it just took that one person to be ballsy enough to get up and do it um and I guess it's the same thing if you've got a couple of people vibing it just kind of enables a lot of people because if you've just got a room full of people with their arms crossed going on that which sounds like every industry showcase that I've ever yeah then that that is gonna that is going to expand onward but um I I like that as well I like a good challenge in those uncomfortable situations where you've got because I remember every musician's been through it when you first start and you're singing in a pub and nobody really gives a [ __ ] they're there and you're and you're trying to there's this because because most musicians of massive attention Seekers are definitely fall into that category and you're trying to yeah yeah yeah and you're and you're trying to and it feels so frustrating when you're bettering your soul and everybody's just they want to finish their chips and so I always I found that a bit of a challenge to like how do I break through this noise without presenting myself in this frustrated way where I'm actually more just trying to bring people in and and I guess that's the the skill of being a performer because then you learn how to do it in more positive ways rather than just feeling angry at people for not looking at you so your your first instrument is guitar then presumably it is indeed yeah and um I wanted to ask you if you had any um Flamenco background somehow because I I sometimes hear some angelican what was it called angelation I forgot what it's called now some weird intervals in there that you hear in Flamenco are you playing I no I don't it's it's always been a because I I haven't had lessons either so I was always at any time I've I attempted to I think I've had two lessons in my life that I attempted and both times I I it didn't really work it just I don't know if there's something about my mind that didn't work why because you have a solid idea of what you want to do I know I I I I just think it's I think it's just the adhdnis because you're sat homework and it's the same with school man whenever I was set homework I was in [ __ ] at completing it so they go right take this and prepare this for the next lesson by the time the next lesson come along I hadn't I hadn't done it for me self-inspired learning works really well so I'm able to sit down and you know in a sense YouTube has been my teacher because I've I've sat down and I've watched loads of YouTube videos because I've gone I want to get this technique down so I Google it and there's a teacher and I find one that I resonate with and I sit down and I learn it through that and a lot of time it was I'd listened to when I first started I was listening to Hendrix or for Chante records just slowed down and I just stay there with my guitar and I guess I just work out my own way of playing those techniques and in the end it was it was I guess it is Theory but I I see patterns when I play the guitar same with the piano I don't my theory is actually quite bad but I I see patterns on the and I guess if you were to expand those patterns mathematically it would make sense in the world of theory it's just that that's how my brain's interpretating it and um in terms of the weird example Well it Well it's like you know with time I learned I learned the pentatonic scale like like every musician does but before I knew that that was the pentatonic scale it was just that I knew this note you know like there's there's this shape that's almost like this it's almost like whales the shape of no or England in the way because it's got its little arm sticking out and then it's got its two little feet sticking out and then the rest of it is a box so that's that's kind of how I see it I I see the shape of what it is rather than understanding that this this semitone makes sense with this one and this is why it mathematically makes sense my brain doesn't isn't very good at working like that but in terms of like the dissonant intervals and stuff it was more I'd I'm very good at hearing the melody in my head before it's played um and and I like I love those really dissonant Stravinsky style intervals where it just feels a little bit jarring and then resolves nicely and for me it's just more of a case of I hear it in my head and then I [ __ ] around with the fretboard until I make it and then I work out the most um ergonomic efficient way to play it so my fingers don't have to travel the furthest distance so it's less so Theory it's more just a lot of trial and error until it feels right um which is probably a longer way to do it if I understood Theory it'd probably be a lot quicker but it's just the way that I've always done it I guess I'm only just starting to realize the importance of theory or you know I put that in inverted comments actually um yeah because I was never really familiar with it I think I've sort of taught myself a lot in the same way that you have you know just trying stuff out and I would always listen to things and then try and do it but then I'd only be interested in the tricks you know I want to know that I want to know the flashy stuff of course and then you know after that work backwards and now I just now I love economical guitar playing yeah of course yeah I'm hoping my brain settles down and and lands in the same place but um yeah yeah but but I don't know for me it's always been I think because I started young as well and because I just always playing guitar and took it everywhere it's people like but how do you do this and how and it's more like you ask them well how do you speak English you know I've been doing it for so long and it feels so second nature now that I don't really know how to explain it just like I wouldn't know how to explain how I'm constructing a sentence with these similes and things that make sense and have to follow this like the rules I don't really understand but I just know that I can do it and um there was a there was a sentence I heard that you should learn the rules in order to break them so that you can create something new but I suppose if you've never learned the rules you don't even know that you're breaking them so it's a lot easier it's the rules if you don't know what the rules are then they clearly don't apply to you yeah yeah there shouldn't be any rules I think that's actually the the truth of it but but then but then I do I do to to to kind of be Devil's Advocate I do also understand um the the the benefits of if I did understand it I'm sure that would be a much more proficient player so I do understand I'm not to say it's all crap and [ __ ] because some people's brains some people's brains Really Work Well in that way and they can pull it off amazingly and um that's part of me that envies that as well yeah but you know your way around the Fret ball which is the most important thing I'm just interested in in whether um you're probably a bit like me I don't I don't like mucking around with um alternate tunings and stuff because I think if I do that then suddenly my whole understanding of like the patterns and the shapes and the places I'm used to putting my fingers they're just not going to make the sound that I'm expecting to hear I can't work like that yeah I need to sort of be able to play and sing along with what I'm doing you know like I I always do this kind of stuff like um you know I know exactly what my fingers are going to do and I can sing along to it and then in anticipation change the tuning and it's just never going to be like that yeah so the only the only time I mess around on a tune in really is if I've if I'm writing something so I did it with with high ran um but if I'm if there's a note that I can't reach in the in the standard EA dgbe tune in I just I will just drop whatever string it is to make sure that that economical finger placement makes sense so the tunings aren't so much like a dadgad or or established tune and it's more just like if that I need to change one string and make that make sense within the context of what I'm playing then that then yeah I'll just do it to suit it basically yeah I know a bass player that just won't learn songs he just has his Tech retune everything so it's all just open open strings and then he just goes like this just points at people hey hello ladies how are you doing nice to see you tonight which is a good system there's no rules no that's the thing there's no rules yeah so I've got a couple of things here in my preparation document okay so it says here that you were misdiagnosed with me yeah what does that stand for um Maya oh it's got one of those even though that I always had carried this diagnosis for so long I never learned how to pronounce Encephalitis is the last word because that's a brain inflammation of some sort isn't it yeah it is Helen let's I think it's myalgic let me let me my algae is myalgic myalgic encephalitis they've given it a name that makes you tired even saying it which is ironic um yeah so my allowed myalgic encephalomyelitis but I mean so so chronic fatigue syndrome is what it's kind of um because because they always say me CFS which is quite fatigued which I suppose in a way is a much simpler way of describing the base level symptoms but the symptoms that come with it as far as I understand I mean you've got it's not just fatigue fatigue is probably one of the most horrible symptoms it's it's like complete neurological like brain fog that comes with it a lot of people have experienced like post covered stuff will I guess will relate to that um there's pain there's distant orientation there's a hangover feeling or just a feeling of flu a feeling of fullness in your limbs and yeah a fatigue that feels like you haven't slept in about 10 days on end that never goes away no matter how much you sleep it's just always there and the Encephalitis part of it um does does that affect like um thought patterns as well I mean I know it affects everything and and it also comes in waves of anyone who's experienced it it's so some days it'll be slightly better and that's why I think people can't really understand it and because it's inside you also as well you look relatively normal from the outside and um yeah 100 it affects composition of thought so even stringing on my worst days a little string together normal sentences I developed a stick a tick and a starter on my worst when I was in the thick of it but um just thinking about even day-to-day tasks or or doing any kind of logical thought process and then having spontaneous creative thought becomes very hard as well so a lot of people that go through it go through depersonalization which means you essentially lose your personality because without spontaneous thought we are just machines really we're we're able to answer how is your day going yes no would you like this for food but in terms like coming up with what makes us I think individuals is our ability to spontaneously communicate things that someone else might not have which which makes us unique and you lose a lot of that I think when your brain is on survival mode because it I think it just uses resources for what it needs to get through the day but everything else it it just becomes weighed down by inflammation essentially in your body and then that turned out to be actually Lyme's disease yeah so so it's it's such it's such a complex area because I think we're still on the precipice of understanding what these Chronicle illnesses mean because for me I think that Emmy rather than misdiagnosis is more of a symptom because they still don't really know the cause of Amy there's there's not enough research for them to be able to say definitively this is why people enter a state some people think it's a post-viral thing caused by the Epstein-Barr virus uh some people think that it's it could be mold poison and it could be an autoimmune thing like I I think there's probably all of these answers could be true which means I think that it's actually a symptom of something bigger that's going on that's caused the body you have to just go into absolute shutdown mode because postcovid uh is this people experience a lot of the very same symptoms like fatigue just brain fog that won't go away and numb so I I think that I do probably have Emmy as well if that makes sense I feel like that's a symptom of and maybe Lyme disease was the catalyst so they found antibodies to Lyme disease which is this bacteria you can get from a tick in my blood much later on in my journey much later on in my journey um which was probably the thing that set it off and the thing that was frustrating for me that if you catch Lyme disease within this first month window of getting you only need to take a two-week course of antibiotics and you're cured most of the time so I think how do you know you got it so as early stages then I mean assuming assuming that you're you how can you be aware of that well well nobody nobody thought to test for it for me until like until probably about eight years too late or six six or eight it's hard to know exactly when I got it but um it it's a progressive disease so the symptoms get worse and worse over time and the more time is left the more and that was definitely my experience is that is that I started what it is to deal with it once it's taken hold or exactly so so when we actually got around to finding it is cutting a very long story very short um by the time I treated it I was just left with basically a messed up immune system where that had learned a lot of bad habits and a lot of autoimmunity a lot of damage to my nervous system to my organs and um with this condition called muscle activation disorder which is where your cells overreacting I became allergic to a lot of things and um particularly sensitive to histamine and things like that but it's it's some yeah it's a Minefield it's a Minefield really is histamine is the thing that you get with allergies isn't it that's a it is yeah except so so muscle activation disorder is when your body doesn't it reacts massively to histamine and it can't process it so all of those allergy symptoms you start reacting to everything from I I can I can be if somebody walks in this and they've got like a strong smelling perfume or after shave on I can suddenly start feeling like I'm hungover it's really bizarre the thing we're doing this remotely because I'm drenched it I'm sure you are a fine smelling young man um so but yeah the the um so at the moment I live on a diet of about five things so I eat fresh meat um cooked and I a very limited amount of vegetables courgettes uh squash um and a few other things and um if I eat anything else again my my sim I wouldn't be able to sit here talking to you if I had a bowl of cereal this morning for example and and it's um it's not just as simple as like a gluten or dairy intelligence you become intolerant to everything and so I've had to live within a very a bit of a bubble in terms of what I exposed myself to but this treatment here I'm on a lot of Mast Cell blockers like ketokifian um chromolin and some other things and they help suppress these reactions and the the goal is to be able to return to a normal healthy diet I mean it sounds pretty healthy I mean just probably not very exciting well so so it's this thing called the paleo diet which is it's based on Paleo paleothic I think that's how you say it the so the caveman diet because we were all it's funny that this is the diet that works for me because it makes biological sense so like we're all evolved basically our Industries evolved faster than our bodies did so taking grain making mass-produced Foods human evolution only happens at a certain speed so it's I think it's why a lot of people are now in in the modern world developing a lot of illnesses and a lot of this autoimmunity because our when you go back to eating like a caveman would was like hunter-gatherer you get your meat you get your nuts you get your vegetables from the land around you that sustains you there are less reactions so a lot of these people with autoimmune disease when they go to these sorts of diets they feel a lot better and it kind of makes sense because our bodies have evolved to accommodate those sorts of diets not really accommodated to uh not really evolve to accommodate lots of um overly processed diet so I guess it makes sense and that's in that regard yeah yeah yeah I suppose it's um just keeping it simple actually isn't it I mean just hunt together I mean berries without actually hunting I'm not going out there with a spear and spearing myself uh it's optional yeah probably quite frowned upon and then so when you were when you were um when you were first diagnosed because it says on here that you was that Sony records um decided to relieve you of your contractual obligations because yeah they don't think you work so so there's there's a bit of a because it's funny you know when you start you start reading comments about yourself on the internet and people run with these narratives and then yeah yeah yeah yeah and people wrong with it so it wasn't it wasn't as Sinister is because I read some comments like Sony found out that Rand had mental health problems and then dropped him which really really wasn't really wasn't how it how it panned out so I was I was working with an amazing guy called Eric apapalay who who did the defamation of Strickland banks that first plan the plan not the first Plan B record but the plan B record that went massive and made him huge for he was on top of the best of one where he started singing singing more kind of Motown Soul Motown stuff yeah and Eric Eric was a big big contributor to that and so Eric spotted me was he an a r guy or is he like a producer he's just he's just a brilliant musician man he's a producer so he he's and a very good human being as well but he he's he was walking past while I was busking when I was in 18 19 years old and um I was busking one of my own songs and he was just like man your lyrics are incredible I'd love to take you to London and make an album with you and we started the process of doing that and so and then Sony took it they were a subsidiary of Sony so they were a sub label of Sony and Sony took that on board and we signed a contract and we were working on this album and then halfway through this album I became very very sick and um uh and I started I was almost like pretending I wasn't sick because I was this is my whole you know up until I was 10 years old I was it was like this thing that was manifested and the thing that you said like I was doing all these industry showcases and all that stuff and people were like you know I just can next next big thing and all this stuff was happening and I was in the process of making this album and um I was just so this is when the symptoms started and I was feeling dissociated tired pain started happening in my body and there were there were times where I'd be in the studio and I'd I'd do a take and I'd excuse myself to go to the bathroom and I just there was one time I threw up blood and then just pretended that it hadn't happened and I came back and I carried on before doing the take without letting anybody know and there were other times where I'd have these industry showcased and I'd be in the backseat of a car crying and I'd be sleeping and then I'd get off there brush it all off and get on stage but it came to a point um I was managed by a guy called Andrew mancy at the time who was had done the chemical I think he'd be the manager of The Chemical Brothers um but um there'd be there was a point where I started breaking down on stage as well um because I was just so weak like even standing and singing on stage became this massive and people started obviously noticing this and that was that I think that was a time where Eric was like you know you need you need to take some time out and so I I did that and I was very wet and I took time out of making this album which is a really difficult thing to do I went to live with my mum and it was intentionally only going to be for three months but I didn't end up getting out of bed for a whole year um after that and and about six months into that it was a very Mutual conversation between me and and Eric um at a time running through Sony with this contract I was just like I I don't I don't think I've got it in me to do this and Eric understood it and and we parted ways and and it it wasn't so much that it was a dropping it was more that that contract expired because you know there are a certain amount of years and I that was very uh that was maybe 2001 and I I probably would didn't really have much of a life then up until 2006 2007 so um yeah so it was just you know these terms of the contracts are maybe three years or something like that it just the time the time passed and and and it never it never happened and um it was it was heartbreaking man because because in my head I was like but this is my Prime early 20s everybody always tells you that this is the best time to do all this stuff and so it was really difficult like I I was I was pretty sure that that was my chance and it had come and gone and and more so the more time that elapsed um the more it felt like that and um and then when I started making the freckled Angels album which was it the freckled danger was actually half of the tracks that I made with Eric and I remember messaging him one day years and years later and asking if I could use the tracks and he was just like go for it which is really nice of him he didn't expect anything in return um and I I still there's there's still part of me that feels I I haven't reached out to him in since back then because there was a part of me that felt almost like a guilt for letting them down for having so much belief in me and pouring so much time into me and um I felt immensely guilty for not finishing that project and I I did feel it I shouldn't feel guilty though because I think like the whole nature of the traditional music trade is that people like him will invest a lot of time in a lot of artists that they believe in yourself and then some of them are going to fly some of them will not for for a million different reasons most of them won't you know and they only need like one to fly to justify the corner office no they're going to be okay no of course of course and you know it's not it's not that he was struggling for for money to any sense because I guess there was the defamation and the and he did a lot of he was responsible behind Daniel Bedingfield and a lot of other people's amazing production but but um it was I think it was just more that there was so much belief and excitement in that recording process and um and and it wasn't really that I had let him down through my ability that's what I was frustrated by it was this Insidious outside force that I had no control over that just ruined everything and yeah it was it was for a long time it took me a while and when I started making the freckled Angels album when I I got I guess myself to a point with my house where I could still record I was still spending or every day in a bedroom but I had my music set up in my bedroom I couldn't really leave my house at this point but I decided I I pretty much at this point I'd in my head I was like I'm probably not going to live to see 30 so I'd like to do something that I I feel I've always known that I've had this potential to contribute musically to the world I like to make this even if it's only my mates this year I want to finish this record Angels album so that's what I did I I used half the tracks that we did back in those early days and then I produced things like crutch and make my way and dominoes and a few things just by myself in my bedroom and I threw together this like 16 track album which I self released and it did mod modestly okay it was really just my friends streaming it now it's seeing a lot more views because everything else has become successful but um and then I just self put it out there just thinking like this is going to be my contribution and I'll probably die in a few years and um yeah um someone's all about Legacy that's that the recorded medium that's just it's your legacy that's that's it yeah and yeah it's pretty healthy to think like that sometimes it's like because when it comes to the many demands on our time as artistes and people who you know who want to talk to us in any in any context really it's like everything that you do you have to decide whether it's content or art and the stuff that's art that's really your legacy the rest of it is completely disposable and it's just the way you communicate the fact that you do art to the rest of the world isn't it so that that stuff's that stuff's important I mean I think when you have like profound health issues it does make you think more carefully about what you're going to be leaving behind but everybody should think like that of course yeah yeah yeah because we're we are we are a a um finite creature we will expire all of us will so like that it's just that when it's very much in your periphery and it could be any time in the immediate future you start thinking about it a lot more but the truth is we're all we're all very Bleak way to put it but we're all we're all just heading to our inevitable demise so but the um interesting so I made this album I put it out there it felt really good to have that out there I started posting it from my house to people that wanted it and you know they were the very manageable orders um coming through and then my health dipped again after that really badly and I went into full-blown psychosis against I guess is my brain's way of creating an alternate reality that was more explainable than my actual situation so like I was because because it felt so unfair like there was no doctor could diagnose me what was going wrong this was still before I knew I had Lyme disease and and also as well after I after the allopathic medicine had let me down and there was nobody because I kept I must have gone to the doctors hundreds of times being like please just test my blood for something else there's something going wrong I just got feeling like and they kept going ran look we've spent a lot of money the NHS spent a lot of money looking at your tests there is nothing wrong with you it's in your head like some doctors would even laugh at me for going yeah but I looked at this on Google and they're like oh you're looking on Google yeah like look Google doctors hate that you've got quite a quite a patronizing way and um so so I after the allopathic medicine let me down and you know I've gone through the mental health system I'd been on various ssris and lots of talapram and whatever and diazepam and they hadn't worked and so I started turning to the spiritual because that's the only option I could see left like or or Homeopathy or uh um weird I've done some not to call that weird but I've done some weird things I want to see shamans I went to see exorcists I went to see anything that I thought might work I I and I was broke at the time as well I Come From A working class background not so so all of this stuff was I'd save up for months and do this one thing that I put my hopes up and then it wouldn't work or or sometimes I'd convince a spiritual healer to see me for free and pull my heart out and um it's just like you're to take so many disappointment after disappointment after disappointment it's like it's really difficult to just carry on going and and I didn't really know at the time that all of these experiences was concealing some gold but anyway that all accumulated in just a massive breakdown and I just went into this mode where I thought this can't be anything other than demonic and I was convinced that because I couldn't figure out an explanation so I was convinced that there must be some either sort of demonic entity possessing me or following me and then and then beyond that and that took me some weird places I had conversation with satanists and stuff but it's really weird dark period in my life and or I thought I was part of this experiment and my psychosis manifested itself and this way that I was like if I start acting in a way that's not expected of me I can short circuit this reality and and I can break out of it so I started doing really bizarre things and that there was one time I stripped off butt naked and I went and lay in the middle of a main road and started laughing in hysterics until the police showed up and um and in my mind that was like this is what they expect the least so this is going to help and obviously a little bit help but it was so funny so during this psychosis I started manically I was there was still part of me that was very lucid and present I started man looking up on the internet and I found out about this condition called p-a-n-d-a-s pandas which is this conditional autistic a subsect of autistic kids has of course by the streptococcal bacterial infection and I and I was like a lot of my symptoms look the same so I convinced my mum to take me to a gastroenterologist and I pretended that I had these these this gut pain to to which he would prescribe and I said oh I'm I've had this antibiotic before I made up this lie and and I know that this one I I get on really well with it so he prescribed me the short course of antibiotics which was actually against the streptococcal bacteria what I didn't know at the time was it also targets Lyme disease I didn't know this at the time but I was on a different tangent that actually took me to my diagnosis I took this antibiotic and all my symptoms went down by about 50 after two week course of taking this and I was like that's not Placebo because I've taken hundreds of supplements hundreds of self-treated things on my journey to try and make myself better this isn't Placebo I I know this by now because I'm very familiar with the placebo effect so I go it didn't cure me because after a while those symptoms came back so I I saved up money I went to an infectious disease specialist in Brussels I explained everything my whole story and without even testing my blood he was like you've got Lyme disease mate a numb they tested my blood and sure enough antibodies to Lyme disease positive and that took me on another big journey to try and numb cure myself of limes which is yeah wow and you're you're in Calgary now yes that's part of your ongoing treatment isn't it yeah so so it was funny so so after I got that diagnosis I was like brilliant how do we treat it I can get better that wasn't the case because I took the antibiotics and my body was just damaged it was messed up so again there was another heartbreak of like I finally found the answer but there's no solution anywhere and so I started again I I get you join these communities these substant communities online of loads of people with Lyme disease and you wouldn't know this unless you had it and now these they support each other they're also trying cures and people are doing wacky [ __ ] people are staying in themselves with bees people are because it stimulates your immune system people are doing I I did some weird things I did this the weirdest one I did was a fecal transplant which which is disgusting like you essentially take somebody else's business because of the enzymes that are in there it's because of the microbiome so you're transporting somebody else I saw that on an episode of House yeah yeah so it's a thing they cure ultra um use uh Ultras colitis uh I forgotten I don't know how to say it and Crohn's disease is helped by it a lot and um so basically you're you're introducing a whole new microbiome from another person through their poo into your ass through a an enema and I went to this clinic and I did that and it made me a lot worse um after saving up a lot of money you're full of somebody else I'm I'm sat here as a man full of [ __ ] in somebody else's [ __ ] and um yeah that that didn't work but so I started again I started I started Health blogging for my bed because I was like you know what I've got this answer I still I'm probably not gonna live I I just wanted to put out there my story so that and these videos you can still find online but I started blogging and I guess it's almost like I was just being CR sometimes I'd break down and cry I tell my stories I thought if I die at least maybe someone else can see these videos and be helped maybe not feel alone or maybe a scientist will see it and say oh [ __ ] we need to take this I want to devote my life to helping this and luckily I was rewarded by a stem cell doctor stumbled across it and he I guess felt an affinity towards me his son was a musician and um he I got an email and it's like if you can get yourself to LA I can cure you and uh we I've got the stem cell procedure and we can cure you so I get I I asked my mum I get enough money to get a flight I end up staying with this um this guy called Chuck because I don't have enough money I was broke at the time I'm going to get a hotel or a Airbnb this guy called Chuck who is a set designer for uh The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air funnily enough but lovely couple he was going through the treatment the same treatment because he had Lyme disease and I you know we went through this treatment um together and it was an experimental treatment and um I think that clinic since shut down because they had some lawsuits against them because some people weren't as lucky as me and I I knew I knew going into it it was experimental because I just had nothing to lose and um I uh sure enough I get home after like grueling 12 weeks in La where I have this stem cell transplant which is really barbaric the way they get it it's liposuction so they put a needle like this big into your back and he saw you saw the fat out of you and then they separate the stem cell centrifugal fuse them and then put them back into you um I went home and I I started getting better and it was amazing like my energy started coming back I started to notice that I was leaving the house I I got another stem cell transplant they had a two clinics one in Frankfurt I had another one I came back and within about a year I was out on the streets playing music again and this was about 2016. um and the first song this was the the amazing thing because I would I had not only had I had like submitted to not ever having a music music career again I'd also submit to the fact that I probably wouldn't be alive at this point so like we put out this song me and my mate Sam we put out the song blind dyed not really thinking much of it was the first one of the First videos we uploaded um or I'd uploaded in years and um it went viral straight away and uh Warner picked up this record and we put out this record it wasn't like a I think we got number 47 or something like that which isn't for considering considering it was just like the first thing that I'd properly done since I basically submitted to not being alive anymore it was just like this such an affirming fingers I'm like now I'm I'm 27 and I thought this was all gone and then with that just like everything else followed and it was yeah beautiful man very beautiful very beautiful 27 does feel like a late in life opportunity when it's when it's music doesn't it it's weird it's weird it's it's an ironic thing because it's a 19. if you haven't made it by the time you're 19 and you see people coming up for 16 17 who are just obviously going to be the next thing you're like well [ __ ] it I'm gonna go and work in a studio that's how I felt yeah and for me it didn't there's also there's also a poetic irony in it as well because and I I thought about this uh a while ago this the the 27 is the notorious age that the most most of these artists die and and to be almost like reincarnated at this age felt kind of poignant I suppose uh yeah it was interesting but there's also something else to that as well I think the music hits different when it comes from a place of complete resignation like if you if you have put this idea to one side that you're gonna be a huge star often the next stuff you do is the best stuff because you're not thinking about a huge audience you're not talking about you're not talking to a broad you know batch of the masses you're you're really doing a more probably a more authentic expression of what's going on inside your heart and then what's going inside your heart is you know people can relate to that and regardless of how regionally specific you are or how you know even conditionally specific you are about like your illness or anything like that people relate to those feelings and it's like if it if you're trying to write songs for the world if you're trying to write songs for yeah on the heart you've got an opportunity that doesn't always present itself until you've given up you know 100 and I've never really I think the more I've created the less and less concerned I've been with that approach in in terms of creating a formulaic I need a catchy chorus I need I need this to be hit like the the more and more I've dipped my toes into doing what exactly what I want which which is is really more of leaning towards the things like I've done with the Tails or with higher end all these more conceptual unstructured pieces that just musically kind of just go where they want to rather than thought returning home or returning to a bridge those things for me they excite me a lot more and they're they're the thing that gets me most inspired in the Creator process and the more the more I've it's funny the more the less I've tried to cater to the masses the more widely it's been accepted which is a bit of a paradox I do think that you are anomalous in that respect you know most people collaborate with with somebody who's either driven by the need to be interesting or the need to sell as many records as possible you know you find yourself in those sort of creative situations where there's an agenda and it can be one of those two things or something in between um but when I when I listen to high Ram I had no idea what to expect and I was completely blown away and it was really mesmerizing and it's like no this guy's rejecting any semblance of trying to make a hit and yet this is obviously going to be a hit you know it's obvious it sort of it resonates in a completely different way to anything else that's out there and is brilliant in like more than in more than three ways it's brilliant I appreciate that well yeah and it was it was very it was a very it was very affirming for me because it's allowed it's allowed me to think now start thinking a little bit more daringly and numb it's nice to be confirmed I I would have carried on making stuff like that anyway but it's nice for enough for me Nation to that it's connecting with because you know ultimately there's still definitely a part of me I'm not so like I just don't care about it it's all about the music man like I I there's still a part A desperate part of me that wants to be accepted as all of us want to be accepted in in some ways in some of the lyrics and those those songs you actually you do reference that need as well of course yeah and and brazenly kind of Express ambition and stuff I think it's [ __ ] brilliant it's just so it's so authentic it's kind of like it's really exhilarating to listen to it and I know I'm talking on behalf of everybody that watches my channel because everybody loved it and uh he had so many positive comments one one of my more popular episodes I think um yeah I mean it's great stuff I've got a few questions if you have the time and the inclination I do yeah I've still got a while all right so um some of these are from enthusiasts from the channel some of these are from myself and from Jenny so here we go Ren I'm just going to read it exactly how overwhelming is the outpouring of love and respect towards you and your music is it validating or uncomfortable I think you've already covered that a little bit actually Yeah well yeah I think I I think it is it is incredibly overwhelming I for for all the previously mentioned reasons because because I'd never really expected to be in this position um did you ever get that thing where you know like because it's been a such a journey I mean yeah did you I mean because for me it was also a journey but in a totally different way it was more like we were being overlooked and we were kind of like we felt like there were people in the music trade who were saying oh we'd love to sign you but my boss doesn't think you're serious and all that kind of stuff and we were frustrated and we kind of built our Audience by doing a lot of live stuff and then eventually it became inevitable and then when we did have hits and major label music contracts my attitude was about [ __ ] time and I was really ungracious about it you know which is kind of like that's part of the rock and roll thing you know it's not it's fun to do that but um you're quite gracious about it you're actually a nice guy well look I think I it's funny because the forces that that were I guess the biggest barrier and that are still a barrier were these forces that out outside of my control I feel like even like early on I always knew that this is all I wanted to do and I I suppose it's sort of like the accolades and the admiration it's it's a bit of an odd one because I I don't feel like I've always and because I've always been quite anti-social and stuff like that as well like I still there are parts of it like to answer the other part of that question even even though I'm I'm grateful for a lot of it when I'm out when I'm out on the streets I I feel like I don't want to be really really famous which is a bit of an ironic thing because that's what I'm everything that I do and all the success in my field and your field are measured by Fame really because that's really the the measurement of how many people that's yeah it's how many people are aware of it but my idea of walking down the street and being famous to the point of not having any previous where I walk into a store and someone goes oh mate let's take a picture let's get an autograph let's do this like a constant barrage of that for me it's my idea of Hell mate but like because because I really I love the creative process I love and I do love seeing that it's impacting so many people's lives and hearing all these stories but then I almost wish you could step out of that suit and go right that's done now I just get just get on with my [ __ ] and and just live this life as a as a bit of an anonymous person because I love I love it when I'm on a stage and all of those people know your words that in that time drown me with attention but I almost wish then you could step off and just [ __ ] turn it off because I've never I've never really I think also it's partly to do with my illness as well but I've never I've always been a bit a bit introverted in that respect even though I may come across extroverted on stage and stuff I've I I I like to just keep myself to myself when when all that turns that's really interesting because I've recently been talking quite a lot about um an interview that James Hetfield did a while ago I don't want to keep going back to it but he was sort of talking about how he finds it difficult to adjust to going back to normal life having been on stage and loving the you know so he yeah he can't he can't get the balance right and he describes them being able to you know having to take his own bins out and stuff like that whereas you know as if James said first of all as if James Hetfield does that but for me it's more it's more I I just believe in being totally transparent with all this stuff when we did the big we did the last big push show which was went really really well but I remember sitting outside I I went into it because because I've you know I've got a plethora of mental things going on I remember sitting outside and I had such a it was just person after person after person would come up to me and and they would always mean a lot they tell me how much my music meant and stuff but I was so over it's just my mind was so overstimulated with information because I think because of the nature of what I write about when people are opening up to me about what it means it's not just oh I love your Music Mate it's like I was going to kill myself a few weeks ago and then I listened to the and like to have that conversation when you're not a total level ground yourself and to have those conversations not just one time but 50 times in a night it's just becomes to a point where it gets a bit too much and and I remember well that's really overwhelming they probably get a sense of responsibility to your audience as well which is completely Beyond like your responsibility I guess because there'll be a lot of people watching I guess what I would ask ask for my audience and you know like put put it out there it is the best way that I can serve people is to buy creating music it's not really to be a shoulder to cry on to be a advice because I don't know it I can't give you advice I'm not I I'm trying to figure my own life out the best way I think I can serve people is just carrying on doing what I do and making music and stuff like that rather than given too much of myself on an individual basis because I'm a bit of an anti-social little bugger I like to keep myself to myself I mean but you know what I think the reality of it is that like if you even if you were really rude that's still an interaction that you'll never forget as from a from a Fan's perspective you know what I mean like I I was in um I remember I went to see the Ben Elton musical We Will Rock You featuring the music of Queen and um I was invited by Sir Brian May and I sat next to Brian May I was like yeah brilliant this is great you know my favorite songs on this and then as we were leaving a woman came up to Brian May and said uh yeah Brian you've got to have a picture with me and started to do that and then he went no I don't [ __ ] off she'll be dining out on that for the rest of her life it's amazing you know so you could do that and fully get away with it I think and people would not only respect it they'd probably love it you know yeah yeah yeah um okay let's do another question here we go and I quote what is it about your music that's resonated with so many people and ex elicited such an emotional reaction from people I feel like they should answer the question themselves they're definitely not yours it's not your job to answer that that that they're the receptor of it I don't know I I I I I I really do not know the answer I suppose that there's a all right if I'm gonna have a stab at it I feel like when a particular because because what I'm doing I suppose is a little bit different if that's resonating with so many people at that time I believe it's because in that time space and time and culture and Society there's a bit of a want for people talking about a particular subject matter I believe there's so much hyperpolarization in the world today that it's a it's a good breeding round for people feeling also social media we've got a lens concert we're all now performers all of us every single one that's what social media has done it it's turned us all right whereas before it was just the performance who were performers now all of us are to a degree because we're putting our stories out there for everybody to see for our friends and everything and I think that that is a good also a very good breeding ground for um for so some some more destructive thought patterns and um I guess by amplifying those and putting that into a the medium of song um now is a time where a lot of people can relate to it which is why maybe at this point in time particularly it's doing well God knows so this yeah you've definitely captured the zeitgeist by the way I love that word Zeitgeist in German it means time ghost which like a time traveling ghost basically um yeah if you were to make an American TV series from the 80 about a time travel ago yeah nice guys just remember reminds me of when I was uh 15 years old there was this uh this internet video going around called Zeitgeist which was about the corruption within the uh monetary system and do you ever yeah I think I remember that yeah yeah documentaries that were about you know the third Tower of 911 and all that kind of stuff yeah like the Venus Project and yeah so that it had a had an air of conspiracy about it but also it also at the the age of a 15 year old weak weed smoking teenager I was just like it had such a profound impact on me because I was I was reading a lot of like oldest Huxley and uh George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut and lots of dystopia back then as well and and that was like this Catalyst into me um I suppose planting the seed in in into uh I don't know just just basically questioning everything from from above to below and putting that under a little bit of a microscope which I guess has been a bit of a theme in my work as well um but yeah Zeitgeist bro that that documentary [ __ ] blew my mind yeah yeah I need to go back and watch it again I love that um if I might posit an idea sure I think it's because you're the Zeitgeist right now is is like particularly in when it comes to masculinity toxic or otherwise it's always talking about men's mental health and expressing stuff you know that you would traditionally feel uncomfortable saying and the idea of that is to save people's lives you know like I you know ex if you're able to sort of make some utterances that tell people how you're feeling there's a chance you'll realize that you're not alone or something will persuade you to not kill yourself because you know at a certain age it's a man who has that kind of impulse is going to act on it within 24 hours so there's this whole movement where we've realized that and we're all basically everything's about it's okay to not be okay my problem with that is the same as I said to you that this to you before we started recording it's like saying bombs are bad of course it's [ __ ] okay to not be okay that's the reason why the expression okay exists you know it's like there is there's always going to be a people that aren't you know and it's and it is fine it's fine but that's such a broad and sweeping statement that it doesn't actually help anybody I think it's it's not enough to hang your coat on whereas the stuff you're doing is so it casts such a clinical eye on it and it really you're you're declaring things that take it takes real courage to declare you're actually doing the stuff that you're supposed to do to save your life and it's yeah it's really like um it's beguiling in a in the truest way because you're kind of like saying stuff and it's like well okay now I'm intrigued what is this what is it what is he saying and why is he saying it and you're pulling people in who want to be there for you only as a set of ears do you know what I mean well yeah yeah no I do it's it's like you just before I even talk about how great the music is I mean that's that's only like thematically one of my theories about why why people love high-end for example yeah well I suppose I suppose it's like you by doing something rather rather than telling somebody that they're allowed to do something by doing it yourself it's a lot it's a lot more enabling I suppose and I I agree with you because it's like I was saying earlier something else popped into my head about it when you have like a mental health topic sort of like toxic masculinity and it becomes a Hot Topic and almost like commodified so it's presented in a very like commercialized way where it's like it's fine to and a lot of the time I can see right through it you know like when you get like these Tick Tock stories come up and it's just some dude and he's just like he's bawling crying and he's he's also added a a an emotional piano sound behind the background and it's just like it's it's so important that I open up you can see straight through it straight away like and that there may be some Merit to it and there may be some positivity to that because some people may be a positively impacted by it but I think when it's when it's done in such a way that it's more about feeding the person it's more about the the self um gratification of like oh if I put this is It's a Hot Topic so if I I'm gonna cry right now oh brilliant I'm crying now I'm gonna put the camera on me and now I'm gonna put this sad music and and that's gonna get me that's the problem I have about these things when they become commodified it's very similar to when um all the black lives matter stuff was happening and you had um big corporations very obviously being like and now here's a person of color on our front page and it's just like doing it in such a way that just doesn't feel genuine this is not actually about the chords it's about it's about the and so I think the when it's when it really is that's the bandwagon isn't it that's the yeah when it's really Stripped Away of all of that and like you say it's so obvious that of course it's okay not to be okay of course it's important that as men as women as people we're allowed to speak freely in a place free of judgment um no matter what your background it it it's it's just a no-brainer and for some reason clumsily along the way along our progression and development of society maybe for reasons that are that were positive at the time you know like at the war men had to just [ __ ] block down their emotions otherwise how do you deal with the emotional um like influx of just seeing everything you love being destroyed or seeing like War atrocities I think at the time it was probably important for a man to be pretty hardcore and like do you know what I mean and to shut down those emotions and and but then hanging on to these things as we progress as a society may be slightly destructive so it it of course it's important for somebody to be able to express themselves freely without judgment but yeah like you say when you when you see that done in such a way that commodifies it or is you I you I think anyone can really deep down feel when something is a slightly not authentic or disingenuously things just ring phony don't they and it's usually when there's a movement of some sort of happening of course and yeah I I I hope I'd hope that by because my my journey is a very Niche Journey line not there's only a very small handful of people that are gonna really truly relate to it but but hopefully there are Parts within that when I'm expressing it I I'm not going to try and cater to a broader but by expressing that very small narrow Journey that I've been on hopefully there are elements of that maybe within High ran or maybe within some other songs that I affects people on a broader sense to feel like they're unable to be able to that'll be brilliant if if that's true what you've said then that'll be a really positive thing I think that's come from it allowing people to feel safer to be able to go you know [ __ ] it better sure there's a percentage that that applies to the other thing I was going to say was like um a lot of people that appreciate what you're doing are also musicians like I know a lot of people on my channel are musicians of all at all levels really and there's always that sort of cliche of oh you know we're writing songs because it's catharsis and we're addressing these these dark issues and it's like really that song is called crazy baby that's about is it right okay cool good I'm glad you got your catharsis and that that [ __ ] silty sewage pop music that you're making there that's like because of your heart being so dark is it right fine and then you're coming along and you're definitely doing something that looks and feels like it's cathartic you know and it's inspiring for anybody that writes songs to see somebody being that honest and that specific about stuff that's you know burdening you it's [ __ ] exciting you know for everybody I think especially musicians and especially people who are sick of the the current sort of um attitudes towards masculinity or the lack thereof be yeah but but conversely to that you know sometimes I like to make music just to make fun where I'm not where it doesn't have to be this big journey into an emotional rollercoaster sometimes I just like to rap about nonsense or but that's what that's one of the things that lends the authenticity to it though isn't it because you know you know it can't always you know address one Topic in one step exhausting mate yeah it would you have to have those uh tangential uh you know Explorations don't you 100 man we are a tapestry of things people we are around me um okay here we go here's another question your style is very unique uh did it come naturally or did you have to experiment to find your voice and this style of writing and storytelling oh bloody hell um uh I I think I suppose I suppose it's just it's like it's just a uh there was never there was never any right I need to be like this or or it's I guess it's just a lot of time stumbling across what excites me so in terms of the more I guess I guess the more the stuff that's more within my own lane it is the more sort of theatrical the the tales and the higher ends and stuff like that and that really just came about there was no there was never really an intention behind right I'm going to do this to have this in my it's more just something I started making a lot of things and that was the thing that really excited me so I started doing it more it was really just through my own exploration there was never really a decision um as all things it's just a a string of lots of different events I can't really answer it in a clearer way than that I don't think just a mistake really an intentional mistake yeah I mean I think that's um it's impossible for you to not be unique you know I always struggle with the term very unique I think you're either unique or you're not you know I don't know how you can be quite unique um but yeah I think if you if you play all those instruments and you're drawing all those influences it's kind of like yeah I I listen to I just listened to a load of stuff growing up as well man I mean my dad used to listen to a lot of folk music but a lot a lot of I know my mum was more into sort of at a James Nina Simone all the soul stuff and a lot of African music as well my mum used to go to Ghana a lot and I think that was a massive part of it my parents before my dad left um when I was a kid like there was a lot of musical stuff just just going on and um in in the house and from all different cultures and stuff and I think that was a massive part of it and then when I became uh you know the rebellious little teenager that wants to break away from from all out that then I just I started falling in love with like drama drum and bass hip-hop and more of the electronic stuff and and then it all kind of melded into one thing I suppose yeah when you say hip-hop give an example of some of your favorite hip-hop artists I mean the first one the first ones are just an obvious one for any white rap artist um like I I fell in love with Eminem when I when I heard the Slim Shady LP when I was I think it was like nine or ten years old um because I'm a bit older than you like the first album I ever bought was uh Run DMC record um you know because I like words and stuff yeah but um no carry on no I was just going to say because that's a Rick Rubin produced record and there's some great guitar playing on there there's some stuff with Joe Perry from Aerosmith on the Walk This Way single which is what that's on that record and there's also like I think Rick Rubin himself playing on on actual the title track raising hell and it and that's the thing that got me is like oh my god listen to that guitar it was it was really just sleazy rock guitar stuff and that's that's what I got into you know but I can still bust a rhyme I'm sure you're aware I've I've wrapped I've had occasion too yeah man yeah man but yeah but no so I mean like yeah I mean same here like so so my I guess my introduction was was through Eminem and then to the to the horror of my parents blasting songs like Kim and stuff full volume as a 10 year old but I I think it was more the the songwriting approach was very influential with the stories most of the early records but then through that then then I found the second album I got was um was Dre 2001 and production of that the Simplicity and the production of that was I I took a lot of influence from that from my production I used Drey 2001 as a reference mix for my mixing for probably about a decade after that album was made it was just such a well-mixed album and um yeah but but then that led me then I got more into like Rage Against the Machine um more because because I because I always loved uh because I love I love the hip-hop so but I was still like really sort of things like new metal as well funnily enough I had Fred Durst message me which was a funny one because yeah yeah a lot I used to I love Limp Biscuit and Papa Roach and all that new metal System of a Down all of that stuff that was kind of my my thing growing up um yeah yeah that just but but then but then I went back and I did run the MC BC boys uh Wu-Tang you know like Method Man red man all of that stuff I just fell in love with yeah I think I think it's just really the approach to songwriting it's the stories man that I fell in love with from hip-hop there was because there's a lot more words condensed into it over song uh that's what I liked you could pack you could pack a lot more story in there um and that uh with a traditional song like if you're just I mean I've been in situations where I'm doing like um Pro songwriting gigs you know and and you're turning up and and you're writing for a specific artist and it's pop music and it's kind of like you end up just dealing in platitudes there's no way in a situation like that to actually write something that means anything and if you're writing a story it's going to be completely Abridged a lot of time in that world where where it's Pro songwriting you end up all they want to hear is like a verse A Chorus and the middle a or what they call the bridge because it's usually an American vernacular and um how are you supposed to tell a story in one verse one chorus one Bridge of a pop song I mean yeah it's always going to be a meaningless watery [ __ ] that's why I love those old folk songs you know the ones that don't add that it's like a ongoing and that's why because a lot of people I notice that within the comments were like oh it's like it's almost like bad music and and yeah I love the progression of those because they can go on for as long as they go on they they it ends when the story ends it doesn't have to fit a formula and you don't necessarily need to have any sort of refrain to to no you know I mean some of them obviously some of the best ones do but yeah it's another one of those situations where there's no rules and the story is the thing that determines I mean I drive people mad with a with an eight or nine minute rendition of uh American Pie and you always think it's over yeah yeah yeah yeah I sat through a very painful open mic night where somebody butchered that but it just kept going it might have been me actually no no it was it wasn't you but it just kept going you're like okay oh no no and also as well through the etiquette of open mic night you you have to have three songs each so by picking that it still only counts as one so it was just like oh no no there's more yeah that is that is one of the most contentious song people love the chorus but the rest of it is kind of like two or three verses would have done the gig you know that's that's that would have been fine but it is a bit long but that's kind of the charm of it as well um so one of the other questions we have here how do you stay so positive through all of your uh treatments and medications well what the thing is is people people see me when the when I choose to let them see me you know like that's the thing like like the windows and usually the moments that I choose to be seen are ones where I'm feeling slightly more upbeat there there are there are exceptions sometimes where I'll just just not and I'll open up a little bit but I think that's it like I I I'm a human being you know like I I uh while I I you know I try and find humor in my situation and I try and find the humor in a lot of things it's like that that scene in Life of Brian that always look on the bright side of life while you're about to be crucified um I I like it's I like that mentality but I I don't always live by it just because I'm I'm a person and and um it's just that when I'm in those really deep dark places it's not really a time I want to share myself in the public space so um yeah I guess my answer is is that I don't always I I I I I I don't always but um I try my best to see the light in the dark and and you get better it at it after say like a decade of illness you know it's a skill that I've refined or say if I've got a gig that's been booked and I can't change that and I'm having a bad day I've gotten a lot better at embodying the me that would be having a good day in that moment if I need to yeah yeah and then does that create a sort of a flood of symptoms afterwards so you can sort of hold it out there it's is different so there can be a crash but there can also be a a um a fake it till you make it sort of situation where you're just pretending to be on and then you come away feeling slightly better than you did when you when you started because you're forcing yourself to be within a certain mindset um that even when I'm feeling great there's a crash like I have a I have a limited window of energy compared to most normal people who haven't got immune autoimmune conditions so there's always a crash show but the most important for me really isn't the energy crash it's more about what my mental space is doing within that energy crash and sometimes I I go on stage or or I go into a recording session feeling like crap and I come away from it feeling a lot better sometimes I come away from it feeling a lot worse mentally but it it's really the luck of the draw in those situations yeah it's nice to have the work though isn't it you've got Mom mate amazing yeah I I don't feel like it I I'm really lucky to be doing what I do because I feel like um in other Industries say if I was working outside and that was my thing and I was passionate about I just there would be days where I just could not do that at all and if that's a stable source of income luckily like with what you and me do there's residual income and there's passive income because your songs are always out there for people to listen to and so it's something that can so I feel like I I got lucky by having this health condition and choosing this line of work because I feel like if it was something where it would just require my man hours on a day-to-day basis I'd be in a much more unlucky position also I'd have never been able to afford to come to Canada and do these things as well so I yeah I feel very fortunate to be in this position and I feel and my heart really goes out for the people that aren't in this position who have to rely on disability benefits to get through and um that's one one part of my purpose is hopefully raising enough awareness so that's less of a thing in the future you know can I ask you a question that isn't part of my prep sure you ever done the acting only only within the confines of music yeah yeah I reckon you're doing brilliant at it I reckon you'd be a great actor yeah it's something someone off for a role in not in a I'm trying to imagine what I would put how I would cast to hang on a second um I'd like to be I'd like to be a villain really yeah okay yeah because I think you could do you could totally do like um a villain in a period piece um I don't know like maybe first world war um someone who's just sort of um using the the trenches and all the that horrible stuff that was happening in the first world war to disguise a series of your own Grizzly murders okay interesting yeah we're on to a seed here we're into a seed it okay yeah so yeah so so it's interesting and also the more I've um The more I've lent into this world of I suppose there's not a cool word for it yet um because I haven't seen much else of it like with the Tails and stuff I suppose I suppose the closest thing I came to was like digital theater but that can come across it it's not it's it's it but it's not really it that's the thing it does sound like a home Cinema yeah and it sounds a bit wanky as well but just but the more I've LED towards that I mean a big dream of mine is I'd love to create like a musical series for for Netflix or for Amazon or something like that where it's it's music based but it's it's not really a musical because when you think of musical it can be a bit cringy sometimes it can be a little but I'd like to make something a bit darker um you know short format episodes that that have a dream of mine would to be able to get like artists who are popping off to be like Kendrick come and do this with Billy and we'll we'll do a and then you you have this three this episode that unveils a bit like tales of the unexpected or the hammer house of horror where it's just like a or you know all to a modern audience like a black mirror or or that sort of thing or love death and robots where it's just like things going wrong in song This film stylistic really really well that for me that would be to be able to be an orchestrator of something like that I almost feel more passionate about that than becoming a successful musician um but you know there's a lot of time and I also see I also see a longer shelf life or something like that because when you know by the time I hit 50 60 70 um to be able to be behind the camera and to be a director and something like that I I would absolutely love and keeping music is the foundation but being able to explore and create I love creating characters and songs I love creating stories so to be able to create a larger World um would be brilliant and I just feel like those those platforms like Netflix or something like that because they are a bit more daring and that like that love death and robots I don't know if ever saw that but it was that short format animation thing to be able to be yeah I just think that would be brilliant I'd absolutely love that and that that's almost kind of what I'm slowly edging and trying to work my way towards whilst doing the music thing in the time being yeah I think it's in your future I hope so okay this question we've sort of covered but I'll ask it anyway How does writing such Roar and emotionally vulnerable lyrics leave you feeling um is it cathartic or just more exhausting um and do you ever feel like you've uh overshared or exposed too much of that in a life no I never felt like I've oversh I'm I'm a pretty open book to be honest with with anything um but I so I never feel like I've overshared I I think there are moments in song I love it when I'm writing a song and I cry like during the process because I'm like [ __ ] brilliant I just cried then that means it's good like I love being a I feel like if I can't move myself I can't really move anybody else so so for me barometer for for when you know you've hit something that's worth yeah for me it's a really good because yeah I think I think so I don't I'm not exclusively trying to make myself cry every song all right again that'll be exhausting but but when I'm writing something that is more in that sort of more heavy emotional place um yeah I think it's partly that and it's also partly sometimes you just know you probably relate to this sometimes you've written something and you're just like [ __ ] hell yeah and sometimes it's just like you've picked out of The Ether like you were just like a conduit you were a you were uh you were the thing in the middle of the idea and the paper I actually I mean I don't go in for a lot of hippie stuff but I do feel like there are some songs that are in The Ether and then like holding your guitar and trying to write a song is basically like a net and you're sitting beside the Riverbanks and then the songs are like butterfly and if you're not holding in there you've got absolutely no chance of of catching them so I do I do feel like that with some stuff but but I also think it's possible to grind out a song 100 something yeah yeah yeah so so I think I think that there's there's definitely times where you [ __ ] grind and grind and it's not working and then sudden or sudden it comes together and it's and it's you've done so many like yeah sick but in those moments where I really do feel in the flow I do feel like I'm like I get this gut feeling that like and I've I've been right pretty much 90 of the time when I go this song before it's out I'll go this song will be received really well and this song will do moderately well and this song and usually it's like it's pretty spot on I don't think I really anticipated quite to what extent it happened with higher end I knew that when I released it it was probably the best thing I'd done so far in in terms of best in terms of how it would be received but I was still I didn't expect it to do anywhere nearly as well as it did do in terms of opening so many doors and even sitting and chatting to put someone like yourself and amazing opportunities have come through and followed it um I didn't really expect that but there was still a gut feeling that like okay something about this is right a numb but how I'm just did you feel that though when you're actually writing it or was it kind of when you no it's when it is when it all comes together when you're writing when I'm writing it I try not to think too much about the end result because because otherwise I feel like if I'm starting to resist that Temptation yeah but it's more that there have been some moments where during a song I get really excited and go [ __ ] I've stumbled across a good idea here I got that when I I don't know if you've heard it but there was this money game part two verse about uh selling uh showers and relating that to economic expansion and when I was when I fell across that idea and when I was writing that song I was like this is really [ __ ] good idea and um when I rolled with it and and finished it it did end up doing really well so um there are definitely moments like that but I've been gone on a bit of a tangent I haven't really answered the question I I think I'm left I I don't really know how I'm left feeling it depends on the song I think sometimes I'm left just happy and sometimes I'm left kind of just like a little bit [ __ ] yeah so because you're such a self-contained artist and when you so when you finish the song um I mean it's for me it's like um we do it we do a song like with the band and it's a collaborative thing there's some bits that I'm not sure about you know and I have to sort of Bend to the will of my collaborators to a degree that's kind of the nature of it and sometimes it can be like one of those things where there's too many compromises and it's all you know doesn't really mean anything to you anymore and other times you do something and you think this is [ __ ] great amazing and then you play it to somebody and like it's not even their reaction it's more the way you feel when you play it to somebody you know it's like you stop find yourself shrinking it's like actually this isn't what I thought it was yeah oh mate I've had those I've had those moments and I also had um and it's and it's funny because it's one person's opinion but it can really alter how you feel about that song and I I had that um I had that with my so so my my old old manager I won't name names but I play I played in this new album that's that's slowly being drip released at the moment and they were just like yeah not really that good I was just like oh and then I was like yes and every and and then for a while Ever every they were just like you know you could do a lot better it's not just not anywhere near your best stuff and and every conversation that I whenever I place people stuff I'd be like oh yeah I mean it's not it's all right I mean I wasn't really trying you know but but these are some of these songs that I've done you know I mean like it stuck on me so much um and and it's funny those songs are now doing really well and I I guess I've changed how I feel about them but it yeah it is funny how like one person's opinion can really transform your relationship with something that you were really originally very proud of yeah I mean I find it's kind of like the way the person I'm playing it to for the first time reacts is irrelevant to me but it's how I feel when I'm playing it if you know what I mean like if I find bits in it that are excruciating there's kind of like ah this is this is not ready or this isn't this needs to go into I understand I could be pretty happy with my stuff like you are you are you like um 100 100 I'll do and redo and redo and redo things so so like I um and also with these performances as well um I tend to um the amount of preparation work I put because a lot of people are like oh just the natural but I put in so much preparation work into down to strike me as a really hard working person yeah down down to the facial expression as the hand Expressions how I want to convey a certain because I'm also directing these videos as well so down to where the camera should be on me down to where where it goes so so that there's but then when it comes to recording process it's the same thing like if even if the emotion of like three second line is wrong I'll have to do it 50 times if that's how long it takes to get that one line right um I've got a lot of friends in the music world who will just be like I have to do it in one or three or two or three takes otherwise there's no point and they'll just be like whereas I'm definitely the opposite I'm very much like I like to be very forensic with it and just make sure that each line in a which is funny because a lot of the time then I'll do a live performance and people end up preferring this live performance that isn't forensically looked at and I'll be like the ones the one that you forensically kind of build in the studio situation where every line is gonna be perfect to you know just to allow you to move on that's only the starting point for a song isn't it it evolves when you when you find ways to do it live and you know like I hardly ever listen to our first record it's been it's been 20 years now I've been obliged to listen to it more recently because we're doing a re-release and I'm not plugging it by the way that's not what I'm doing here but it's only 9.99 in jobs coming to All Good Records the um yeah no it's just I was just saying like but I know that having played those songs constantly for the last 20 years in various different live scenarios they've completely changed and the way I'm singing them changes and the stuff I'm playing changes and they just evolve naturally um but in the first how much how much do you how much do you hate playing your most requested songs or do you still love it do you still find a way to change it in such a way that brings you a lot of joy um I'll play it I'll play I Believe In Thing Called Love Faithfully that's [ __ ] brilliant man that's nice to hear yeah I love it yeah that's wicked you know yeah really proud of that yeah you know it's it's uh and afforded me the opportunity to buy this David Hasselhoff cardboard of course and that's the dream really but to have to have David's my Spotify royalties this yeah David crotch just looming in the side of the shot next to my head where I always wanted it to be yeah of course yeah nice thanks David oh sorry oh so funnily enough I went to I went to a uh when I was when I was a teenager I went to this um production of hook in Bristol and um they had the secret guest and it was it was David Hasselhoff was hook that's a really great bit of casting you put a mustache on David Hasselhoff and he looks like his evil twin brother from that episode of Knight Rider when it was basically David Hassell doing some naughty stuff but in a similar leather jacket he had it he wore it with a more of a sort of um more of a rebellious Persona yeah yeah you know what a good show man I don't believe it was the same actually put mustache on him and he's just really evil yeah yeah I actually did a thing like my brother bought me uh sorry man this is I shouldn't be wasting this interview with it but my brother bought me a David Hasselhoff t-shirt for my birthday and I decided to wear it all the time and it was starting to piss him off and I thought okay I'm gonna wear this for a hundred days straight never wash it you know so I made it 100 days of Hoth and I did a Instagram post every day of me wearing this the same David Hasselhoff t-shirt and then I was trying to get David Hasselhoff involved I kept writing to him and saying hey David how about a picture of me and you together wearing the half two shirt you know for the finale and he just flatly ignored me throughout the whole thing which is his prerogative and I totally respect that's one of those things I was saying earlier about if a celebrity is rude you kind of respect them more I almost I almost loved him more for it of course I was disappointed and in the end I had to use Photoshop to um simulate the moment that he might have stood next to me and I made it so he was wearing a Justin Hawkins t-shirt I was wearing a David Hasselhoff t-shirt and I think one of us was standing on the other one's foot but if you on closer inspection it wasn't the best bit of photoshopping because my my both of us had the same legs which were my legs that's a long story I'm sorry about that yeah yeah no no I think photoshop's always better I love that song yeah photoshop's always better when it's a bit botched to be honest that's true isn't it [Music] okay okay sorry I don't know how much more time you've got but um there's a few more questions yeah I've got about 20 minutes all right nice so once you become very popular with some people you naturally will attract those who will try to put you down oh how do you handle criticism or perhaps we might want to talk about haters have you got any haters oh of course I do yeah I feel like I feel like anybody who puts himself in the public sphere will get taped um most of mine comes from Tick Tock uh because on YouTube it's it's all it's all pretty much like positive but I suppose it's because people finding out the channel um I know I often wonder as well if it's something to do with the fact that it's short form content and my work is kind of like meant to be experienced everything's intentional you know in a nine minute song it's not just like you can drop somebody into a moment and be like and feel the same thing you just just wouldn't but um yeah I think I think how do I deal with it it's like it's just um I think it's just the desensitization it's like the first time you read something it will just stick with you because humans don't like criticism like I remember the first time somebody like when blind eyed the first song we did went viral and people will be like what a [ __ ] haircut or something like that and and you'd read it and you just be like oh no I need to go to the barber and like but like you really take it on board and you really take it apart but I feel like the more and more it happens you just really become desensitized to it so you can look at one of those things and it just it just bounces off for you like it it's really not um you could even have you know I've even had seen these reaction videos where someone absolutely tears apart a song because they go I'm gonna be the one that hates this and I I you know it's it's just this or that and then they're trying to make a name for themselves Maybe not maybe they genuinely hate it and that's okay but but like the I think I think you just because you're subjected to so many opinions one thing that a few years ago I was like I remember saying was like if I if I could feel the way about positive comments that I do about negative comments I'll be on top of the world I'll be skipping down the street because when those positive comments come in you don't really They Don't Really sink in as much as the negative ones it's like we're looking I don't know man that's the thing if you had the same vision maybe is it because you and I hate ourselves maybe it's because we are full of self-loathing yeah yeah it may be but it's it's yeah it's strange but I think I think it's just really desensitization and and I also think that if you're uh if your work is accepted by absolutely everybody then it's probably quite beige like probably Gary Barlow in that instance oh well yeah but but then but then not I don't I don't think it's possible because because you're saying that there's almost like a little bit of a negative sense because saying Gary Barlow also do I mean like like there'll be some people that think it's too applicable to the masses and they won't like it so I think it's just [ __ ] impossible and that's good like it should be there should be some people who don't [ __ ] like it because everybody lives a very different Walk of Life and there's no way of creating something that is going to relate to every single person I feel I feel like it's physically impossible sorry to interrupt you earlier on you said something about hyper polarization and how that's a thing that affects all culture and probably all people and Society societal stuff isn't it but um yeah in a way as an artist what you're looking to do is polarize isn't it you don't want anybody to just think that it's okay you know yeah you want people to hate it actually don't you yeah and yeah and if it rubs I think I think the criticism that I get isn't really people being uh the controversy I like if someone's being that that for me is is great but it's when it's a criticism that it's just like this is [ __ ] cringy and rubbish or this person it's what those things and I'm like [ __ ] how am I presenting it's those it's those criticisms that I think stick with me but I think it's when when it's like when there's so much of it you you it's like anything like it's like like if somebody's sits there like giving you a dead arm for a while your arm's gonna go numb after a while and you're just gonna yeah it's just gonna be slight slightly irritating but I don't know mum I don't know you're punching back or you're punching back yeah sometimes sometimes I've done that sometimes I've just tried to leave like uh it's this is the funniest one like sometimes I'll leave like you know like they'll say something and I'll and I'll try and say something witty and that's equally offensive back to them um sometimes it's full of a lot of malice because I'm so enraged by what they've said that I'm like I'm gonna [ __ ] look at their profile I'm gonna tear this [ __ ] down and I and I come in with pure Vengeance and rage but um but then they say then they say you shouldn't be so sensitive and react to somebody on the internet and I'm like because that's that's usually the reply they're like oh oh you're so sensitive that you're saying something back it's like [ __ ] right I am mate if you're gonna come out here like of course of course I am but yeah it's so funny that that's the [ __ ] like yeah you're not you're not allowed to retell it otherwise that means your hands are I'll cut it off yeah I'll come at you brother I always say off your [ __ ] off I will come for you with vengeance but no yeah I think I think you just you just get you just get numb to it you just get into it yeah yeah yeah yeah you can't go around being Vengeance all the time no of course I know I don't oh it's only it's only the select ones it's that every night if someone's there every night I've done it myself friend you know I I've done it myself I know how it feels it's it's a beautiful feeling yeah and then you just think oh why did I do that ah and then again you're too sensitive it's like yeah but I always I always I always do it which I always do it with humor though I'm not just just nasty I'll I'll always try and do it in a way that's like poking fun of somebody and in a way that would be like a Heckler and a comedian but but um yeah I still I still sometimes find a little bit of pleasure in it yeah good for you man you deserve it um here's a question and we can do a real quick answer on this recently you've been leaning more towards rap music and Hip-Hop uh will you bring out a more rock inspired song yeah yeah 100 I I feel like like it's just uh what comes out comes out so usually my albums before or the bodies of work that I made before this were quite eclectic and this album was very hip-hop focused which is why there's been a lot of Hip-Hop Hip-Hop Hip-Hop at the moment and then the album that I I did that intentionally because I was like you know what I um I hip-hop was such a huge influence for me and it'll be really nice to almost be have it's more I guess it's a bit of an ego thing it's more like be accepted within the hip-hop Community for my skills as a hip-hop artist and that started happening now you know I've had some brilliant people have I respected reaching out being like this is a sick record and and I love your flow and stuff on this and that feels really good to me and um because I I did actually before that really more come from a place of rock inspired singing sort of place and um so what I really wanted to do was was make that album and it feels like it's achieving the purpose in which I intended which is just to really hopefully be a credible hip-hop record um and then after this one I'm doing the opposite and I'm going down the lane of uh of a more I I put this out there but I'm going to go down the route of a more um just song based inspired record I've written I I've gotten got nearly all the songs written for it now but it's it's really um it's sort of very song melodic inspired records that that come from a lot of my favorite bands and like like red chili peppers the police the early blur stuff like a lot of the Brit pop scene um uh and then going back even further um and and you know Jeff Buckley whoever's lots of Soul stuff but but there's just a lot of influences crammed in there because I I really wanted to make a Timeless record and and so that that's what's coming next and obviously dotted around that is a lot more of my more conceptual music pieces but they always they always sit by themselves they never really belong on albums because I feel like they just occupy their own space but yeah so the next album will be will be exactly that and I know a lot of people one of the criticisms that I get that isn't really a criticism is it's a backhanded compliment is a lot of people say oh I miss when you sing I miss when you play guitar I miss when you do more of this and um and I do too to be honest like and that's why but I just really wanted to hone in on this produce beats hip-hop record because it was just for me this is what something I really wanted to do and then the next the next thing will be a huge step away from that and I love the freedom of being able to do that as well and and I guess that's one of the luxuries of staying independent is there's not a case of too many cooks to a baller broth where they go this hip-hop album is a great success when's the next hip-hop album coming so it's nice to be able to have the freedom to then go okay I've done this and now I'm gonna do this and yeah it really is I think what people are investing in when they buy your record or you know follow you for any part of your journey is is it's that it's you as a creative entity no matter what's going on it's really exciting all that stuff you know it's pretty amazing um you're so prolific yeah yeah you must be like a Diane Warren level prolific songwriter aren't you how many songs a month do you think you're right oh it totally depends on the month mate like I haven't actually written a huge amount since I've been here in Calgary but I've been really going through the motions I'm in clinic like every day um with these drips and the new medication that I've gone on is I guess stifled it a little bit but luckily they're not medications I'm on for life but um it really it really depends sometimes I can be writing just churning them out just just just and write a couple of songs a day and but sometimes it's um it's not that my hard drive is a massive um Vault full of songs there's loads of stuff on there from the years when I was sick there's just so many ideas there that um but for me it's just um uh it's just very important part of what makes me me is is being able to be creative it's it's um so it's never really I've never really look at it in any other way other than just it's almost like I know this sounds pretty wanky but I feel like I need to do it yeah yeah yeah yeah that comes across you're inspiring to all of us I think it's brilliant stuff um so anyway thanks a lot for today I think this has been so much fun to get to know you a little bit and really interesting stuff as well um you want to sing my theme tune with me you don't have to there's really um yeah show me well we can do a dueling banjos yeah which Killian I know your guitar's not getting picked up at all so this is going to be impossible for me I'm gonna have to look at your fingers still no no it's like blocking out all right I'll just sing I'll just sing with you just in Hawkins right again Justin Hawkins right again with friends run wow I can see uh like a real crooners album kind of big band stuff oh yeah we need to do that 100 that's the next thing yeah well thanks for listening everybody don't forget to like subscribe hit the Bell notifications watch one of these two videos thanks Ren brilliant mate thanks so much for watching um please let's continue the conversation in the comments section tell me which part of this interview you enjoyed the most um if you want to listen to it as an audio podcast it's available on Spotify Apple podcasts and well all of the other ones as well see you next week for another long form episode of Justin Hawkins Rides Again in the meantime make sure to check out Ren's uh YouTube channel um I'll put a link to it in the description here um he's got some brilliant videos out there you're gonna love him and anyway until then I'll see you cats on the ice

Channel: Justin Hawkins Rides Again

Views: 512,942

Keywords: justinhawkins, justin hawkins, justin hawkins interview, the darkness, the darkness music, justin hawkins music, justin hawkins the darkness, justin hawkins rides again, ren, hi ren, ren music, ren songs, ren playlist, ren interview, justin hawkins ren, justin hawkins podcast, podcast, music podcast, ren podcast, jenny's tale, violet's tale, music industry, songwriting, new music, music news, music business, ren reaction, hi ren reaction, lyme's disease, chronic illness

Id: EcU4iNM6hNQ

Length: 109min 50sec (6590 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023