PipemanRadio Interviews Jake of Citizen Soldier at Welcome to Rockville 2024

0:04 Hey, you have done too. That's true for see Wow, for young will Why Up America, It's time for the Adventures of Pipeman on W four C why dot com wis pompis is number one internet radio station. Here's your host, the White Man. Worst times had off. Now the home feels hollow. Try to run the A team. It's til feels like, come on, it's fun. Where will he luck Bottom? Somebody that will be no bad us? And I'm getting close to school inside not turn out of todders. Where will here rock Bottles? It is the pipe Man here on the Avengers of Pipe Man W four C Y Radio at Welcome to Rockville, and I'm here with Jake from Citizen Soldier. Nice. I want to start off right off the bat is. I loved the story behind you and this music project. Can you tell us what happened from the very beginning to start this? Yeah, man, I think I think it resonates with people because I don't care about being famous and that nice Like people can hear that and

1:34 think it sounds cliche or roll their eyes, but it's the honest truth. I I eight years ago, I was in a psychiatric hospital and really struggling to define reasons to continue on with life. And I ended up deciding that I wanted to do a four song EP, just a musical project, as just a way to kind of process what I went through and you know, get that out into the world and move on with my life. That was really the plan, you know, was to move forward and get back to my normal job and be done. And we put out the songs, and you know, the songs talked about suicide prevention and struggles with depression and anxiety and grief, and the response to them was so overwhelmingly positive that we're just like, I guess we gotta play one show and we'll put out maybe one more record, a full record, And then I just got kind of sucked into it. And you know, eight years later, I'm a practicing trauma therapist. I went to grad school and finished up my degree, and so now it's like I'm on the other side of it, you know, and I'm getting to see clients and therapy and play these festivals. And we just were finishing our sold out headlining tour tomorrow, which is unreal. We're doing like six hundred to twelve hundred cap rooms. It's been wild. It's been so cool. I love hearing that story because and that's why I wanted to bring it up, because I think it Number one, it gives hope to anybody, like you never know, sometimes the best things in your life come from the darkest places that you get to, you know. And then the other thing is it is Mental Health Awareness month, right, and I've been

3:07 talking about all month on my live show that music is the best therapy in my opinion. Okay, for you as the artist, it's cathartic to you know, get everything out in a song. And for us the listener, we can relate to it or put our own meaning to it, and it helps us. It helps us when we go to places like Welcome to rock Pille, where we can escape from everything in the world, even for just a little while in some friends, family and music. Yeah. Man, it's cool and it's sad. It's cool because it's fun to hang out with people and enjoy this music. But it's also like, the more I do this, the more I'm like, this is evidence of how much people are hurting, Like they need this so badly. You know, people feel so trapped by their lives at times, you know, Inflation's crazy everything's expensive.

3:57 People are struggling to just get by, and so it's like, you're right, this is like an escape. It's like they get to live a different life for a day, right, And I think music provides that on like a mini level every day, whether it's like screaming a song in the car on the way home or listening to something when you're having a rough day. I think, you know, music does that for a lot of people. Yeah, And I feel like when we had that whole lockdown period and no live music, I think that's one of the big reasons because we had no live music that people were angry, depressed, and all this stuff. Like, of course, the lockdown in and of itself, but then you combine no outlet and so you as a therapist, now, how do you view that statement of what I just said. I think that you know, something very common that I see in therapy and people shut down. First thing I'll say is let's get out of here. Let's walk around the building a few times. You know, it's so simple, and people roll their eyes and get frustrated with simple solutions, right, But you know, it's amazing how it's just like change of environment, getting out of that room. Letting your brain see that there's more to life than the four walls you're you're trapped in.

5:04 It can be pretty therapeutic. And I think for people to be locked inside and connecting with a screen and getting attached to that more than real human beings is really problematic. I think that that's why you're seeing such a you know, surge of people flocking to shows right now, is because they missed that real connection so much. And you know, you see it with youth. I see it as a as a clinician. You know, rates of suicide and self harm and anxiety are off the charts for young people. Yeah, because they don't know how to connect anymore. They're so afraid, and you know they're not happy isolated, but there's comfort in that. You know, there's comfort and they feel safe in that isolation. And so you know, getting kids outside, getting people to go do things with each other and connect and get that sunlight is so important. Yeah, no doubt, and a lot of people, you know, I need help, but they don't really have an example to follow. So my question to you is what happened when you were in that hospital that you think started the turnaround of your life.

6:15 I can't pretend like that moment a switch flipped. I tell my fans ask about this, and I'm like, it's that change is still happening. It's still a work in progress. It's so gradual. I wasn't like I'm gonna take this message and go be a rock star, Like it'd be so insincere and corny if that were the case, right. I still struggle to believe that I deserve to be here and that this is real, you know, because of the imposter syndrome and in my own personal struggles with depression. But I think that it's little moments along the way that encourage you to keep going. And I think that's like the most important thing I can do with people who are struggling. Like bands talk about depression and mental illness, but I think there's a need in the scene for professionals to get feedback on places and processes to actually get help that's evidence based and professional. Right. So I tell fans like, hey, if you're looking for a therapist, here's some things that I suggest, and here are some pitfalls I want to encourage you to avoid, because guess what you're going to see A crappy one you might see three to five crappy ones before you find a good one. Here's how you handle that discouragement. Here's how you make sure you stay resilient because so many people will try to see one bad experience, quit they're done, and never do it. Yeah, and never do it again. But it took me like seven to eight therapists to find a good fit for me, And so I think the education on how to be an effective therapy client, how to fire your therapist, like what criteria you should look for, Like those things are so important because therapy works. People just get so discouraged with

7:45 the system. It's like somebody taking the first two pills of an antibiotic in quitting. Everyone will be sick and no one will get better. Right. It requires a lot of tenacity and staying engaged. And you know, it's like that graphic you see of that miner who's digging and he gets tired and turns around and the gold is like an inch away. Yeah, you know, it's like you don't want to be that person, right, And so's that's my perspective. I'massionate about that. It's so funny because I talk about that. What you just explain all the time. That's all. Yeah, absolutely, man, because I run multiple radio stations of the whole Crapla shows, and I tell people, man, you got to stay long enough to make it to a finish line. And I use that e Zack cartoon as an example of what happens when you stop short of the finish. I love that graphic, right, It's great because it's just like, it has nothing to do with talent or ability. It's just staying, like, keep showing up those That's my favorite thing to say is show up, show up, show up. And you know it's the Thomas Edison thing. It's like, Okay, I just figured out one more way to not do this. I'm learning more about what I don't like in a therapist. And when you find someone you like, you know, you become such a valuable asset to the world in so many ways because you're educating your friends and family on it, because you're like so excited that you finally found something that works, and you're encouraging other people. And the culture around mental health is shifting and it's not just like, oh, you had a bad experience with therapy. Oh okay, I'm sorry. I never go back again. It's like, no, you know, we need to encourage people to be resilient and you know, not take one failure as a you know, I'm just gonna throw in the talent quit. Yeah, no doubt. And as a therapist, do you find that your client because you went through you went through what you went through,

9:20 maybe listen to you a little more because you've walked in their shoes, maybe in a similar way, not the same way. Maybe I try to have two ears in one mouth. Yeah. I think therapists, A lot of therapists I work with, I there are so many therapists that are more informed in the different modalities and like textbook wise, they mop the floor with me, right, that stuff matters, and I try to be competent when it comes to those things. But I think my strength is I don't try to jump over to the fix it portion too quickly. A lot of therapists go there so fast because it's about them. It's about I need to fix this client so I can feel better about myself as a therapist and feel like I'm doing the good work. My approach is I need four to six sessions of just like being the most curious person in the world about this person, I want to learn everything about them. Like when people see that you want to know everything about them and the details of their life matters, and you're asking follow up questions to deepen your understanding, Like you're probably going to be the first person who's ever done that for that person. Because we go to the grocery store, we say, hey, how are you, and we just want to hear good, okay, good see ya bye. Right, you don't want to hear well, actually, I'm struggling. My husband's suicidal.

10:28 I'm struggling with self harm. It's like, no, I just want to get my corn flakes. Leave me alone, right, I'm just gonna move on with my day. So people don't want to hear the ugly truth. So when you show a lot of interest in their ugly truth, they their trust is just like locked in and the you're the only one probably yeah, oh absolutely. And then once you're there, then you can start taking some risks and pushing some buttons and challenging them. Well, they're not going to trust you till that point anyway, so they may not implement what could be very helpful actions because they're not convinced that it's gonna help them one hundred percent. So you wrote a song while you were in the psychiatric hospital, right was the lyrics? Yeah? So you know what I think is cool about that is I think that's probably the most open and vulnerable you can ever be to write a song. And another example of that that I think of right off the bat. One song that I think is my favorite lyrics of all time that I totally relate to in a lot of ways was can is can You Feel My Heart? Which Ali wrote in rehab and you know, and you know that song, you know this, you know, and it's like one line in there I think is my favorite lyric ever in history because it's so powerful, and that is I can't drown my demons. They know how to swim, right, And I think that is so profound. I don't think everybody gets it the way I get it, but I get it.

12:01 What's your opinion on stuff like that? I mean, I can tell you my impression to that. When I hear that, that sounds like a cry for help from someone who feels like they have tried everything. Mm hm. And you know, like if it were easy to change this, I would have done it by now. You know, you look at me and say that I need to step out of this or change or get myself help, you know, And you don't know how many different things I've tried. You know. It's looking at your challenges and your problems and feeling like it's an impossible hurdle that you'll never be able to get over. That's what I hear. I hear that, you know, just this surrender to the idea that I feel completely overwhelmed by the task of you know, trying to approach and change. This as a great perspective on it. And it's so true too. And the thing is, I think a lot of people don't understand.

12:52 I'm glad you brought that and that part up, because when you're somebody that's not going through what they're going through and you're like telling them, like, just take it off, just do this, just do that, you know, don't you think they want to do that? They want to do that. It's like people think that these people don't want to get better and that they don't try anything. Yeah, that's something that's super problematic, is you see a lot of that compassion fatigue is real, and I think people in that place, instead of getting themselves help lash out and say things like you like being sick, you like being depressed, you're addicted to and like that happens. Like some people have maladaptive coping skills and they get attached to them, right, But you're not the person to tell them that. Maybe a mental health professional that's been working with someone for months and months and months can be like, hey, I notice you have a habit of doing this.

13:45 What's the payoff? It's not a bad character traite, It doesn't say anything about you, but like, you know, we all have bad habits because there's a payoff. Yeah, we use drugs. We turn to addictions because they give us comfort that we can't find anywhere else. So, you know, being being open and honest about that is hard. But you know, I think people like being right and they like thinking they have the answer, and so we overstep and tell people, you know, things that maybe it's not our place to make those statements because they're big statements and they can do a lot of harm. Yeah, totally. So how do people reach out to you? On socials? On the We're everywhere man? The question is how can they escape us? We're on we have a huge TikTok following almost a million followers on TikTok, a million months with listeners on Spotify.

14:28 We got Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. We're very into reels and short form content. We like to tease a lot of songs and get feedback on ideas, so we're everywhere citizen Soldier. You can search it anywhere. You can see my ugly bald mug, and you're good to go. What's your favorite TikTok you've done. I did a TikTok that was about the first producer we worked with telling me that I was too fat to make it in rock and Wow. How the songs called thank you for Hating Me, And it's just about how the people who you know make you feel worthless can really become fuel and motivate you into awesome, awesome things. So I love that that went viral. We got like three million hits on it. It's our biggest song. It's it's awesome. I love that. One of the things I love about it is Okay, Mike Tyson, He's gonna be fighting here shortly. Yeah, it's been a lot of promo, but he keeps being real lately and he's talking about stuff exactly like that, Like he talks about fear like I've always done, but he's being very vocal about that. He has always been extremely fearful going into a fight, and Customatto taught him to use that fear to knock people out instead of to get instead of getting knocked out, and that's why he would go in so brutal like that, because that was the fear fueling him, not because he was some brutal person.

15:45 So I love that you said that. That's great, And is there anything else you want to tell people about your music or anything else that we haven't covered already. No, if you're passionate about mental health or you feel like you you just need a new band in your life. It is unique and different and not like something you've heard before, go give us a shot. I think we have that. We're kind of weird. We're like the red headed step child of active rock. You know, we're still trying to prove that we belong. But go check it out and let us know what you think. Well, you definitely belong and I love the concept of everything you're all about. And thank god we got people like you and music. Thank you, man, I appreciate that, and my guys, thank you for being here and welcome to Rockville, and thank you for being on the Adventures of pipe Man. Thanks, thank you for listening to the Adventures of pipe Man. I'm W for CUI Radio.