Real stories, told by real people.
We're back, alive and well, and we've got a story to tell. Today, Phry from Germany joins us. And he's got some things to share. From the good times he spent as a child with his grandparents, to the hard times of dealing with the divorce of his parents and living with his mother who suffered from manic-depression. This often caused unnecessary trouble for both Phry and his sister.
At 16 years old, Phry found himself depressed, alone, and not able to fit in with the rest of the kids at school. Isolating himself in a room, and losing the meaningful connections he once had with friends. He found himself losing it, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But, things changed once Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" came on. Phry talks about that fist time he saw Slash play on the guitar, and how it spoke to him on an entire new level - "After just one week I was hooked and I knew that this was "my thing" and I wanted to do nothing else with my life than becoming a great guitarist."
Now music and dedicating himself to becoming the best guitarist he can has changed Phry completely. He says "I have put all the trauma from my childhood and also the more recent tragic events into my new songs, not only to help myself deal with them better but also to show other people how something bad can be turned into something good eventually."
The GIANT AMONGST US Phry, speaks through his guitar strings and shares his story with us today.
‘Til
very soon,
PEACE!!
_____
Phry's work and where to find him :
✉ Join Phry's Email list and his Street Team Group on Facebook:
https://music.phrymcdunstan.com/connect-with-content-page
YouTube Channel : www.youtube.com/phrymcdunstan
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/448v2qeuqmr9zJSuPMxIyr?si=hoPkK6shSG2_oMYPTT9wig&nd=1
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phrymcdunstan/
_____
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_____
Background music played in between the outro complimentary of
Phry McDunstan ft. Jeff Bragg - Mirage
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Now, here's a little story I got to tell.
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Testing, testing, one, two.
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Ladies and gentlemen, we're back.
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We're alive.
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We're well.
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And we've got a story to tell.
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This time, we're going to settle in the west of Germany and we're joined by Fry.
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It's been cool and interesting to me because I've already been able to connect with people
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from different walks of life and living in different pockets of the world.
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From the US, places like Pittsburgh and Utah up to Canada.
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And now we're going to hunker down in Germany.
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Fry was kind enough to set some time aside and share his journey through navigating his
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way out of a toxic environment, an unhealthy environment to put him in a better place mentally,
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emotionally, and even physically.
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You know, because stress, anxiety, depression, all of that has an effect on our minds, of
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course, our spirit, but also our physical health.
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So he unpacks a lot of his early childhood trauma, his feeling of neglect, abandonment,
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of not being accepted or in a way outcasted from his peers, his classmates, his battle
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with depression and how music got a hold of him.
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That was his therapy.
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That was something that he was able to ground himself in and brought meaning to his life,
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brought happiness to his life, and how he's in a better place now because of it.
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So without further ado, let's go ahead and get into it.
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Ladies and gentlemen, this is Fry and his story.
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Hello.
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Today is Fry by uns.
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Fry, how are you?
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I'm fine, thank you.
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I just had to throw my German in there.
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Wow, I'm impressed.
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That was perfect.
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I guess you can say, Ich konbischen Deutsch, ich lerne immer noch.
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Wow, that's amazing.
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So how's everything going, Fry?
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Thank you for joining us, taking time out of your day.
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I do appreciate your time and welcome aboard.
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Thank you so much for having me.
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I'm really excited and I've been excited for the entire week and really looking forward
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to doing this.
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Cool, I'm happy to hear that.
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So tell us a little bit about growing up and I know you're originally from Germany,
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so if you can just talk a little bit about how that was growing up and how things were
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for you back in the Golden Age.
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Yeah, sure.
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Yeah, in the 1980s.
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There you go.
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Okay, right.
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You're also...
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I was born in 84.
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84, okay, yeah.
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Right on.
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I'm a child of the 90s mostly.
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Yeah, I was born and then later raised in a small town in Northrend, Westphalia, which
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is in the west of Germany.
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And back then, Germany was still divided.
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That was before the fall of the Berlin Wall, like three years before.
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No, 84, five years before.
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You lived through that?
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Yeah, I was actually also once visiting...
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On the west side.
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Yeah, on the west side.
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I was actually also once visiting the eastern part of Germany with my family.
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We were seeing some friends in Berlin and I still remember crossing the border and the
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people from East Germany checking our car and seeing the Berlin Wall when it was still
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standing.
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Wow, that's crazy because like I told you, my wife is from Germany and she was from
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the east side.
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So I heard stories about how it was when the wall came down because she was born in 82.
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So she was also a child when that happened, but it's always fascinating to hear the stories
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of the reactions of people and then there was people from the east that were rushing
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to get over to the west.
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Yeah, it was...
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I read about it when I was younger and then we would hear stories about it.
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You see it on TV documentaries, but to actually hear stories, personal stories of people that
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lived through it, it was always fascinating for me.
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Oh yeah, I once stayed with a guy from East Germany when I was on vacation in Bavaria
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and my ex-girlfriend and I, we did some couch surfing there and we met this guy and stayed
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at his place and when he was younger, he was actually fleeing from East Germany by swimming.
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Like he swam from one of the beaches somewhere in East Germany right through Denmark at night
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with a friend.
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They were in the water for like 48 hours.
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And that water is ice cold.
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That was really, really impressive.
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They were in the water for I think almost 48 hours until they were rescued by the Danish
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and then he made it to West Germany.
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They allowed him in here.
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That just goes to show what the human body can do like out of desperation and my goodness.
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That's really pushing it to the limits.
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Yeah, I was also really fascinated by that.
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So we kind of got off track when this guy just happened.
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So back to how it was for you growing up on the west side.
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So yeah, I was growing up in this rather small town and it's a very conservative little town,
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really boring.
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But like for the first few years of my life, I still have very fond memories up until I
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was seven years old probably.
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And those come mostly from spending a lot of time with my grandparents because my paternal
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grandfather who was a retired railwayman, he used to ride trains and buses with me all
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the time and in Wuppertal where he lives.
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They have this, you know, this Schwiebeband, this monorail upside down train, which he
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took me on like every day I saw him and I really love that.
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And he also let me like watch construction sites for hours because like almost like any
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little boy, that's what fascinated me, like all the excavators and the heavy machinery.
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And my maternal grandfather, he had a house in the woods and he would often take me for
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long walks through the forest and explain nature to me, which I also like really loved
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and found fascinating.
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And yeah, that's a cool thing because you were introduced to the outdoors and that's
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always like, you know, a lot of, there's a lot of people that I know, probably especially
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more nowadays that from an early age, all they know is technology, but it seems like
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at least in the beginning that you had the outdoors experience, your grandfather, what
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they were taking you to see a lot of what's going on in the real world.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And I'm very, very grateful for that to this day.
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Like, even though I don't really like the town where I grew up now, because like once
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you grow up, things become very stale and boring there.
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But growing up there as a child was actually more beneficial because like we had lots of
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nature there and it was safe to be on the streets all day long as opposed to like I'm
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later on, I met many children who grew up in bigger cities and like they got into drugs
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and other bad stuff really early.
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So I'm really happy.
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I have to ask you, not to cut you off.
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I have to ask you when you were going through the woods and would walk through the forest,
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did you guys ever go peels hunting?
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No, I like my grandfather didn't.
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That's mushrooms.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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But just for the people that didn't get what I was saying.
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Yeah.
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No, we mostly like he showed me like all the like the traces of the animals and which animal
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would make a certain trace.
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Oh, that's cool.
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Yeah, and also.
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And also.
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Yeah, and like birds and rabbits and deer and stuff like that.
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That's cool because when we take, we always take walks through the forest by wife and
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I and my little dog, our little dog.
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And during, it's usually October I think, October, November, maybe even September, but
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you can see people with their baskets and their bags and they're out there.
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They're out there looking for the mushrooms.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, that's that's a cool thing to do.
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But I unfortunately, I never did that.
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And I to this day, I'm not really into like these kind of mushrooms, like the ones you
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you just eat.
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Yeah, right.
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Yeah, because I don't really like the taste that much, but there's there's other mushrooms
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I I've enjoyed in the past.
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Now now the other ones might be getting off topic a little bit, but the other ones, do
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you pick those out yourself or?
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No, I bought them.
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You like the Netherlands are always like an hour away from from here so you can hop over
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there and buy some.
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Okay.
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Yeah, right, right, right.
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So that's so you had you had an outdoorsy childhood.
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It sounded like.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, the first like 10 to 12 years.
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Definitely.
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So yeah, the reason why I mentioned my my grandparents first before my parents is that like even
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though my mother is a very loving and caring woman and she she spent a lot of time with
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my sister and me when we were very young, like she she was raising us reading us and
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telling us stories and also talking always talking to us like we were adults.
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So I actually learned how to speak like at a very, very early age, like when I was like
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I think one and a half years old and my mother she sometimes told me that whenever she went
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shopping with me and was asking me, hey, what should we get?
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And I was answering her.
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Yeah, maybe some apples and stuff like that.
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Then she would often say that other people were turning their heads like, whoa, he's
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so young.
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How come he's he's already talking that good talking like a grown adult.
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Yeah, I think mostly because she she was reading and telling us stories so much and facilitating
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our interests as well.
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Okay, which was really helpful.
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And I'm like like what you said earlier, nowadays, so many children are mostly raised
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by the TV or the the internet, which, yeah, which can be very harmful and actually hinder
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your ability to to speak and to to understand things,
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especially when it's coming from outside sources, like you're not even having say, for instance,
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if you have a child and you're not having control over it, you might be at work, you
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might not be around.
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So they're they're getting this influence from so many different sources.
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And a lot of times, maybe more often than not, it's not coming from from a good place.
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Yeah, like from a place of love and and guidance.
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Yeah, you're easily influencing the influence can be it could be rotten to the core.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Yeah, but even though like my mother did all that, she also suffers and still to this day
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from manic depression.
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And my father on the other hand, he did not, but we never really had the best relationship
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since him and I are basically polar opposites and like both in our character and interests.
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And like, he had never he never had much patience with children per se, like when it came to
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teaching and explaining stuff.
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So I basically had to teach myself how to swim, ride a bike and then all that stuff.
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Because like, even though he tried with him, I could never never do it because like, yeah,
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there was no little to no patience involved.
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And I know from from from him growing up that his parents also, even though like my my grandparents
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were the nicest to my sister and me, you know how it is like when when when they they become
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grandparents, they they kind of change, you know, and when they had him, they they weren't
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also being very patient with him.
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So I think this this was the reason for for him having trouble explaining stuff.
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Were you the oldest?
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Were you the older of the yeah, my sister is two and a half years younger than me.
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And yeah, I also like much later, like when I was already 21 years old, I also found out
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that he's not my biological father, but that he first met my mother when she was already
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pregnant with me.
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I mean, that that didn't really affect me.
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I was I was a bit disappointed that they hadn't told me earlier, but he was saying that they
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they feared that when I was still going to school that I would like neglect my my school
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and because I got angry or or stuff like something like that.
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Do you mind talking about if you ever found out who your biological father was or if your
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mother ever?
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Oh yeah.
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I was really after that because like he was sending my my my mother a letter and he wanted
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to meet me.
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And yeah, there there was also no real connection with him.
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I mean, I even to this day, you don't really yeah, I kind of I found a letter.
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I found one of his letter in my mailbox like a couple of months ago and he wanted to reconnect
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with me again.
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But at this point, you know, like my relationship to both my parents isn't still isn't the best.
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I actually because because of her condition and because of her not taking care of it properly,
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I am now avoiding contact with my mother because things have gotten worse now.
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And since my sister already has three kids and she's a grandmother now and still doing
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the same things that she did when when my sister and I were young.
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I once told her that either you're you're going to therapy and work on it.
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And once I find out that you've been doing this for, let's say like half half a year
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and still continue doing that, then we can be in contact again.
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That was like almost two years ago.
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And to this day, she hasn't taken care of that.
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So yeah.
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That's strong for you to do because I know a lot of people because of the fact that it's
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a mother or father or even a sister or brother, even if the relationship is toxic, they can't
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sever the ties.
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It could be out of guilt or for whatever the reason is, but that doesn't necessarily mean
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that it's going to be any good for you to hold on to it.
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And like what you did was, I mean, you gave her out if it's an ultimatum or you gave her
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the opportunity.
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If this is important to you, you can work on yourself.
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And when I see some improvement, we can go ahead and try to build again.
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But until then, it's probably better that it stays the way it is.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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And it's not that like my sister and I haven't tried helping her like we were doing everything
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possible in our that we could do to help her, but she never really like the it's really
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important that when you have problems like that, that you yourself do the first steps
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or the most important steps and she didn't do that.
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And so all my sister and I did for her was basically for nothing.
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And at a certain point, like you can't do anything anymore and then it's better to tell
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those people, hey, figure this out yourself or leave me alone.
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You know, right?
00:17:42
Yeah.
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And you still have it out there.
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Like whenever you do get it together, I'm still here.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah.
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Once I see that and like my sister, she is still in contact with her even though like
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also not that much, but I always when I talk to my sister, I always ask her how she's doing
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and yeah, she's always telling me the same thing.
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Yeah, not not well, but she's also not taking care of it.
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So yeah, the same old song and then it's yeah, eventually, when do you draw the line?
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And that takes me back like to to my childhood because like at the time I was seven, my parents
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then split up and later got a divorce.
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And at first, like my sister and I, we were devastated, but we later accepted it because
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for the last couple of years of their marriage, they were constantly fighting.
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And this is something I also still remember and them not fighting every day was was for
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the better for for us.
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But like, apart from that, one of the biggest mistakes my parents made then was always talking
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badly about each other in the absence of the other one after the divorce, even then they
00:19:04
were like often trying to turn my sister and me against the other other one and also their
00:19:12
new partners, which is probably why to this day, I still have I have a huge problem with
00:19:19
authority and I stopped listening to them very, very early.
00:19:25
Did you feel like they were doing that to try to get you to side with one or the other,
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like trying to put themselves in a good light and put the other in the bad light so you
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would side with them or?
00:19:37
Yeah.
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I mean, they were still relatively young when that happened.
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They were about my age now.
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I'm now 38.
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And when they got divorced, they were also 38 and I think my mother, like being manic
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depressive and my father also having had the troubles with his parents when he were younger.
00:20:01
I think they didn't have the.
00:20:06
What's the word?
00:20:07
They pretty much weren't taught how to raise a child.
00:20:12
Yeah.
00:20:13
I spoke about this before and it really comes down to if you're not handed over information
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or you don't have the tools mentally, physically, whatever it is to deal with a situation, how
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can you pass that on to the next?
00:20:29
Yeah, absolutely.
00:20:31
And if it's not something that you're you're passed down and it's not something that you
00:20:37
learned yourself, there's really no you're you're dealing with an empty tool bag.
00:20:44
Right.
00:20:45
And I think in order to improve on yourself and your improve your situation, you have
00:20:50
to become very introspect.
00:20:53
Yes.
00:20:54
You know, like always, always thinking about, Hey, what have I done wrong today?
00:20:59
Or why?
00:21:00
Why did I do the things I've done?
00:21:02
And how can I turn things around and both my parents are even to this day, not really
00:21:09
the kind kind of people who would do that.
00:21:12
I mean, my father, now that he's a grandfather, which is something that like that also happened
00:21:18
with his parents, like with my nephews and niece, he's a completely different person.
00:21:25
Like he used to be unnecessarily strict when we were younger.
00:21:30
I still remember that we weren't allowed to talk when we were eating.
00:21:36
And which like this is a good thing.
00:21:38
The TV had to be turned off and we had to finish our our maybe meals before we could
00:21:45
get up.
00:21:46
And now when I see him with my with his grandchildren, like they can do anything they want, like
00:21:51
they can watch TV, they don't have to finish their their meals and can get their dessert
00:21:57
like right away.
00:21:58
And whenever I tell him, hey, you know how it was back then?
00:22:02
He's like, nah, you're you're you're exaggerating.
00:22:07
So it's safe.
00:22:08
Is it safe to say I mean, from what I gathered right now is you're the opposite.
00:22:12
You're more of a introspective person.
00:22:16
Yeah, absolutely.
00:22:18
And that's funny that you mentioned about not being able to get up because that was
00:22:22
the same thing when we were younger.
00:22:23
It was if you don't finish your food, you can't go outside and play.
00:22:28
And our dinner, our dinner table was right next to the window.
00:22:31
I was always the last one to finish the food.
00:22:34
And so I'm peeking out the blinds.
00:22:36
My brothers are already done with their food.
00:22:38
They're playing outside.
00:22:39
All the kids are riding their bikes, running around in the street.
00:22:42
And I'm looking out the window and my mom is like, you can't get up until you finish
00:22:46
the food.
00:22:47
And oh my God, that was like that was the worst.
00:22:50
I would I would have to force it down.
00:22:53
But you know, I found a way and finally it's like, it's like, I'm.
00:22:58
I'm out.
00:22:59
I'm out of prison.
00:23:00
You know, I can go outside and play now.
00:23:02
Yeah, I mean, some rules are, of course, for for the better.
00:23:10
But I still remember so many things that are unnecessary, especially with him.
00:23:15
And yeah, so this is like the main reason why I stopped listening to my parents at a
00:23:20
relatively early age and stopped seeing them as role models.
00:23:24
You had a trouble with authority after that.
00:23:26
Yeah, sure, because like when when you're like being told what to do and even when when
00:23:32
you when you're pretty young, you you already figured out like some of this doesn't.
00:23:36
Yeah, some of this doesn't really make sense.
00:23:39
Then like nowadays, whenever like anyone tells me what to do and I I smell bullshit, I I'm
00:23:47
not doing it.
00:23:49
So is so is it more like just out of like a rebel without a without a cause or you feel
00:23:55
like it's more of you questioning authority?
00:23:59
I think you're not just going to go along with it just to go along with it.
00:24:03
You like, let me this doesn't make sense.
00:24:05
Why am I going to do that?
00:24:06
Yeah, I mean, now I'm definitely like a rebel.
00:24:11
But I think up to up to until I I was probably 12 or 13 years old, I was I was probably I
00:24:19
was probably a really well behaved child.
00:24:23
I still remember like I had a friend when I was 10 years old.
00:24:27
He was more like a real troublemaker and maybe he had he had he was also having like a bad
00:24:34
influence on me.
00:24:35
But hell raise.
00:24:36
Yeah, yeah, but like when I when I when I was like out with him, he was always doing
00:24:40
like the opposite of what he should have been doing.
00:24:44
Right.
00:24:45
And I kind of became like that when I when I was like in my in my teens, like 13, 14,
00:24:52
I think that's a lot of it for a lot of different reasons.
00:24:55
We we start to put our hand in the fire when we shouldn't.
00:25:01
Yeah.
00:25:02
I mean, I was also seeing how or more I was understanding more how my mother's about my
00:25:10
mother's condition because like during my my teen year teenage years, I remember like
00:25:18
when she whenever she was depressed, she would often cause unnecessary trouble for for the
00:25:25
family and mostly for my sister and me.
00:25:29
Like she would sometimes disappear without out of warning or completely like neglect
00:25:36
herself and let herself go.
00:25:39
Like I remember when I when I was about 15 to 17 years old, that all she did in with her
00:25:46
day was like watching soap operas.
00:25:49
And most of the time with my sister and before she got to an age where she wanted to go out
00:25:54
and meet friends and party.
00:25:55
Wow.
00:25:56
So you pretty much were having to take care take care of things on your own.
00:26:01
Yeah.
00:26:02
Most of the time, sometimes my my sister and I just took care of everything with like
00:26:08
whenever she she had a manic phase, for instance, she would often make plans and promises to
00:26:15
us like, oh, we're going on on vacation and we're doing this and that, which then never
00:26:21
happened because we what many people often do is like they make plans and they're excited
00:26:26
about stuff and they don't even know how to how to do things.
00:26:31
Yeah.
00:26:32
My sister and I, we were slowly getting used to that and practically raising ourselves
00:26:39
more and more as time went by.
00:26:42
And this was you were still in high school or yeah, pretty much high school during this
00:26:46
time.
00:26:47
Yeah.
00:26:48
Yeah.
00:26:49
That was also like the time around the time that I had my my first depression.
00:26:54
You mind talking a little bit about that?
00:26:57
Yeah.
00:26:58
The first severe depression was when I when I was about 16 years old because I had to
00:27:04
repeat a year at school.
00:27:07
And I really basically couldn't really connect with the people in my new class.
00:27:14
And over the course of that school year as the contact to my old friends from before
00:27:20
became less frequent because like once you're not in the same class anymore, this this just
00:27:25
happens, you know, I became more and more of a loner and like every day after school,
00:27:32
I would just sit at home all day playing video games by myself.
00:27:37
Like I started playing video games before that, but I always played them with my friends
00:27:42
because that was something they they were also doing and we would often play together.
00:27:49
But like the combination of that, like playing video games all the time and then seeing how
00:27:53
my mother and sister were also just being very passive and watching TV all day and
00:27:59
then failing to connect with with the people at school that I think those were the catalysts
00:28:05
for me becoming more and more depressed to the point where I became like really blocked
00:28:12
and I couldn't talk to people anymore.
00:28:15
Like whenever I was at school during the breaks and in between the lessons, when I was trying
00:28:21
to talk to people, I couldn't think of anything like nothing would out would come out of my
00:28:27
mouth and that was also when I had to say something during class when the teacher picked
00:28:32
me out to say something.
00:28:35
So before that, I was always very talkative and a pretty creative child and I would often
00:28:43
write stories or draw comic strips with my friends and all of that was completely gone.
00:28:51
And even though I tried real hard to come up with anything during like a conversation,
00:28:56
I couldn't think of anything.
00:28:58
I was like really, really blocked and that that bothered me a lot.
00:29:02
You think now I know you said it was a combination of things.
00:29:06
So it was it sounds like it was the environment.
00:29:09
It wasn't really the healthiest of environments because of what you're looking around and
00:29:14
your sister, your mother, they're not in a good place and you're not doing much of anything
00:29:20
at the time of playing video games and kind of losing the human connection that you went
00:29:24
sad.
00:29:25
So it was safe to say it was a combination of all those things that put you in a in a
00:29:31
depressive state.
00:29:33
It might also be hereditary as well, because like not not only was my mother having these
00:29:41
depressions and manic phases all the time, but my grandmother, due to the fact that her
00:29:47
parents, my great grandparents, they were both killed during the Nazi occupation of
00:29:54
Germany.
00:29:56
So she grew up in a foster home and she never really she never really dealt with that.
00:30:04
I still to this day, I don't know much about it because she would not often talk about
00:30:09
it, especially not with with her grandchildren, but also not with my mother and her siblings,
00:30:17
but she would often let things out on them.
00:30:20
You know, not only is my mother having problems to this day, but some of my uncles and aunts.
00:30:27
I think this like really messed up two to three generations of my family, which is understandable.
00:30:34
I mean, that was a horrible, horrible time.
00:30:40
So during that time when you you weren't able to connect with the kids, you were in school,
00:30:46
but having a hard time focusing and now was this all throughout school?
00:30:51
Or there was a time where you kind of wiggled your way out of it and things started to look
00:30:58
more on the positive side.
00:31:01
Yeah, that happened after that school year because I talked to my my my class teacher.
00:31:11
I told him that I would like to to be transferred to another class where I knew more people
00:31:18
and were also some of my old friends who had also to repeat a year.
00:31:22
Luckily, he said yes, since he saw how much I hated being in his class, not because of
00:31:27
him, though, because he was a great teacher.
00:31:29
And I had him later later on, I had him as my history teacher again, which is the reason
00:31:35
why I still to this day I'm very interested in history and often read or watch documentaries
00:31:42
about it.
00:31:43
But yeah, he let me go to a different class.
00:31:47
And soon after that, my condition changed for the better.
00:31:50
I made new friends there.
00:31:52
I went out more and spend less and less time playing video games.
00:31:56
Yeah, that that lasted for for that entire year.
00:32:00
But then when I turned 18, I had another severe depression phase because like most of the people
00:32:06
I hung out with changed schools after after that year.
00:32:11
And I was mostly on my own again.
00:32:13
So the same thing happened happened again.
00:32:16
And this time I remember on my 18th birthday, I was making I was thinking like, ah, now
00:32:22
now you're 18.
00:32:23
Now you have to to basically become an adult, and I was thinking right away.
00:32:30
I was trying to to study real hard at school and to kind of change my my behavior more
00:32:40
to become to become a better student.
00:32:44
But after a while, when I saw that I was mostly on my own and I still couldn't connect with
00:32:50
all the other people in my class, then the next depression phase kicked in and I got
00:32:56
blocked again.
00:32:57
It seemed like you were you were putting a lot of pressure on yourself.
00:33:00
Yeah, I mean, I was always like a non conformist at school.
00:33:05
Because like like I said, like about the time I turned 1213, I was becoming like a rebel
00:33:11
myself and which was also like probably a reason why I couldn't connect with most of
00:33:18
the people at school because most of them were really nice kids and they were coming
00:33:23
from good homes.
00:33:26
And I always had the feeling that they were because they knew my parents were divorced.
00:33:31
And especially when I was younger, they like some of their parents told them like, ah,
00:33:38
you have you have to help this guy.
00:33:39
He's having trouble at home.
00:33:41
And I always hated that I didn't want to I didn't want to be treated different differently.
00:33:45
You know.
00:33:47
So yeah.
00:33:48
I mean, I'd rather give a picture or or an example of how it looked like for you during
00:33:54
that second phase, because I know you said there was a second phase where you had a I
00:33:58
wouldn't call it a phase, but the second depression episode that you had, like where
00:34:03
there are certain things that that manifested because of it, like say, for instance, not
00:34:09
speaking with anybody kind of going in your shell distancing yourself, anything like that.
00:34:15
Yeah.
00:34:16
All that and plus like a certain feeling of guilt because I tried real, really hard to
00:34:23
become like a quote unquote, a better person by studying and behaving all the time.
00:34:33
And I kind of felt like this, this wasn't me.
00:34:38
I think I had to learn how to be okay with the fact that I'm a nonconformist and I don't
00:34:45
easily fit in and like, especially at school, you know, how how school is they they don't
00:34:51
they don't really want you to be creative or think differently.
00:34:56
So yeah, I but that kind of made me feel a bit guilty, I guess.
00:35:01
But at the same time, I also experienced that something was missing from my life because
00:35:07
I mentioned before that I was always a very creative child.
00:35:12
And whenever I found something I liked, I would like really delve into it and become
00:35:17
obsessed with it.
00:35:18
So for for a time when when I was younger, it was drawing, like drawing comic strips
00:35:25
and pictures of superheroes and reading comic books.
00:35:31
And then it became inline skating mountain biking for a couple of years, martial arts.
00:35:38
And when I turned 17, also weightlifting, but like, it's the case with so many children,
00:35:47
I would either lose interest in that or couldn't further pursue some some some of that because
00:35:54
of like monetary reasons or family troubles as well.
00:35:58
Right.
00:35:59
Yeah, I needed something in my life to to get out of this.
00:36:03
Because like I saw with my mom, she had her first child, which I found out much later when
00:36:10
she was in her early 20s, or when she was even, I think, 19, like my older half brother,
00:36:19
whom I met much later, who didn't grow up with with us.
00:36:23
I think she could never find or pursue anything that would maybe help her overcome her depressions
00:36:33
and manic, manic phases.
00:36:36
So I kind of maybe this more subconsciously, but I kind of felt that I needed something
00:36:43
in my life to to really help me focus and get out of this this cycle.
00:36:51
Because like I said, this was already the second time I had severe depression.
00:36:57
And I was kind of fearing that like with my mother, this would always be happening to
00:37:02
me again and again.
00:37:04
That depression, it seems like it even not forced you, but it puts you in a position
00:37:09
to where you started to look inward and figure out how can I get myself out of this and get
00:37:18
better.
00:37:19
Yeah.
00:37:20
But at that point, I didn't really have a clue.
00:37:24
So I just basically I set it out.
00:37:29
I I lived through my days waiting for for anything to happen.
00:37:35
And you were already out of school by this time?
00:37:37
No, no, I was I was still at school.
00:37:40
I was 18.
00:37:41
And I had like three years ahead of me.
00:37:44
In Germany, we go to the equivalent of high school a little longer than people in the
00:37:51
US.
00:37:52
And we usually it depends on when when you when you first go to school, but I since I
00:37:59
also had to repeat a year, I graduated school when I was already 21.
00:38:06
So yeah, I still had three years, three years ago.
00:38:11
And yeah, shortly after that depression finally ended.
00:38:16
I was then like one night watching MTV and all of a sudden like the music video for the
00:38:23
guns and roses songs we child of mine came on.
00:38:26
And I knew about that band before and like a couple of their songs like November rain
00:38:31
and but I didn't really knew who they were.
00:38:35
And then seeing slash for the first time playing the song and the whole vibe of the video
00:38:41
that that really spoke to me somehow like an entire new level.
00:38:45
And even though I was like interested in music for a while already, I was only writing songs
00:38:53
like lyrics kind of mostly rap rock stuff because back then I was still listening to like Kid
00:39:00
Rock and Limp Bizkit.
00:39:02
Limp Bizkit.
00:39:03
Yeah, but also like lots of hip hop like Randy MC, Cypress Hill.
00:39:08
Oh, some old school stuff.
00:39:11
Yeah, yes.
00:39:12
I still love that to this day.
00:39:14
I'm really into the old school hip hop.
00:39:17
Yeah.
00:39:18
Yeah.
00:39:19
But yeah, that kind of gave me the idea maybe I should try becoming a guitarist because
00:39:26
like I kind of felt like a connection to to Sledge like all his mystique.
00:39:32
He was just standing there with his last Paul and you couldn't really see his face and he's
00:39:37
more like like a character, you know.
00:39:40
And that really fascinated me.
00:39:41
He was entertaining.
00:39:42
Yeah.
00:39:43
And yeah, so I asked a guy from from school who knew how to play guitar to show me like
00:39:52
my first couple of chords and write them down for me.
00:39:56
And then I got got an old acoustic guitar from my mother's then partner and started practicing
00:40:02
right away.
00:40:03
And after just one week, I was already hooked.
00:40:07
Like I knew I had found my thing, you know, I and I wanted to do nothing else but becoming
00:40:13
a great guitarist because like after one week of playing, I already knew all the chords
00:40:17
and I could strum them and play around with them.
00:40:21
Even though I was already like 18 years old and I knew that most musicians start at a
00:40:27
very early age, like when they're like six or seven years old.
00:40:33
I still had more than two years of school ahead of me, which was like, okay, I can like
00:40:39
an excuse for me to to really focus on that because I didn't have to go to work and do
00:40:45
grown up stuff, you know.
00:40:47
So yeah, all I did from that point on was playing the guitar.
00:40:51
Like after school, I would play up to six hours every day.
00:40:55
And on the weekends, I would even play up to 12 hours.
00:40:59
Would you just lock yourself in the room and yeah, when I like the 12 hour thing that was
00:41:04
like I met two amazing guitar teachers or first the first one I met, he was only like,
00:41:12
I think two and a half years older than me.
00:41:15
And he was becoming more of a good friend.
00:41:18
But like he would take me to to a session place in Dusseldorf every weekend where you
00:41:25
could just hop on stage and play with like seasoned musicians.
00:41:30
And I really like like.
00:41:34
After playing for the entire day, we would go there and then play sessions with like
00:41:40
really amazing musicians, which which I'm really grateful for because there I learned
00:41:45
how to how to improvise and listen to others and what they're doing.
00:41:49
That's what I was going to ask you.
00:41:50
Are you guys just on stage together improvising just paying off each other?
00:41:54
Yeah, we would never play covers like we would always like freestyle.
00:41:58
Yeah, more like kind of I call it aggressive funk because it was like we were playing like
00:42:06
since I wasn't that that good yet, I would just play one funky dominant seventh chord
00:42:13
and really just listen to the bass player and drummer and what they were doing then
00:42:17
just work on like the dynamics with them.
00:42:21
And we would often just play on one chord.
00:42:25
But then there there would be my my guitar teacher and buddy, he would like solo over
00:42:29
it and yeah, that's a good way.
00:42:32
That's a good I think that's a good way to sharpen your chops because you're not just
00:42:35
reading off of you're not you're not just reading off of a paper, but you're actually
00:42:40
feeling it.
00:42:41
Yeah, you're playing off each other.
00:42:43
And that has a lot more passion and like it sounds you are ready to creative type.
00:42:48
So that was right up your alley.
00:42:49
Right.
00:42:50
Plus it was OK to to smoke weed in there, even by the top.
00:42:54
Like one one night the cops were were there and I was like, oh, shit, what should we do?
00:42:59
And no, they say it's OK.
00:43:00
It's better.
00:43:01
They say it's it's better for like the musicians like smoking in here.
00:43:06
Oh, then going through the street.
00:43:09
Yeah, right.
00:43:10
Going through town and bothering people there.
00:43:12
So yeah, they were.
00:43:14
So that's the way to smoke weed here.
00:43:16
Legally, you got to know how to play instrument.
00:43:19
Yeah.
00:43:20
And then just jammed with others.
00:43:22
You get a pass.
00:43:23
Yeah.
00:43:25
And yeah, and I really enjoyed those those years because yeah, that helped me become become
00:43:33
a better guitarist.
00:43:35
And after one year, I started taking lessons from from my guitar teachers teacher because
00:43:42
he wasn't he didn't have the time anymore to teach me.
00:43:48
And so I went to his old teacher and from him I learned like so much about music theory
00:43:53
and learned all the scales and how to how to improvise over certain chords.
00:44:02
And yeah, I became like really, really good over like in a short amount of time.
00:44:09
I remember then that when when I graduated school after like like two and a half years
00:44:15
later, I was like already better than most guitarists I knew who had started playing
00:44:21
at a very early age.
00:44:24
It's safe to say from the music that was that was like a lifesaver for you.
00:44:28
Yeah, I mean, I wish I could tell you that from that day on, when I started playing,
00:44:34
I never experienced depression again.
00:44:37
But then there there was one last but like the most severe phase shortly after I started
00:44:42
playing, because that was like what I what I told you before we started recording what
00:44:47
my my new song is also about.
00:44:50
Like I fell in love with a girl at school that I shouldn't have fallen in love with
00:44:55
because she was already in a relationship and there was like no chance for me of getting
00:45:01
together with her.
00:45:04
And yeah, same thing.
00:45:05
Like it really messed me up because like she was also from she was also hanging out with
00:45:12
those people who who were coming from from quote unquote good family situations and kind
00:45:20
of again made me feel like an outsider because I couldn't still couldn't connect with those
00:45:27
people.
00:45:28
Before before that, it didn't bother me that much because I had my guitar and I had new
00:45:34
friends like mostly musicians and I was hanging out with them and they were also all nonconformist
00:45:40
people.
00:45:41
But yeah, since since I was like way too much in love with her and like there there was no
00:45:48
hope for that.
00:45:50
Yeah, I became like really depressed again.
00:45:52
And I even then had at one point a manic phase where I lost sense of reality for for like
00:46:01
a couple of days, which I have never experienced before.
00:46:05
And that like really shook me.
00:46:07
Whoa, okay, you know, I'm sorry to cut you off, but I'm interested a bit if you don't
00:46:13
mind just sharing.
00:46:14
I know you said it was for a couple of days, but just how exactly does that feel like or
00:46:21
what were you going through during those those two days?
00:46:25
If you can even recall, yeah, yeah, I can't go too much into detail because some of it
00:46:32
is a little embarrassing.
00:46:33
No, no, that's fine.
00:46:34
That's fine.
00:46:35
But like one of the things is, you know, when like some some people that often happens to
00:46:46
to people who are addicted to amphetamines, like meth, for instance, you start you start
00:46:53
hallucinating thinking things.
00:46:55
Yeah.
00:46:56
And seeing patterns where there aren't any.
00:47:00
Like I remember one day walking around town thinking that everyone was watching me and
00:47:06
talking about me.
00:47:07
And when I was like overhearing conversations from strangers, I was like projecting everything
00:47:14
they said onto myself and I was thinking they are talking about me.
00:47:19
You know, that that lasted for like a couple of days.
00:47:22
And after that, yeah, it was, but it luckily it was like the only time I've had it because
00:47:28
after that, I was like really shortly after that, I was still struggling with the depression
00:47:35
side.
00:47:36
But once I got out of that, I knew that I had to to keep working on myself.
00:47:43
And I did that through music.
00:47:45
Now, did not to stay on that topic too long.
00:47:48
But did how did that end?
00:47:51
Did you you just snap out of it or?
00:47:56
I think I like the the manic phase.
00:47:59
Yeah, my first guitar teacher who was a good friend of mine, he he kind of took care of
00:48:05
me like he let me sleep at his place and sit things out mostly and he was talking to me
00:48:11
because he slowly brought you out of it.
00:48:14
I was in love with right.
00:48:16
And after that, like I said, after that was over, I still was struggling with severe depression
00:48:23
for a couple of months, even mostly also because I saw the girl like every day because we were
00:48:29
going to school together.
00:48:31
And we still had like, I think a full year of school ahead ahead of us.
00:48:36
Yeah, seeing her every day.
00:48:38
Yeah.
00:48:39
I don't know if you know that Pink Floyd song coming back to life coming back from their
00:48:46
later albums.
00:48:47
By the way, Pink Floyd is to me, the most beautiful music I can imagine and it speaks
00:48:54
to me on like on another level.
00:48:57
Like this is probably their music is the music I can most most identify with.
00:49:06
That's the one that that hits home for you.
00:49:08
It speaks to the heart.
00:49:09
Now correct me if I'm wrong.
00:49:11
I don't I don't know if I never tried to do it, but I used to always hear about it when
00:49:16
I was younger.
00:49:18
There was one of his albums.
00:49:19
I don't know if it's Dark Side of the Moon that you can play through with the Wizard
00:49:23
of Oz in the background or it plays along.
00:49:26
Yeah.
00:49:27
And also with 2001, like with the final 20 minutes of 2001, it's Dark Side of the Moon.
00:49:34
Yeah.
00:49:35
How does that look?
00:49:36
How does that look like or sound like it just goes together?
00:49:38
Yeah, it's kind of synced.
00:49:40
I've only I've only done it with 2001, not with the Wizard of Oz, but it's it's creepy.
00:49:48
Is it pretty trippy?
00:49:49
Yeah.
00:49:50
I mean, it's they they were I've seen an interview with was it with David Gilmour or
00:49:57
with Roger Waters, one of them.
00:50:00
And they they were asking him about it.
00:50:03
And he said it's it's pure coincidence, but maybe it's because it's great art and it's
00:50:10
coming from from a certain place, you know.
00:50:14
Right.
00:50:15
And then and then sometimes, I guess, even if it's if there's two separate mediums of
00:50:22
the art form, but on a subconscious level, somewhere, somehow they connect and sink.
00:50:28
And if you find the right match, you realize, oh, wow, these two go together.
00:50:33
Oh, and it's the song echoes, by the way, from the album before Dark Side of the Moon.
00:50:39
If you listen to echoes, yeah, it's a 20 minute song, and it's it's so epic and impressive
00:50:45
on its own.
00:50:46
But if you sync that up to the final 20 minutes of 2001, then it's yeah, it's it's like a
00:50:52
music video.
00:50:53
Okay, I'm going to have to do that.
00:50:55
I'm going to set some time aside to see how that goes.
00:50:58
I think there's there's a cut on YouTube where you don't have to put in the work and just
00:51:03
can sit back and enjoy it.
00:51:05
I mean, YouTube, what can't you find on YouTube?
00:51:08
Absolutely, right.
00:51:11
So your teacher or your men's not your mentor, but your friend, your guitar teacher, he slowly
00:51:20
yeah, slowly helped you come to grips with reality, come back to life.
00:51:25
Right.
00:51:26
Yeah, like he would, we would still go to that session plays and hang out even more than
00:51:32
before, which really helped me because he's also like a non conformist.
00:51:35
And we were we're basically the same person to a certain extent.
00:51:41
And we were getting along so so well.
00:51:44
So I was always like jamming with him.
00:51:47
And then I continued taking lessons from his teacher.
00:51:52
But at the same time, like, like all this dedicating myself to becoming the best guitarist I could
00:51:59
be, I think that mostly that has then had changed me and helped me, first of all, overcoming
00:52:12
that.
00:52:13
But then later on, never fall into that trap again.
00:52:18
That's important.
00:52:19
That's because to stay out of it.
00:52:22
Because through through music, I learned like what focus and discipline really mean and
00:52:30
how to calm myself down.
00:52:32
Since before that, I've always been like a rather lively and hectic person, especially
00:52:38
when I was a teenager.
00:52:40
And I I constantly need new input or I get bored, which is probably why school was such
00:52:46
a big problem for me.
00:52:49
In the first place, like that, too.
00:52:52
And like over the years, I became more patient, both with myself and then later on, also with
00:52:58
other people since I, like after three years of playing, I became a guitar teacher.
00:53:06
And to this day, I have been teaching students from from all age groups, walks of life and
00:53:11
experience level.
00:53:13
And that's for almost like 17 years.
00:53:16
So you're doing that full time.
00:53:17
Yeah.
00:53:18
So it's now I'm slowly switching from being a full time guitar teacher to solely being
00:53:26
a musician.
00:53:28
But at the moment, it's still have have.
00:53:33
Do you do that mostly online or do you do live guitar lessons or a combination of both?
00:53:39
My students, they they come to to my place here and I play with them.
00:53:44
It's one on one because I also do online guitar lessons, mostly like a video course that I
00:53:52
offer as part of my I've seen it.
00:53:55
I've seen your YouTube channel.
00:53:56
You have you have a lot of those.
00:53:57
Those are good.
00:53:58
Those they I mean, most of it is in German.
00:54:00
But I mean, I see that that you also offer those.
00:54:03
Yeah, the English ones are in my for my online Patreon course.
00:54:09
And I mean, those are good.
00:54:13
If someone someone would ask me, hey, I can't afford like one on one guitar lessons, but
00:54:17
I want to to learn how to play guitar anyway.
00:54:20
I would definitely recommend like these video lessons and doing that.
00:54:27
But they're still like, there's nothing like that one on one hands on like together in
00:54:34
the same way.
00:54:35
Even with all those books now and like DVDs you can get and YouTube videos, it's still
00:54:43
because you can do so many things wrong.
00:54:47
Even if you have like an instruction in front of you, like a book or or even a video, you
00:54:53
can you can still like put your fingers slightly wrong there on the fretboard and maybe yeah,
00:55:02
also other things like tone control and stuff like that.
00:55:04
And once you have someone that that you're seeing like on a weekly or like bi weekly
00:55:12
basis who who sees what what you're doing and then is able to correct you, that's still
00:55:19
irreplaceable.
00:55:20
Yeah.
00:55:21
So the music was your that was your outlet?
00:55:26
Absolutely.
00:55:27
Yeah.
00:55:28
And the main catalyst for me never falling into that depression or even manic phase trap
00:55:38
ever again.
00:55:41
Everybody has their their reason, their why I always hear that you got to find your why
00:55:46
or some people it's a family member, it could be a partner and I mean music.
00:55:53
That's that's also that's a universal language.
00:55:55
And for you, it speaks in a in a more personal and dear way than than maybe the way it does
00:56:02
is some other people.
00:56:03
Yeah.
00:56:04
I mean, it's it's the best thing that ever happened to me and I'm so grateful for this.
00:56:09
I mean, this is also the reason why I why I am a full time musician and not doing this
00:56:15
as a hobby, because I knew that if I like had gotten a job after like a real quote unquote
00:56:25
job after school, yeah, and just did the guitar thing as a hobby.
00:56:32
I knew from like, from my school days that I wouldn't fit in in most places like you
00:56:40
can't like put me in like an office space and expect me to to sit there for eight hours
00:56:46
every day and do what I'm told and yeah, I think had I done, I can respect that about
00:56:53
you.
00:56:54
I like the fact that you you pretty much have accepted and embraced your individuality,
00:57:01
non conformist.
00:57:03
That's the way because everybody, I mean, especially when you're in school, they raise
00:57:07
you and almost breed you in a way to just go by the standards, the regulations, the
00:57:13
rules, the schedule, everything, but not everybody is like that and everybody is different.
00:57:21
Yeah, that's true.
00:57:23
And I think that had I done that, I would have probably fallen back into the the same
00:57:29
cycles.
00:57:30
You would have went crazy.
00:57:31
Yeah.
00:57:32
Yeah.
00:57:33
That's not for you.
00:57:34
Yeah, right.
00:57:35
So it's also your therapy, I mean, it's your therapy, it's your everything, music.
00:57:42
Yeah, it helped me like, like writing songs and thinking about what has happened to me
00:57:48
and putting that into to a song and like learning how to to express my feelings through the
00:57:56
guitars.
00:57:57
Well, that helped me overcome these things.
00:58:00
And I still I have certain family members like like one of my cousins who never who never
00:58:08
found anything like this.
00:58:11
And to this day, they're still blaming like everything on their childhood.
00:58:16
And like, whenever they mess up and fall back into like nasty habits, like they always mentioned
00:58:25
their their shitty childhood, and I think this is this is very unhealthy.
00:58:31
And yeah, I never really went to therapy.
00:58:34
Like at one point during one of the depression phases, I tried seeing a therapist like I
00:58:41
literally knocked on his door because I come I come from a small town and I knew, okay,
00:58:46
in this house here, here's living a therapist, maybe I just knock on his door and then ask
00:58:51
him for like an appointment, but he basically just sent me away because he wasn't taking
00:58:56
taking me seriously or maybe he was too busy or something.
00:59:00
Yeah, so I yeah, like with so many things like figuring out how to to ride a bike and
00:59:07
how to to shave and stuff like that.
00:59:10
I also had to figure out on my own how to overcome depression and how to to prevent myself from
00:59:20
ever falling into that trap again.
00:59:22
And I'm really, really happy and grateful that I found music and that this was the thing
00:59:29
for me.
00:59:30
That was your your therapy office was every time you went to those jam sessions or you
00:59:35
met up with that guitar instructor of yours.
00:59:39
Right.
00:59:40
And then after school, like a year after that, I moved away from that small town to to Cologne
00:59:46
where I still live to this day.
00:59:49
And also like being in a bigger city where you can also like broaden your mind by like
00:59:57
meeting new people every day and having exciting opportunities all all around you that also
01:00:05
helped me and also like having the physical distance to my family was like really important
01:00:12
for me because I sometimes go back to this to to my to my hometown because my sister
01:00:18
lives there with with her family.
01:00:22
And I'm always happy to see her and my my my nephews and my niece.
01:00:28
But I'm also always happy when when I'm leaving because I really can't stand that place.
01:00:36
It's good to go.
01:00:37
It's good to visit, but it's so good to go.
01:00:40
Yeah.
01:00:41
Yeah.
01:00:42
And I also like I've written a song about this like my my first ever solo my my first
01:00:50
ever single as a solo artist is called This Is The Place and you can watch the music video
01:00:55
on YouTube.
01:00:56
I went back to to my hometown and and film like all the places I grew up at and then made
01:01:04
like a music video out of this and really tried capturing like the the boring aspect
01:01:11
and the dullness of this place.
01:01:13
So yeah, like in a way this is also like a form of therapy.
01:01:17
Now I have this song and it's a it's a catalyst.
01:01:22
You know, I'm sure also like you said for you, music has been your life saving your
01:01:28
therapy.
01:01:29
Now, that also is probably going to be something that a lot of other people can relate to regarding
01:01:37
the ones that come to you for lessons or the ones that you instruct.
01:01:41
I'm sure some of them that has been the same the same thing for them as far as music is
01:01:47
is what's helping me.
01:01:48
It's what I love.
01:01:49
It's it's bringing life back into my life.
01:01:54
Absolutely.
01:01:55
And since I became a solo artist, I've also joined the great music coaching program.
01:02:03
And the first thing they taught us there was how to tell our life story and how to use
01:02:11
it in order to better connect with our audience and in order to even like if that's our like
01:02:21
our goal or intention to help people.
01:02:24
And I'm now like over a year into my solo career.
01:02:29
And I've already built a small community of like-minded music enthusiasts.
01:02:33
And there's a handful of people in there who also went through depression, abuse and
01:02:40
severe illness.
01:02:42
Let me know that once they discovered my music and listened to a couple of my songs that
01:02:49
was very helpful to them.
01:02:52
And this is like hearing that is like the greatest gift for an artist because then you
01:02:57
see, OK, not only did my music help me, but it's now also helping others as well.
01:03:05
Oh, yeah.
01:03:06
That's a beautiful thing.
01:03:08
And I'd like to also share all that information, your YouTube channel, your music and everything
01:03:13
that you have going on in the description box so we can get that information from you
01:03:18
later.
01:03:20
And people that want to check out your music or see what you have to offer, say they have
01:03:27
a guitar, they love strumming on the guitar strings and that type of thing and they can
01:03:31
connect with you in a musical sense.
01:03:34
Yeah.
01:03:35
So if I mean, as of now, it's still mostly on Facebook and I don't know how many people
01:03:41
are still using that.
01:03:42
But I have built my like my my main community on Facebook and there is a group called the
01:03:48
Fry McDonston Street Team Group where all these people are meeting.
01:03:53
So over there you can share not only like your your favorite music and your interests,
01:04:01
but also let people know like if you were struggling with anything and or or still are
01:04:10
and how to overcome this or how you overcame it.
01:04:15
It's become the favorite thing about my my music career, like nurturing this community
01:04:22
of people, this group and talking to people there.
01:04:28
And every other week I do a live stream there and play some music for for the community
01:04:34
and also share the latest news there.
01:04:37
Oh, OK.
01:04:38
Yeah.
01:04:39
I can add also I was listening to some of your stuff and I shared one of them with you
01:04:44
in the Mirage, the new song.
01:04:45
It's groovy.
01:04:46
It's bluesy.
01:04:48
Your music, it has a sound that can if there's something for everyone, if you like the hard
01:04:56
stuff, aggressive stuff, if you like that laid back and chill stuff, some something groovy,
01:05:01
something funky, bluesy.
01:05:03
Like I said, this last one that you put out on on YouTube, it's something for everyone.
01:05:08
So I like that you can play a variety of things.
01:05:10
And I was even on your YouTube channel and I seen that you were even giving a tutorial
01:05:16
on how to play some Bob Marley.
01:05:18
So reggae even.
01:05:19
Yeah.
01:05:20
I mean, that that's the that's I think the.
01:05:25
You have a you have a big range.
01:05:27
You have a dynamic range.
01:05:30
That's the to a part the Led Zeppelin influence because the Zeppelin did that all the time
01:05:36
back then they they had a funk song.
01:05:38
They had like a reggae song even and then like their hard rock and blue stuff and let
01:05:46
no two of their songs ever sounded alike.
01:05:50
And this is like my approach as well.
01:05:52
Because I also enjoy listening to all these these artists.
01:05:55
I love Bob Marley and the Whalers.
01:05:58
I love how about how about we were talking earlier about the 90s stuff.
01:06:02
How about Sublime?
01:06:03
Oh, yeah, like if Brad if Bradley hadn't yeah, if Bradley hadn't died when they when they
01:06:12
like broke and released that sublime album, I think they would have been one of the biggest
01:06:17
artists of the night because they were so unique.
01:06:20
Yeah.
01:06:21
They had the scar, the reggae they had.
01:06:24
Yeah, it was a little bit of yeah, yeah, funk.
01:06:28
Yeah.
01:06:29
And punk and punk as well.
01:06:31
Yeah, yeah.
01:06:32
They were they I still I have a lot of their stuff and I I listened to on Spotify like
01:06:39
you know you could find a lot of a lot of everything on there.
01:06:42
Actually you you have a Spotify playlist too, right?
01:06:46
Yeah.
01:06:47
And so that's a beautiful thing that you're able to connect and then even this community
01:06:52
that you have going on that's like you said that's your baby right there.
01:06:56
That's a joy in itself.
01:06:58
Yeah.
01:06:59
And one of my goals for the next couple of years is to to further grow it and also expand
01:07:07
it to my inner circle community like the group on Facebook is is free.
01:07:13
So you can join this and connect with people there.
01:07:17
But I also like as you know like as musicians we have to to live and make money.
01:07:24
Of course, yeah.
01:07:25
I'm also like that old saying that starving musician right and in order to to not be a
01:07:31
starving artist anymore I'm now working on my inner circle community which is like behind
01:07:36
a paywall but what you get for your money there is like you can connect with me more
01:07:41
personally through one on one zoom calls.
01:07:44
I can teach you like in addition to my video guitar course I can I can do like one on one
01:07:51
zoom sessions with you and I will also do these live stream hangouts over zoom where
01:08:00
like people can connect with each other by like because with with these zoom calls everybody's
01:08:07
able to speak and say speak their mind there and I'm I'm now constantly working on that
01:08:17
and building an even better community over there.
01:08:23
That's awesome.
01:08:24
And I wish you the best with those endeavors.
01:08:27
Now I know you're dealing with a lot of people through zoom and is there anything you can
01:08:33
offer to somebody who has been through a similar situations some advice some tips I know for
01:08:41
you it was music but just any kind of words of encouragement for somebody who may be going
01:08:48
through that right now and they still haven't figured out how to come out of that dark place.
01:08:56
Yeah, like if you are struggling in life like so many people do nowadays.
01:09:02
Like I think like after the past three years even more people than ever before.
01:09:09
I think the most reasonable thing first is of course to seek professional help and make
01:09:17
that take that first step because yeah not everyone is as fortunate as me and find something
01:09:28
that like grips them to a point where they dedicate their entire life to it and and having
01:09:36
that being their like anchor but like once you started getting back on the right track
01:09:43
through therapy therapy I would recommend try finding something that gives your life
01:09:49
meaning and direction and you don't necessarily have to make it like the focal point of your
01:09:55
life like I did with my music but it should be something that you enjoy doing every day
01:10:01
and that helps you become a better person over time and also at the same time please
01:10:06
make sure that it's something that you could theoretically overdo without it affecting
01:10:12
your health or your social life because at some point in your life it could be like the
01:10:17
main reason for you to stay on the right path and like like playing video games for instance
01:10:23
which I did before I became a musician as fun as they are and as much of a distraction
01:10:29
they can be from from your day to day life they would like not fall into the good category
01:10:38
because yeah it's yeah it's not healthy to to be on your own and watching a screen all
01:10:46
the time and for many people this is often like even the like the catalyst for their
01:10:52
suffering and the reason for their depression but it can be anything it can like like you
01:10:57
said it can be finding a partner or starting a family or yeah art in general like painting
01:11:07
writing stories like I have I have one I have one of my fans who recently became a songwriter
01:11:16
and that is helping her through depression and that that's giving her like so much self
01:11:23
esteem and I write with her every day and she she's she often sends me what what she's
01:11:30
been working on and now she's making like new connections like networking all the time
01:11:37
and that is really helping her you know perfect yeah well said yeah and what's really important
01:11:46
is to always be honest with yourself and always bear in mind that you yourself have to make
01:11:55
the first step you have to want it no nobody no nobody can force you to do this and even
01:12:01
though like maybe maybe you find some people who are meaning well and this is like something
01:12:08
that I've experienced from dealing with my mother if the person going through all that
01:12:15
is not serious about wanting to change their lives then it's it's almost no use like it
01:12:26
would it doesn't even matter if you treat the person that's a great right or wrong because
01:12:32
to them it it's it's kind of the same they will always find an excuse to fall back into
01:12:42
old habits and and start or do the same mistakes again even though like all the people around
01:12:51
them is giving their best to to prevent this so like what you really have to if you are
01:12:59
wanting to to get out of your situation and if you are wanting to seek help you you still
01:13:05
have to remember that it's always mostly on you so you really have to want it otherwise
01:13:13
there's no use you can you can just say okay I'm going to to therapy now but I will not
01:13:18
be honest with my therapist at least only be honest to to them to a certain degree that
01:13:25
it doesn't work that way you have to to be completely honest both with yourself and with
01:13:30
your therapist and also with the people around you and to really yeah stick to it you cannot
01:13:39
have asked this that's right that that reminds me of the old saying you can lead the horse
01:13:46
to the water but you can't make them drink it right and you have to do the work and that
01:13:53
is pretty much what you did when you when you were going through your episodes and when
01:13:59
you weren't doing too well you looked in and you in your mind and your spirit in your heart
01:14:07
you felt like I've I've got to change some things I can't stay this way yeah and it's
01:14:13
not the effort right yeah and it's not that that I'm now like a hundred percent happy
01:14:19
all the time and nothing nothing is happening to me anymore I have still suffered like a
01:14:26
couple of setbacks even after I became a musician and even quite recently but I have found something
01:14:36
that will always like ground me and always your your you have your my anchor right and
01:14:44
whenever I whenever I encounter problems setbacks and and and bad things happening to either
01:14:56
me or the people around me I can now always find both comfort and encouragement in my
01:15:05
music and like stay level headed and work these things out exactly and that's just
01:15:14
being realistic that's a part of life you know things aren't always going to be peaches
01:15:19
and roses and strawberries and rainbows we're going to deal with our we're going to we're
01:15:25
going to have our issues the point is that you're still in a good place to where you're
01:15:30
making the effort to do better if it's every day whatever it is that that grounds you for
01:15:35
you as music whatever it is that you you have to fall back on or to help you out when those
01:15:42
times do come because it's it's a fight I mean it's you're fighting a good fight and
01:15:48
we're all still a work in progress right and I I mean what what's what's good about the
01:15:54
internet and and like modern technology is that whatever you are looking for if it's
01:16:01
like like additionally if it's help or inspiration you you can now find it more easy than ever
01:16:11
before and I also have people that I look up to like I look up to Jordan Petersen a lot
01:16:19
because he's doing what I'm trying to do on an entirely different level like he's helping
01:16:25
out so many people with his books and his lectures and then there's this guy I have
01:16:30
found pretty recently David Goggins who is oh yeah the one who's like oh you stop making
01:16:36
excuses get out there right yeah yeah and he's like I think he was a Navy SEAL toughest
01:16:43
guy right yeah I think he's the toughest guy on the planet at the moment like I have like
01:16:48
when I first listened to him speaking on Joe Rogan's podcast and I was like I was glued
01:16:56
to to to the podcast like I was I was soaking up everything he said because he too he comes
01:17:02
from a place of depression he was overweight when he was young younger and he was not taking
01:17:07
care of himself and somehow he has developed something that only very very few people on
01:17:17
this planet have have found which is like true will which is something that I would never
01:17:26
say that I have found but with me it's it's it's pure luck like that I have found music and it's
01:17:34
I'm kind of disciplined but what what this guy has is something entirely different like
01:17:41
something that could never be taken taken away from him and I look up to people like that because
01:17:47
they I think they're here for a reason they are especially now since that's something he always
01:17:54
says that since people have become or are becoming weaker and weaker like people like that they are
01:18:03
here to show to show those people or like like every one of us how it could be done yeah I
01:18:13
also speaking to David Goggins because I know he's real real big about taking responsibility for
01:18:19
yourself and I can say that I get that from you because it going back to earlier when you were
01:18:26
saying that you know people that that or you have cousins it could be family members I mean I
01:18:31
know people and I was even one of those that it was always somebody else they they're not giving me
01:18:37
a chance they're looking at me this way they you know but it there's a so many people that we could
01:18:45
point the blame to but when you finally take responsibility for your own actions your own
01:18:52
choices and taking control of your life that's when you can finally see some changes yeah I mean I
01:19:00
remember me being the same like before I was also like yeah my parents are divorced and I have a
01:19:07
lot lots of cases of depression and addiction in my family and maybe that's hereditary and yeah
01:19:13
yeah stuff like that but at a certain point in your life you have to to distance yourself from
01:19:20
that because that when once you you're a grown adult it's it's mostly on you yeah you had you had
01:19:29
a lot of excuses or reasons to to say this isn't going to work and an effort you know but um
01:19:36
when you're younger we're all born into different conditions and you don't have control over that
01:19:42
but like you said once you get a little bit older you can start making some changes and some adjustments
01:19:48
and figure out what isn't working what you see and how can you change that for the better and you
01:19:58
through music there's a lot of people that find different outlets but the point is you have to
01:20:04
find it within yourself to start taking action that's true absolutely fry this was
01:20:11
a great conversation I really appreciate your words your time and I'd like to share everything
01:20:19
that you have going on in the description box after this this is published with your music and even
01:20:26
your community everything everything that you have going on your music is I dig it so I'm a fan so
01:20:34
I look forward to listening to more of what you have on on the YouTubes and the Spotify's and
01:20:40
is there anything else that you would like to leave off with before we wrap this thing up
01:20:48
first of all let me thank you again for inviting me to this and um like I uh I have to say this is
01:20:56
the best podcast I have ever done oh that is a lot thank you yeah because this is like really in
01:21:03
line with what I'm trying to um to get across to people not just hey look at me I'm a guitar
01:21:09
player and I can play this and that but yeah like I want to to give people what what I have been
01:21:18
giving been been given with music you know and um yeah I really enjoyed this this conversation
01:21:25
and yeah the only thing I have to say is if if you are like the listener if you listeners if you
01:21:32
are struggling with anything like that and you feel like um talking to to anybody find get professional
01:21:42
help first and then find find something that that you care about and if you're into great music
01:21:49
great guitar music then you you might look me up as well and then join my community I'll be happy
01:21:56
to to welcome you to my to my street team group and uh hear hear your story because that's to me that's
01:22:05
what being a musician is mostly about not like making lots of money and and uh showing off your
01:22:13
talent to the world but meeting new and interesting people and finding more and more ways to connect
01:22:20
with them couldn't have said it any better myself thank you so much thank you I'd like to thank Fry
01:22:30
again for being open for being vulnerable allowing himself to be vulnerable and for being strong
01:22:39
because like I said before it takes guts it takes courage to open yourself up and to talk about
01:22:47
things in your life that are sensitive things in your life that are very personal so I always
01:22:52
appreciate it when someone like Fry comes on and is willing to share a piece of that with us I respect
01:23:00
it I also respect the fact that Fry he was willing to look within himself he had that introspective
01:23:09
personality to where he looked in himself to figure out how can I get better looking at his
01:23:15
environment his mother not in the best of conditions and that was from a generational cycle of
01:23:23
undoubt with trauma pain suffering loss and how that cycle continued for generations but Fry he
01:23:32
took it upon himself he had something in himself that made him want to break the curse so to speak
01:23:39
and to change his reality it's not to say everything just overnight got better as life is
01:23:45
we go through our ups and downs it's a ride it really is a ride and even with his setbacks even
01:23:52
with his failures he still got back on course still got back on the horse and rode on and was
01:23:59
pushing on to try to find a better tomorrow for him and he found it through music and that's been
01:24:06
his purpose now that's his way to connect with people that's his way to build with people who
01:24:12
have that same passion or who have been through the same trauma the same neglect the same struggle
01:24:18
so there will be a link included in this episode to everything that Fry is involved with he has
01:24:24
a youtube channel he also does guitar lessons he has tutorials online he has a facebook group
01:24:32
he does live streaming sessions he's doing a lot coaching all of that if you're a music lover you
01:24:38
like playing the guitar you want to even learn the guitar or you just been inspired by his story
01:24:44
and what he's doing reach out to him show him some love connect i'm sure he'd be more than happy to
01:24:51
hear from you so my hat's off to you bro all the best and again thank you again for your time your
01:24:57
words and your message and i want to thank all of the listeners again because i'm seeing people
01:25:04
tuning in from all corners of the globe and that's been encouraging and exciting to see thank you for
01:25:11
tuning in if you can and when you can to help us know what it is that is resonating with you
01:25:18
what you like about the show what you don't like about the show either way that's the only way we
01:25:24
can improve and help grow this share it with a friend or somebody you think might find value in this
01:25:30
and also let us know what platform it is you're tuned into whether it's Spotify, Deezer, Google,
01:25:36
Amazon music and if you would like to be a part of this show and share your story or even a story
01:25:45
of somebody in your life that has impacted you in a positive way my door is open and you can always
01:25:50
reach out to me via email i'd be happy to connect till next time and very soon peace
01:26:20
bye