what is your proudest accomplishment thus far? "i've heard 'tear in my heart' play on satelite stations a couple times. oh, and it came on once while i was shopping at target. that was pretty cool."
share the story behind the conception of one of your albums.
BLURRYFΛCE is a concept, is a character, is me. he is everything in this life that i am insecure about but i'm not alone in being insecure about these things. you'll see him pop up in the album, hear his voice, see my eyes shift to his in the videos. he loves the color red and hates the letter g. in the videos and in performance i paint my hands and my neck black because blurryface is fear and insecurity and you can feel like those things are strangling you and more importantly your neck is your most vulnerable and your hands are the strongest parts of your body. it's a deep crazy concept, i know, but i think all of this work and this thought really drives this album into being more than just tracks pressed into a cd.
what is the weirdest thing you find attractive in a person?
curiousity, i guess, for lack of a better way to describe it. i like someone who looks at the world and tries to figure out all its parts. someone who is unique and doesn't apologize for it and owns it. i once went on a date where we did nothing but people watch and make up backstories for everyone that walked by. it was probably one of the best dates i've been on.
yngbldkds said:taken from an interview with ace, "there was this book, called uglies (by scott westerfeld), a dystopian book where the main character who's last name is youngblood is one of the 'uglies' and desperately wants to get this surgery to go to pretty town. stuff happens and instead she meets up with some outliers and discovers that this pretty making process also dulls your senses and that's why life was so much happier because no one was really feeling much of anything anymore. the concept just stuck with me.
practically though, my last name is young and apparently there are lots of bands already named some version of youngblood so yungblood happened. i wanted to start a revolution of yungblood kids; i wanted to be the voice for the uglies."
how would you describe yourself in five words?
excited, scared, realist, optimist, poet.
what has been the single most influential relationship you have had?
my parents, the abstract idea of a family, and the lack of relationship with them makes them the most important relationship i've had, i guess. i've made my family elsewhere, in songs, in josh (his bandmate), in the audience that go through this cathartic experience with me every day, in the people i've dated. i'm the aftermath of a car crash reassembling my parts.
how would your friends describe you? Does it differ from how you would describe yourself?
i definitely have an 'on' switch. i can be the guy in the middle of the dance floor, a rowdy drunk, down for about anything and people love that guy. but then i have days that's the last thing i want to do and i have my notebook and i'm writing like a mad man and thinking too deeply about the state of the universe and that guy is less fun to have at parties.
how would you describe your band/sound?
the biggest question we get from bloggers is how do we define ourselves. i mean, i get why we are kind of hard to describe because i sing, i scream, i rap. josh drums and i play piano or keytar or ukelele and we don't use guitars much at all. you might hear a straight up pop punk song and the next track has a reggae vibe and the one after it i'm rapping with a ukelele. we were called schizoid pop and that was the closest thing that stuck.
share the story behind the conception of one of your songs.
this is the story behind 'guns for hands' and 'car radio' (off of 2013's vessel) because one kind of leads into the other. we played this one show and it seemed like, more than usual, people were coming up to afterwards and saying how much our songs had changed their life or kept them from comitting suicide and it stuck with me that this town just seemed sadder than most. anyway, i get off tour and i come home and my car had been broken into and my stereo had been ripped out of my car and it was about the only thing i had valuable in there. i drove that car for like a year afterwards because i couldn't afford to fix it and that feeling of silence, it just felt like a hole in me even if it was for fifteen minutes. i just felt lonely and empty which i think you can hear in 'car radio'. always though, i was thinking about that sad town and, i mean, the whole idea behind guns for hands is you can do something destructive but you can also break through the shit that's going on and either option is in your hands. it was important to me to remind them that the negative energy can be refocused into something beautiful.
JUL 07 2015 THE METRO THEATRE Sydney, Australia
JUL 09 2015 THE POWERSTATION Auckland, New Zealand
JUL 11 2015 SAITAMA SUPER ARENA W/ ONE OK ROCK Saitama-Shi, Japan
JUL 12 2015 SAITAMA SUPER ARENA W/ ONE OK ROCK Saitama-Shi, Japan
JUL 14 2015 SONGSHAN CULTURAL & CREATIVE PARK WAREHOUSE NO. 1 Taipei, Taiwan
JUL 16 2015 SUNTEC SINGAPORE INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION Singapore, Singapore
JUL 18 2015 ATC ACTIVITY CENTER Manila, Philippines
JUL 19 2015 TRINOMA ACTIVITY CENTER Manila, Philippines
JUL 21 2015 ROUTUNDA 3, KITEC Hong Kong, China
JUL 22 2015 GMM LIVE HOUSE Bangkok, Thailand
JUL 25 2015 FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL Yuzawa, Japan
JUL 26 2015 ANSAN VALLEY ROCK FESTIVAL Daebu Island, South Korea
JUL 31 2015 OSHEAGA FESTIVAL Montréal, Canada
AUG 02 2015 LOLLAPALOOZA Chicago, IL
AUG 02 2015 HOUSE OF BLUES Chicago, IL
AUG 21 2015 PUKKELPOP Hasselt, Belgium
AUG 23 2015 LOWLANDS FESTIVAL Biddinghuizen, Netherlands
AUG 26 2015 BELSONIC Belfast, UK
SEP 08 2015 ECHOSTAGE Washington, DC
SEP 09 2015 ECHOSTAGE Washington, DC
SEP 11 2015 FESTIVAL PIER Philadelphia, PA
SEP 12 2015 BLUE HILLS BANK PAVILION Boston, MA
SEP 13 2015 SOUND ACADEMY Toronto, Canada
SEP 15 2015 HAMMERSTEIN BALLROOM New York, NY
SEP 16 2015 HAMMERSTEIN BALLROOM New York, NY
SEP 18 2015 SCHOTTENSTEIN CENTER Columbus, OH
SEP 19 2015 MEADOW BROOK MUSIC FESTIVAL Rochester Hills, MI
SEP 20 2015 FARM BUREAU INSURANCE LAWN Indianapolis, IN
SEP 22 2015 STARLIGHT THEATRE Kansas City, MO
SEP 23 2015 SUMTER AMPHITHEATER Papillion, NE
SEP 25 2015 LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL FESTIVAL Las Vegas, NV
SEP 26 2015 SALTAIR Magna, UT
SEP 27 2015 RED ROCKS AMPHITHEATER Morrison, CO
SEP 29 2015 BRADY THEATER Tulsa, OK
OCT 01 2015 SOUTH SIDE BALLROOM Dallas, TX
OCT 02 2015 BAYOU MUSIC CENTER Houston, TX
OCT 03 2015 AUSTIN CITY LIMITS Austin, TX
OCT 05 2015 RYMAN AUDITORIUM Nashville, TN
OCT 06 2015 THE TABERNACLE Atlanta, GA
OCT 07 2015 THE TABERNACLE Atlanta, GA
OCT 08 2015 HOUSE OF BLUES ORLANDO Lake Buena Vista, FL
OCT 09 2015 AUSTIN CITY LIMITS Austin, TX
OCT 11 2015 DIAMOND BALLROOM Oklahoma City, OK
OCT 13 2015 COMERICA THEATRE Phoenix, AZ
OCT 15 2015 GREEK THEATRE Los Angeles, CA
OCT 16 2015 SDSU OPEN AIR THEATRE San Diego, CA
OCT 17 2015 FOX THEATER Oakland, CA
OCT 18 2015 FOX THEATER Oakland, CA
OCT 20 2015 CRYSTAL BALLROOM Portland, OR
OCT 21 2015 REVOLUTION EVENT CENTER Garden City, ID
OCT 22 2015 PARAMOUNT THEATRE Seattle, WA
OCT 28 2015 THE DISTRICT Sioux Falls, SD
OCT 29 2015 MYTH Saint Paul, MN
OCT 30 2015 EAGLES BALLROOM Milwaukee, WI
OCT 31 2015 CHAIFETZ ARENA St Louis, MO
NOV 04 2015 O2 ABC Glasgow, UK
NOV 05 2015 THE RITZ Manchester, UK
NOV 06 2015 SHEPHERDS BUSH EMPIRE London, UK
NOV 07 2015 O2 ACADEMY Oxford, UK
NOV 09 2015 THE INSTITUTE Birmingham, UK
NOV 11 2015 TRABENDO Paris, France
NOV 12 2015 TRIX Antwerp, Belgium
NOV 13 2015 RONDE Utrecht, Netherlands
NOV 15 2015 UEBEL & GEFAHRLICH Hamburg, Germany
NOV 16 2015 ESSIGFABRIEK Cologne, Germany
NOV 17 2015 MUFFATHALLE Munich, Germany
DEC 09 2015 VOGUE THEATRE Vancouver, Canada
DEC 14 2015 ACE OF SPADES Sacramento, CA
