S18 E13: (1/2) [Jimmy + Andrew + Anthony] Everyone, Let’s Gather Around the Dumpster
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Please note, at the time of this episode's release, Kevin Elliott could not be reached for comment.

Hello, my name is Jimmy Imperial. I'm from Los Angeles. I'm a musician. I met Kevin Elliott back in 2017 around summertime through a mutual friend musician. We met through the local bar scene slash music scene in downtown LA. Around that time, they provided probably one of the best local live shows for local punk rock bands and

garage rock, fuzz rock stuff. He seemed like a normal dude, your average punk rock kind of guy, someone who wanted to drink and play music and have a good time. Everyone was still acting like teenagers in their 30s. There was very little maturity around that time. My first impression of him, I really didn't think much other than a nice, awkward guy.

who seemed very eager to meet people in LA because he had only been in LA for a year at that point. So he didn't have too many friends, which made sense to me at the time. Now I understand why he never had too many friends. He had this band called Die Laughing. I had another band called Nakatomi Plaza. Basically, our relationship was trying to book shows or get our stuff out there for each other.

I would try to set up and book a show or he would too. And we'd use each other's bands to fill up half the bill and then look for other bands to jump on. He had a fire under him too. He was eager to play. And that's something that I always like when I network with people, like I look for the hungry ones.

People who want to work for it, you hope in return that maybe one day they'll get you a show or add you onto a cool show that they got. Most of our time was spent in the PM hours. It wasn't day to day because in the daytime, he would be working at a coffee shop or something like that. A lot of these red flags weren't coming up for me and a lot of the people in my scene generally.

A lot of us are like runaways or come from not such good home life. So being in a band was like having this family. It's worked for me because it's also a form of therapy. I really just use it to get all my anger out because I felt like no one was listening. It really was the only form of therapy I had. I wasn't in a good place at the time myself. I was dependent on a few drugs and alcohol. I was kind of just floating around from place to place, looking for bands to play with, people to crash with.

We were friends for maybe two months before it ramped up to me being there for a week and then taking off and then coming back. Whenever we'd go out or go see bands, we'd end up going back to his place, which is in the middle of the historic district of downtown LA, which was pretty cool to me at the time. Cool little penthouse thing. I just started crashing there more and more.

I feel like he used his apartment to draw people in to thinking he was cool. And it was almost like a crash pad. It wasn't ever just me. He already had two roommates and there would be other people passed out on his floor. So it's typical Sid and Nancy type looking situation where everybody's passed out and sharing a blanket. But all these people, they had something to offer. And I think he thought by offering a place to crash and party, that was the whole trade-off.

It was very much a two-way street. He was getting something from me and I was definitely getting something from him. This was before any of the red flags really started kicking off, probably more so because I was inebriated 90% of the time I was with him. Our relationship revolved around getting trashed and music. So it's loud, aggressive punk rock, alcohol and copious amounts of different drugs.

2019, I believe. We had booked a show. It was the only show we had ended up successfully booking together. It went so horrible. It went horrible on my end too. My drummer blacked out before we started our set. He couldn't play the drums and it was embarrassing.

I had invited my wife, Alyssa, to that show. Thank God she never went. And this is when I was sliding into her DMs type of thing. I knew at that time that there was no way I was worthy of her. It was after that night, we all went back to Kevin's pad and partied. And I took a look around the room. I couldn't do it anymore. I just didn't like who I was becoming.

I tried to hold on as long as I could, but the depression, the drugs, the constant drinking, being away from my kids. I was a very involved parent and then I lost my dad, got a DUI. My previous partner left me. I just really had nowhere to go. So that's how I fell back into the band route. But all that stuff caught up with me after that show. I just couldn't take it. And it led to some altercation where I ended up getting beat up in his apartment by him and his roommates.

I thought it was my fault. I thought I did something wrong.

I was just very confused. I was already depressed as hell. I had really nowhere to go. I went back there to talk to him and he had told me what happened. It was a pretty outnumbered situation. The next day I go back, I hear his apology. I'm also very vulnerable. I have nowhere to go. I'm in the midst of my existential crisis and depression. And he goes to work and he says, "You can chill here, man. Don't even worry about it." I just get real sad and I contemplated suicide. Like I wanted to jump off his roof. My brother comes and saves me, gets me into rehab.

It made me strong, but also I just couldn't wait to get the fuck out of there. I knew that I had a lot of work to do. I had to wait a little bit and take a break from music, focus on finding different career paths to making money. Before that, I worked back a house in the food industry, which if anyone's ever worked, it's enough to kill you. Especially out here in LA. It took a while. I had to adjust to

from even the PTSD of rehab, I want to say. I was able to get into a good place and a good rhythm and get out of the food industry. I stopped playing music for a bit. Anything that involved being mechanically inclined, I was trying to grasp. I just ended up finding a good little spot that was quiet and almost mom and pop-ish type garage where I got to work on boat engines all day and by myself. I thought I was going to be plagued to a life of cooking and

I was just so afraid to go back to that because of all the shit that comes with it. To get out of that type of environment and see that I could actually do something different at what I felt was such a late age, which gave me the confidence to not fall back into some of those patterns. It's something you have to keep working on too. I distanced myself throughout the whole rehab from everybody because when you're in a rehab, they take away all your shit. You can't really make calls whenever you want. You're

You really have to have their numbers stored in your head or their addresses. For like the first month, I could only make one call a week to my primary benefactor, which was my mom. And then I was allowed to write letters to my kids. The next month, I got my phone privilege. It's like different phases of it. Eventually, someone had smuggled a cell phone into rehab. I ended up using it and getting on Instagram. I did talk to Kevin once.

He had no idea where I left because I had taken off after being jumped. Apparently he thought I died. He was asking around about me. I just let him know where I was at and told him I was cool. And he said he was getting things lined up for Die Laughing Again. Wanted to know if I wanted to help him out once I got out of rehab. At that time, I pushed it to the side because I was so focused on myself.

I felt comfortable in my life. Things were like going really, really good with Alyssa. We had got a house together, moved in. I had gotten my kids back and I was in their day-to-day lives. We started integrating our families, Alyssa's kids and my kids together.

I was working normal people hours Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., doing mechanic shit so it wasn't so stressful. Building my life back up and getting comfortable, I started playing guitar again. Not really writing, but getting in contact with Kevin. We'd periodically see each other. I'd go visit him. He came down with some of our mutual friends for our first New Year's that Alyssa and I had at our house. We were having a party online.

That's when he started ramping up trying to get me to get the band going again. Kevin was like, "Hey, I finally found a drummer," which wasn't Anthony at the time, it was this other guy, Bill. Kevin said, "Hey, look, man, I booked a rehearsal. This thing's going to happen. You know how dedicated I've been to this thing. He's got material. He's already got it recorded. He got a drummer. I just need to learn these simple punk songs." It didn't seem too stressful. I wasn't going to be fronting a band. I was just going to be the rhythm guitar player.

which is all I really was going for at that time. I was trying to be cautious about it because being in a band can bring on as much devastation as working in a kitchen. I didn't want to be the center of attention in that band if I was going to play. I had made the decision, all right, yeah, I'll go try out. We had booked a practice session at a studio over here

It sort of meshed. It sort of didn't. The drums were kind of all over the place, but it felt good to play again. It was Drew, Bill, me, Justin was there, and then Kevin, who was also holding a guitar and was going to sing. So I was like, wait, there's three guitars? This is weird. Like, that's kind of not cool. That's going to be a hard fit on a stage.

So what happened was Justin and him were going through some personal beef. I got there and I guess I had rehearsed the songs a little bit better. And Justin was already going through his beef with Kevin. Justin was like, it looks like he got to this gym and he just took off. He called an Uber and I didn't see Justin until like a year later. That's how it started. After that practice, it was Bill, Drew, me and Kevin, a four piece.

Hi, I'm Andrew Saxena. I have known Kevin since elementary school. We were on different tracks, so I didn't really have a relationship with him until middle school, high school. He was the class clown. We all knew of his antics. I don't know if this is a legend or I made this up, but I thought he had released a chicken on campus or something and claimed that it was like a sacrifice to Satan. He was super outgoing and jovial. It seemed like he was having fun, all that.

all the time. I had my own friend group. We were punk rocker kids. And then he was a little bit more of a popular kid. Weren't necessarily in the same cliques. He was outgoing and he had an infectious personality. I felt like I wanted to be friends with him before I actually became friends with him. I'm a shy person for sure. In high school, I always felt a bit loner-ish. I was in the punk rock crowd. We were in bands. He was in a band in high school. I was in my own band. He was the popular band. And

and ours was we always felt I hate to say it the better band but just not as recognized so I was a little insecure very self-conscious I was attracted to him because he seemed like a presenter a performer I was in theater as well we were in comedy sports which was the improv team we're in 10th grade so I'm impressed by dumb humor we all had to write an ode and we

and we had to present them in front of the class. And of course, his was an ode to his rooster or male chicken. So it ended up having the refrain of ode to his cock. That was just so that he could say cock. Jokes would get crazy sometimes, like locker room talk jokey. I'd sometimes get sensitive.

I have two gay parents. Maybe sometimes I get triggered at gay jokes. And then all of a sudden, I feel like I'm lecturing people. I feel like I'm in a weird zone. So I remember feeling a little antagonized because Kevin always wants to make these shocking jokes about minorities or about Nazis. I felt like he was always trying to do a shocking joke about different people groups. He would also jokingly or maybe seriously be like, oh, the gingers get a bad rap because he's a red haired, freckled guy.

It almost feels like this is real. It almost feels like you're a little bit bigoted to all these people. And then you're also pointing out how sometimes people could be bigoted against you and that's a problem. Isn't that a bit hypocritical?

Kevin.

Kevin's like, I don't know what to do. I need someone. And I'm like, okay, I'll fill in. I went in and it worked out and it felt gratifying because it felt like it worked. And the other band members thought I could play. It was fun to be able to sing these pop punk songs. They kind of hearkened back to our youth, but felt a little Beatles-y.

The beginning, it felt a little more healthy, and I was a little bit in awe of how prolific he was in terms of songwriting. He was a good organizer. Getting people together, having practice, and setting up shows was always something I was not so great at with my band. I was the lead singer of my band. I was lazy about it, and I wasn't too intrusive. If you had other stuff to do, that's fine. Go live your life. I was a very passive band leader, but Kevin, he had everything organized, and it felt like a job.

It was cool as someone trying to figure out how to do art because when you see someone treating art seriously, it was attractive to me. Are you somebody who tends to prioritize other people's feelings? Yeah. Feelings and needs. It's something I've had to work on. Being a creator is a fun place to work on it as you learn and can set boundaries. I love to help the people around me who are creating stuff. If you're not helping people as an artist, it's just not going to go well for you. Yeah.

you. You're not going to build any community and you're not going to learn any skills or learn about people that have skills that you might be able to talk to and learn from. The early days were cool because we were practicing. It didn't feel like there was as much booze or drug issues. We developed a good set and we started playing a bunch of shows. We developed a little bit of a following. I was getting heavily into yoga and it annoyed Kevin. I had a community and another band with it. So I was splitting my time. It

It bothered him and I just eventually left because he was haranguing me about it, talking shit on yoga, my friends. It felt like my life was a perceived threat to him. It was like, choose the band or life. I had also gotten into a new relationship. So it was like, all right, I'm balancing a bunch of new stuff. And rather than feeling like we were able to have communication about it or be adults about it, it was just like, this thing is a threat. It felt aggressive and weird.

That other band ends, and then everyone moves to LA. We all came out here, and I started doing some school out here. I do films and screenwriting, so I came out here to try to get gigs. And Kevin came out here too. I was just itching to play again. I had played in a few bands, helping my friends out, but nothing was really coming off the ground.

So Kevin started his thing again. He had a friend who had also moved to L.A. and we were a threesome. We did crazy pop punk still, but now it was a little more grungy and there were samples and it was a little more screamy and experimental. We started that. It fell apart because of not being able to communicate and dysfunction between Kevin, the drummer and myself. One of our shows I showed up, it was the 23rd. So it's Christmas Eve Eve.

We had rehearsed. I show up and it's a different drummer, I think. Oh, all of a sudden we're playing with a different drummer. I meet the drummer. He's taking his fifth shot of whiskey. He gets in a crazy brawl. Someone from the audience randomly plays with us. This is like the first time that I flipped out at Kevin. Like, I can't do this anymore. So like, left again, the band fell apart.

I knew about Jimmy was that he was a recovering addict. So I was like, all right, Jimmy is a much tougher guy than I am. And then I got to know him and he was a fun guy. He very much felt like Kevin's friend because I knew him through Kevin. We were just so shitty at communication between all of us, mostly because Kevin was dominating the communication. I felt a little antagonistic towards both Jimmy and Kev because I'm passive, they're dominant. Here's Jimmy.

We were rehearsing for about four months. No shade on Bill. He's an amazing paralegal, amazing friend, a good dude. But he was a little more focused on his real big boy career, adult shit, and not so much focused on playing drums in some startup punk band. Kevin made the decision to let go of Bill and look for another drummer, which was Anthony, who was living in, I believe, in New York at the time. The whole time, Kevin was secretly scouting this drummer, knowing that he was just using Bill as practice to see if we could cut it for him.

So he cuts Bill, Kevin and Anthony. They had this previous relationship online. Kevin would send him mixes for producing and stuff like that.

Hello, I'm Anthony. I'm a musician and stand-up comedian. I've been performing for the last 20 years. I'm from New York City, but I'm living in LA currently. I started playing music when I was 10. My cousin, he's about the same age as me. We got into music at the same time he was learning how to play guitar. And so I asked for a guitar for my 10th birthday. I got a guitar. I was terrible.

And for my 11th birthday, I got drums. And so then me and him started playing music together. We both weren't really very good, but we started a band. We started playing DIY punk shows, all ages shows when we were in high school, freshman, sophomore year. We were part of the scene in Brooklyn and in Staten Island.

It was kind of a similar scene for the All Ages shows. So we were part of that for a couple years until all those places closed down.

At that point, we were old enough to start doing shows in adult venues. We did that for a couple of years. I did make a living as a drummer, but I was in my early 20s, so making a living was a little bit different. I didn't need to make much. Three, four roommates at a time, mattress on the floor, making a living, you know. You just cross your fingers. That's your health insurance. How did you meet Kevin? It was kind of a weird, random thing.

We met on Twitter. I was tweeting and interacting with the Eve6 account. It was when they had their big Twitter comeback. They started tweeting all this weird, funny stuff, and then people started paying attention, and then they put out some new music. I don't think they had been together for a few years, but I don't know if the reunion happened because the Twitter was growing or it was part of a PR campaign or what, but it worked.

That account kept growing and getting bigger. And some funny things that I tweeted, they retweeted, and then I would interact with their tweets. And then Kevin commented on something that I replied to, and we started having our own side chat in the comments of one of the Eve 6 tweets. We both had links to our music in our bios, ended up checking out each other's music and

And so we started chatting about the music. I liked some of the stuff that he had posted. He liked some of the stuff that I had. We started sending each other demos, things that we were working on, being like, hey, can you listen to this? What do you think of this? Is this cool? Would you want to play on this? He couldn't really find a drummer. He had a couple of people that kept coming and going. I wasn't even living in LA at this point, but I was planning to move there for my music and for my comedy.

To think about the progression of things is odd because in the beginning, he was very complimentary of all the stuff I was working on. I moved here last summer, summer of 2022. But the summer before, I came to LA to take a vacation and I had some shows lined up. So we actually met once I went to LA.

I went to the bar that he was working at and we hung out for a few minutes while he was working. He was nice to me. He was always complimenting the work that I was doing on my music projects. We hadn't really worked together yet at that point. I just knew that it was hard for him to keep friends because he was always telling me about how everybody hated him. But once I moved to LA and I joined the band as

as the drummer. It didn't take that long for him to start treating the whole band badly.

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We went downtown to this photo shoot. It was all very impromptu. There wasn't even really a photographer. Andrew brought a camera and Jimmy's wife was there. There was nobody to take photos, so she was like, "Okay, I guess I'll take the photos." We took a few photos on the roof. Then we're walking around the neighborhood.

And he was like, "Oh, there's this really cool alleyway. We'll take some photos there." So we get to this alleyway. There's nothing special about it, it's just a dirty alleyway with a dumpster. And he was like, "Everybody, let's gather around the dumpster." We're like huddled around this dumpster, it smells like pee.

He's like, this is great. That's awesome. And I look and I see that there's a brick wall next to the dumpster. And I'm like, you know, that's pretty classic. Band photo, brick wall. Why don't we just grab a shot over there? We take three or four photos and then some security guard from one of the buildings comes over and makes us leave. Here's Jimmy.

Kevin and Anthony get into this squabble because Anthony didn't want to be on Skid Row. It's not like hot piss. And it was just gross. He said something about, we don't need to like take these gutter punk pictures. We're all in our thirties. We've all lived the punk rock life. I'm pretty sure if we put all four heads together, we could come up with some cool pictures. We were all like, yeah, definitely. Except for Kevin took it in offense was like,

This is my home. This is my city. I was like, whoa, this dude's getting really heated over this. He just escalated the situation. He ended up insulting all three of us individually in some way, shape, or form. Anthony just came from New York and felt like he didn't get any input on this photo.

because it was so last minute. But Kevin took it as this threat and instantly was telling us through text, "If you don't like it, then fuck off. This is my band. I make the rules," type shit. I had to like side text him saying, "Bro, you waited six months to get this drummer and you're going to can him before we even play?" He seems legit. He was a really nice guy. We all clicked. That's kind of rare.

We just felt an instant connection with him and it was just really weird to me because we were all in such good spirits before. We basically almost broke up. I remember having to talk to Andrew and Anthony in our own sidebar text thread. I just wanted some insight from Andrew because he had known Kevin the longest. So I wanted to know, is this just like a fluke or is this just a stupid argument? And Andrew basically said without saying, you know, Die Laughin' has been trying to be a band for almost 10 years and it's always failed.

pretty much because of Kevin. He's kind of driven everybody out of that band that he's tried to start one way or another. Here's Andrew. I remember us doing a photo shoot, started out fun. Then we get near like a dumpster and

And it's a really gross dumpster somewhere in downtown L.A. We're taking pictures in front of it. Then I think Kevin asks Anthony, get on the ground. Get on this gross ass piss covered ground. And Anthony's like, no. Kevin's mad about this. He's chugging beer. And I think he has a bottle of whiskey. He's got me carrying the bong. And we're out in public with Alyssa and Jimmy.

Kevin's asking us to get down into piss puddles. And I think it was funny because it was the first time Anthony had ever met any of us. And it was the first time we'd all been together, essentially. I don't think we'd ever rehearsed. Anthony's just like, no. And I think Jim's like, no. It became a problem that bandmates didn't want to kneel in piss for Kevin, which seems like a reasonable issue for anyone to have. We all had this crash course in communicating with each other. And I think that's part of why we all quickly became closer afterwards.

Anthony, he's a comedian, a musician. He's made films. I was super inspired meeting him. He can have functional communications with his creative partners. That's really cool. He quickly was over Kevin, especially because Anthony would have more questions. He was the drummer and he'd need to know certain things about the songs. He couldn't just jam along each time. And he had ideas, I think, that conflicted with Kevin's.

I feel like it was an ego battle constantly in their interactions. And it felt like Kevin was harsh about that and meaner to Anthony because of that. People would come to Kevin with basic issues like, but what's the structure of this song? This is what the demo is. And then this is how we play it live. And Kevin would be like antagonistic about us trying to find solutions to how to play his music.

It would get to the point where we try to figure out what his solos were going to be or when he was going to do parts that he was going to do and they would come sporadically. So the drama started because of inability to have any kind of communication that was constructive at band practice. So much so that if it would happen, we would end up taking a break and whiskey would be getting chugged by Kev. It would be like time to get super high and then mad at whoever had the problem. And whoever wasn't involved in the conversation just had to piddle about with their instrument.

These practices were happening at my house too. So often I would just kind of go inside and hang with the cats. Here's Anthony.

We were talking about shooting a music video for one of the songs. Jimmy had some ideas. I think he wanted to get some time at an hourly studio and just bring a couple of cameras and shoot the rehearsal. But Kevin didn't think that the rehearsal space looked shitty enough. He wanted to shoot somewhere that was more gritty, I guess. I was like, "I don't want everything that we do to be shot by piss-smelling dumpsters." Something like that, where I was like, "Does everything have to smell like piss wherever we go?" He was like, "Oh, come on, you're not punk rock."

punk. This is the aesthetic of the band and this is what we do." And I was like, "Does it have to be? Do we have to be like in literal garbage?" I grew up playing punk. I played CBGBs before it closed. So I feel like I know a couple of things about punk. When you're forcing it, that's not really punk anymore. That was fine when we were young. We're in our 30s. So there was a little tension because he was shooting down everyone's ideas.

I just felt like he was attacking all of us for no reason. He was very upset at me for going against his punk rock aesthetic that he had in mind. I thought that the ideas that we had were also ideas that a punk rock band would do, but he was angry about that. Here's Jimmy.

We were talking about music video ideas and he was shutting every idea I had down and telling Drew not to wear his dress because Drew liked to wear dresses. He wore a dress to the first photo shoot and he had told us that he was going to wear a dress at every show we played. He was just like, no, not having it at all, which is also very concerning and weird. It's like day one, dude, and you're making us feel like we're just this backing band.

Eventually, Kevin, I think Drew talked to him individually. I talked to him individually. He ended up apologizing to Anthony, I believe, just in a weird way. I remember him apologizing in this sorry, not sorry type way. But for whatever reason, we moved past it. It was like, let's get over it. Let's play. Let's see if this is going to work. Anthony hit those drums hard. It's what we needed. He kept time. He kills it on drums in his first rehearsal. Drew's on point. Once we had that first rehearsal with Anthony, I was like, oh, shit. Okay, this could be something real.

Kevin had originally booked our first show almost six months in advance before we even knew that Anthony was going to be our drummer. It was at the Redwood. And then Drew booked a show at the Sardine, a local venue down the street from his house. We had two shows. It was like a Friday night show and then a Saturday night show. So we practiced for, I want to say, a week and a half. We probably ran three, four practices before we had our first show. After our first show, our second show at the Redwood, I remember it being completely toxic.

Kevin had booked that show. Something happened with the lineup and something with the drums. Like Anthony thought that there was going to be a backline drum set. That means when there's a drum kit set up, usually for you, and you just bring your cymbals and snare drum. Kevin had told Anthony the drum set would be backlined by either the Redwood Bar or by one of the bands. When we get there, we find out that our time slot is different and there's no backline available for us.

Kevin, who's already been on his high horse about how this is his band and he's supposed to be the leader because he's trying to make that the thing. He doesn't do anything about it. And then he takes it out immediately on Anthony. I immediately back up Anthony because I'm like, how is it his fault? You told him it was going to be backlined. Yeah.

It's your job as the leader to go talk to the promoter to get the lineup switched so we could borrow the other band's drums because we knew one of the guys in the other band. The problem was they went on first, another band went on, and then we were last. The band that went on first that we knew wanted to leave because no one wants them to hang around until 11 o'clock in their mid-30s.

They end up doing us a favor. We play, but it was like another red flag. You're the leader of this band. You're so persistent on controlling everything. But when it comes to actually taking care of business or figuring shit out, it fell onto me because I wanted to fix it. I want to play. We did all this work. Anthony came from New York. We rehearsed. I'll just figure it out. I took over as managing the band because I just couldn't see Kevin doing it. Obviously, this guy needs a little help. He's not the best leader. So maybe I could just play guitar and do the managing. I

That's basically how I got into booking shows for Die Laughing. This dude doesn't have the people skills. He doesn't know how to do those kind of things. It's starting to show that he can't function, especially in high stress things. I already knew Kevin to be a drinker. He was not PC at all. By that second show, we had all pretty much told him, we really need you to just be that microphone that comes out of the box and then back into the box it shows. If you're going to drink, you should probably like do your thing. And then after we play, get the fuck out of here and go drink.

He has very bad views on women. He has a past. His mom died very young. He could blame it on his shock humor or he wanted to get attention.

He had one girl, but that was it. It was like this weird rocky relationship. They knew each other from San Diego. They worked together and she was coming out of a relationship. It was like a rebound thing for her. She had two boys as well. So we talked a bit because I was going through it too. Not being able to be around my kids all the time. I understood where she was coming from. She was around and she was cool, but she would only take Kevin, you know, low doses for two days or for the night and then leave back to San Diego the next day.

I found out later, though, they had a falling out and she just never came back. I never saw her again. He'd always say this weird thing like, I respect women so much that I don't talk to them. As he drank more and more, the racial banter and jokes started coming out more and more. Andrew has always been on his ass about homophobic type shit. I fucking hate hatred, man. That's why I got into punk rock. I started getting really irritated. Everything started becoming a real red flag. I started seeing things for how they were.

Kevin booked one show. That was it. He didn't have a car. He didn't have an amplifier. His guitar was broken. I mean, the guy had five songs. It just wasn't adding up anymore. I'm actually paying for the rehearsals now. I'm booking these rehearsals out of my own pocket. I'm just doing all this work. When I brought up a song that I had written, he just totally was like, nah, I got 10 more songs to release. You don't even have any intention of playing it. There was two instances. There was rehearsals booked and I was on my way to pick Kevin up.

And he just shut his phone off, just bailed on it. Wouldn't answer his phone. I'm waiting outside his apartment. He did that twice. His excuse was like, oh, I'm sorry, man. I got drunk. Sorry, guys. I blew it. The next time he did it, we just went and practiced without him. And we posted videos of us playing one of the songs I wrote. He immediately tries to kiss our ass. We saw the control issues very early on to sum all that up. And it was almost too much for comfort for me. I'm going to see how far this goes. Hopefully it ends, but it only progressed.

Here's Anthony. He was always unhappy with something. So that was almost an immediate shift. Once I got here and we were actually working on stuff, he was very difficult. He thinks that his ideas are better no matter what. I've met a lot of people like this.

They're not interested in what you're bringing to the table. In the beginning, it seemed like Kevin was interested in what all of us had to offer as musicians because I think what we did was we came into the project and we took his demos. When we played shows, we took those songs and made them more than what they were on his bedroom demos. I feel like a lot of me calling him out happened privately.

He would be more open with me about his lack of interest in collaborating with them. He knew I was okay if it was just his project. Once I met those guys, when I would talk to Kevin privately, I was always kind of advocating for them because we were having fun initially. I could see that they were excited about being part of the band. So when he would say stuff like that, I would be like, you got to talk to these guys. You got to be upfront about this. I would do a lot of that privately, but

When the argument about the photo shoot happened, the three of us, me, Andrew, and Jimmy, we started a separate group text without Kevin. So we had the band one, and then we had the backing band one. That was our chat to be like, how are we going to deal with Kevin? What are we going to do? How are we going to get past how bad he's treating us? How are we going to tell him how we feel? We all knew what the three of us were upset about.

I would end up being the one who would bring that stuff up. It was a weird thing because Kevin was telling me privately about his grievances with the band and the band, we were all talking about our grievances with him. I think that we all wanted to record the next batch of songs as a band and that kind of scared him. He would send me messages separately from the band group text

and be like, how do I tell my band that they're never going to play on any of the recordings? And I was like, I don't know, but I think you should tell them that because they seem like they really want to. I was fine either way because I had my own musical projects. I do comedy and I had all kinds of separate projects. His band wasn't my creative outlet. It was just kind of a fun thing to do when I first moved to LA, joined a band, make a couple of new friends.

That's enough for me. I don't ever play drums on the album. I don't really care about that. But the other guys were interested in doing that and he wasn't that open about it. It was pretty obvious that he didn't want to collaborate. What made it hard was that not only did he not want to collaborate, he didn't even really seem to know what he wanted from us.

That started really early on. It was fun for a couple of weeks. Then we were just trying to navigate how to keep this band from falling apart.

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There was a couple of times in rehearsals where we were trying to learn a song, a new song that he had already recorded a demo. We'd all heard it before and we were just trying to hammer out our parts in rehearsal. Something wasn't working and we kept not being able to get through the song. I had some questions about the arrangement. We got the intro riff and then you start singing the verse and then there's another riff before the second verse. It's

I was just trying to figure out how many times do we go through the riff. He was telling us one thing and then we would try it and he would do it differently. I was like, we're not getting this. Can you just tell us how many times? He didn't seem to know and he was getting really upset that I was asking questions about arrangements. The only way that we solved it was I pulled out my phone and I pulled up the demo and we listened to it together and he was like, oh yeah, you were right.

But he just wanted to argue before that. It wasn't until I pulled up his own recording of himself playing the song. He always wanted to keep it loose. He was like, well, the guitar solos, those would just go on indefinitely. We'll just jam. And so every song had like jam sections. We want to structure this so that we can be tighter as a band. And it was just hard. He wasn't interested. He just always wanted to do the opposite of what we were...

trying to do with him. One of the examples of a time where I was more upfront about my distaste for his behavior. We had this show for all of the rehearsals and for all the gigs. Jimmy would pick up Kevin at his place and bring him to wherever it was and then drive him home. So he got a ride to the gig

And Andrew had all of Kevin's equipment. So he gets a ride, he has his equipment delivered to him, doesn't even help anybody load in. He's just hanging out like he's some kind of rock star and we're his roadies. I'm setting up my drums. I don't expect him to help me with that but he didn't set up any of the amps. He's trying to like get me to help him with the microphone because

Because for some reason there was no sound person. It was like, all right, the band is done. Now you guys figure it out. So we're trying to find the outlets and the mics aren't set up for some reason. So he's like, where's the mic? What do I do with the mic? I was like, I don't know. I don't work here. I'm doing the drums. Figure it out. We finally get everything set up. There's like five people in the audience. One of them is Jimmy's wife and her friend is there. My wife is there.

Our friend from out of town is visiting. It's her last night in town. And they're both at the show. The band after us is there. And that's about it. But we still want to be professional. That's just what you do, I thought.

I've done so many shows to five or less people. I've done shows where it's just the sound person and my girlfriend. For a band, it's a free rehearsal. Sometimes we have to pay to get together and play music. So anyway, we're ready to go. And at this moment when we're like, okay, let's start. He's like, hold on. I got to go smoke some weed first. And we're like, what? We have to start.

He's like, all right, I gotta smoke. I'm not playing until I smoke my weed. So we're like, fine, just do it fast. I don't think he could find the weed or the pipe. He's like, who took it? Who took it? And he's yelling at us. But then at some point he gets on the microphone and he starts accusing everyone in the room. He's like, who stole my pipe? Somebody stole my pipe and I refuse to play until I get my weed. I've been in bands for 20 years. I've never experienced this level of...

I don't even know what you call that but it's unprofessional. So he storms out of the room. He leaves us on the stage and we're supposed to have started already. Jimmy had a new song idea that we had practiced a couple of times and it was like an instrumental at that point. We're all just kind of looking at each other like, what do we do? And I was like, why don't we play that song that you wrote? So we kick into Jimmy's song that Kevin doesn't even know. He comes back when we're halfway into some song that he doesn't even know how to play.

He thought it was like he was Liam Gallagher or something. He thought it was like an Oasis kind of thing. But it really annoyed us. Here's Andrew. Finally, the dude shows up. And I remember we're yelling at him on stage. This doesn't work. You're destroying a bunch of people's experience right now. This really sucks. Everyone wanted to fight this guy. And he was never accepting in any way that he needed to extend any communication or understanding about what people's feelings were.

how his actions made them feel. I think everyone just started to realize it's a brick wall. And then when we tried to call him out on it after the fact, he was like, oh, that's a stand-up. That's a comedy routine. That comedy excuse again. We were stereotypical dudes for a very long time, just letting stuff slide. I mean,

Maybe this will work and we won't have to deal with these communication issues. They escalated and we all tried our best. And this guy would not hear anyone out. He was telling all of us in like the group text to all fuck off. He'd just replace us all.

In terms of our band relationship, it was a constant build of not being able to communicate a clear idea of what our goal was. It did seem like it was building. At that show, it felt like there were ultimatums where it was like, hey, if we don't have a sit down and talk about this or figure this out, I'm out. After that show, at some point, I remember reaching out to the group text and being like, Kevin, what we need to do more than anything is not rehearse, not talk about the next record.

We need to just sit down and talk to each other. And he didn't want to have a band meeting. I think that was the second to last show it planted that seed of this can't go on.

Here's Jimmy. We were coming off of the incident where he blew up with his weed pipe. When I confronted him about it afterwards, he fired me. He's like, no, you're fired. You're out of here. And then two days later, he apologized. I let it go. But by this time, most of these red flags were up in the air. They're staying there and they're with me constantly. I'm just trying to figure out an exit strategy out of this. And everybody's on the same page.

I feel like Kevin could sense the shift. The more he saw and sensed the shift and the rift in the band due to him, he got worse. He didn't know how to come back from it or just apologize and move on. After that, Drew pretty much was on his way out.

Anthony was gonna leave. He just couldn't take it. And I was gonna leave too. I just wanted to make sure I had some kind of project to bounce into. That was the game plan. Drew, Anthony and I were like, "Okay, look, I have these three shows lined up. I spent money on these. Can you guys just help me get through this? That way I could keep these contacts." This is all my networking and I didn't want to burn everybody. I wanted to keep playing. I knew that I was going to do something on my own or maybe with Anthony.

It was about mid-July, I had booked a thing for Jam in a Van. It was like on YouTube. We had to do like a 10-minute livestream set. If we had a good response, they would put us on officially and then we'd get a spot. It took a lot of work. I had to organize how we were going to do it. We did it at Drew's house. We got our friend Trevor to help us sync the audio and sound because it needed to be perfect. It came out cool.

Kevin knew that we were doing this audition, but I had to meet with all the other band members and our friend Trevor four hours before to set everything up and get it going because nobody wanted Kevin to really be there. We knew he would just be drinking the entire time. He wouldn't be helping. A couple days before that, I came across this song by the Shady Francos. I...

They immediately recognized it was a Die Laughing song called Boyfriend. It was written, it was in the same key, same structure, time, everything. He added an extra chorus on top of the chorus. So it went from the chorus to his new chorus and then repeated. So it was just direct plagiarism. I brought it up to the guys and they all agreed. We were all pretty lost. Ultimately, Anthony ended up bringing it up to him and he was just like, well, why didn't you give him credit to begin with if it wasn't your intention to steal? Kevin just wrote it off as not stealing it. I

Here's Anthony.

We were on our way to a rehearsal. We were doing like a video recording. So Jimmy picked me up and Kevin was going to meet us later. We're in the car and Jimmy's like, hey, check this out. And he plays me this song in the car and I was like, what the fuck? He told me that Kevin knew this singer from the Shady Francos and he emailed him like, hey man, I love your stuff. I was wondering what kind of vocal effects do you use on your recordings?

So this guy tells him what he uses. Kevin records everything with this same kind of sound. We have to talk to him about this because I don't want to be in a band that just rips off complete songs. Being influenced is one thing, but taking songs and saying you wrote them, that's a whole other thing. Once we do know, now it's just as bad as if we knew all along. We don't get a pass. This is enough to be like, I don't know if I want to be in this band anymore. Here's Jimmy.

Coming up late July, it was our last rehearsal before our show at the Silver Lake Lounge, which was a big deal for us because I booked that show with Deuterella. I had to pay two other bands to come play with us that were semi-big in the local scene. And this is the Silver Lake Lounge, which is where Silver Sun Pickups blew up. Elliot Smith used to play there.

This was a big deal for us. It wasn't just some dive bar, you know. It was one of our first shows in Echo Park. A chance to get back into like that coveted local scene where things can really pick up for you. The rehearsal before that gig, Anthony and Kevin got into it over some dumb shit about a click track and Anthony being off in tempo. And it was just Kevin once again deflecting and trying to put the blame on Anthony.

That night, we got into a heated argument, all of us. I have to drive everybody back home still. Kevin doesn't say a word to Anthony the entire way home. So that's already awkward. I drop off Anthony and then Kevin starts talking to me. He's going on this weird transphobic rant. Came at me with some weird shit. I was just really bothered by that whole conversation. This dude knows my brother's gay. He knows all the bands I've been booking for, all the connections I've been making. Drew's wearing dresses to our shows.

Drew's been supporting the LGBT queer punk scene since before me. Anthony's super level-headed. It's just this one guy's hatred that's coming out more and more. And it was just really bothering me. So I drop him off and I noticed immediately that he left his phone in my car. In weird relationships, when you have these red flags and feelings, sometimes people tend to go through other people's phones.

I open his phone because he's talking all this shit openly to me about Anthony in our own text messages. I know this guy has issues with me. I want to see what the fuck he's saying. So I go through his phone and that's when I open this bombshell of weirder shit. I open Pandora's box. Next time on Something Was Wrong. So it came out somewhat quickly. Once we knew about the text messages, there was no coming back from that.

I had zero contact with him. I was already done. The last ever show that we were supposed to play with him was the first Bitch Jagger show. It really seemed like they wanted it to get to the highest plateau so they could feel safe about coming out or sharing their stories in a censored way. I was listening to your podcast about my lonely mechanic job and it's what got me through the day and I was thinking, this is the perfect platform for these women. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe, friends.

Something Was Wrong is a Broken Cycle Media production created and hosted by me, Tiffany Reese. If you'd like to support the show further, you can share episodes with your loved ones, leave a positive review, or follow Something Was Wrong on Instagram at somethingwaswrongpodcast. Our theme song was composed by Glad Rags. Check out their album, Wonder Under. Thank you so much.

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