How do you cope with “post tour blues” as we like to call it, is it even a thing you experience?‍

I love talking about this. I have a theory that post tour depression is actually just our brain's response to the drastic difference in stimuli that we experience after we get home from being on the road, and that you can keep yourself relatively sane by keeping yourself pretty busy for the first few days of getting home, and then slowly tapering off as you adjust to being back home. When you're on tour there is ALWAYS something going on, at the very least you're usually in a loud van with one of your bandmates snoring, maybe music playing, etc. When you get home, you're suddenly in a quiet space and nothing is being asked of you, and our brain's don't know how to respond to such a drastic difference.

Self care secrets plz. Name them. ‍

Making sure you're taking time to do things that make you feel good! Whether it's aesthetically, emotionally, physically. I always bring a face mask on tour for when my skin feels extra icky (my fave is the Inisfre volcano clay one!), try to stretch daily, go on little solo walks when I have the chance, and journal about the feelings I experience.

Do you feel like there is financial, and emotional sustainability and stability in being a touring musician? Or do you have an alternative plan down the road?

‍Honestly... not entirely, at least not until you hit a certain level and are being paid enough and are being afforded enough resources. Touring before any of those things is so so hard. At the beginning, we had no money for hotels, never had green rooms, could barely afford to feed ourselves, and were frequently put into weird and uncomfortable situations. As we've grown, it's definitely gotten easier, but there' always been a feeling of not being able to continue doing this if we don't continue to see an upward trajectory. I feel really grateful that we've seen that, and it's been really wild to experience how much easier touring is when you're afforded downtime, reliably comfortable lodging, and higher quality meals. As for Thank You, I'm Sorry, I think we know that if we don't continue to see those upward changes, someday we won't be able to keep doing this. For now though, every tour we do is better than the last and we feel better and more able to do what we're doing. It's really been incredible to experience.‍

Is there any financial advice you would give to your younger self or bands just starting out?

I would so highly recommend storing away as much money as you can toward the beginning and (after getting music recorded and released) REALLY invest in your merch. For most bands, merch is how you make most of your money on the road. Think about your band's demographic and what kind of designs they'd realistically like to wear, invest in high quality designs and get as high quality soft goods as you can. We frequently have people come out to shows who don't know our music but love our merch and want to buy something just because it looks nice. My other piece of advice is to get a credit card with a hotel rewards program as soon as possible. Then you can put those charges you have to pay anyway like merch orders, gas, etc onto a card and pay it off, and then use the points toward free hotels. Seriously a game changer, I wish I had done this sooner.

Why do you choose this life? What do you get out of it?‍

This is going to sound stupid but I genuinely feel like this life chose me. I cannot imagine my life without music, or touring, or any of it. I will start feeling absolutely awful about my life if I haven't done something music related in awhile, whether it's writing, or playing a show, or touring, and without fail it's remedied by doing one of those things. I mean awful in the vaguest of ways too, just generally bad and depressed and with a lack of purpose. Then I write a little song and I remember I can't not have this in my life. So, I guess I get a sense of purpose out of it lol. ‍

How can we as a society make the music industry better?‍

Going to do my best to not make this a rant about capitalism but... I would definitely say the current state of the industry is just a symptom of that larger problem. Without attacking and deconstructing our consumerism, the way we value labor, the way we value art, how we perceive the inherent needs of every single human, I think the industry will always suffer. I think rather than focusing on just the music industry, we should begin by focusing that into society as a whole.

‍What does “home” mean to you as someone who frequently is traveling?

‍Home has really become this center of balance for me. Pre-pandemic as I started hitting the road and traveling for music, I really disliked my life at home. Touring was always an exciting opportunity to escape an awful job at Starbucks, a roommate I didn't get along with, and a general feeling of having no clue what I was doing with my life. During the pandemic, myself and most musicians were forced to reckon with their home lives and work to build something at home that is more sustainable long term, or provides them a back up plan. I personally doubled down on building hobbies outside of music, working toward a career that felt okay enough to do every day, entering a long term relationship, and really intentionally carving my social bubble. Now, home feels like my safe space and a place where I can recharge myself to make touring and the creative parts of music happen. ‍

What’s a tour memory that was bad in the moment, but you can laugh about now? ‍

Two years ago we went on a 3 and a half week long DIY tour. In the first week, my partner's mom was diagnosed with cancer (she is okay and cancer free now!) and then two days later I woke up covered in fleas from the person whose house we were staying at. My mental health was awful the whole tour and I was struggling to eat, sleep, etc and the shows were SO bad. So many weird venues filled with weird dudes. I truly did not know how we were going to make it through. Somehow we did it though, and that tour gets referenced by each other all the time now. ‍

How do you deal with writer's block or creative slumps?‍

I've been experiencing more slumps in the last 2 years than ever before. HOWEVER every single time I come out of one, I write songs that I genuinely feel show so much growth from the last songs I wrote. When experiencing these blocks I really try to allow myself to get through the slump without getting too hard on myself, I'll try to expose myself to new artists or genres, and accept that I will write new music when my brain decides it is time.