PipemanRadio Interviews BLOOD OF LIONS Hard Rock Rebirth w Purpose & Power

0:00 Hi, you have unto censure. I'm double for see Wow crazy young. Why come America, It's time for the Adventures of Pipe Man. I'll you four C Why do comfs Pompeas is number one Internet radio station. Here's your host, the Pipe Man. Shut up from hoste fall up. Contis is slowly. You haven't no strangle that can happen to scars review.

0:54 It's the pipe Man here on the Adventures pipe Man W four C Y Radio. And I'm here with our next guest that has some badass new music and long awaited I must say, so, let's walk. Welcome to the show. Jonathan Lee of Blood of Lions. How are you hey, I'm doing good. Thanks for having me by man. Hey my pleasure. So ten years of seclusion, that's something I would do, actually and have been known to do. I don't know if I've done it for ten years yet, but I've been known to go into seclusion and disappear quite a few times in my lifetime for months, sometimes maybe a year or two at a time. You know, sometimes it's what you need to really like, just cut out all the outside chatter and clear your mind and bring that creativity back.

1:46 Yeah, honestly, I feel like even though the ten years was really tough because I was miserable not making music, and that was kind of the reality that set in. Ten years later, it was like, that's the missing link I started creating again that you realize that's the missing link. But it was definitely one of those things where I needed to cut it out of my life in order to heal from what I experienced with the way the last band broke down, and also to just refocus my energy on things that were important to me in life, which was my son and you know, surrounding him with a healthy family. And it was just one of those things where I said, I can either keep pushing and banging my head against the wall right now, or I can really invest in the thing that's right in front of me that means the world to me. And so I chose to redirect my energy. And I feel like the music that I'm creating now is more authentic, real, and just emotionally charged than anything I've ever created before.

2:48 And I find that to be true for the simple reason that when you're in the moment of all the you know, stuff going on, like you never really people don't realize artists don't have the chance to jump off the hamster wheel and really assess where they want to go. They know where they want to go in the very beginning when you're young and know nothing, and then you're put on this train that doesn't stop anywhere, you know, So sometimes you do need that reset by yourself, like I said before, without the outside chower and focus on other things so that you have the appreciation of the music later. And I even say not missing out on things, you know, cause like I was very involved in the music scene and then I left that scene and I started a family, and then I focus on my family, and it says the kids, you know, were grown and on their way, then I could go back to being that music person again, but with a different passion and a different love for it.

3:56 One hundred percent could not align more with you. I mean, you're right. I mean my first trip down the musical road, which was a good let's see, sixteen years straight of making music, was I'm going to make this my career. This is going to happen. There's no doubt about it. This is what I was born to do. And that was the drive, you know, I felt like it was the passion. It was the calling. It was what I was built to do. I still feel that, but that's not why I'm doing it now. I'm literally doing it because I need to do it. I need the therapeutic outlet. I have to speak about the things going on in my life in an artistic way and deliver messages and lessons that might actually impact somebody else's life in a positive way. And you know, honestly, I'm not even doing it because I want to this time.

4:50 It's a necessity for me, like I mentioned, but also my wife has pushed me into it. And not allowed me to stop. And without her and a couple other voices in my life, I wouldn't even have stepped into creating the first couple. Songs that you've heard. Nice. So it's just it's been a it's been a trip, my man. It's been a. Trip, I'm sure. And I love hearing the support that you're getting because that's what people need. Sometimes it's the other way around, and I think almost that taking the time out allows those people that want to support you to support you, because I think it's harder when you're in the whole mix of everything in the beginning and the craziness and you know now you not only do you need it, but I think you can handle it.

5:40 Is also the other thing. Yeah, you know, and it's it is an anomaly. I mean everybody that I tell the story too of my wife saying, hey, we don't have the money to to pay for the studio time, but book it. This is what you're supposed to do. God's going to provide. They're going, this is that's crazy, and it is right because you know, that's a woman who wants stability telling me, in an unstable environment, make a choice that could leave us even more unstable, because in the long run, it's. The right one. And I mean everything in me told me not the right decision. You shouldn't be doing this. And there's been you know, there have been times where I went, wow, that was definitely the wrong decision. We're still struggling, and then it turns around and there's breakthrough and you go, Okay, maybe I got ahead of myself. So you know, that support has been an anomaly that I've experienced, and I think many musicians and many people that have been in the music industry would say, usually it's not that supportive.

6:36 Usually it's the wives or the girlfriends going, hey, if you don't make it by now, you're dropping this because this is time and money and effort and our family deserves you, or you know, you should put your efforts into something else that's actually going to have a return on investment. And that's just not been the case, and I'm super grateful for it. I think it's super important no matter one industry you're in. I even look at I could take a movie like Rocky Okay, and even though it's a movie, just a concept of it is he would have never won the heavyweight championship without Adrian, you know, and you know there's so many stories like that, and that's it's really. It gives you a whole different enthusiasm and motivation when you have that kind of support. And then you talk about therapy, and I always talk about how music is the best therapy, whether you're the artist like yourself or me the listener, because I mean, even the songs that you wrote now they mean something to you, but to the listener they it might mean something totally different, but still have the same result that therapy. And I think those couple of years of COVID lockdown is why everybody's so miserable and angry because they didn't have that outlet of music.

7:55 Yeah, I one percent agree Again, I mean to be honest, I've been read in a book for I started writing in about six months before COVID ever hit on the toxicity of some of our American cultures to the family environment and bring development and children, and how connection is the most important piece of human existence. Food and water, safety and shelter can be provided, but if you don't have love and support, then you will still perish. You'll end up with chronic disease, mental health issues, you will die at some point if you do not have human connection. It's just facts, studies that have been done. So COVID and then my book I actually said I wouldn't be surprised if there's like a pandemic where we're isolated, for it to be a litmus test to see how much this damages people and you know, and what it causes in the mental health issue, and then how controllable we are after that, because if you're emotionally on tilt, you're extremely controllable, and you know you can be influenced easy.

8:50 So you know, COVID I felt put all that on on steroids. It took our mental health issues and put them on steroids, because, like you said, people then weren't able to go face to face with their therapist. They had to do telehealth. They weren't able to see people face to face. They weren't able to connect with a crowd that feels the same thing or energy or is feeling that therapeutic release through music at a concert like they wanted to. They couldn't go gather at churches to build the community. It was completely destroyed. The one and. Single most vital part of our existence was taken and stripped away from us. And I truly believe that is why we're seeing a revival in rock and roll and metal right now. Is whenever rock and roll and metal has been big, it has been during angst filled times where there was instability and uncertainty, and COVID was the biggest point in anybody's life of that, I think, besides the wars that we were in through history. And now people are going, well where do I put this energy?

9:48 Where do I You know, I can throw it on my therapist once a week, but I need another outlet. I can't just talk for an hour and that's it. And people are going out and metal has a revival. I'm watching teenage kids wear corn shirts, deftone shirts and you know, Slipknot shirts around the school and say that they love this music that I was raised on when I was in high school. And I'm going, wait a second, what's happening here? This was a bead for like twenty years, you know, like we were drowning in an ocean of music and nobody cared to throw us a life preserver, you know. And yet here we are with the generation of kids who went through COVID, who are filled with angst and uncertainty and instability and wondering where I place this energy. And rock and metal has been that revival that I've seen for them, and it's been beautiful totally.

10:33 And like I go on tour and do radio coverage at music festivals, all the major rock metal festivals. Just got back from Europe from you know, Hellfest and Download and Resurrection Fest, and man, there is no other feeling like being in that crowd and the vibe and your one big family. That's the thing. All the problems and bullshit going on in the world, it doesn't even exist there. And then as to your point, Okay, So I wasn't able to make it for back to the beginning. So I watched a live stream not the same, and it was cool and all, but it wasn't I could imagine what I would have been feeling like there opposed to just watching it, you know. And then to your point with the kids, it's like, oh my god, I can't believe all these kids are sitting there singing Sabbath and Ozzy songs like I mean, listen, I got introduced to Sabbath when I was, you know, like in seventh grade or like back in like the set in the late seventies, you know. And to see kids now in twenty twenty five, like tearing up because it's Ozzie's last show, that just blows my mind.

11:58 It's wild and I I love seeing it because it shows that the music that we're creating in this genre is absolutely doing what we've always thought it could do, which is having a timeless and lifetime impact on people for generations to come. And I've always described it to people like I analyze everything. I'm an overanalyzer in my brain is constantly working and I'm always looking at what's the pattern, what's the you know what's really underlying, And you know, I took a look at this and I'm like, why is it metal and rock that's revival right now amidst all this chaos and this uncertainty and instability. And you know, there's tons of music, tons of music that affects you. But pop is on the decline. You know, R and B and hip hop around the decline. Country and rock are on the rise. Why and I went, man, They're just so much more raw and real with what you write about. And then when it comes to rock and metal, I don't think there's another genre of music where every single emotion or feeling or experience can be talked about and it's never judged. You can feel joy through metal music. You can feel disdained through metal music, you can feel hatred through metal music, you can feel love through metal music, and that can all be in one song, with the yeah delivered and the dynamics of that song and the way that the vocalists delivered those melodies.

13:19 So it's I feel like it's the only genre that gives you that landscape of wide open freedom of emotional delivery. And that's just kind of what I've boiled it down to and. I even go to the point of like, there's no better place the lecto of all your negative emotions. But in the pit, oh man, it was the most healing thing in my life Maschwitz when I discovered them. So my cousin was eight years older than me. He was a big punk rocker, like ghetto punk or got a punk stuff in Los Angeles in the in the hard rock and punk scene in LA in the nineties, and so it was flurish in the nineties. I mean we had everybody, we had No Effects and Bad Religion and and you know, Good Riddance and all these bands that were just blowing up in this punk rock scene.

14:10 And there was a lot of California punk rock and hardcore being thrown in there. So he would take me, as an eight year old two of the shows and introduce. Me to these things. And so at ten, I got my first mash Pit at a Bad Religion concert. And I was a pretty strong kid, and I always liked the challenge. And I saw the biggest, baddest, most muscular dude in there, and we went straight at each other like bull rushed each other, and he rocked my world and my cousin went over and he picked me up and he looked at the guy and he goes, okay, now me and you go, and they went at each other and they rocked each other's world, hugged it out, and then they both grabbed me in the center and a three man piece went around the pit and I went, WHOA, this is amazing.

14:54 We can actually like be physical with one another and get our anger and our angst and our hurt out on one another towards one another. But we understand that it's healthy. We're not doing this to hurt each other. And if we did hurt each other, we loved each other. We picked each other up and we said, hey, bro, sorry, let's go get you some help. And then we went back in the pit. But it was the most healing place for me because there was so much turmoil and trauma and abuse and aks going on inside of my home that that mosh pit was where I could literally let out the moms that was angry and hurt and wanted to just roar. And I'll tell anybody who who's going through it, you know, any teenage you know, young man or even young woman who's going through it. If you want to release your anger. Yeah they have, you know, they've got these anger or rage rooms nowadays, right, but there's nothing, nothing compares to amash pit because.

15:51 Yeah, it's real, man, and it really does stop you from going out in the real world and hurting somebody. Yeah, and you get love on the back end of it. You don't just get left with Oh I just released all this negative energy and broke a bunch of stuff. Okay, now what do I do with it? Right, somebody goes, hey, bro, I see you, and you're You're amazing and you're worthy. I'm gonna love you, bro. Yeah, all that rage and anger I saw on you. Thanks for letting it out here. We appreciate you, We love you. It's just different. I mean, until you experience it, you don't know. And my dad, oh my gosh. The first time I took my dad to a metal show was at the Roxy and we went to see seven Dust I think was playing This is back in like early two thousands.

16:36 I believe that's who it was. And I told him, I said, hey, I'm gonna jump in the mosh pit, and he's like, what those guys are like way bigger than you. I'm like, no, you don't understand. I've been doing this since I was ten. I'm nineteen. Now, this is your first show with me, like trust me. And I went in and I went around a couple of times, and my dad saw guys slam me pretty good and me slam him back. And then we kept going and my dad jumped in the pit and he went after the guy he went and like slammed the guy really hard. And I pulled my dad aside and I said, hey, you only do that if you understand the rules. You don't get to be angry at that guy for him hitting me. We were hitting each other out of love. You were hitting him out of retaliation. I need to He's like, but he's going to hurt you. He's way bigger than you. He's not going to hurt me. And if he does, he's going to pick me up and he's going to love on me and he's going to take me to get some help. You don't understand the dynamics of a machri pit.

17:28 Let me show you how healthy this is. And my dad has been a very angry person in his life. He's never dealt with his a lot of his issues, you know, until probably maybe he's dealing with him recently. We're estranged right now. I don't know, but he never really dealt with him. There's a lot of anger and rage that came out, and so he got to experience something that I was using as a tool to help release that, and it opened his eyes, I think a little bit to go, Wow, there is something really healthy here. And I wish that I would have realized this when I was younger, because I'm sure he could have really used it with everything he went through as a kid too. Yeah, people don't realize, you know. They look at this and they look at Oh, we're just a bunch of mean people fighting each other, and they have no clue what it's really all about. And me, I have the opposite.

18:14 Like my dad obviously wasn't going to a mosh pit like you know, and I went My first club show ever was at the Roxy, but it was in like eighty eighty one and it was Motley Crue before they even had an album. When there's like horror, they were like horror punk. They weren't clam yet, you know. And I just remember going to that club show and thinking myself, oh my god, I'm never going to a real concert. Ever. Again, it's it's that whole feeling that you can't really describe to people, and it's this community that you become a part of. And I took my son in his first mash pit, and then I took two of three of my grandchildren into their first mash pits.

19:03 Wow. Yeah, and it got progressively stronger, like so my son's first mashpit with Slip Knot when they were opening for Metallica Tattoo the Earth Tour, and then my grandson his first mash pit was August Burns Red. Okay, so you know, as time went on, things got a little more brutal, but they only look brutal from the outside. From the inside, it's the same thing. Yeah, yeah, it really is. You know. It was actually really cool too to see the video you brought a Metallica of Jason Momoa.

19:44 Yeah yeah, yeahitting in the pit, and it. Just shows you nobody on any level is you know, is protected from trauma or whatever they helt and utilizing that moshpit as a release. I guarantee you he needed that just as much as every Oh. The smile on his face, he could totally tell. And I actually shared one of those videos on my Facebook. I'm like, man, I would love to be in the pit with Jason Momoa, I actually said with Aquaman because I'm like, how cool would that be to be in the pit with Aquamand. Yes, yeah, and he's a big dude too, you know.

20:27 And it's just but that was like, for me, that was really beautiful because you haven't really seen a celebrity jump in with society in such. A raw form like that. Yeah, and it just showed you everybody needs healing. That's what I felt like the message was there, like everybody at every level needs healing. But I don't think people that if they don't understand a mosh pit, then they don't understand that image. No, And there are idiots that go in there thinking it's about going into hurt main people. And I've literally watched them go to I've been part of it too, of them going down like you were taking down, no doubt about it. And yeah, I always laughed because I was always the little dude. But that's the person you gotta be scared of in the pit because those big dudes they like use how they're big and stuff, and me I would just come flying around, get down the enticon lunge and lunge up with the elbow and be on the other side of the pit before the dude even knew who hit him, you know, And that isn't our thing. It's like I remember being being a teenager and it was always the little dudes in the pit.

21:37 It wasn't the bullies. The bullies were the ones we were probably, and we were mostly taking our anger out on in the pit, like release an't there because of the bullies outside. And you didn't find those bullies in there except once in a while. But when those bullies came in there, they weren't the bullies there. Nope, nope. And I experienced that a couple times. You know, you saw people who were literally there to be violent and to genuinely hurt somebody and thought that's what it was about. And you would watch everybody in the mash pit just kind of eye contact, no words, said yep, it's time. This guy seems to be taught a lesson, and they teach him a lesson and he gets up and he's rocked and he's like, what the hell just happened in my life? And we all go we love you, dude, but knock it off, yep, and the boundary set and the healthy lives on, and it moves on. And now we've got another person that goes, WHOA.

22:34 This community is awesome. Because I was doing something wrong, maybe I didn't know it. They put me in my place, they told me they loved me afterwards, and now I'm a part of that community. That's yeah, that's that's what the whole world needs right now. I have said a lot recently that in order to solve all the world's problems, we just have to have one big metal festival that everybody's required to attend and that will solve all the world's problems. That we can all love each other again instead of the bullshit we're having now, I'm in bro right. I have not heard it but that way. But man, I'm not going to argue that one one bit because when you think about it, it's like people that have never been don't know what they're missing out on and when they do experience it. Like I'll be honest, my wife had never listened to hard rock or metal music until about a year ago. Her first show was Stained Breaking Benjamin Daughtry and Lakeview Nice, and you know, I was supposed to sign and go on tour with Breaking Benjamin twelve years ago, and we lost that deal because we broke up on tour four days before we were going to sign with Cameron Strang and Warner Brothers, and Breaking Benjamin's one of my all time favorites. And so this was my first time getting to see them live.

23:46 Because I was so busy with my own career, I never actually got to go out to experience their tours. So I was in tears for a couple of the songs because they meant so much to me. And I looked over my wife and she's just mesmer And my wife says five to one, blonde, petite, just sweetest pie woman, Like I call her my butterfly because she's just such a soft, sweet woman. And literally like turned to me after the show and said, that was one of the best nights of my life, literally. Top nice life. And I was like, what, like rock and metal show. Your first time ever, You've never even jumped into this music like that is one of the top five nights of your life.

24:27 She's like, I've never felt anything like it. I love when they get converted. You know, it was, and it's wild because I just didn't think with her that it was going to happen because she's such a soft delivery. But you know, she's been through a lot too. She needs an outlet too, she needs a place where she can feel like this. You know a lot of times when we're in a relationship, we throw our crap on each other. Yeah, I think this is where this has helped me. I get to, you know, throw some of my crap into music, and hopefully she can utilize music as a place where she can throw some of her crap into the mumusic and it doesn't have to be thrown onto us under each other. And you know, it makes a healthier relationship in the long. Run if you have an outlet like that, no doubt about it. And that's where you know, these two songs that you just dropped, That's why I think it's better than anything you probably ever did, because it's raw, it's real feelings. That's what hard rock, rock metal is about.

25:22 It's talking about real things like you're mentioning pop like when things are going on the way they are in the world right now, who wants to listen to some bubblecum stuff that has no basis in reality, you know, And so I love that you not only have the support, but have had the time to really, you know, get that creativity where you could just be real instead of just writing a song, but writing something that means something. Yeah, I mean, and I've always written about my life. I've always tried to be real in my music. But there's just difference now because I'm not, you know. And sometimes when I was writing in the back, I'd be writing about something that happened. But I'm like, let's frame this in a way that, you know, even though it's about this relationship that was unhealthy, Let's frame it in a way to where I write these lyrics with metaphors that somebody can take a message from it that maybe isn't about that. And so I kind of focus on them because that's what music does, even when you don't mean for it too right, And I've curbed my writing now to where I'm just going to go with whatever comes out. I'm going to be so raw and speak my truth that you can't say that it's not authentic.

26:37 I mean, I'm letting people know about the last eight years of my life and some struggles that have come up. We talk about you know, the first song built for the moment is about being you know, why my music career didn't work out twelve years ago? And why write now is the right moment. I mean, I'm more mature. I can handle the pressures of it better. I you know, I'm not going to make the mistakes that I did back then, or I probably will if I would have got signed it as a late twenty early thirty year old. Yeah, my focus is different. And you know, these songs are just we're talking about sexual abuse that has come up through therapy over the last few years that I totally blocked out of my mind. You know, there's songs about you know, about a night where just being raw, I put a barrel in my mouth and I was, you know, seconds away from pulling the trigger and I had to have a moment where I was ripped out of that.

27:27 And that's the closest the Devil's ever going to get to taken me out. And you know, all these things like I just want, like I want people to know out there that are struggling with some of this stuff that they're not alone, because it's alone in it before and I think we all do in the moment and I think we all feel the pressure like I don't want my shit to land on somebody else. Well fuck that, that's what music's about. Yeah, we're we're letting your shit land on us, and we're letting our shit land on you. And we're sharing the shit and we are carrying it together and we're releasing it together, and we're loving each other through it. And I just I mean, I don't know any of their place but metal or rock where that happens. Well, that's what I love about this new music and I look forward to a lot more of it. Tell everybody how they can check out the new songs, check out everything you got going on, and you know what else we could look for on the horizon awesome.

28:19 Yeah, So anybody who's interested in checking us out, you can find us on our socials at Blood Alliance Music on Instagram and on x and on TikTok, and then it's just Blood of Lines on Facebook. We've got our website which is blood alions dot com. All of our stuff is on every major music streaming platform, so Apple Music, Spotify, all all the platforms there. And then we will be releasing a third single here coming up very shortly with a full length music video. We've got a special feature on that with an artist that is part of Il Nino and also had his home side project that was pretty successful.

29:02 And just a really great friend of mine. And you know it was was sitting in his house talking about the premise of this song and he went, Man, I feel that too, and I went, well, let's write. It together, bro. You know nice. It's that community that came in. So with this next song and this next music video, you guys are going to get to see, you know, kind of an image out there of all the struggles that we're all kind of going through and probably can feel, and two guys that are doing it and writing about it that just want to connect. With you through it. So that that song is going to be released here probably in the next four weeks in the music video in about six weeks. It's called New Devils, And I'll tell you what, man, that's the song. That's the one where I think it's going to capture people and they're gonna go, well, what is this that this guy's doing.

29:48 Like the other two songs, we feel them, they're really good, but what's going on now? This is this is a next level and you know, I'm excited to to do that, and when it comes to live shows. Right now, we're we're just focused on getting this product out to people and seeing how it's received. Me and the guys are getting together later this year to start writing the second album as we're releasing the singles for this first album and and kind of get ready to do our live performance stick next year. Probably at the earliest, we'll probably play a launch show later this year, but our goal is to let this let the music speak for itself this year and then write out the live shows and hopefully some of those festivals. You know, God willing Danny Wimmer, you know, likes what he hears and we get thrown on some festivals and we start kicking it off that way.

30:40 You know, we do have a special collaboration that we're going to be doing here shortly in the next couple of weeks. I can't release that either. It is with a very very big name. Him and I are going to be writing a song together for Blood Allions and super excited about that. It's one of my my music idols and dreams to one of the guys that I've mentioned that I saw live and you know, I have played with live. So it's just it's surreal the way that this time, all this is happening, and go for the moment, man, It's just it's it's the moment. And so I would appreciate if anybody out there that's listening, if you guys were inspired or you you you know, connected with any part of this conversation, please go check out the music. If you hate it, I'm not going to be offended. Please let me know that too, because I always want to be better. But you know, maybe you guys feel something and we can stay connected for a lifetime and you know, heal together. So yeah, check us out. Really looking forward to another conversation with you, bye man. This has been awesome.

31:41 Yeah, absolutely, and hopefully we can have one in person at Danny Wimmer Festival next year. Let's go. Brother would love that and really look forward to that. So I'm just gonna say that's gonna happen. We're gonna put it out there there. It is, put it out there and I know it well. And thanks for all you do for the commune, you know, by putting your heart on the line in your music and it is the best therapy ever. And thanks for being on the Adventures of Pipemin. Hey, thanks for having me. Really appreciate it and it's an honor to be here. So we'll talk to you my friends. Man, thank you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin on w for CUI Radio