NATE BERGMAN - LIONIZE

"I think it's probably way more important in your limited number of hours on the planet to have fun than it is to be comfortable." Nate Bergman, guitarist, singer for Lionize

PREVIEW:

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ABOUT NATE BERGMAN AND LIONIZE:

Nate Bergman from the rock band Lionize joins the podcast for episode 117. Nate talks about the band's humble beginnings and how they became friends and tourmates with Clutch. Lessons for both being in a band and for life are learned on tour from many bands they have shared the stage with, leading Nate to be thankful for the band's continued success. Plus we talk about the current state of rock and roll music and details about the new record from Lionize featuring Jean-Paul Gaster from Clutch on drums.

TRANSCRIPT:

Jeff: I've been so excited to talk to you because I think we're finally seeing rock and roll come back into the conversation, the musical conversation, and I just love your band.

Nate Bergman: Thank you.

Jeff: I really think that you guys have such a rock and roll aesthetic to it, but if you just do a normal Google search of Lionize on the internet, there's lots of different people talking about lots of different things that you guys play. And I always like asking the musician to start off with like how would you quantify your sound?

Jeff: Because rock and roll is such a broad idea.

Nate Bergman: Yeah, we get asked this question a lot, and every time I go to think about it, it changes.

Jeff: Well, of course.

Nate Bergman: We're a rock band. I think we're a rock and roll band. But I always feel like we've been probably ... we probably should be more conservative. We're never really afraid to experiment or delve into a thing.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Nate Bergman: And I think for us we grew up. If you listen to Thin Lizzy or Deep Purple or The Police, there's all sorts of other stuff happening under it. Zeppelin.

Jeff: Totally. Totally.

Nate Bergman: Black Sabbath.

Jeff: Yup.

Nate Bergman: All of our favorite bands. Parliament. They're mixing stuff in, and you think well Sabbath, that's a heavy metal band, and that's fine. But Bill Ward is basically a jazz drummer.

Jeff: Right.

Nate Bergman: So to me, you could say they did some stuff that was jazz, and I think The Police are not a reggae band.

Dustin: Is that what they're supposed to be?

Nate Bergman: No, but I think there's a huge-

Dustin: I never thought about it I guess.

Nate Bergman: There's a huge reggae influence.

Dustin: Yeah, definitely.

Nate Bergman: No doubt.

Jeff: Totally.

Nate Bergman: Same thing. And I think the more you look at the bands you love, they're not ... Like Chuck Berry is a rock and roll act.

Jeff: Right.

Nate Bergman: There's very few things that are just rock and roll.

Jeff: Right.

Nate Bergman: And I think with a band like Clutch being such an influence in what we do, I think you find inspiration in the fact that things aren't just rock and roll.

Jeff: Yeah. No, and I think that is a great way to put it because a lot of times, especially with bands that are just starting out or whatever, they have a singular vision. This is what I'm going to be, and I think the bands that do it best and the bands that I love the most are the ones that are like everything's on the table.

Nate Bergman: Sure.

Jeff: No matter what. And that's why I really love what you guys put down.

Nate Bergman: Awesome. Thank you.

Jeff: But you kind of broke into it a little bit and talked about influences. You and the other guys in the band met in school, correct?

Nate Bergman: Yeah.

Jeff: What influenced you to pick up the guitar, to start a band? What were the direct influences for that?

Nate Bergman: I've never even actually thought about that. I think Chris who plays keys, organ, he was into classic piano from a very young age. And I think it grew from there into jazz. So he's played ... And Henry on the bass kind of same thing. And for me, my mom had an old acoustic Yamaha classical nylon strung guitar that was always just in our basement.

Dustin: I feel like everybody has that guitar in their basement. Everyone.

Nate Bergman: Well, my mom was a product of the '60s and '70s, and I think-

Dustin: That's what it is. Our parents were like ... Because my mom had the same thing.

Nate Bergman: 100%.

Dustin: Hippie child.

Nate Bergman: They sat around in a circle at some point, and somebody sang, actually sang Kumbaya.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: But back before it was cheesy.

Nate Bergman: Yeah. Maybe my mom was playing the guitar. That was always in the basement, and I think at one point my parents were like, "Do you want a video game system or do you want to take guitar lessons?" And I'm sure between the ages of 10 and 13 there was the idea that maybe girls thought that was cool. Nirvana was really big at that point, and I've always loved music. I mean, my first memories of music are just like from my parents influence, and they were super into classic rock and guitar-driven stuff. So I think I gravitated towards it. I don't know if I ever really got super serious about it. It was kind of a thing where we started the band post-high school, right in the throws of ending high school, people were having parties and we kind of just told people we would play the parties for free. And then the parties were following that it grew from there.

Dustin: You must look back on that pretty nostalgically remembering or not remembering those parties. Or was it just a shit show?

Nate Bergman: Shit show.

Jeff: Shit show. Most parties like that are.

Nate Bergman: 100% just total fuckery. They were great. I mean, we remember one night where the party got broken up. My friend had a party, his parents went out of town. We played the party. 300 people ended up coming. Trashed the house, and then Hank went with his brother and they hid all the drugs and alcohol in the bass drum, and they ran outside and slept in the woods overnight. And then we picked them up once the cops left at four or five in the morning, we picked them back up. And then we were like, "Man, I think we ..." Can I talk about pot?

Jeff: Oh, of course.

Nate Bergman: Okay. So I think we were like, "Man, we just bought an eighth of weed, and it's gone now." He was like, "Correct, my friend. Incorrect, it's in the bass drum."

Jeff: So remember, kids, hide your drugs in the bass drum.

Nate Bergman: Yeah. The cops didn't even look. They didn't even look at it.

Jeff: Oh my God. That's so funny. And going back to that time too, I'm always curious with bands, when you guys started out in this iteration of the band, was it always Lionize or did you have it ... Did you start with a different name?

Nate Bergman: We thought it was super cool for the first couple months of the band we called it Catch A Fire after the Bob Marley record. We just thought that imagery was cool and intense.

Dustin: That's cool. Yeah.

Nate Bergman: Then we got a cease and desist letter because we had a website, and then the website got a cease and desist letter to the address, and it was actually one of the Marley daughters had started a clothing company with the same name. And we were like, "That's pretty cool, but we should ..." I mean, it's one of the richest music estates in the world. So we probably thought ...

Dustin: Yeah. It's like fucking with Jackson.

Nate Bergman: We didn't have that financial backing yet. Yeah, so we were at rehearsal one night, and we used to rehearse in this really weird warehouse space, and we had to kind of do it overnight. So we were doing it from 12:00 to 3:00 or 12:00 to 4:00 a.m., and we were like, "We need a name. We have a show coming up. Let's just change it and do it." And Hank was going through the dictionary and came across the word Lionize. He was like, and at this point, I mean, we were below the longest rung of trying to achieve any type of success as a business. And he was like, "The name means to celebratize something. That would be funny." And we were like, "Oh. Oh, yeah. That's funny." No one's ever going to know about this band. It's just for fun. And now we're stuck with it.

Jeff: I think it's a great name.

Nate Bergman: Cool.

Dustin: I feel like if you try to take your band naming too seriously, you go completely wrong, right?

Nate Bergman: Yeah, I think in retrospect had I known how many people would make an Eagle's cover band joke-

Dustin: Oh.

Jeff: I never made that connection, but you're right.

Nate Bergman: Fuck me for telling you that now.

Dustin: Now it's out there. Now I can't unthink it.

Nate Bergman: If another person comes up and goes, "Uh, is it like the Eagle's, like you can't hide your lionize," and I'm like, "Yeah." We're huge Glenn Fry guys. Love the Eagles.

Jeff: Stick around for the second set, guys. It's nothing but Eagles covers.

Nate Bergman: Yeah. It's actually almost uniformly like the Big Lebowski. It's like at some point someone's like, "I fucking hate the Eagles, man."

Dustin: So when does the band move from this group of party animals playing party shows to actually being like, "Oh, we should hit the road. We should make records. We should tours."

Jeff: Try to do this.

Dustin: We should take ourselves seriously.

Nate Bergman: Three things happened within a year that changed the trajectory of the band.

Dustin: And how far after was this from the post-high school years?

Nate Bergman: So four or five years of kind of driving up and down the East Coast, going to beach towns, going to bars, primarily playing bars. We graduated from parties that didn't pay much to bars, which paid a little bit more.

Jeff: A little bit more dinero.

Dustin: Of course the normal trajectory of a band.

Nate Bergman: But you're playing ... They're like, "You got to play for three hours," and we don't have that much music. So we're thinking how do we jam out for ... What's a 30 minute jam sound like? And then people started to get pissed, and then we ordered too many buffalo wings and they can't compliment.

Jeff: I've been there.

Nate Bergman: I mean, we played a few Buffalo Wild Wings. We played straight up restaurants. I mean, anywhere that would take us. We said, we would lie a lot, and they would be like, "Do you have three hours of cover material?" We'd be like, "Yeah."

Jeff: Sure do.

Dustin: Definitely.

Nate Bergman: Are you paying us $750 because we're in.

Dustin: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: So we did that for a while, and then in 2006, through a very weird story, our drummer at the time was taking drum lessons from a guy in Maryland who was also teaching John Paul from Clutch.

Jeff: Okay.

Nate Bergman: And we connected with him and found out we had some musical similarities, and I think he was being very gracious by saying he liked the demos that we were putting together. And we ended up in 2006 in Baltimore, we opened up for The Bakertown Group.

Jeff: Oh, cool.

Nate Bergman: And that kind of exposed us to what was possible at a hard ticket venue as opposed to playing restaurants and stuff and bars. And that same year, a guy who was working for Steel Pulse heard our music and was like, "I think that this reggae band would really like the weird rock thing you're doing." And they ended up taking us on an amphitheater tour with Steel Pulse and the Wailers and us. And we had no business being there. We didn't have the right gear for it. We didn't know what was happening. We get on this amphitheater stage, and we spread out. For the first time, we were 25 yards away from each other. We'd only ever played tight little bars. No fucking clue what's happening. And then at the end of that, at the end of the following year in 2007, we had a booking agent that was part of a company that was putting out HR for the Bad Brains solo tour three months across the U.S. And he was like, "It's $75 guarantees, and you're probably going to die in the middle of it. Do you want to take the tour?" And we just made the decision at that point that this was it. We were never going to go back to playing bars. We were going to really make an effort to be a touring band, and the nightmare has not stopped since then.

Jeff: That's awesome.

Nate Bergman: Now 2018's ending, we're here.

Jeff: 2019.

Nate Bergman: It's slowly got better.

Jeff: That's incredible. That's such a great trajectory too because you guys just kind of took it all in stride. It wasn't like, again, it wasn't like the younger band being like, "I'm going to be famous tomorrow." You know? You guys were like, "Let's see where this takes us."

Nate Bergman: Yeah. I think the only reason this thing has worked is because our whole commitment has been to just we want to make cool records and we want to play good, meaningful shows. And that really is kind of up to you what that means.

Dustin: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: A good record to you might mean selling a million copies. A good record to us means that when we listen back to it, we're like, "Oh, that was cool. We did a cool thing."

Jeff: Yeah. Well, speaking of a cool thing, you guys have kind of fallen into this, as we talked about off the podcast actually, this kind of big brother scenario with Clutch.

Nate Bergman: Sure.

Jeff: Can you talk a little bit on that because personally speaking Clutch is very influential.

Nate Bergman: Absolutely.

Jeff: I'm sure they are to you as well.

Nate Bergman: 100%.

Dustin: Did you wear your Clutch shirt on purpose or do you just have a pile of Clutch shirts?

Jeff: No, I wore it on purpose.

Nate Bergman: It's a really bizarre story almost, but we're from the same county in Maryland. Neil Fallon's, one of his first jobs was working for my dad in 1989, 1990 at a seafood store. My dad owned a seafood store in Gaithersburg. Small operation, maybe four or five employees, four employees, and Neil was one of them. And I was always at the store. At some point he was probably babysitting me, which is basically what he does now on tour. I'm still annoying him, asking him all sorts of stupid questions.

Nate Bergman: So I was aware of Clutch from a very young age because when I was in middle school and high school, my dad would be like, "Hey, you know this guy used to work for my store. His band's doing the 930 Club." I was kind of always aware of what was happening with them and gradually became a fan of what they were doing. As I got more into rock and heavy rock and then in 2006, when the drum teacher scenario happened with John Paul, it kind of all came together and was like these guys are ...

Nate Bergman: When we first started hanging with those guys, they were in a band still, and they had gone from the '90s being in tour buses, etc back to being in a van, and we were like, "That's the type of band we want to be. We want to be the type of band that who gives a fuck if the money falls out from under the scenario. The most important thing is showing up and playing the show." And when the whole industry collapsed, these guys were still doing it, and these guys still had 100, 500, 300, 600, 800 fans showing up to shows.

Nate Bergman: And to us, having more than 50 people at a show was like you were the biggest band in the world because they were playing the music that they wanted to play, and we were experimenting with dub reggae and experimenting with heavy riffs and no other bands were really doing that. And we gravitated towards their work ethic and how smart they were and how nice they were and how when we went on tour with them, they were showing us that it was possible to do this and not in this grand way where you're like, "My goal as a guitar player is to have a tech set all my stuff up and then after that someone's going to bring me coffee at four. And then I don't want to talk to fans after the show because I'm busy doing this." It's like, no. These guys got in there and just fucking did it.

Jeff: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: And to us, it striped away all the bullshit that everyone sells you on, like being famous or this grandiose idea of what rock and roll is, and what it really is is just like you're hanging out with your best friends and you're playing music and that's the gift, that's the paycheck, that's the payoff is that you can maybe survive in a world that doesn't want you to survive doing this by doing this.

Dustin: Something pretty romantic about that though.

Nate Bergman: But that's the romantic aspect, to me, is that ... And as we continue to tour with them and still to this day, we played a venue in 2007 with them in Jacksonville, North Carolina called Jesters. And there was 500 people there, 400 people. And I'm thinking to myself, "This is it, man. This is fucking incredible." I mean, the energy and the whole thing, and they're on a tour bus now. And this is crazy. They have a tour bus and on and on and on. Meanwhile, all these shows on this tour have been several thousand people, sold out. We were fortunate enough for them to take us to Europe, to the UK for the first time in 2014, and we did a venue there called The Forum. It was 1400 people and it was sold out. I was like, "This is crazy."

Nate Bergman: Then in 2016, we went back with them to the UK, and we opened for them at a sold out show at the Roundhouse, 3000 plus tickets. It was just like ... So every year that everything kind of gets tougher for bands, these guys are growing, and it's because they're doing it the right way and they're smart and they treat everyone how they want to be treated. And they know because they were where we were at a certain point, and a lot of times to be a first of three on a bill, it sucks. It's tough. It's never tough with these guys. They always make it so much fun and so cool to be here that anytime Clutch asks to go on tours or do a show, we're there. I don't care. A lot of bands would pay to do it. So the fact that we can make a small paycheck doing this is a privilege.

Jeff: That's so rad, and, I mean, not only have you kind of gotten this comradery with Clutch but you've also have featured Tim on a couple of your records, you've featured Neil on a couple of your records, and I know when this episode comes out, you guys are going to be talking about a brand new record with another special guest. Can we talk about that a little bit?

Nate Bergman: We can. We can. We had an experience on a label recently where we decided that because of that experience, we want to start kind of putting out our own music and taking control of how we do things. And right at the end of 2017, actually the day after a sold out New Year's show, for person reasons, the drummer who we've been playing with for six years left the band. So we were kind of stuck in the scenario of like what do we do. Do we quit? Do we-

Jeff: Try out new drummers.

Nate Bergman: Try out new drummers. That process is just a nightmare.

Jeff: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: So obviously if you have access to probably the best rock and roll, the best drummer alive right now.

Jeff: Alive.

Nate Bergman: I mean, I think you could go off into different sub-genres of drummers that are amazing, but we have access to one of the best musical minds in John Paul Gastor and as a drummer, he's probably our favorite drummer maybe ever. So we said, "Hey, man. Do you want to make a record with us? We have some songs we've been working on, and we think they're pretty cool." And we knew if we asked, he'd probably say yes. So we did. But he's very busy, so we were taking a chance. They're basically in the middle of setting up their record cycle, and it was ... He's been in the studio with us and helped us do pre-production on tons of stuff. The second we got in and played the first song with him, we were like, "All right. It's done. This is it." It took about four weeks, five weeks and we put the record together. It's 10 songs, and it's hands down the best thing we've come up with as far as how the songs are, what they sound like, the presentation, and the drumming is ... I don't even know how to describe it. I mean, it's like having all of our favorite drummers kind of in one package.

Jeff: Oh my God.

Nate Bergman: It's wild. Yeah.

Jeff: John Paul, for anybody out there who's watching, listening to this who has not checked out Clutch, I mean, try to find some live videos of where you can see him drum because it is incredible. And the amount of stuff he can do, and I wanted to ask you with this new record, you came to him with songs that you guys had. Playing those songs with someone of the caliber of John Paul, did it change the record?

Nate Bergman: Yeah. In a sense that ... I don't know. It's really tough because Chris who plays keys and Hank, they've played a lot with JP on other projects. So in a sense, they're really world class too. As far as keyboards go, I don't really know a lot of guys that are in rock bands that can come close to what Chris is doing, in my opinion. And Hank is the same way. He's jammed with JP for years and years and years. So more than it elevated it, it elevated it naturally because it felt so normal.

Jeff: Right.

Nate Bergman: It just worked.

Dustin: That's so cool.

Nate Bergman: So I think when we went to push our ... He pushes us to think about things in a very rhythmic way, which for us was a cool ... He's a musician before he's a drummer in a sense. So to have his brain, we've always worked with him in that aspect, and then to have him behind the kit, it was ... I feel so cliché to say magical, but it really felt ... You could feel the energy in the room when we were doing it, and we were like, we knew immediately when we did something that kind of sucked, we were like, "If we don't have that feeling, then it's just not right." And then when we did have it, it just worked.

Jeff: And I think it's the perfect storm too because, like you said, you guys know this guy. It's not like you're vetting 100 drummers trying to get the next guy in the band or whatever.

Dustin: No, it's like you've worked with him too.

Jeff: You worked with him before, especially your bassist. So the pockets already a pocket. And on top of all of that, it's just this feeling, like you said. And that's not cliché. Magic happens. When you're in a room writing music-

Nate Bergman: That's why we do it. That's really why we do it at the end of the day to have those feelings.

Jeff: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: And I think we started looking at it immediately after the last drummer last. Like more of a Queens of the Stone Age scenario where like a drummer could change the vibe of the direction that we go in for the tour or the record. They sound really different with Theodore on the drums, and it's really great.

Jeff: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: And no one goes, "Oh, it's Queen of the Stone Age or John Theodore. I don't-" No one says that. It's Queen of the Stone Age. The songs are the songs are the songs.

Jeff: Right.

Dustin: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: And at the end of the day, I think I almost look at it as a privilege that we can approach it in that way.

Dustin: Wow.

Jeff: That's cool.

Nate Bergman: Yeah, we're very fortunate to have the support system that we do.

Jeff: Yeah. So you record this record with John Paul, and it's coming out in 2019. I got to ask the other side of the question then, will he tour on this record with you? Because, again, he's so busy.

Nate Bergman: I don't think we have a plan to do ... I'm sure there will be scenarios where some type of show, hometown thing happens. Something really cool will happen. I have no doubt. But to tour, I mean, they're the hardest working band other than us. So I would say we're really happy right now. We have this guy Ted on drums for this tour, and our buddy Tobay [Stranvick 00:24:01] from a great band from Sweden called [inaudible 00:24:03] that has been doing some tours with us. So we have thins kind of arsenal now that we can pull from. Whenever you come to see us, there will be a world class drummer behind the kits.

Jeff: That's excellent, and I'm sure, like you said, I mean, you are so symbiotic with Clutch as it is anyways, I'm sure there will be many times where you guys will be sharing the same stage. It'll be like, "All right. JP, come on."

Nate Bergman: Yeah. We've done a lot of tours with those guys. More than I can remember at this point. Yeah, this tour right now also too because Mike Dylan's on the tour and Chris from Lionize played on Clutch's new record. He did four, five or six songs on keys. He's playing organ on Book of Bad Decisions, and Mike Dylan has always kind of jammed with everyone. And he's amazing. So there's this really crazy brotherhood kind of thing happening where everyone's just like a big jam session the whole night. Everyone's kind of stepping in and out of the sets.

Dustin: That sounds amazing to have that. Every single night wherever you go, that's got to be crazy.

Nate Bergman: It's really fun, especially because we done several tours where the bands on like backing tracks and click tracks and ax effects. It's like you can't really jam when you got backing tracks in.

Jeff: Of course not.

Dustin: Structures. Yeah.

Jeff: I think that's something, again, going back to what I said in the beginning, I think that's something that has been lost for a long time, especially in rock and roll. Like the rock and roll heydays that we all love, that we all think back on, finally our influences, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of comradery, brotherhood. These different bands would mix and match members and create different jam sessions and all that kind of stuff, and it's lost. And to see it coming back with you guys on Clutch and all of these people together, it's like it warms my heart.

Nate Bergman: I wish more people did it.

Jeff: I do too.

Nate Bergman: And I look it kind of like this too, because I think rock is actually starting to come back a little bit, especially in Europe and UK. There's always going to be this mainstream idea of where like, "All right. I'll put on the rock and roll outfit, and I'll write the song about a fast car or drinking or a girl. Now we're playing rock music." There's always going to be that, and that will always be popular and kind of rise to the top. But what I think happens is that the off shoots of that become bands like Clutch and us who will jam, and I think if you go and look at ... I just feel like if you put up any song that's on rock radio right now in the top 10, I didn't mean to say that so disdainfully.

Jeff: No. I hear that.

Nate Bergman: Pull up any song that's top 10 rock radio, listen to any of those songs, and then go pull up on YouTube a clip of Santana at Woodstock, and you tell me which one hits you in the gut more because it's not going to be what's on top 10. It's sterile. It's got no vibe to it. It does not feel good. And then go listen to that, and you see that there's like energy that can be created out of thin air, and that's really cool. I think if you had the chance to do that as a musician, you should.

Jeff: Yes, oh my God, that's very, very good advice. And that leads me into the question that we get to every single week on this show. You guys have been killing it and working hard at killing it now for the better part of 15 years at this point. What fuels you to keep doing it, to keep wanting to produce, to write, to tour? What fuels you to do it?

Nate Bergman: At this point, I'm pretty sure it's lack of skill at anything else.

Dustin: You married to it now. Yeah.

Nate Bergman: I don't have a resume, and I'm pretty sure if I went to Walmart or Mcdonalds or Subway or anywhere that's hiring, I don't know if I'd be literally qualified to do it. They'd be like, "What's your past experience," and I'd say-

Jeff: This.

Dustin: Yeah, but I don't really think that's fair because Jeff and I are on the same like no resume. We were just dirty fucking musicians living in a dirty fucking house. Look at us now. The possibilities are really endless, especially when you're somebody that knows how to work with a fickle group of people.

Nate Bergman: Sure.

Dustin: That goes a long way.

Nate Bergman: I mean, the truth is I think what drives myself and the rest of the guys to do this, and it's very selfish, is that it's really fucking fun.

Dustin: Yes.

Jeff: Yes.

Nate Bergman: It's really, really fun whether you're in the basement or the studio or on stage. If you can find a group of people, hopefully more than one because we need more like four piece bands to happen. If you can find that connection, it's just fun. It's really, really fun. And I don't know even ... if you're in a scenario where you have to work other side jobs or you have to live a very stripped back lifestyle, I think it's probably way more important in your limited number of hours on the planet to have fun than it is to be comfortable.

Jeff: Yeah.

Dustin: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: For me. That's for me. I don't value comfort more than I value having a good time because I don't-

Dustin: Amen.

Jeff: Amen.

Nate Bergman: Right because I don't think there's not a lot of time in general. So I think people really force themselves a lot of times to be miserable by obtaining these things that bring us comfort, and I don't want to get too weird about it but I value the magic of trying to create art and the struggle and the fun over not driving a 2006 Hyundai with 250,000 miles on it. That's me.

Jeff: Yeah. No, I think that's a great way to live, and we talk about that a lot on this show actually. The whole ethos of this show is we're all fueled by death. There's very finite amount of time that we're going to be on this rock. Like why not try to have fun and do what you love before you're freaking gone for good.

Dustin: And I feel like all the best art comes from discomfort.

Nate Bergman: Well, I think you have to understand, and I'm starting to understand it more as I get older, but the discomfort is growth.

Dustin: Yeah.

Nate Bergman: That's where the growth happens. It happens in the places that are uncomfortable. And I don't mean like ... I mean, we spent years and years and years without hotel rooms, living in a van. Clutch was one of the first bands ever when we were on tour that at the end of the night they would take their deli tray, and they'd be like, "Here you go. We know you don't-"

Dustin: Aw.

Nate Bergman: It's true.

Dustin: When you get that, I'm sure it like warms your heart so much.

Nate Bergman: Well, it fed us.

Jeff: It fed their hearts too. Yeah.

Nate Bergman: We'd been in scenarios on tour where we had to siphon gas or steal food. I think the point is we learned what it meant to appreciate a hotel room where we used to pile six people into one room. Now we have a couple rooms. Now we have a van and a trailer. We have gear that works. But I think without understanding the other side of it, you don't understand what it means to have those things. So I guess living in the uncomfortable scenarios, it forces you to really understand what the value of things are and playing music for an hour on stage every night or 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour and a half, that's very fun. And that's why at the end of the day I think it's worth it to not quit.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah.

Dustin: At least something to the point where you're not having fun anymore, then it's like ...

Jeff: Reevaluate.

Nate Bergman: That's the thing is it's not always going to be fun.

Dustin: Yeah. It's not going to be fun every month. You guys are going to butt heads every now and then. You're going to have a rough show every now and then. But that's not what it's about. It's about those highlight moments are so highlighted and amazing.

Nate Bergman: Yeah, and I think for us, I think we realized too a lot of people in art are looking for a payoff, especially now with instant gratification and social media. They're like, "If I just get to a million followers, then everything gets better." Nothing works like that. There is no goal. There is no finish line for us. We make music, and then we die.

Jeff: Love it. I love it.

Dustin: Amen.

Jeff: I love that. So into 2019 then, this new records going to drop, which we're very excited about. Do you have a name yet?

Nate Bergman: Yeah. We do have a name. The record is called Panic Attack.

Jeff: Awesome. So cool. So we'll be looking for that. And then obviously you're going to be hitting the road and working hard again on that. And we'll be talking about that as the year goes out. What's the best way for our listeners and viewers to follow you and the band?

Nate Bergman: Spotify's great. If you look us up on Spotify, our tour dates are there, links to our websites are there. Lionize music. L-I-O-N-I-Z-E music, that's everything. Facebook, Instagram. Lionize Music.

Dustin: Perfect.

Nate Bergman: And we're slowly realizing that the power of Spotify is everything. So please go to Spotify, follow, save, tell people. We're a word of mouth band, so if you don't tell people, nobody finds out about it.

Jeff: Well, we'll put all that in this show, and hopefully everybody will spread the word because-

Nate Bergman: Yeah, 10 people. We'll be happy with five or 10 people at this point.

Jeff: Well, I wish the world for you guys because you're working hard, you're sound is awesome and hungry and I love it. And I can't wait to see what's in store for you.

Nate Bergman: Cheers. Thank you guys. Thank you to Death Wish and you guys for-

Jeff: Awesome.

Nate Bergman: Having us do this.

Jeff: Awesome.

Dustin: Thanks, man.

Jeff: Thank you so much.

Nate Bergman: Cheers.