Vanishing Fathers Series | Everclear Lead Singer Art Alexakis | The Story Behind "Father of Mine" Ep 100

Have you ever heard a song that you related to so much that you felt an immediate connection to it? For many people who have experienced abandonment by a parent, that song is Everclear’s 1997 hit, “Father of Mine.”
-
In this episode, Everclear lead singer, Art Alexakis, tells his personal story that inspired the song that still resonates with people of all ages. The divorce of his parents and subsequent abandonment by his father affected Art and his siblings in profound ways, but just like the song’s lyrics say, he was able to break the cycle and become the father he never had.
-
Now 34 years sober, Art is sharing his journey to sobriety, personal growth, and fatherhood with host Jamie Truman. He has advice for young men with the same internal struggles, and parents trying to raise children after divorce.
-
Tune in to hear Art talk about his love of music, writing the band’s powerful song, and its impact on his family and the world. Plus, find out which songs he’s written have the most significance to him!
-
Purchase Vanishing Fathers
100% Proceeds go to charities that help at-risk youths

 Connect with Art Alexakis:
Instagram 

Connect with Jamie at Truman Charities:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Website
YouTube
Email: info@trumancharities.com

This episode was post produced by Podcast Boutique https://podcastboutique.com/

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:21

I remember blue skies, walking the block. I loved it when you held me high. I loved to hear you talk. You will take me to the movie.

Speaker 2: 0:32

You will take me to the beat. Take me to a place inside there's so hard to beat. Welcome to the Truman Charities podcast. I am Jean-Yu Truman, your host. I'm sure you all remember this song, father of Mine, from Everclear's double platinum album. So much for the afterglow For my Vanishing Fathers podcast series and book. I'm focusing on the impact fathers have in a child's life. I reached out to the lead singer of Everclear, art Alzacus, to learn about the story behind his hit song, father of Mine. We talk about the impact it had on him and his family growing up with an absentee father. The struggles he faced and how he was able to break the cycle and become a loving husband and father to his wife and two beautiful daughters. The advice that he has for young men that are facing the same struggles that he faced while growing up. This is Art Story. Hi, art, how are you?

Speaker 1: 1:33

I'm good. Good morning Jamie. How are you?

Speaker 2: 1:36

Great, it's kind of surreal talking to you. I at least still listen to your music. I mean I still do. But gosh, it's, I mean since I was in middle school, everclear's been around since 91. So I yeah, I grew up listening to your music 92.

Speaker 2: 1:53

92. Okay, wow, yeah. So I know some of my favorite songs, like Santa Monica and Everybody Knows I Will Buy you a New Life and, of course, my ultimate favorite, father of Mine, which we are going to be talking about later. So you have been very well respected musician and artist and I'm excited to learn a little bit more about you and about you know your writing. So first I wanted to start out. I've watched several interviews of you gosh over the years and I know that you have mentioned that your father left when you were young, when you were five years old, and I wanted to know do you have any memories I mean, if any of your early childhood, of your family dynamic?

Speaker 1: 2:40

I absolutely do. Yeah, my memories go back to about when I was three years old, which is pretty normal, but their images they're kind of splintered in the images. I remember my dad and my mom. He left when I was six and he was abusive, mostly mentally and verbally, to my mother. It became physically abusive and that's when my mom left him, which was a very brave thing for a woman to do in the late sixties, you know, because there still wasn't a very good stigma about divorced women, you know. But she did it because it was the right move to do for her children. Even though she's passed, I'm still very proud of my mother.

Speaker 1: 3:21

I was raised by my mother, by a single mom, and my dad should have moved down the street and raised his kids, but he didn't. He went to the other side of the country, married a younger woman and raised her kids. So I didn't really know my dad. I met him like few times over the years. He called very sporadically, literally like in the song, sent me five bucks on my birthday. You know I was still calling me cowboy when I was 12, 13, 14 years old, because last time he knew me, you know, when I was five or six, I wanted to be a cowboy, you know. So my relationship with my dad was always like that. I lived with him for a short while because I was getting in trouble in my teen years, but we never really connected, we never really gelled.

Speaker 1: 4:13

And it's interesting because my father died a few years ago and he died three days before David Bowie died. And I was sad about my dad, but I didn't really know him that well. I knew him but I just he didn't give me all that much. David Bowie died. It broke my heart because even though I'd met him once in passing, as an artist, he had given me so much over the years really just so much that at times, just being who he was, impressed me.

Speaker 1: 4:50

So that's my kind of juxtaposition between a rock star giving me more, more than my own father did. He never paid child support, he never supported anything. I blamed him for years, but with my brother's death, my brother died at Noverdust when he was 21. I was 12 and the breakup was really hard on him. You know, I was young enough that I think kids who were in their teens were younger, can adapt to divorce better, especially when the parents handle it better. But to be fair to both of them, to be fair to my father and my mother. In the late 60s no one knew how to be divorced. Very few people knew how to be divorced.

Speaker 2: 5:33

Right, that's true, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:35

They weren't brought up there. That was the stigma, that was the last, last, last resort and it was shame for life. That was the idea, you know, that people put into each other's head about what divorce was about and unfortunately it just left a lot of damaged people, like myself, you know.

Speaker 2: 5:55

So when your mom moved and they separated and got divorced, how old were your siblings at the time? Were you the youngest? Yeah, I was. I'm the baby there was five kids.

Speaker 1: 6:07

My oldest sister, paula, was already out of the house. She had already gotten married and had a baby. By the time she was 18, barely 18, maybe 17, 18. There's a picture of her in her graduation gown with a very pregnant stomach, but you know, this was the late 60s so. But she and I were the only ones still alive. I had a brother, so it was girl boy. George Kiki was my middle sister, vicky was the sister right above me, about five years ahead of me, and then I'm the accident baby. That happened when my family moved to California from Detroit in the late 50s. I was born in 62, so they hadn't planned on a fifth child. But there you go, you can do.

Speaker 2: 6:53

And so you do think, as you were saying a little bit earlier, that they took it a lot harder than you did at first.

Speaker 1: 7:01

Destroyed them. My whole family was just drugs and alcohol, especially with my brother and my elder sister's first husband was just rampant.

Speaker 1: 7:13

You know it's late 60s, early 70s, and my sisters just were kind of lost and they kind of, in hindsight, they were kind of lost their whole lives and it's just, it's so, so important and I got to tell you, as a father, I take it so seriously and this honor of being a parent, because everything is going to affect them. Everything negative or positive, is going to affect your children somewhere down the line and I just especially being a role model as a male for daughters, all I have is daughters. I have two daughters. Do you have sons?

Speaker 2: 7:57

I have all sons, all sons, all three boys.

Speaker 1: 8:01

See, you bought these, so your husband had good karma. I have horrible karma, so I have daughters and that's fine. That's fine. I accept it 100%, because there's no, no one loves you more than a daughter loves her daddy until she's about 12 or 13.

Speaker 2: 8:20

I think that's for most kids.

Speaker 1: 8:21

And then it just kind of, then, it kind of it's just no debt.

Speaker 2: 8:24

But then they come back like early 20s.

Speaker 1: 8:27

I hope to see that my oldest hasn't come back to me or her mom yet, but I hope that that's the case. But she's doing really well. That's all I care about she's. She's happy and and flourishing. My youngest daughter is just like the apple apple my, that sounds so stupid, but it's really just she and my wife. Our family right now is so strong and the large part of that is because of my sobriety. I'm about to hit 34 years sober. I work my program very hard, I have a great fellowship, I have a great spiritual relationship and I just love what I do. I'm 61 year old guy. With MS, I get to play rock and roll for a living. I mean, come on.

Speaker 2: 9:13

Can we talk a little bit about. So you say you're 34 years sober, You've been through sobriety for 34 years, almost 34 years.

Speaker 1: 9:21

We don't call it that until it's there. It's the 15th is my sobriety birthday.

Speaker 2: 9:26

Oh, that's very exciting. So what was the moment when you decided that you had to get sober?

Speaker 1: 9:33

Oh, I had a really, really bad experience. Well, I had many bad experiences. I was a blackout drunk. I got off hard drugs a few years earlier and I put all the energy into drinking and regardless of what people tell you, I mean with the exception of, maybe, fentanyl, which we can talk about later, which is horrifying nothing gets you more messed up than alcohol.

Speaker 1: 9:58

Alcohol is just so vicious on your body, your soul, your spirit, your mental capacity. If you're addicted to alcohol, if you're truly an alcoholic, as I am, it's. I became a blackout drunker. I would just go to work remember, leave him work at lunchtime to go. I just get a drink and then black out and show up. My wife at the time my first wife, bless her heart, would go through bars looking for me because I just disappear. I don't have cell phones, no pagers, and I'd show up two or three days later scrapes or bruises all over me. I didn't know how they got there, hands busted up, obviously done in fights, just wow.

Speaker 2: 10:44

Is it just something that when you take a drink, there's just no kind of stopping?

Speaker 1: 10:48

Yeah, with addicts and we talk about this program a lot in recovery I liken it to like a whole inside of you, right, and I'm trying to fill the hole. Addicts try to fill the hole with anything that creates dopamine, right, something that's benign as sugar to something as vicious as heroin and cocaine, alcohol, sex power, anger, shame. I would do things that were shameful and it didn't bother me because I understood shame. I call it the warm. I'm writing a book right now and in the book I call it the warm waters of my shame because I felt comfortable there. I felt comfortable when people underestimated me Just incredibly low self-esteem and a lot of that I have to attribute. I'm not trying to point fingers and blame and take things away from me, but when you look at root causes of it my family breaking up when I was four or five, six, you know, with the violence and everything that was going along with that had a horrible impact on me. Obvious, my whole family.

Speaker 2: 11:58

How did you get into music? Did you find that as an escape, or tell me a little bit about that.

Speaker 1: 12:03

Well, I remember when I was three, three and a half it must have been 1965 or 1966, my mom would put me to bed in my jammies, right, and she'd leave the door open so I could hear what was going on, because I didn't like a total dark room and it was like lights coming from the front room and a lot of times I would like sneak out and go hide behind the couch. This is the 60s. Her and my dad are sitting there drinking high balls. My mom had the big beard dude.

Speaker 2: 12:37

Very sexy.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Totally sexy and I was, you know. I heard this music. That was just like. All I remember is. It just made my body vibrate and I went around and looked around the corner of the couch. It was the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The last time they were on Ed Sullivan and they were playing and I couldn't control myself, I ran to the TV and just started jumping around and of course my siblings and my mom and dad are laughing about it and I never wanted to do anything else. It's true, sad, sad Because I got. I was a smart kid Not great grades but tested really well because I was smart. My mom wanted me to go to college after I got clean the first time Not sober but clean and I took film because I wanted to do something creative. She wanted me to take engineering or something to fall back on.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Right.

Speaker 1: 13:42

It's just not me. You can't make your kids. You got kids, you know you can't make them be what you want them to be.

Speaker 2: 13:48

I can understand why she wanted you to do it like as a mother like the safety of like. Of course absolutely Well, you're an engineer or something like that.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Yeah, but but now with my children. I want them to find their bliss. I want them to find their bliss and be able to monetize it to make a living, because I never wanted to be rich. I really didn't. If I wanted to be rich, I would have made much better moves in my career than I did. But I've always wanted to not worry about money, to be comfortable, and I am very comfortable. I'm comfortable enough that I can put my daughter through college when she goes to college, and my other, my eldest daughter. So I'm fortunate and I get to do by playing music, which is just. You know that wasn't part of the plan back in the 60s and 70s and 80s. So what do you want to do with your life? I don't play guitar or rock and roll band man, I have family. That's what I wanted. I wanted the white picket fence, but I wanted to play rock and roll, and you know, be careful what you ask for, because that's what I got. Basically, I don't have white picket fence, but I got a nice wall with electric.

Speaker 2: 15:01

So tell me what that feeling was like when you first heard a song of yours on the radio.

Speaker 1: 15:07

Well, that would go back to like one of my earlier bands on college radio and that was pretty exciting. But when Everclear started breaking and we went from clubs like opening for people or headlining small clubs and Santa Monica over heroin even heroin girl it just exponentially got bigger. But when Santa Monica hit our first big single, it was drastic. It went from us headlining like 300, 400 C clubs to like blowing out 1500 C clubs, extra nights, multiple nights, crowds going around the block. It was amazing. You know, when my anarch guy calls me one day and goes, just want to let you know you ship gold, you got a gold album, I'm like wow. And then like a week later he goes I was wrong, you don't have a gold album on what, what? He goes.

Speaker 2: 16:08

No, you got a platinum album. I'm like, oh, you.

Speaker 1: 16:14

Taking my mom to the platinum record party was comedy gold man. She had no idea what was going on.

Speaker 2: 16:21

I was going to ask you her reaction.

Speaker 1: 16:23

It's interesting because I told her what was going on. She, just it, just hell, billy man. She's from the deep South and she lived in California and just she was just an old school working girl. Right, she, just she was a grinder man. She tenacity, she just she did, always did the right thing and I loved her for it. You know, I was presented to her at times as a kid growing up. Now, looking back, I'm so grateful for every moment I've had with her. But I told her that I'm flying her. She was living in Portland and I said cause she wouldn't be near her grandkids.

Speaker 1: 17:00

And I had a couple of sisters living there at the time, as well as my daughter, and I'm like, mom, you're going with me to the platinum record thing I don't know what the hell that is. And I make you know, the stylist lady made her a dress. We pick her up, we fly first class. And she's like are you sure we're supposed to be up here? Where else supposed to be up here? And then we didn't know that we have a limo. Pick us up, you know, right there. Pick us up right from the airport.

Speaker 1: 17:35

Take us to this like big restaurant down in Venice and they've got spotlights and they've got red carpet and paparazzi and all this stuff. And she's like boy, it's called boy, boy, is this for you? I go and mama, she goes what is this platinum thing I got means that sold a million records, yeah, and she's like a million people bought your record, that noisy rock and roll record. And I go, yeah, imagine that I go. It's probably going to go double platinum, the way it's looking. And and she's like that's two million. I go, yeah, and she goes, this is for you. And we're just sitting inside the limo and people are waiting to open the door and I'm like she's like, okay, let's go and I knock on the window and they open it and she's like just waving at people. You know, I always knew that he was going to be something special, you know that's. But given that tour was just I mean nothing better.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Yeah, yeah, you know buying her a house and taking care of her in the last years. She died of cancer in 2006. And my oldest sister and me lived in Portland. My sister's like I'll take care of her day to day because you're traveling so much. You just pay all the bills and I'll take care of her. I'm like done.

Speaker 1: 19:01

Just once a week and I never failed, never missed it, practice once a week or more, but I was able to spend more and more time with her at the end there and thank God she got to meet my wife now because she didn't like my choice in lives earlier. But, man, but she met Vanessa and she was like this is the one, don't screw it up. And she didn't say screw, she said don't screw this up.

Speaker 2: 19:30

Yep, mom's now.

Speaker 1: 19:32

Yep, listen to your mom. Listen to your mom.

Speaker 2: 19:36

So when you hear who you are you have a platinum record, you're famous around the world. What was the reaction to? Did you hear from your father at that point? Or what was the reaction from your siblings as well?

Speaker 1: 19:50

Siblings. Just I don't want to bad talk the dead, but siblings and their children just hit me up for a lot of money and never paid it back, except for the wife of one of my daughter's sons my daughter, guess my niece-in-law. She brought us some money and paid it back every time. But I knew that was going to happen.

Speaker 1: 20:13

I had people in my life my in our guys like look man, people are going to lose their minds. They don't know how to act like this, Because I went from being a kid from the group in a housing project that had always struggled for money to appear, making millions, and it was. It was a different world getting that big house up on the hill, much different from looking outside, looking in and inside, looking out. For sure, and it was a hard juxtaposition, for sure, but I don't know it was. It was a learning experience. It still is and I'm still grateful for all of it, even even the hard things, because I it makes me a better person from learning from it, pushing through my father, because for not being there, because it it taught me to Be able to have to fend for myself in a lot of ways that I shouldn't at such a young age, but I'm grateful for the strength that gave me for sure. Yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

Speaker 2: 21:22

Oh no, not at all. I was just kind of gonna talk a little bit about, really, what you just were just mentioned, and I wanted to talk about how you came up with father mind, which was one of your largest singles.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Yeah, it's probably our second or third largest yeah but it impacted a lot of people across the board different ethnicities, different people from different economic backgrounds. Abandoned parental abandonment is not something that's relegated to just one section of our society, it's pervasive. And I Remember I was writing songs for our third album, the follow-up to sparkling thing, which is our first album, which had Santa Monica on it, was our second album and Santa Monica on it and I remember putting my baby to my, my other daughter to sleep. She's five, but she's my baby and Just you ever watch your kids sleep, just watch them sleep.

Speaker 2: 22:26

Of course.

Speaker 1: 22:26

It's like let's do that.

Speaker 2: 22:28

Other people think you're insane, you know it's like your kid, though it's okay, class one, let's go watch the baby.

Speaker 1: 22:35

Yeah, it's like it's cheap entertainment, man, but it makes you feel really good.

Speaker 2: 22:41

Wow, we did that I know that I made this.

Speaker 1: 22:46

It's a miracle, it's, it's really you made it together with your partner, and that's what a bonding experience. You know, that, that sense of family that I never had growing up, I had then and and I have now even more so.

Speaker 2: 23:03

Oh, with my family now when you were having your oldest daughter. What was that like when you first found out you were going to have a child?

Speaker 1: 23:12

well. So when I met her mom we fell in love. She was living in Portland. She moved to San Francisco to live with me and we were in so-and-so On love that we're like that's nice, birth control, let's have a baby. You know I Mean money, but you know we had love and sex and that seemed like a good thing. And then, you know, like three, four months into that were like we got a taper that back a little bit, you know, because the pink clouds kind of wearing off, as it does with relationships, and by that time it's too late. We had to be, we had a baby on the way and and we moved to Portland because we're living in San Francisco and public schools were not good there and they were in Portland and we can eventually buy a house in Portland. So I agreed to move to Portland. They had a great music scene going on, so we moved up there in the around December 91.

Speaker 1: 24:13

My daughter was born in June of 92 and and it that's. You know I was pretty excited about it when she was born. I remember being, you know I was there and then I left. After the baby was born I went home to go get some stuff, because we're in a suite. I said I could spend the night with my wife and I went home to get some clothes for her and for me and I felt Postpartum depression.

Speaker 1: 24:44

I felt like this weight literal weight on me because I'm sitting there going and I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I can barely take care of myself. I have to take care of Tyrone and I'm just sitting there and it was like a God shot where, all of a sudden, there, I saw this light in my room and this lightness just being. I just realized I Always put her first and it's gonna be okay, that's it, even if I have to work and work three jobs and play in a band. I put her first. That's my driving impetus. Is her that? She's okay and that's? It's never failed me.

Speaker 1: 25:27

To be honest with you, it's just priorities, by prioritizing and being tenacious, because when people go, do you have any words wisdom for people? I go, me no, but if I had to give you something, I just if you want something really bad, don't give up, because you might not get it anyways, but you definitely like it if you give up and there's always someone right behind you waiting like excuse me, thank you. They want it more than you and you have to want it more than anybody else. I've never done anything. I'm scrupulous, business-wise, but I'm just. I Drive myself hard and I drive people around me really hard. Not so much anymore, but in the years that mattered.

Speaker 1: 26:13

I did. But let me get back to the father of mine then, because I think it's important. So basically, me and my wife at the time were watching my dog asleep and I it just came to me. It's like thinking of my dad. It's like how does a guy walk away from this? I mean, how do you do that? How do you see this and and walk away from this? How do you do this? And and my wife is going to bed and I'm like I'm gonna go work. I had an office and I had a acoustic guitar in there and I go on there and write. I just started writing, writing words and just building the story and and playing.

Speaker 1: 26:53

A couple of riffs came up, a riff for Father of Mine and by the morning I had pretty much all of it done. And a couple of days later I'd say about two weeks later I had the song done and I was down in California at the Capitol building because we were selling the Capitol and my A&R guy knew to not like push me on songs because I didn't do demos and I was basically I was going to give you the record and you're going to put it out. That's how it's going to go, which is really arrogant hindsight, but I'd probably do the same thing today. But he's like you got anything you can tell me about or play me something or something, and he had a guitar in his office. Like you want to hear a little bit of the song, he goes yeah, so I start playing it and I play the whole song and he's the stoic riff. You know they don't show emotion. But he's sitting there and he's wiping his eyes behind his glasses and out in the front room where the secretaries or assistants have their desks, I hear sobbing and we walk out and there's four young women sitting on a desk hugging each other, weeping, weeping. That's the best I got to have, just crying.

Speaker 1: 28:17

My A&R guy goes. Well, I don't know if it's a single, but it's going on the record. I'm like okay, and you know when it was recorded and mixed and everything, and he pushed for it to be a single, even though I didn't know what was going to happen with it. Really, we had a couple of hits before it. Everything to everyone was a number one hit at alternative. I'll buy you a new one. Number one hit at alternative did okay, it popped, but Father of Mine was the one that brought it home on that record.

Speaker 2: 28:50

What was it like when you found out how popular that song actually became?

Speaker 1: 28:56

It was weird I would be places. I'd already gotten that from Santa Monica and from the other singles. People recognized me from videos and talking to me.

Speaker 2: 29:06

Father of.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Mine would bring people to me and they would just tell me their story. I'd be in the supermarket and people would just start telling me their story.

Speaker 2: 29:17

What was that like it was intense.

Speaker 1: 29:20

It was intense. I wasn't really looking for that or set up for that. I'm not a therapist, but I've been through enough therapy. I probably could be. But one of the things that I really loved about it is I got people from every race, every psychological makeup, every financial background. It didn't matter. It was really, really interesting when people would come up and tell me their stories. It made an impact on me, for sure.

Speaker 1: 29:57

I was at Starbucks this morning I had to go in. I used to go to the drive-thru. I went in and the sky's next to me and he's talking to me and goes Do you know what? That is, she's like yeah, it's art.

Speaker 2: 30:12

I come in every day.

Speaker 1: 30:13

These young girls don't know ever clear they're in their 20s. He's like no, you don't understand, he goes, he's a rock star. Then he's like You're a rock star, father of Mine. That song changed my life. He changed everything. I'm like, and you need to lower your voice. He was yelling. He was yelling, he was excited, I guess. So I called my wife. She's like You're just a troublemaker, you're causing trouble, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:44

Well, you would be surprised. My stepson, he's 20. He loves you guys and a lot of his friends do.

Speaker 1: 30:50

You know what's funny. You know what's funny, jenny, is that I'd say at least a quarter, if not more, of the people coming to see us are kids. They're on their days late teens, early 20s, mid 20s who were either not even born when we had our first records come out, or babies. I think there's a lot of people really hungry for rock and roll. A lot of 90s bands are doing well because of it, because I think that was the last era of guitar based rock and roll that was on the radio. That was really popular.

Speaker 1: 31:32

I mean bands like us. I mean we played Saturday Night Live. They're not putting rock and roll bands on Saturday Night Live anymore. It's just not happening. It was a different era. I've said it many times most of us that were making music in the 90s grew up in the 70s, when it was, you know, chief Trick, aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, you know bands like that. Guitar bands were on the radio, so that's kind of what we grew up with. And then it, you know, went through hip hop and punk rock and all that stuff. So I think we brought something new to it because of it.

Speaker 2: 32:12

I think kids are. They're longing for something without auto tune.

Speaker 1: 32:16

Thank, you yes, without auto tune and without tracks, like just something and not. It's like the kids they talk. I don't want metal, they want rock and roll. They want guitars and they want voices and they want passion. Yeah, and I get it. I still do. I will be a 90 year old guy with bad hearing, just pissing off everybody at the old folks home, just cranking it up. Hopefully they'll have a punk rock old folks home.

Speaker 2: 32:51

All right, I did want to ask you so when Father of Mine came out and it's this huge hit and everybody's, everybody's talking. It's like coming at you wherever you are and obviously still this morning people are talking to you about it. So did your? Did your father ever talk to you about that song that you wrote? Cause obviously he knows that was about him.

Speaker 1: 33:12

Yeah, he did. I remember he reached out to me and that song had come out and he was like hey, boy, you know you had this bro Greek accent. And he'd be like I hear you want a song about me. I hope you did. Yeah, I hope you did me proud. I go well, dad, you haven't heard it. He goes no, I haven't heard it yet. Well, it's honest. It's honest and true. And he didn't say much after that because I don't think he wanted to hear honest and true and then I didn't hear anything about it after that we talked sporadically.

Speaker 1: 33:49

My sister's been pushing me to talk to my dad and one of my sisters who I never really got along with very well after I grew up. She was very over here politically and religiously and I wasn't. But someone asked her about like did your brother like is he romanticizing that? Like did he make a lot of that stuff up? And about your dad, my sister's like no, arthur, they call me Arthur. Arthur was being nice, he was being kind. If I had written the song it wouldn't have been that nice.

Speaker 1: 34:31

So it's truthful right, because they were older and they saw a lot more of what was going on than I did. It's like him just walking by and smacking my mom or cheating on my mom with her best friends and people like neighbors and stuff like that. Yeah yeah, my dad made a lot of bad choices, man. You know, I have compassion for him because everybody makes bad choices and I've been the king of bad making bad choices. I never made those kind of choices when it comes to my kids, but he did and he was, you know he was abandoned as a kid.

Speaker 1: 35:10

His dad and mom came over on the boat after World War I in 1919 and my grandfather met my grandmother. She was like 12 or 13 or 14, something like that. Well, it's back then for Greek people, you know people from the old country.

Speaker 2: 35:28

Perfect, let's get married yeah.

Speaker 1: 35:31

And worked out a deal with her parents, kind of an arranged marriage, forced marriage moved to New Hampshire, had two children and she was pregnant again and she ran off of the Fuller Brush salesman, the door-to-door salesman through Story in 1924, right Wow, to get away from that man.

Speaker 1: 35:53

And my grandfather, typical of the men in my family, took his sons, put them on a boat with a nurse, with a nanny, sent them to Greece and that was he was done. He sent them to Greece to be raised by his mom because his dad was off roaming the countryside having illegitimate children with other people. I come from a long line of people that of men that adhered to that cycle. I am the first one that broke that cycle.

Speaker 2: 36:26

Why do you think you were able to do that?

Speaker 1: 36:29

Because my mother raised me flat out, my mom my mom never really bad talked my dad, like a lot of women would. In that situation of the abuse and the abandonment and not paying child support and all that my mom did but is very passive, aggressive. She'd be like boy. A real man doesn't leave his children and move to the other side of the country and raise someone else's children. A real man realizes that people grow apart and gets divorced and moves down the street and raises his children with his ex-wife. And I've always believed that. I still believe that to this day. You can't work it out. Don't put it on your kids, man. Put your kids first and raise them up, and I see a lot of people doing it.

Speaker 1: 37:15

One of the unfortunate things about the fact that there's divorce rate is what it is is that we've learned to be better at divorce and raising children in divorce and I see a lot of families, mixed families, remarrying, having children. You have stepchildren. My wife has a stepdaughter. It isn't easy, it's hard, it's really hard, especially. Sometimes you get along with your stepchild's mother or father. Sometimes you don't. It's not, you know, but you got to try, you got to do the work, you got to grind it out and be there and be positive and be in love, be able to love it. You don't have to like, you have to love it.

Speaker 1: 38:05

You don't have to like it, that's my take, because we say that in recovery is like look, man, if you're my sober brother or sister, I'm going to love you. I don't necessarily have to like you, but I have to be there for you as a sober person, and that's something that's really important, I think. And just doing the steps and doing recovery and working it every day. I see my wife, I see how it's changed me because I was sober before I met her but just how I've evolved with it and she's involved in different programs around that as well. And she's not an addict. She barely had one drink, you know she's a cheat.

Speaker 1: 38:56

For sure I got to hit that window, right, that one window. But we just have such a great relationship right now, and only relationships with everybody, with people I've known for years, with people I'm just meeting, are better because of my sobriety and my relationship with my higher power.

Speaker 2: 39:18

For sure For me, If someone's listening to this and they are a younger girl or boy either one and they're having struggles because they are from a broken family, they have an absentee dad and they're really struggling right now, what would you say to them?

Speaker 1: 39:37

I urge them 100% to get into therapy and find a great therapist, Whether it doesn't matter how much money you have. There's programs everywhere and don't settle for someone that doesn't get you or you don't get them. There's plenty of people out there. But if you can find that relationship of a therapist or a mentor or a coach, it's just wonderful what we can all get back. I'm a certified life coach.

Speaker 2: 40:06

Are you?

Speaker 1: 40:07

Yeah, and I'm just starting to build clientele now. I've been waiting because we've been touring so much and I've got this book deal and just like a lot going on. I got them. And now they tell me I got pancreatitis or something like that. I mean, getting old sucks. It just sucks because I feel 15. Don't you feel like a kid inside?

Speaker 2: 40:32

It is strange, as you get older.

Speaker 1: 40:35

I just turned 40 and I was like I feel 20. Well, you look great though, but I'm looking at me and I'm like who the hell is this guy? Who's that guy? That's not that good looking long guy. I thought that guy, you know, but I still feel like the kid. And I think that that's more important than anything, because even this is going to break down and go away.

Speaker 1: 41:00

Beauty is going to go away. Beauty becomes more of an internal thing. But, man, you know, I'm just grateful. I have a lot of gratitude in my life right now and, like I said, I can be grateful to COVID, because COVID brought a bunch of horrible stuff, but it also brought good stuff, and I'm focusing on the good stuff from the lockdowns and just Zoom, zoom, it's just Zoom. Meetings for February has been a huge part for millions of people and just connecting with people. Yeah, I mean we weren't doing interviews on Zoom before COVID.

Speaker 2: 41:42

No.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Probably every interview you do is on Zoom.

Speaker 2: 41:47

Now everything is on Zoom.

Speaker 1: 41:49

I'm on Zoom at least once a day.

Speaker 2: 41:52

Yeah, do interviews.

Speaker 1: 41:53

today I got, like you know, the interviews are really starting to kick in the tour and they haven't kicked in for the album yet because we haven't really released a press release for the album. We've just kind of teased it. But we have a live album coming out right at the same time as the tour.

Speaker 2: 42:12

Yeah, before I let you go, is there anything that we haven't covered that you'd want anyone to know?

Speaker 1: 42:18

Just keep your eye, everybody keep your eye out for our first World Big Live record. It's going to be a double live vinyl record. It'll be digital as well. There's going to be a video, or it'll have to. It's called Strangely Enough, everclear Live at the Whiskey of Go-Go at the legendary Whiskey of Go-Go we played last year and record is dead and it's just. It sounds really great. I worked, we worked really hard on it and it just it's raw and kind of sloppy, but still very rock and roll and still tight.

Speaker 2: 42:53

I'm excited, it's exciting. Okay, I can't let you go without asking this, or else my husband will, like die what he needs to know. What was your favorite song that you ever have written?

Speaker 1: 43:04

I don't know if there's one, but if I have to choose one, it's a hard question, I'm sure. Yeah, it's like which child do you like?

Speaker 2: 43:12

the most. That's what I was thinking.

Speaker 1: 43:14

Go ahead, tell me yours.

Speaker 2: 43:16

I'll tell you mine, I like, depends on the hour.

Speaker 1: 43:19

Everybody has their favorite child. Come on.

Speaker 2: 43:22

I'm a two year old, so it depends on the hour.

Speaker 1: 43:26

Sometimes the minute Right If they're throwing things at you. There's a song I mean. I'm very grateful to my hits. I'm very grateful to Santa Monica. They bought me houses and a couple of divorces. I'm very grateful for that because I wouldn't be where I'm at now without all that bad stuff and I'm just grateful for it, so internally grateful. But there's a song called learning how to smile. That's on our fourth record, songs from America movie volume one learning how to smile. I think that's a pretty great song and a song I did for my solo record, a song called hot water test, which is about my MS, my multiple sclerosis, which I was diagnosed with in 2016. But the song came out in 2019. And I hadn't been public about it. Family friends knew about it. I talked to people about it. I wasn't hiding it. I wasn't talking about it because I needed to process it. I needed to process what it was and what it was doing to me and I think that song came out pretty honest and pretty good.

Speaker 2: 44:38

Well, thank you so much for sharing everything about your life and what you have going on now and your upcoming tour, and you're one of the most positive people I've met and it's been wonderful and quite an honor to have this conversation with you.

Speaker 1: 44:51

So I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. You're very welcome. It's wonderful talking to you and thank you for calling me positive. People tell me that all the time I don't know when that happened. It's obviously happened in the last few years and I'm grateful for that, because before that I was kind of a dark cloud walking around. But I'm grateful and I think that comes through. So thank you very much.

Speaker 2: 45:17

All right, well, thank you, art. Have a great rest of the day.

Speaker 2: 45:20

Bye dear Bye. If you enjoyed this episode in our Vanishing Father series, please make sure to subscribe and rate or review this podcast. The reviews really do count. If you'd like to hear more about the statistics and further understand the impact on fathers in society, please purchase our book Vanishing Fathers A Ripple Effect on Tomorrow's Generation. All proceeds from the book will directly go to charities that are helping at risk use, and if you'd like to follow us online, go to our website Trumancharitiescom, facebook at Trumancharities, instagram Jamie underscore Trumancharities, and you can follow me on LinkedIn at JamieTerman. Thank you so much for listening to our Vanishing Father series and please make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any further episodes.