Music

Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.

To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the page under Support.

All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible in the United States and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.

Thanks for your support.

Okay, so let's talk Mormonism now. So you're like Mormon's successful rock band, you're like the new version of the Osmonds but you know but but modern.

Right. So you're carrying that like all these hundreds of thousands if not millions of Mormons are like, oh that's us, that's our band. You know what I mean?

Yeah, and you know what I still proud to carry that you know, and I culturally I I want Mormon. You know you can't you can't get out of your blood and so I still really appreciate that and I'm I definitely hear what you're saying as far as that you know like

Is there part of you like representing Mormonism in the priesthood when you're like being successful to the world part of that?

Well, you feel you just feel the mantle of that you feel like you know it's like I'm representing my people in a way and you want to do right by them and it's it's like an extra done you know you don't want to disappoint them and it's like yeah I think there's a little extra thing there and that's you know part of my

trepidation of like speaking out to you is like is that I know that you know people like you know brand from the killer is the entries and also the panic of the disco.

disco. He well he was raised that way. I don't think he yeah much into it now but you know you feel that sort of you're taking on this this mantle and I don't want to disappoint those people but also you know it's like at some point I got to you know be myself too.

So when when we were you know early on the band me and Dan were still going to church you know we would go church on the road we find you know the nearest chapel and you know

so while you were touring yeah yeah yeah church church they wouldn't play on Sundays no Sunday gig what yeah say no to everything but Sunday yeah Sunday gigs Sunday yes so yes everything but Sunday gig.

Okay okay okay okay and right sorry yes yeah we were still still still with it and still you know we can see ourselves Mormon you know I Dan is not definitely not has his own path as far as where he's at with everything right now but you know we're we're

pretty aligned as far as I thought some things but so when you hit big where you had the had the big crack started to emerge in your testimony or faith no okay so you so you're hitting a big you're still like into the Mormon thing

yeah okay you know it's like I'm not like the most like I'm not the best but I'm in there I'm doing my best I'm not drinking or you know doing any of the typical rock star things you know you know

actually being faithful to you a lot of fun to read that kind of stuff appreciate you so not the not the most difficult no drugs or you know just both living clean and and trying to do this thing our way and probably not you know at the risk of looking cool to probably other bands and you know no tattoos and I'm sure it's it's probably a strange

drug to position for people but it's it's the truth of who we were and so we did it did you ever feel like well God did this or we were blessed by God like or or I guess you work so hard for so long it probably be hard to attribute it to anything other than hard work

yeah a little bit okay okay perhaps I lived in you know in a world that God created that if you work hard okay this kind of stuff happens so thanks God for making a context and then also you just think of all the other Mormon bands that were playing

floor that we knew and loved and that weren't having that success so that almost yeah it's like okay they weren't God bless you but yeah just doesn't really work so okay okay so what happened so yes I was still in it we were being faithful and I don't as we got married and stuff

we would go to church but our temple attendance probably wasn't all that great we weren't really going that much anymore and just sort of there was just some things I think we're under the surface I think prop 8 was an issue with for both of us even though we never really talked about it a ton the discussions we did have it were like you know if this can be seen as anything less than a complete you know

...