Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What people don't realize when they talk about our lineup changes is that the original Against Me! broke up in 2001. It never recorded a full-length record.
I'm a musician and I listen to music all the time. If there's something out there where someone would tell me that I should listen to, I would listen to it.
If I want someone to recognize the gender identity I feel, I'd have to ask for that. I can't assume people will know how I'd like to be treated on their own.
The idea of Ryley Walker not ever listening to Leonard Cohen is like me going out to dinner and them telling me that they've never had spaghetti or whatever.
I don't want to be just that transgender performer or that transgender musical artist. I want to create songs and art and have those be judged on their merit alone.
As an artist, you're just observing the world around you. So much is overwhelming and it's all so inescapable that it can't all speak to general cultural statements.
Every artist has the song where they say, 'I wish I could have written a song as good as this,' but they don't feel like they've done it yet. It pushes you to evolve.
Fred Durst gave my first wife a tattoo of a star on the bottom of her foot when she was 14 years old in his trailer home. So that was my first introduction to Limp Bizkit.
Growing up, I never had a role model to show me that you can be trans and live a happy life. I hope that I can be that source of hope for someone out there who's struggling.
My whole identity is not gender. My whole identity is not talking about gender. There are so many other things in my life that are fulfilling that I like to think about too.
I think that on paper we did make so many of the classic mistakes that a punk band makes, signing to a major label, getting in business with the wrong people, stuff like that.
That's one of the biggest fears a lot of trans people have if they decide to come out, that they're making themselves unlovable and that they'll never have a relationship again.
I grew up with a mother who always had every fashion magazine stacked up on the side of her bed. When I was really young, I'd lie in bed with her, and we'd look at the magazines.
Maybe you don't know who a person is just based on the way they dress. I know that's a really simple thing you're supposed to be taught really young, but sometimes you can forget.
As a trans person, I don't feel welcome in most public spaces. Especially now with Trump, I don't feel faith or recognize that we're protected by the government or administration.
I was married for like seven, eight years. And then coming out of that I was like, 'Okay, now what? I guess I would like to date? That's a reasonable thing. I'm allowed to have that!'
Hormone replacement therapy does not change or affect your voice. And I have no problem with my voice: I really like my singing voice, I don't feel any dysphoria with my talking voice.
My first record I ever got was 'Full Moon Fever.' My dad gave me a copy when I was maybe nine years old or something. And I listened to the heck out of that record. I loved that record.
Going on tour for 10 years straight and playing 200-plus shows a year, you can't ever come back from that mentally. You're twisted in a weird way where you need that in order to be a person still.
For most people who are transitioning, surgery isn't really a financial reality. So to place these goals of 'in order to be happy with my body, I must do this thing' is really damaging to yourself.
To know that the people who are singing along at your show actually have something in common with you and can identify with what you've gone through, makes the songs that much more meaningful to sing.
When I was fourteen years old, I got arrested for battering an officer and resisting arrest with violence. I was beat up by the cops and they charged me with that. There was no original arresting charge.
There were definitely songs in the past that were me dealing with living this gender dysphoria, and sometimes they were really direct and no one picked up on it - but oftentimes, they were more veiled in metaphor.
To me, the songs that I'm most thankful to have been a part of creating are the songs that are able to adapt and change over the years and that mean different things to you at different periods of time in your life.
You know, sexism in the punk scene - or just in rock and roll in general - is so easily demonstrated by the amount of women or queer people that you see on stage versus the amount of cis males that you see on stage.
Musicians are kind of like pirates, you know? You have to be free to follow whatever your muse is, or wherever life is pulling you - especially if you aren't in, like, U2, and making millions and millions of dollars.
Any doctor will tell you a great treatment for depression is exercise, physical exertion, that it really ups the dopamine in your brain, so that's what a show is. I play a show and that's a high for me; I can ride that.
I'm just me and if me being honest about who I am and putting myself out there in that way makes connections with people and helps people out, that's just repaying the favor of music because that's what music does for me.
Any way that I can use my career or my platform to push along transgender visibility in the mainstream and society serves me on a personal level in that it will make day-to-day existence when I'm not doing this that much easier.
The first record we made, we recorded and mixed in a day. The second record was recorded and mixed in a week. The third was recorded and mixed in a month, and 'New Wave' was mixed and recorded in six months. It was an epic project.
I think the hardest part for musicians is what a wide gulf of time there is between when you decide to sober up and when you have the ability to navigate being social and having relationships and being in a band and having friends while sober.
My father was stationed in Italy in the military. I had no one to feed me what was cool, so I was into Guns N' Roses and New Kids on the Block and MC Hammer and a lot of '80s hair bands. But I was never into Motley Crue, they never stuck with me.
I feel self-conscious for even having met so many other band people and artists, I don't want to be that artist that is only able to talk about themselves and their own band. I don't want to be that person. I'd rather just be quiet than be that person.
I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.
Trans people should be able to fall in love and sing love songs too, and have that be just as valid. You turn on the radio and every other song is some guy singing about some girl who broke his heart, or vice versa. And there's not a lot of trans representation with that.
I moved to Naples, Florida, and by 15 I was into punk: Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, Operation Ivy. Along with the classic punk bands, like the Sex Pistols, the Clash, the Misfits, Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat - all those bands that you get into when you're first getting into punk.
My favorite video game when I was a kid was this game called 'Metroid' and the main character of 'Metroid' was Samus. Samus has this body armor suit, helmet and everything except at the end of the game, the helmet comes off and it was revealed that Samus was actually a woman.
I've gotten to do some really amazing things, gone to some really amazing places, and just have some really unique experiences. And if I have one regret looking back it's that - not a regret even, because I think that's kind of labeling depression as something you can control - but I just wish I would have been able to enjoy it more fully.
I could write all songs all day long about what I think about the music industry or music in general. Sometimes I gotta be like, "Let's write about something else." You don't want to say the same thing over and over again. In a lot of ways, I look at records as a year or two of my life encapsulated in songs. They're almost like journal entries.
When bands come from that underground scene and go into the mainstream, people just hate it. And it blows my mind. If you're saying you don't like what pop culture is, then change it. And when someone does make an effort to change it, everyone rebels against it and hates it. You can't win. People just want that division to exist. They don't want that division to go away.
Fans decide what pop culture is. We can define ourselves. Music and the presentation of art nowadays is totally in our control, with the Internet specifically. You no longer need record labels. You no longer need movie distribution companies. You can just make it and put it online, and it will distribute itself to millions of people. The borders and everything have been broken down. It really is in the hands of the people.