Is It Time To Break Up the Band?

Proxy with Yowei Shaw

Yowei Shaw

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 589 Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The case of the bandmates who can't finish their record and don't know why.

Evan and Chris are best friends, bandmates, and creative partners. Years ago, their band The Superweaks was on the verge of breaking out. Then Evan's brother Corey — the band's bassist — died suddenly, and the band never recovered.

Now they have a record that's almost done. Just a few vocals left. But it's been stuck for years, tangled in grief, burnout, ADHD, resentment, lack of leadership, and silence.

In this episode, Yowei connects Evan and Chris with Ryan Dusick, founding drummer of Maroon 5 turned therapist, to investigate what happens when a band is also a friendship, a dream, a workplace, and a family system — and what it takes to get unstuck.

From the episode:

— The Superweaks — listen to their single "Blindside" and The Superweaks Superweekly Supercast episode where Yowei stumbles into the case — on Instagram @thesuperweaks

— Ryan Dusick — author of Harder to Breathe: A Memoir of Making Maroon, Losing It All, and Finding Recovery, and host of The Harder To Breathe podcast — on Instagram @ryan_michael_dusick

— The Music Industry Therapist Collective: www.musicindustrytherapists.com

New to Proxy? Try Bisexual Wife Guy for a classic case, or Yowei Can't Speak Bro for another story about friendship and miscommunication.

For episode liner notes, show gossip, and dispatches from the emotions beat, get File Under Feelings, our free newsletter, at proxyhq.org.

Proxy is an independent show, supported mostly by listeners. Paid members get bonus episodes, ad-free listening, live Proxy hangs, and the satisfaction of keeping emotional investigative journalism alive 🍏

Visit — proxypodcast.com

Get in touch — proxythepod@gmail.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello? Hello, podcast engineer. Hey, oh, hey. Jesus Christ. Oh, did you not realize it was me? No, it came up as like a Delaware number. I thought it was spam. It's my Google voice. It's my Google voice.
0:21.2	I just, yeah, I just send it to voice now because I was like, oh, I thought you were trying
0:25.5	to avoid your work duties.
0:28.6	No, no. I was like, oh, another fucking, you put your name, you say you're interested in,
0:35.7	you know, solar energy and get sales calls for the rest of your life.
0:50.1	This is Proxy, and I'm Yo-A. Shaw, your emotional investigative journalist.
0:56.1	Today, the case of the bandmates who can't finish their record and don't know why.
1:02.5	That's after the break. Ever wondered why some trends are just suddenly everywhere?
1:23.6	Newsflash, nothing gets popular by accident.
1:27.3	I'm Brittany Luce, and on the It's Been a Minute podcast,
1:29.9	I take the things you and I are both obsessing over
1:32.7	and show you the invisible forces behind the scenes that make us love it or hate it.
1:38.3	Be smarter about what you're consuming.
1:40.7	Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast today.
1:55.0	Music listening. Listen to the It's Been a Minute podcast today. Last year, some friends of mine, Evan and Chris, they invited me to come on their podcast, this once-and-a-while show where
2:02.3	they mostly talk to people they've played music with in their band The Super Weeks.
2:06.9	And at first I was like, I don't know anything about rock music. I don't have anything to talk
2:12.4	about. But then I thought, oh, I could use this opportunity to try to find a story, put out a call to listeners, maybe find some band drama for an episode.
2:24.2	That would be an interesting space to explore.
2:29.0	So on a sticky summer day, I make my way to the Jamtown Recording Studio in North Philadelphia.
2:36.0	It's behind this graffiti-covered door, mics and cables everywhere.
2:41.7	Evan shows up late with halal chicken and rice for Mikey the drummer.
	...

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