Travis Barker On Premonition, Intuition & The Importance Of Following Your Heart

Dubbed one of the “100 Greatest Drummers of All Time” by Rolling Stone, Travis Barker rose from blue collar roots to become one of the world's most talented, prolific and hard working rock stars — a multi-hyphenate musician-producer-entrepreneur who initially made his mark as the drummer for Blink-182, the influential, multi-platinum punk-rock band that earned it's very first Grammy nomination this week for it's latest release, California. Today, Travis is celebrated for his unique percussive acumen; a rare ability to collaborate with a diversity of musical giants — people like Eminem, Lil Wayne, Slash, Mary J. Blige, RZA, Tom Morello and Steve Aoki — across a swath of genres that reach past rock to country, jazz, hip hop and everything in between. Extending his entrepreneurial flair beyond music, Travis is also the founder of accessory/apparel company Famous Stars and Straps as well as LaSalle Records and is an investor in a variety of ventures including Crossroads Kitchen – one of Los Angeles' best restaurants and perhaps the most acclaimed vegan restaurant in the world. Travis bares his soul in Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating Death, and Drums, Drums, Drums* — a deeply personal and brutally honest memoir chronicling the highlights and lowlights of the renowned drummer’s art and life, including the harrowing plane crash that nearly killed him and his traumatic road to recovery. Ultimately, it's a book about personal survival. Constant reinvention. Musical salvation. And fatherhood. Travis Barker is a great rock star. But behind the tattoos, sold out arenas and dope rides lives a quiet, soulful artist with a prodigious work ethic. A sober consciousness birthed from pain. Etched from hardship, Travis Barker has survived some serious shit. But it's our wounds that make us human. And it's that humanity that interests me the most. This is a conversation about a remarkable life. The pivotal moments that forged it. The premonitions that foretold it. The intuitions that directed it. The humanity behind it. And the heart that animates it. Open, humble and present, I absolutely loved spending time with Travis. I sincerely hope you enjoy the first of what I hope will be many future exchanges. Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like if you really want to do something, unless you're 110% sacrificed and ready to sacrifice everything. I didn't have no cool clothes. I didn't have a cool car. I was poor. But I just wanted to play the drums. Not for chicks, not for any other reason, but that's what I loved, you know? So, I mean, anything I'm involved with is because I absolutely love it. I've learned to trust the gut. Like, if my gut and my intuition tells me no, it's a no. But everything happens for a reason, and I believe in that saying, "Win or learn," you know? And, you know, a mistake isn't a mistake. You learn from it. And now, I'm here to say, you know, like, I do trust my gut 110%.

• 1:46Rich Roll?

  That's Travis Barker, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:01Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, what's up you guys? How you doing? What's happening? Greetings. My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host and welcome or welcome back to my podcast, the show where I get intimate and I go long form, in-depth with some of the world's most intriguing thought leaders and positive change makers all across the globe. Really appreciate you guys tuning in today. It means a lot to me. Thank you so much for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for sharing the show with your friends and on social media, for supporting my work through Patreon and through the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. Really appreciate all of that very, very much. Did I mention I got Travis Barker on the podcast today? Super excited about that. Hold on, can you guys hear that rain?

• 2:46Rich Roll?

  It's crazy. I've lived in Los Angeles, like, I don't know, over 20 years, I have never seen a winter like this. It's been raining like crazy the past week, like sideways pelting rain. Everything's turning green. It looks like Ireland out here. It's awesome. We really need it, but I'm not used to it and it's unbelievable. In any event, I'm in my new container studio space and it's a little bit loud with the rain. So apologies if it's a little distracting. Nothing I can do about that. In any event, Travis Barker, again, super pumped to have him on the show today. You guys know this guy, right? Prolific, super talented rock and roll drummer, but maybe if you haven't heard of him, let me

• 3:26Rich Roll?

  recap it for you. Recognized by Rolling Stone as punk's first superstar drummer, Travis is a musician, he's a producer, he's an entrepreneur who rose to fame and perhaps you know him best as the drummer for the influential multi-platinum punk rock band Blink-182. And in fact, just this week Blink-182, and thus Travis as well, were nominated for their first Grammy for their latest album, California. So that's awesome. Congrats to everybody in Blink and Travis for that. Essentially, he's one of the most prolific rock drummers in the world. He's incredibly talented, skilled, accomplished, hardworking, and really unique because he's

• 4:08Rich Roll?

  Very adept at essentially every musical genre, everything from punk to country, EDM, hip-hop, jazz, and everything in between. In addition to what he does with Blink 182, this is a guy who has recorded or performed with all kinds of artists like Eminem, Lil Wayne, Slash, Mary J. Blige, Tom Morello, Steve Aoki, and so many, many more. And he's also an entrepreneur. He's the founder of a clothing company called Famous Stars and Straps. He's got a record label called LaSalle Records. He's also an investor in a variety of cool businesses, including Crossroads Kitchen, which is not only one of LA's best restaurants, it's perhaps the most acclaimed vegan restaurant in the world. He's also

• 4:53Rich Roll?

  a bestselling author. His memoir, Can I Say?, is this incredibly raw, vulnerable, honest, soul-bearing chronicle of the highlights and the lowlights of what I think is a really remarkable human being's life, including the harrowing plane crash that nearly killed him and his traumatic road to recovery, which is something we spend a lot of time talking about in the podcast today. In any event, super interesting cat, and I've got a few more things I want to note about him before we delve into the conversation. But first...

• 5:37Rich Roll?

  All right, Travis Barker on the podcast today. Super excited about it for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is because there are so many interesting points of commonality and intersection that I have with him, a laundry list of things that I wanted to explore with him, everything from addiction and sobriety to his veganism, his music career, of course, his evolution as both a musician and a human being, what it means to him to live a creative life on his own terms, and... You know, how he balances this rock star persona against parenting two young kids. I wanted to talk about his entrepreneurship, his fitness regimen, which I know is very, very important to him. And the truth of the matter is, I only got through a few of these things

• 6:21Rich Roll?

  because we went so deep and so thoughtful and intentional on just a select few items. So I want you guys to consider this part one of what I hope will be a multi-part conversation with Travis. This is just us getting to know each other a little bit. And it's really great. It came out wonderful. Travis is just such a conscious, soulful, and present human being. And I think it really comes across in this exchange. And you know, this is a conversation that I think pivots around a couple of themes. It's about intuition. It's also about premonition. And it's a conversation about the importance of following your heart. And I think that's all I'm going to say about this one. So let's talk to Travis.

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  Right on, man. Thanks so much for coming over to do this with me. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Have you done, have you done very many podcasts? I did, are you familiar with On It? Yeah, Aubrey. Yeah, Aubrey. I did Aubrey's podcast. Did Aubrey's? Yeah. Was that in person or was that like a Skype thing? Nah, it was over Skype. Yeah. It was pretty cool. Cool, man. Well, good to have you here. Is that the only other one you've done? Yeah, I don't really do a bunch of them. All right, cool. Well, that's, that's good. That's exciting for me, man. Because I'm really super inspired by your story. And there's a lot of points of intersection that we can explore. And I'm just pumped to be able to hijack you and force you to answer my questions. Cool. I'm game. I'm game. You know, I was wrapping my head around, around kind of, you know, what you're about

• 7:56Rich Roll?

  and who you are. And I think something that's super interesting about, you know, the musical aspect of what you do is that Obviously, you're known as a drummer. You're a very prolific, talented, accomplished drummer. But it's really a lot more than that because your sort of persona, or you know, I hate that word, "brand," but like, you know, who you are is really much larger than that. Like, you have this very kind of creative entrepreneurial approach to what you do that allows you to kind of expand outside like the four walls of a band and has allowed you to like collaborate with all these amazing musicians across all different genres, as well as, you know, get involved in all different

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  types of businesses. Like, it's a very dynamic approach to your profession and your career, right? Is that accurate?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I've, I've kind of along the way of playing music, as a symptom of playing music, I've been able to express myself and be successful in a couple of different creative outlets, which has been just amazing. Never, never with the intention to make money or to be successful. It was always like, "Well, I love doing this."

• 9:11Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  And if I could make it make sense to where I don't lose money doing it, cool. And it could just be a hobby. And those hobbies have turned into, I guess, what you call a business now.

• 9:22Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's, so it's really leading with your heart, leading with your gut, leading with your instinct?

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, always. I mean, anything I'm involved with is because I absolutely love it.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  I've learned like, I've learned trust, trust the gut. Like, if I, if my, if my gut, my gut and my intuition tells me no, it's a no.

• 9:40Rich Roll?

  Where did you learn that? Like, where does that come from?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  I feel like I learned the hard way.

• 9:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  A little bit. You know, there's, there's certain, there's big, there's big pivotal decisions in my life where I've made the wrong decision.

• 9:55Rich Roll?

  Like making the, making the decision because of the paycheck or as opposed to the, the creative fulfillment of it?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or I guess just I, when I look back at times, I was like, "Whoa, I knew that didn't feel right." And I still went ahead and did it.

• 10:10Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  And I just go, "Why?" You know, and, but everything happens for a reason. And I, and I believe in that, that saying, "Win or learn," you know? And, you know, a mistake isn't a mistake. You learn from it. And, and I, and now I'm here to say, you know, like, I do trust my gut 110%.

• 10:27Rich Roll?

  It seems that- You know, to me and kind of reviewing your story and knowing a little bit about, you know, where you came from, that a lot of it tracks back to, you know, something your mom told you, you know, shortly before she passed. I mean, she passed, you were pretty young, right? Like, just before you started high school?

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a day before high school.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And what was it that she said to you?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  She said, no matter what, follow your dreams and play the drums. Like, don't stop playing. Like, that's the one thing. I think that's the one thing, like, I think as a child, and I've seen it even with my own kids, it's like, if you give them the option that they don't have to do anything, they're not gonna do anything.

• 11:05Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  So, for me, they were very disciplined in, like, you've gotta practice X amount of hours a day. You've gotta, you gotta be productive. You've gotta put time in with, you know, your instrument, which was the drums for me. I mean, I sang with, like, I sang in madrigals in school and piano, but nothing got me like the drums did. You know, there was a portion of my life where I was like 14, 15, and I thought I wanted to be a professional skateboarder, but I was way, way better at playing drums than skateboarding. So, if my mother and father wouldn't have made me practice, I would have, when she died, there would have been nothing for her to say, "Do that," you know?

• 11:46Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And she, you know, I started just banging on things at the age of four, and she's like, "I think he's a drummer."

• 11:52Rich Roll?

  Right, so just the pots and pans kind of thing, right?

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, like pots and pans and...

• 11:56Rich Roll?

  But she showed up to support that, like, you got you some lessons and a kit and all that kind of stuff?

• 12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, she got me a teacher at the age of four that taught me how to read. And I was really good at sight reading. I was really good at just reading music in general. I would go to drum competitions, and there were sight reading competitions where, you know, I was like five or six, and they'd put a sheet of music ahead of you you've never seen, in front of you, and you just have to kill it, you know? You have to go there and do it. And I was really good at sight reading, and then...

• 12:23Rich Roll?

  So you picked up learning how to read music at how old?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, five and six years old.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:29Rich Roll?

  That's almost like some crazy past life thing, right? Like, you were able to just tap right into it like that?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was weird, and no one played music in my family. Nobody was just like, I just understood note value really young, and I think it was a combination of that, and they just pushed it on me really young, like, "If you're gonna do this, learn it right." And then once I learned how to read, it was really, no one really could teach you how to play rock and roll. Or teach you how to play to your favorite hip hop groups. You know, I had that same teacher that that taught me when I was a kid named Ed Will. He just taught me jazz basics, like learn how to read charts. And then I just listened to everything.

• 13:06Rich Roll?

  So after that, it's just, you know, whatever, whatever is like getting you excited and then playing it over and over and over again and trying to mimic it?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, just listening to what I loved and some of it would be like programmed drums, that a drum machine, it was a SP 1200, you know? It was a MPC and I would copy those drums from from Beastie Boy Records or Public Enemy Records. So that was a, I was just exposed to everything. I was a really happily confused kid in a time where in that, in that time, I think you either listened to punk rock, or you listened to hip hop, or you were a goth kid, or you were whatever. I was confused and I was so thrilled with being confused and liking everything.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  So Southern California, right? Like Fontana area? And we're talking about like late 1970s?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was born in 75.

• 13:58Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Right. So early 80s maybe. So then who, so, so who are your guys? Like who were the, who were the big influences?

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Drummers?

• 14:06Rich Roll?

  Or just drummers in bands?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Drummers in bands? Is that what you said?

• 14:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Stuart Copeland, for sure. Dennis Chambers, he was like a fusion drummer.

• 14:16Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Steve Gadd, Buddy Rich, a lot of jazz guys really for me.

• 14:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Carter Bruford.

• 14:26Rich Roll?

  It's interesting with the jazz, right? It makes me think of Whiplash. When you watch that, do you tap into that emotionally? Like do you see yourself in that character at all?

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Oh, so many, so many. So many similarities.

• 14:39Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  For me, it was really when, when I was in, when I joined jazz band in high school, my mom had just passed away. I was really, uh, just shut down. I really closed myself off from everything and everyone. And I just focused on music. It was weird. Just her words resonated with me and I just, something told me to just be obsessed with drums.

• 15:03Rich Roll?

  Well, it's a beautiful gift that she gave you.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Rich Roll?

  The permission to chase your dream. I mean, what more, you know, what more do you want from a parent? Right?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:14Rich Roll?

  Their belief and their conviction that you can do it.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:18Rich Roll?

  It's just, you know, it's a beautiful way for her to pass and, and to, you know, sort of bequeath that to you.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:26Rich Roll?

  And then for you to really be able to hear it and take that and run with it.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially in a time where you couldn't go. I remember going to my counselors that I think they start talking to you in 11th grade and they're like, well, what are you gonna do? You're gonna go to college? And I was like, my dad and my family, we don't have money for college and frankly, I didn't have.

• 15:44Rich Roll?

  What did, what did, uh, what did your dad do?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  He worked at Kaiser Steel. He was a steel worker.

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Um, and we just, we didn't have a ton of money. We were, you know, we, we got by. And for me, and I didn't have the grades. And once my mom died, I was really just getting by. All I was focused on was drums.

• 16:03Rich Roll?

  So you're like a skater stoner kid or what kind of, like what crowd were you hanging in?

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Not by that time, but the time, I think when my mom passed away, I stopped skateboarding. It was kind of like, I really like laser eye focus on drumming.

• 16:16Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  It just, something clicked immediately. Uh, and that's all I, that's all I focused on. And when I, I remember having those conversations where like, are you gonna go to college? What are you gonna major? And I was like, I'm gonna be a professional drummer. And they're like, What are you talking about? And I was like, I just want to tour. That's all I want to do. I don't care if I'm poor, as long as I have enough money to eat and sleep somewhere. That's my only goal, you know? And I, I, I almost felt guilty at that point to dream of anything more significant than that. It was just like, do what I love, somehow find a way to get paid for it. And that's it. And they just counselor after counselor would laugh at me and just be like, you are an idiot.

• 16:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  You know?

• 16:57Rich Roll?

  Are you going back to your high school to see any of those guys?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Nah, I've, I've donated some like musical instruments and stuff. I don't think any of the same, you know, faculty is there, but, uh, but that was almost even more motivation to go harder and just be like, there is, you know, I started to learn, there is no path to get to where I want to go. I have to create it and I just, I can't, I can't take, I can't take no for an answer. I just gotta be obsessed.

• 17:23Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta want it. You have to be obsessed. And you know, the, the part, the piece I think that's missing from what you just explained is, is having like an incredible work ethic, you know, which I think is a characteristic of, of, you know, your success. Like you work your ass off, man. You practice like crazy, right? That obsession translated into action.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And which it was funny, you know, my father wasn't involved with music, but he was a steel worker and there wasn't, even when he got home, he would, he'd be building a fence or he'd build our house with his own two hands, you know? It was, I saw his work ethic and it just, I applied it to what I do and what I love. And I, I still, you know, my friends go like, dude, what are you doing? You work like you're broke. And I'm like, no, I work like, I never wanted to go away. And I, and I'm never, even with playing the drums as long as I have, I'm still learning. And I make the choice to still be learning.

• 18:20Rich Roll?

  How do you keep it fresh though? I mean, it would be very easy to just get soft after all the success and just knowing like, yeah, I can pull it off. Like I don't have to, I don't have to sweat it.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I guess key, being in competition with myself, just being better than I was yesterday.

• 18:34Rich Roll?

  And, and where does that drive come from, do you think? Like that's just innate?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Just wanting to be great, wanting, wanting to keep learning, wanting to take it a step further. The days where I'm like, Gosh, I don't even know what I'm gonna practice today. It never happens. You know, I sit down, I put a metronome on, I put a timer down. I usually practice for an hour at a time. Sometimes I'll do two to three hours a day and I'll just, you know, uh, something will click and I'll be like, I've never thought of that before. This pattern that I've done a million times, I've never thought about applying it to a different drum or, or maybe some days I'm just working on speed or some days, you know, you can be right or left-handed with drumming. So some days I'll just focus on playing left-handed, not because, just, just, just to do it. In a case of an emergency,

• 19:21Speaker 01

  I'll be able to pull it off live. And, and for me, it's like, I, I feel like it's the equivalent of a fighter. You train, you train, you train, you train for nine to 12 weeks before your fight. And then that night, you know, you just have fun. You, you've done, you've done all the work you're supposed to do. I feel like the same way for a tour or, or just being prepared. I play so much when a gig comes up and they do come up all the time. Hey Travis, we want you to play the Grammys with Eminem, or we want you to play the Grammys with Pitbull, or, or with Tom Morello and Chuck D. I'm just prepared because I'm playing every day, you know?

• 19:55Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very much, uh, sort of an athlete's mindset. You know, the training is, you know, the training is the life, right? And the, the event, the competition, the game, whatever, is just a celebration of all the work that went into getting you there.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:12Rich Roll?

  And there's a lot of parallels between drumming and, and athleticism too, because it is so athletic.

• 20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for drumming, yeah, for drumming, exactly. That's the reason I work out. Like, I kind of work out like a madman because I, number one, I want to be able to go up there and not get tired. And I want to be able to close my eyes and do whatever my mind wants to do. And I want my body to be able to react and, and, and be able to pull it off.

• 20:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:38Speaker 01

  So I, I just, I, I feel like practicing all the time and being in shape, it's just, it just goes hand in hand with two hour sets with Blink, because it's really, it's really an endurance competition out there.

• 20:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I would imagine.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  For Blink, you know?

• 20:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Some of the other gigs I get, you know, like, I just played with drum on Conan and that's just fun, but that comes to just, you know, being versatile and playing all types of music, but when it comes to playing a Blink gig or a gig with Transplants or Goldfinger, whoever I'm playing with at the time.

• 21:09Rich Roll?

  Full on.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't go out there and not practice for four weeks and not train and then go play a show and think you're gonna have a great show.

• 21:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  It's not gonna happen.

• 21:16Rich Roll?

  You've done a really great job of kind of sharing that experience on Instagram and Snapchat with the stories and I mean, it's either like you playing live just and you could see like just how incredibly athletic it is and it's just like, oh my God, you're just going for it, or it's you like with the battle ropes working out, or it's you with the kids, right?

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  Pretty much like, and this is what your life is about.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  That's my life.

• 21:39Rich Roll?

  And when you're talking about kind of like your work ethic and how you still are so ardent about, you know, practicing the drums every day, like what an amazing example for your kids, right? It's like your kids are not growing up blue collar, right? So do you worry about like that kind of like that hunger, like that grit that, you know, is a part of your success equation? Like, how does that translate into, you know, parenting kids and trying to make sure that they have, you know, an enthusiasm for something like you do?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I do worry about that. I came from nothing and I was like, don't let me get off track here, but I was, at the time when I graduated from high school and I had started like I got a tattoo on my leg, like one of my first tattoos and my dad said, "If you ever get a tattoo, I'm gonna kick your ass and I'm gonna kick you out of the house." So I got one and my sister Tamara actually ratted me out. Like I had made her upset or something and she's like, "Trav has a tattoo." And sure enough, my dad's like, "Hey, pull down your sock." I'm like, "Why?" And he's like, "I was told you have a tattoo." And I was like, "Nah, nah, pal." And I pull it down, of course, the tattoo's there, so I didn't get whooped and I didn't

• 22:54Speaker 01

  get kicked out of the house. So I figured out like, whoa, okay, they don't hurt. I love tattoos. Some of my, you know, I just loved the whole ideas of tattoos. So for me, it was like, my dad was always telling me, "You have to have a Plan B. You have to have a Plan B. If you don't have a Plan B, you're gonna be fucked with, you know, all these stoppers and everything." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm gonna listen to my pops, but I'm gonna flip it on them. If I have tattoos, I can't have a Plan B."

• 23:25Speaker 01

  So it was perfect. For me, it was like, that's it. And my goal, you gotta remember, was never to have millions of dollars or never to be the most famous person in the world. It was never any of that. It was just, it was really simple. I want to play drums and somehow survive.

• 23:40Rich Roll?

  Like be able to feed yourself.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't care if I live on my friend's couch, whatever. So.

• 23:45Rich Roll?

  The amount of courage it takes to not have a plan B and just to absolutely go for it and say, I don't care if I'm sleeping on a sleeping bag on, you know, outdoors or on the floor, if I'm eating rice cakes or whatever it is, as long as I get to do what I want to do, or I'm gonna commit myself 110% to that. Like, there's, there's, that's so powerful and beautiful.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like if you really want to do something, unless you're 110% sacrificed and ready to sacrifice everything. I didn't have no cool clothes. I didn't have a cool car. I was poor. But I just wanted to play the drums, not for chicks, not for any other reason, but that's what I loved, you know? So, back to my kids, you know, I hope, I hope they're seeing that now, you know? They come home sometimes, they're like, why are you practicing? I'm like, you know, they're asking me if I have a show coming up. I said, no, there's no show. I'm just practicing. You know, they get it, like, it, it's like, you, you've got to put in work. It's tons of hard work.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  So my daughter plays piano and sings. My son sings and plays drums and raps. He has all sorts of stuff he loves doing. And I'm trying to install that same work ethic in them. And they've seen the grimy side of being on punk rock tours, where, you know, we're, we're playing in really crappy venues and there's, you know, one bathroom you share with the entire crowd, whatever. And then they've been on hip hop tours with Lil Wayne and Rick Ross and, and Nicki Minaj. And then they've been on, you know, Blink tours that are massive and in arenas all over the world. So they've seen everything. They've been to the BET Awards with me when I'm playing with the hip hop artists. They've been to the Grammys. They've seen, they've seen it all. And I'm hoping to just expose it to all of them.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  But at the end of the day, if my son comes home and says, Dad, I want to be a.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Whatever. I don't know. I want to work at a library. I'm gonna support my son 110%. If my daughter says, "I want to be a veterinarian," I'm gonna support her 110%. I'm just exposing them to everything while they're young and just seeing what they love. And, and they both have blood, like music in their blood. It's so natural for them. My son is such a phenomenal drummer and he doesn't even practice. It's insane. My little girl can sing her like butt off and play piano. It's just, I just love seeing it and I'm just trying to guide them. But I, you know, they're, they're very aware of where I came from and what I sacrificed to get where I, I am.

• 26:12Rich Roll?

  And what an incredible education to be able to bring them, you know, on the road and, and sort of have those kinds of experiences and expose them to all different kinds of people. It's super interesting. But then balancing that against any expectation of entitlement, you know, that comes with that, right?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:29Rich Roll?

  It's gotta be tough.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's a, I mean, parenting in general, there's no, there's no guide to parenting, you know? And, and you know, I'll meet like a hun, you know, five different parents I know and everyone's so different. It's just, you really, it's just a gamble, you know? Trust your gut and guide them and point them in the right direction, you know? I just feel like that's all you can do and, and lead by example, you know? Years ago, when I, when I first got sober, this, uh, I was going through a divorce and, and DJ AM actually, who, uh, who passed away, but before, before I'd make any big decisions, he would be like, "You need to sober up for four days in order to make a decision," you know? So I would be sober for those four days.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  And during that time, we were both going to this therapist, because I was trying to be sober and, and AM was kinda helping me. But this therapist said, "If you die today, would you be the man you'd want your kids to remember you by?" And at that point, I wasn't. I was very much like a dumpster and a drug addict. So I was like, "Oh my gosh." And when he said it to me, it was like ripped my heart out, you know, I couldn't even like, I was speechless. I, you know, I couldn't say anything. And I think that's resonated with me forever. And it's just lead by example and just know like that's what they're seeing. And, and everything I'm doing, it's they're absorbing like a sponge, you know?

• 27:54Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  So.

• 27:55Rich Roll?

  I want to talk about the sobriety stuff and, and AM and all of that, but maybe we'll get to it. Like let's, I want to track back to something you said a minute ago was just this idea of, of trusting your gut and, and you know, this, this instinct that you have that you just wanted to be able to, you know, drum and do what you love. Uh, you know, when, like, when did you, when did you know, like, this is, this is it for me. This is what it's going to be. Was it like shortly around the time your mom passed? Or was there, was there just a sense of like, this is it for me. This is what it's going to be. There's no, there's no plan B. All, you know, guns blazing forward.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Well, right before she passed, maybe like those last two summers, I was skateboarding a lot. And the kids in the neighborhood, they'd basically, I kind of started to zone in and, and, and it was kind of, I, I woke up because they, in order to skate their half pipe, a lot of the older kids in the neighborhood, they'd be like, you can't come skate with us unless you, if you could play the drums, learn, learn master of puppets from beginning to end by Metallica. So I'd be like, oh, easy, whatever, you know? And that was my, that was my ticket to go hang out with all the cooler kids that were like really, really incredible skateboarders in my neighborhood. So I would learn all these. And then halfway through doing this, and they'd come over and they'd just come watch me play. And I,

• 29:13Speaker 01

  I remember playing one time and going like, wow, they're really tripping. Like they're really impressed that I can play the drums. This is so weird. And then they started learning how to play guitar.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  One of them was learning how to play drums and I was like, man, I've been doing this since I was four. Like, I'm way better at playing the drums than I am skateboarding. And it was just, first I was in denial a little bit, then, and then it just, it just hit me. And then when mom, my mom passed away and said, just play the drums, just focus on what you love. You know, don't stop, don't let anything stop you. That was like, then the switch just flipped on it. It was just.

• 29:54Rich Roll?

  If you had the green light.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, confirmation, like, you're, you're realizing like, your drumming is allowing you to oddly enough, go skate the backyards and pools you want to skate in the neighborhood. It was so weird.

• 30:07Rich Roll?

  What other, you know, what else could it do for you? You know, like, for you, that was like awesome, but like, imagine what else, what other doors it might open for you.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a trip. And then that was it. Then in high school, I would take out, I was relentless. I would, there was a lot of papers at the time, everything from the recycler to, there was a paper in, in our community out in the Inland Empire called Mean Street. And I would put ads out and I would, I was into so many different types of music. One might say like, drummer looking for band influences Fugazi, Pitchfork, Drive Like Jehu. Then the other one would be like, drummer looking for band influences Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and whatever. And then another one, drummer looking for band Descendants, Minor Threat. And, you know.

• 30:56Rich Roll?

  You're like all over the place. So that, that started to, because you're still like that, right? So you were never, like, I would have thought, if I didn't know better, like, oh, you just, you know, you're thinking about like, Chromeags, Minor Threat, Black Flag, like, I could see you coming up from that kind of vein.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:13Rich Roll?

  But being super focused on like hardcore punk, but it was jazz, it was, you know, it was rap at the time. It was all different kinds of music.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was everything. I figured like, hey, if I'm going to put my cards on the table, let me put them all out and see what, what, you know, what, what comes back. So my dad would be like. Travis, someone's on the phone for you. And it would be like every five minutes. And he would be so irritated. He'd be like, what'd you do? How did everyone get this number? And I mean, it was everything from those papers to local music shops. I just wanted to play with people.

• 31:46Rich Roll?

  Right, so it wasn't about like getting a band together. It was about like, I'm just gonna play in 20 bands.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  We'll eventually get a band together, but there's something weird, you know, like if, if you were just a great guitar virtuoso and you could just play guitar like no one's business, but you didn't know how to play with people, it's a problem. And you can't teach somebody that. It's, you know, and there was no bands, like there was no, now they have like these cool rock star programs at schools and stuff. It's incredible, but for me, it was like, I wanna learn how to play with people. I wanna learn how to like, there's a lot that goes into it. It's like, you start learning how to like write your drum parts in your head with whatever songs you're creating, with whatever musicians you're playing with. So I would have people, you know, from Texas coming to see me.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  I would have whole bands, you know, auditioning me for whatever. And I, and I did that till I just found cool local bands to play with.

• 32:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, super interesting. I mean, that's sort of the, the underappreciated, uh, sort of skill of becoming a successful musician, right? Being able to work with people. I mean, you know, it's no mystery, most bands fail because no, people can't get along with each other, right?

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:58Rich Roll?

  Blink 182 has had its ups and downs with that, like every other band.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:02Rich Roll?

  I would imagine, but being able to have like, uh, uh, you know, an aptitude for communication and understanding and compassion with the people that you're playing with is crucial, right?

• 33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's part of, it's part of it. I mean, being in a band is like, it, you're having a relationship. It's almost like having a girlfriend and you have to, I, I believe there's like relationship maintenance you have to do with the people in the band. You have to obviously be collaborative in, in the writing process. And there is people I know that are great musicians that I've come in contact with over the years that I've played and, uh, and they can't hold on to gigs because they are hard to work with or they're unnegotiable or just, you know, hard headed and it's just...

• 33:49Speaker 01

  People, dealing with people and being able to work with people is a whole other skill, along with playing your instrument, along with, you know what I mean? Everything else is part of.

• 33:58Rich Roll?

  So what is it, if you had to articulate like how you flow with that? Like, what is it about for you? Like, is it about collaboration? Is it about being flexible? Like, how do you navigate the, you know, the sort of personalities that you come in contact with, the people that you collaborate with?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  It's just knowing how to deal with people. I don't even think it involves music at that point. It's just like, how do you, do you have patience? You know what I mean? I have kids. I have the, I have the, my son asked me the other day, he's like, "How do you do it?" And I was like, "Son, I've had, you know, three kids. I've raised three of you guys. I know I have patience. Dad knows how to, I'm very patient." Whereas like, some people that might not have kids, that are 39 or 40 years old that are playing in a band, maybe have zero patience, or have zero, you know, ways to tolerate certain things. Whereas I'm like, "Okay, this is how we work through this," you know? And, you know, I guess I learned, I wasn't always like that. I think I learned it through businesses that I started, through, of course, other, others that led by example that I looked up to.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Um, all that, you know? It's, it's the, immediately when I got in the game and I started touring, I was quiet and I listened a lot and learned.

• 35:10Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:18Rich Roll?

  So when is the first band kind of come together for you that gets a little bit of traction?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  In high school, I was playing in a band called Poor Mouth that would play like every party and it was like, it was kind of awesome, like we killed it. But it was very short-lived. Out there, there wasn't much going on. Like, for me, I didn't know how I was ever gonna get out of Fontana.

• 35:36Rich Roll?

  Right. So that's like inland empire, right?

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I kind of, I kind of bounced around from Fontana to Riverside to Corona. I was kind of everywhere. There was a pivotal moment where... You know, I played in every local band and my dad was telling me, he's like, look, you're out of high school now, you just graduated. You need to pay rent, you need to work sixty hours a week or you can't be here. And I, you know, of course, I didn't want to disappoint my dad. So I went and I kicked butt at the job I was at and I finally got in at the warehouse, the shipping and, and, uh, receiving center. And I got the job. It was sixty hours a week. I couldn't believe it. I was making more than four twenty-five an hour.

• 36:23Speaker 01

  It was the most, I thought my life was made. You know, at that time, that was a lot of money for me. I think I was gonna make, I think I was gonna start at four seventy-five or five dollars an hour.

• 36:32Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Which was awesome. And then I just joined this band named Feeble, uh, with a lot of guys who ironically enough grew up in Fontana that moved to Laguna Beach. And I called everyone one day, I was like, I don't know if, uh, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to join the band anymore, man. I think I'm just gonna stay here and maybe not play drums as much right now because my dad said I have to work sixty hours a week and I need to pay rent and I don't want to disappoint him. And the singer of that band, Noel Paris, said, Trav, I think you're making a really bad decision. I think that you ha- are extremely talented and you have a gift and you'll look back on this and you'll regret it. And if you don't take this opportunity, you, you know, you, you'll, you'll look back and

• 37:18Speaker 01

  you won't be able to get this opportunity again, but you would be able to get another job working sixty hours a week. So please hear me out and please listen to me. Uh, you're too good to waste your life working at Target. So I said, screw it. And I said, Dad, I'm, I'm, I listened to you and I'm leaving. I'm gonna go sleep on my buddy's couch and I'm gonna play in a band and be, he got me a job being a trash man on Laguna.

• 37:46Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna play drums, you know?

• 37:48Rich Roll?

  So he, he helped hook you up with a gig though. So it wasn't like he was pissed. He was like, alright, that's the choice he's making and I'm gonna get behind it. Like, what was his reaction?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Who, Pops?

• 37:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  Well, he kinda gave me an ultimatum, it was either...

• 38:01Speaker 01

  You know.

• 38:01Rich Roll?

  Get with my program or you're on your own.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, he basically said in not so many words, stop playing drums in the garage with your friends. Get a 60 hour job, you know, a week job or or get out of here, you know, nicely, you know, because you need to be a man. He said, you know, a man doesn't stay here and live off his pops. I love you, but you've got to do that. And then luckily Noel just said, man, I I really, I really see something in you and I I could really feel this and you you've got to listen to me. And I just said, screw it, I'm gonna do it. And and I went out there and I I just played in their band and and sure enough Noel was right. Like I I played in their plan band, I played in this this local soca band that would play at Hennessy's like this bar over there.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  And Feeble, we were all trash men, we were all Laguna Beach city workers.

• 38:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  And we would daytime, we would be cleaning up trash, doing city work nighttime, we'd be playing a show every night of practicing. And then sure enough, that led to the Aquabats playing with us and seeing me. And the bass player Chad Larson calling me and going, dude, our drummer isn't going to be able to play these shows or or he quit the band. We need a drummer tomorrow, we're playing with Fishbone at the Glass House.

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  And I was like, duh, I'm there, you know, and he's like, uh.

• 39:22Rich Roll?

  That was like the height, so this was like late 80s, mid 80s at this point?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  This was like 90s, this is 95 or 96.

• 39:32Rich Roll?

  So Fishbone hit its peak like around late 80s, right? Like they were, they were pretty.

• 39:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were still, they were still jamming. I mean, they were selling out like the Glass House.

• 39:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Like 2000, 3000 people.

• 39:45Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. So that's a big step up.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Oh, huge. I mean, we went from, you know, I was playing local bars, some of them twice the size of this with Feeble. And we just, you know, we were such a good band, but we we weren't connected in the music industry. We were a really great band, but we weren't playing big venues. And then the Aquabats hit me up and I played that show. And they were just like, you're our drummer, man. And I didn't know they dressed up or anything. I just showed up there with some drumsticks. I had heard the album the night before and then it was the hardest thing for me, but I had to, I had to tell, you know, because Aquabats had a tour. I was touring now. My dream was coming true. And I had to go and tell my, one of my best friends, like a brother to me, Noel, and the rest of the guys in Feeble, who ultimately

• 40:32Speaker 01

  directed me and guided me to be out there and follow my dreams, that I'm now leaving their band because I got an opportunity to tour with the Aquabats.

• 40:41Rich Roll?

  That's a tough conversation.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  It was terrible. It was terrible.

• 40:45Rich Roll?

  What did Noel say?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  I mean, I think he was upset and I think, I think everyone was upset. I think, I think all of them would have probably done what I did because they, they were, they wanted the dream so bad, just like I did. Ironically, like I said, they were from Fontana. There's not, no one comes out of Fontana. No one's doing anything like, I think they were, I think they were on one hand, very proud of me and the other hand, like, oh man, can't believe this.

• 41:11Rich Roll?

  Are those guys still playing music?

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I still talk to them to this day.

• 41:14Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's good.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we're still friends. No, I, I mean, when I wrote my book, Noel actually contributed to my book. And, uh, and I called him many a times and just thanked him.

• 41:24Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  You know?

• 41:26Rich Roll?

  That's cool. So you're, so suddenly, I mean, how, what is the time period from getting the, getting the gig as a trash man in Laguna to getting the tour?

• 41:35Speaker 01

  It was probably about a year, a year and a half.

• 41:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you, you, so you paid your dues during that year, right?

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:41Rich Roll?

  You were telling me the other day about like how you would, uh, the Hare Krishnas would give you food.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I would just skate, you know, I didn't have a car. You know, which goes back to what we were talking about earlier. You sacrifice everything. I had no car. All I had was a skateboard to my name. But there was, there was some days.

• 41:58Rich Roll?

  But you're all in, man.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:59Rich Roll?

  You know?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  There were some days I didn't have much money and the Hare Krishnas would give us halibut chips. And they would have, you know, food, like a little buffet for whoever. I don't, I don't know what it was for. It was probably just for them, but we made friends with like the guys from Shelter and a couple of other people there. So we would eat. It was awesome.

• 42:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So you go on tour with Aquabats and then you guys get signed and do an album, right?

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got signed to actually Paul Tillet. There was a lot of offers on the table from different people. And Paul Tillet, who, who owns Golden Voice? Sign the Aquabats, basically created a record label to sign the Aquabats.

• 42:35Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Wow.

• 42:36Speaker 01

  It was awesome. Um, and Bill Fold at the time was my manager, who, who at the time where I grew up in Riverside in Fontana, he had a place called The Barn, which had the best shows ever. Like, ev- all the great bands would go through there, you know? Your dream, if you came from where I came from, was to play The Barn or Spankies, or any of those punk rock clubs out there. So, yeah, we, we, we rode and, and recorded an album. It came out on Golden Voice, Paul Tallett. And, and we were off, we were off running, man. We had like songs on K-Rock. We filmed music videos. It was a trip.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Right. So you've already like exceeded your like wildest imagination for where you thought you would go, right?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  And then, and then what happens? You guys, you guys end up being, uh, opening for Blink 182? Is that how it goes down? Is that the next?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I toured with them for maybe two years, recorded two albums with them, and we are on Snowcore with Blink 182, which was like Primus, The Alcoholics,

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Blink, Aquabats, who else was on there? I feel like someone else popped on and off that tour, but we did that tour with them. And at the end of that tour, Aquabats were a great support act for Blink, meaning we'd play right before Blink every night. And kind of oddly enough, man, the same thing happens. I'm in the Aquabats and Blink's drummer leaves. They have a falling out like forty minutes before their show. And Aquabats are, are about to play and they're like, dude, our drummer just left. I think he quit. Can you learn twenty songs in like forty minutes? And I was like, uh, sure.

• 44:26Rich Roll?

  Twenty songs in forty minutes?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And luckily, like some nights, you, it just happens naturally too. You go out, you know, you go out and you watch the bands before you or after you, just to support and kind of check it out. So I'd kind of seen some of the stuff, but I wasn't listening to it with the ear that, oh, I'm gonna have to play this. I was just like, oh, this is cool, whatever. They were fun to watch. They were really funny and Mark and Tom were really loud and kind of ignorant and just, you know, uh, just, you know, like a fun, fun, fun band and.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  That day, we just got in the dressing room. I said, Tom, just play me all the songs on guitar. I just need to see how you're picking and what the rhythms are. And forty minutes later, hopped on stage, played our first show.

• 45:09Rich Roll?

  See, that's crazy. That's insane. So it wasn't about mimicking every single drum stroke so that you could be, you know, exactly the same as the drummer who preceded you, but it was about finding your own way to play these songs?

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh huh. Yeah. And then I played.

• 45:25Rich Roll?

  And being able to tap into that in just forty-five minutes for twenty songs. I mean, that's, that goes back to like the past life thing. Like you being able to learn music, you know, sheet music at age four or five. Like the fact that you could channel that like so intuitively is pretty amazing.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was awesome, man. It was, and me, for me, I was having so much fun. I was like playing two sets a night. So I did it for like the next four or five shows. And after the first one, they said, we want you to be our drummer. And I said, well, I think you have a drummer. He just left, though. You know, it's kind of like a girl. You meet a girl and she's like nuts about you, like, oh, my gosh. And then you're like, you have a boyfriend, like, hit me when you don't have a boyfriend. It was kind of that same scenario. I told him, I was like, well, if things don't work out with your drummer, he doesn't come back. Obviously, I'd love to play with you. And they were, you know, we've never sounded better. We love this. And we got home from tour, the shows were over and, and they said, you know what? We're gonna call you in a week and let you know what's up.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Call me in a week. They say, you got a show tomorrow night, six P M. Be there. And it was just, it was just green light. Yeah. It was like, that was it.

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  And then you gotta, you have to go back to the Aquabats and have that same conversation.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Same thing. Yes, we were, we were actually doing what's called Grad Night at Disneyland, where they would have, I think No Doubt did it the year before, and ska was so popular then, you know?

• 46:48Rich Roll?

  Was that, was like the No Doubt phenomenon spilling over into Fontana? It was kind of happening a little bit before you, right? Or around the same time? Cause it was, you know, they're Orange County, so not too far away.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yes, ska punk and punk rock was just everywhere, you know? So we would play with No Doubt, you know, Aquabats would open for them. We did Grad Night the year after them. So those were my last shows. And I remember I had to tell them same thing like, hey.

• 47:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  It was just so weird, man. Every time I felt guilty. I don't know. I don't know if I should have felt guilty, but I did. And uh, and you just, like I said, the people you play with, they become your brothers. It was just, it become like a family and, and it was hard. I remember, you know, us bawling the last day. I told them, you know, I'm, I'm gonna go play with Blink and they just couldn't believe it. Uh, you know?

• 47:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  And for, for me, it was like, man, am I, am I a jerk? You know what I mean?

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  Right. You're a climber?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. Am I a climber? Am I like, what, what am I, what am I supposed to do? And I, and I just saw, you know, Aquabets had like nine people in the band. We were in like a ten passenger van. Sometimes it was thirteen people in a ten passenger van. Just, it was just, it was, it was rough and, and uh, and it just, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

• 48:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  I just trusted my gut.

• 48:14Rich Roll?

  How are those guys doing now? What are they doing?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Great. We're still great friends.

• 48:18Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's good.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  And Christian contributed to my, my book. Can I say? It was really cool. Christian contributed to it and so did Noel and the guys from Feeble for it. So having both of them, I told them meant so much to me. And, and I let them tell their story. You know, they, they were honest, like,

• 48:37Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  You know, Christian says, I was pissed. I couldn't believe it. Like, and um, and even I learned stuff about myself just from their interviews in my book, which was cool.

• 48:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's almost like it's on there.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  Cause I didn't do the, you know, I, I didn't interview people for my book. I had Gavin Edwards, who I co-wrote the book with. He would do these interviews and he would say, we're keeping everything in there. And I'd be like, oh my gosh.

• 49:02Rich Roll?

  Get everyone else's perspective on you.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  And I'd be like,

• 49:05Rich Roll?

  Your decisions.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  So, some people might not be, you know, I remember like Christian said, like, he, he kinda talked bad about Blink. And I was like, should I put that in there? That's kind of. I don't know, he's like, everything stays in there. You've got to be brutally honest. And you know, Christian even said like, you know, I felt like Travis was so good when he was in our band. He, he was like the Michael Jordan of drumming and sometimes he wouldn't listen to me. And he would play songs faster than I wanted him to play them, but I never heard those things when I was in the band. So it was like, I really listened when I read it in my book and I was like, wow, I never realized. I was being like that or I never, you know what I mean? Or I never realized you viewed me like that or whatever.

• 49:43Rich Roll?

  That's compelling though. That's, that makes for a compelling memoir because you're getting, you're getting the truth. You know what I mean? And that's what you really want out of a memoir. Too many memoirs are glossy, whitewashed. You know, sort of best of versions of somebody's life, you know, and it's not, it's not honest. So.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  And I was so happy I did that. There was a, there's a couple of things, you know, I was brutally honest about a lot. And the day after it came out, the day it came out, it was, uh,

• 50:09Speaker 01

  I remember being really emotional because I was just going like, oh my gosh, everything I shared. I'm almost having to relive again because I'm doing press for the book. And I found out I wasn't prepared for it just to talk about certain things. I was still very emotional about it. So it was like, oh, I was draining, man. I was so, it was just crazy. But then a couple of days after the book came out, I'm like, I'm so glad I was honest. Because I can't go back and go, I didn't say this and I wanted to in my book. It's like, I pretty much said it all besides things that I was legally not allowed to say.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah. It's cathartic, you know, but it's a very vulnerable feeling. Like I experienced my version of that. You know, when my book came out and knowing that I'd been honest about stuff that I wasn't proud of, you know? And, and, and only being able to write that by sort of pretending or imagining that I was writing in a journal. No one was ever going to read and then realizing like, oh man, this is like out there.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:08Rich Roll?

  And, you know, I don't have, you know, I have like one one thousandth the profile that you have. So to know that like mainstream America like all knows that all this stuff about your life is a, is a, is an inexplicably vulnerable feeling, right? I can't imagine, I can't imagine what that must have been like.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a trip.

• 51:28Rich Roll?

  But it's like, but you're clear, right? You're clean. You know what I mean?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  I really felt a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and just, I can put, I can move on now, you know?

• 51:41Rich Roll?

  So Blink blows up and I would imagine that kind of changes the tenor of your life, right?

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  That just was, must have been an insane time.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  I came home and I told my pops, I was just filling in for Blink and I was like, Dad, I made like, I have $3,000 right now. And he's like, you better hold on to it because you're never going to get it again. And I was like, thanks Dad. I was like, thanks a lot. And he's like, I'm serious Trav, you don't know when you're going to make it again. And then, that was before I, you know, they called me the week later. And then I started going on tour and I remember my pops, like, you know, we, we came from lower middle-class, you know, family and he didn't, you know, he didn't have a running car. He had like this old Cadillac in the back of his backyard that, that I would like hose off for him and wash, but it didn't run. So my first paycheck, I came and I bought him a Cadillac and I just, it was just a trip,

• 52:35Speaker 01

  you know, I could like, I, I went, I, the first things I did was helped out my dad and my sisters, made sure they were cool. And then.

• 52:42Rich Roll?

  How many sisters do you have?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Two.

• 52:44Rich Roll?

  Two, yeah. What are they doing now?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Um, one works at my print shop and the other one works at my clothing company.

• 52:50Rich Roll?

  Cool, famous?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, nice man.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Rich Roll?

  That's cool, taking care of your family, but I would imagine like, suddenly, you know, it's Bling City, right?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, uh, it's going, because even Blink at the time, we were still, we were playing small clubs, we were playing clubs around, across America and Europe. Our first, uh, tour in Europe was in a van. It was still very much, it was kind of picking up right where a little bit bigger than Aquabats, you know? And, and then we recorded our album, the first album I recorded with them was called Enema of the State.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  And we just.

• 53:29Rich Roll?

  Blew up.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Blew up. And it was just insane.

• 53:31Rich Roll?

  Did you see that, like, when you made the decision to, to move over to Blink, like, did you see that potential on the horizon? Like, did you have the idea like this, this band's going to go further and bigger and broader?

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, because at the time, Aquabats, and they, they still are, they're very much, uh, I guess focused on children and.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  There are a lot of good qualities about them, no cussing, they're all Mormon, so it all fits into what they can and can't do. But their end goal, what really, what really, you know, cried out to me was their end goal was to have a television show, have a cartoon. And my end goal was to play in a rock band.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I didn't, you know, being in the Aquavats, if I just put it down on paper, it'd been like, okay, I'm gonna play drums in a band that I love, like interesting music, really cool, new wave ska, great guys, but at the end of the day, Christian really wanted it to be a TV show. And for me, I was like, I don't know if I want to be an actor or whatever. I was like, I really just want to play the drums and play fast and fun and just, you know, and it was a three-piece, so it was just, it was very minimal and fun and and I knew who Blink was, you know, I had listened to some of their albums and it just, it just made a lot of sense.

• 54:52Rich Roll?

  So Enema of the State blows up and at this time, like, MTD's still pretty relevant, right? Like, so you're, and you're all over that.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  We're on TRL, we're like number one on the countdowns, we're like, there's people sleeping outside of my gate at my house.

• 55:07Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Uh, in Corona, where I had just moved and I had no idea, I was, I, I needed to move out just because I, there was no privacy there. There was people trying to break in my house, there was like stalkers, there was girls trying to handcuff themselves to me after shows. There was a lot of strange things going on that I was just like, are you serious?

• 55:29Rich Roll?

  Like, how did you manage that? Like, did you manage it well or were you just in for the ride or like, how did that go down for you?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  I was in for the ride, but I was in a little bit of disbelief because we didn't really, you know, we were just, we were a pop punk band, you know?

• 55:42Rich Roll?

  It was goofy.

• 55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, who loved The Descendants and, and All and Black Flag and whatever, all these bad religion, all these bands we just grew up on. And then all of a sudden, you know. A network like MTV gets behind you and is just saying you have the number one video in the world. People from our genre of music weren't ready for that. We didn't know what to do. We didn't even know what that was. We were like, it was insane. But yeah, I mean, we figured it out. You know, obviously with with the success, shows got bigger. We were playing arenas now. You know, making million dollar videos at the time. A record label at the time was like, you're at the point of your career where you need to make a million

• 56:28Speaker 01

  dollar video. Can you believe that?

• 56:31Rich Roll?

  A million dollars on a video?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  I know. Oh, my gosh, man. It was just.

• 56:34Rich Roll?

  Do they ever do that anymore?

• 56:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 56:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  No, I mean, they've figured it out. Like, you do not need a million dollars for a video. But, you know, we had like the guy Samuel Bayer, who did like Smells Like Teen Spirit.

• 56:46Rich Roll?

  He was the guy.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And we're traveling around in private jets. It's just.

• 56:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  Playing two or three shows a day sometimes. It was it was insane.

• 56:57Rich Roll?

  And and are you happy? Like, are you like, I'm living the dream? This is awesome? Or how's this landing for you?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was just more of like, I was like, foggy. I didn't, I couldn't believe it. It was just, I'm just, I'm just along for the ride. I'm just cruising, you know, rolling with the punches, like, whatever, whatever they spring on me, I'm going, okay, I'm down, whatever, you know? We want you to play on top of the whatever Empire State Building. Okay, then you're going over to CRL and then you're gonna go play Madison Square Garden. And I'm like, I don't even know what Madison Square Garden is. You're gonna play this show called Saturday Night Live. I don't know what Saturday Night Live is. I had no, I had no clue. I always say, one of the funniest things, we played Saturday Night Live. I didn't know how insanely special it is to play Saturday Night Live. I had no clue. It was just another TV show.

• 57:44Rich Roll?

  How did you not know that, though?

• 57:45Speaker 01

  I just didn't grow up like watching.

• 57:47Rich Roll?

  How old were you at the time? Like, 25 or something?

• 57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Probably. But I didn't grow up watching TV. I grew up skateboarding, watching skate videos, listening to punk rock, and, you know, trying to mimic Mike D from the Beastie Boys. I was not, I was not watching late night television. I just didn't even, I knew who Jay Leno was, because my dad was such a big car guy, like, loved cars. But, yeah, it was a trip.

• 58:10Rich Roll?

  Wow. So touring, what was the most, like, surreal thing that happened during that era?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Just the massive tours, just going to, I mean, you take, you take a band that was playing two to three thousand seaters and after Inuma the State, we had this, wrote this incredible album and we're out playing, you know, to ten to thirty thousand people a night. You know, all summer long and it was just, the only time it stopped is when we begged for it to stop. Just, don't book shows for a month or two. And we're, we were so over, I mean, I don't, I don't call it overworked because we get to do what we love, but there comes a point, and I always say this, there comes a point when you're on the road, your management's back home and they just keep booking shows. And there is, there is a such

• 59:01Rich Roll?

  thing- You're the cash register.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is a such thing as sanity, you know, and, uh, and ultimately like that led to me doing a lot of drugs, was just no one saying, hey, is everything cool out there? Like, do you guys need to come up for air? We were touring like nine months, ten months out of the year.

• 59:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  It was insane. So sometimes we'd get home and Mark, Tom and I would get on the phone, they're like, who's gonna say they're sick? I'd be like, I'm sick. And he's like, yeah, man, I don't think we could do like the first week of this tour. We're gonna have to postpone the first week of this tour.

• 59:33Rich Roll?

  That's crazy, because you guys are like twenty-five, you're like, your veins are coursing with testosterone. Like, if you guys can't manage it, like, nobody can.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it was just the, just insane. Like, at the time, you're away from your families, you just, there comes this cold time, eight months into touring, where you haven't been home, you haven't seen your family, and you haven't had a break where you're just like, I need a minute.

• 59:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Just real quick, give me a minute. Give me one day off, give me two days off and we're cool, you know? Um, but yeah, I, I, I think, you know, it was, uh, it was just insane. It was awesome.

• 1:00:09Rich Roll?

  So, uh, so the drugs start creeping in a little bit? Like, what are you doing? Like, smoking a little pot? Like, are you, do the painkillers come in, or is that only after like the injury?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Well, for me, um- I started smoking cigarettes for whatever reason while I was out there and and uh and I didn't like to fly. When I was nineteen and I was in feeble and I was a trash man. I got drunk for the first time and I told my manager, I'm I'm gonna die in a plane crash. And he was like, what are you talking about? You've never even had enough money to fly in your life. And I was like, you're right, I haven't. I've never, I've only flown once in my life and it was the scariest thing in the world, but I cried to him after being like, having like too much alcohol for the first time and said, I'm gonna die in a plane crash. It was the weirdest thing, so.

• 1:00:56Rich Roll?

  That is a trip.

• 1:00:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I didn't know, note to self, I did not know that till he did his interview for my book. And he reminds me that I said that and I was like, oh my gosh, I did say that. That's that's so scary to me. So, fast forward to Blink, we're flying four, three times a day sometimes. We're knocking out a show in the morning, a Today Show, whatever, a morning show for the news, uh, an early festival time slot at one festival, and then at night playing our own show. So, we're flying all the time and that's when.

• 1:01:28Rich Roll?

  So the anxiety, is there some anxiety rationing it up?

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, and I think Tom was honestly, I think Tom was the first one. He was like, here's a Norco, like, these will, this will like calm you down if you get stressed or whatever on flights. And I'd always be white knuckling and they'd be like, dude, it's fine. It's just the landing gear going up. And they would always tease me, but flying, I think, I think the one time I flew at a young age, I saw my mom and she was bawling the entire time on the flight because she was so scared. And I think that maybe had something to do with how I felt about flying. So, I'd be white knuckling every time we'd fly and we'd be on these small planes. Sometimes it'd be a private jet, sometimes we'd fly commercial. We just never knew. It was just, in Europe, the planes were old. It was just, it was something

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  I really learned to hate. I just did not like flying. Anything I could do, um, to to forget I was on an airplane. So, it led to me taking handfuls of of Norcos and Vicodin and Valium. Which later led to like OxyContin.

• 1:02:30Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  Um, tons of, of weed and then sherm, PCP, weed laced with PCP. It was just anything, anything to, to not realize I was on a plane again.

• 1:02:44Rich Roll?

  Right. It's interesting that it all germinates from that, right? Like that fear and, and again, like I can't get, I can't get past like this. It's, it really does feel like this weird past life thing, like this knowing that you had, like you're supposed to avoid airplanes, you know?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Rich Roll?

  Like just this intuition that you had about it. And every time you got on a plane, knowing that that was at cross purposes with what your inner self was telling you.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, everyone, I mean, if AM was still here, he would say Travis was a mess on airplanes, you know, Mark and Tom, you know, the worst flyer ever, you know? They would just point at me and laugh because I just, I mean, I wouldn't be screaming, but you could just look at my face. I'd stay up the whole time just waiting, you know?

• 1:03:39Rich Roll?

  Well, can we talk about the, the plane crash?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:03:42Rich Roll?

  You're okay with that? I mean, you know, it's well documented and everything like that, but you know, it's quite, you know, it was quite the tragic encounter. I just, I can't imagine, you know, what that must've been like trying to, you know, overcome that, but maybe, you know, walk us through exactly what happened.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  So DJ AM and I, there was a point where

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  the Mark and Tom and I, it was, it was lots of touring, like I had said, I think it had, you know, taken its toll on everybody and Blink, Tom, you know, just basically Tom one day just said, I'm done. He couldn't do it no more. It was like, you know, there was miscommunication with management and some of us wanted to tour all the time and he wanted to stay home a lot. It was just, it was a mess. So Blink breaks up about four months later, Transplants, my other band breaks up. And I'm like, what am I gonna do? I'm so used to being a busybody. I'm used to doing everything, everywhere.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  So I meet DJ AM and.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  He's a great DJ that plays everything, everything. He plays things people would wouldn't dare have the balls to play in a club and he and he just makes it iller than anyone could ever imagine, you know? So we we connect and I tell him like, yo, I have this idea where it's drummer DJ. I don't know. And, you know, I'm not doing anything right now. My my bands are on time off right now. We should jam. And he's like, oh, I'd love to. We start jamming. The first time we jam, we jam for like 10 hours. And it was just, he was like a guitar player, throwing every genre of music at me. The Beatles throwing, uh, whatever, you know, ghetto boys throwing, uh, you know, Daft Punk, everything, you know?

• 1:05:39Rich Roll?

  He was magic. I mean, he was so innovative in what he was doing and way ahead of the curve.

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, way ahead of his time. So, long story short, we developed this routine that was like, to me, was really innovative. No one was doing it. It was mind blowing, man. We were on to something. We we were playing like K-Rock Weenie Roast. We were playing all the venues and gigs my bands were playing back in the day. Uh, a week before our plane crash, we were the house band for MTV Music Awards, you know, it was ill. It was the best time ever. Um, so we had gigs. I was gigging just as much as with AM as I was Blink. Big shows too. It was just him and I. It was crazy. So it was it was one of those days where I we had a show. It was for like T-Mobile and they would pay

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  us big money to go and play these shows. And it was in South Carolina. And whoever before we left, I was like, I don't really need to go. It's summer. And and my my my baby's mama, Shayna at the time, we weren't together, but she was like, don't go then. Like, if you don't have to go, you don't need the money. It's like, why are you doing it? And I was like, I'm doing it because I love playing with Adam. And I think Adam was going through the same thing, like, ah, we don't have to go. But it was just one of those things. It's booked. Let's honor what we committed to. So we flew out to South Carolina.

• 1:07:01Rich Roll?

  Wasn't uh, wasn't Shanna gonna come with you?

• 1:07:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, Shayna was gonna come. My kids were bawling, man. It was like, it was the weirdest thing. My kids were bawling. My little girl, Alabama, was saying, She's freaking the whole time. She's never done this. She's crying saying the roof's gonna come off. I'm like, what are you talking about, Bama? And, and she's a baby at the time and she's just, the kids are crying, not normal, like weird, you know?

• 1:07:24Rich Roll?

  That is so trippy.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  And yeah, like, like I said, my gut, this is one of the big examples of where I was like, my gut told me not to go. So I end up going and she was gonna go with us, but she's like, nah, I shouldn't go, just in case, God forbid something was to happen, we'd both be in that plane.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  So we go and the flight out there is cool. I take my assistant, little Chris, and, and our, we just had a big homie named Che, who was like our good friend. And he was like, he was playing college football. Basically, Chris and I were like, dude, instead of hiring security for now, we should just take Che with us. Che's gonna be a security for now on, cause it's, it's good having friends on tour with you too. And Che's big and, you know, intimidating. Che's never been on a private plane. You know, we go out there on a G4, everything's cool, we play our show. And then after the show,

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  we had a flight booked for tomorrow. Everything was, everything was set up. But, uh, Am's like, yo, I wanna get back tonight, like, you know, what are we gonna do in South Carolina, you know? And then Chris had just had his son Sebastian, who's my godson. He's like, yeah, man, we should just go home, Trav.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  And I was like, well, we have a flight booked tomorrow, don't trip, let's just chill here, you guys. But it's like majority rules, anywhere we go, if I get outvoted, I'm, I'm rolling with the punches, you know? And everyone was like-

• 1:08:47Rich Roll?

  The people skills.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I took one for the team. I said, okay, whatever, man, let's book the flight, whatever. So booking flights like this, usually, like, the, the flight out there, it's like, I'd speak to a manager and I say, who's the pilot? What's the plane? What's the history? Is everything cool?

• 1:09:06Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow, so you're getting into it.

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm really, I'm terrified of flying. So, and ironically enough, the, the flight out there was cake, a piece of cake, man. We, we knew who the pilot was, he was super cool. He knew I was a little bit weird about flying, you know? Great flight though, on the way back, you gotta think, man, we just got offstage, it's- Nine thirty, ten o'clock. And we make the phone call, get us a plane. So the plane is booked in an hour's time. No, there's no one dotting the i's or crossing the t's. It's like, yo, you guys want a plane? I'm gonna do everything I can do to get this plane there. So the plane gets there and uh.

• 1:09:46Rich Roll?

  So implying that like shortcuts were made on the checklist or?

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  I know my checklist wasn't done, you know, cause Gus, who was our tour manager for Blink, you know, usually there was like a, a, you know, there's a little checklist that goes, and I know that checklist wasn't gonna happen. It was an hour's time. And LV's like, dude, it's not gonna be the greatest plane, but I'll get it. Once again, rolling with the punches, you know, whatever for the team. So we get there. We pull up to the airport and it's like private airport and there's all these jets. And then there's this fucking Lear over all by itself. And I was like, oh, cold as ice. Tell me that is not our plane. And sure enough, the driver drives up to that plane and I'm just looking at it. And I was, you know, bad, bad feeling, man. Bad feeling. My guts saying no.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  It to the point where I actually called my dad. Who at the time, now I say I love you every time I speak to him. He's like seventy-five, but growing up, he's a Vietnam vet. He's tough, man. Tough, tough dad, you know? And uh, I know he loved me, but we wouldn't say I love you or be gushy, you know? It was like more tough love.

• 1:10:55Rich Roll?

  Not a hugger.

• 1:10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, for, for him and I. So I call him and I'm like, I'm bawling at this point. I say, dad, like I have a really bad feeling.

• 1:11:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, you were crying before you even got on the plane.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  I'm crying and my dad's like, what the fuck is wrong with you, Trav? Why are you crying? And I said, dad, I don't know. I have a horrible feeling. If something happens, pal, just do whatever you can to make sure the kids are cool. Cause I have a horrible feeling. And he's like, well, you're gonna be fine, you know? And I take a picture of the plane. I send it to like, I think I sent it to my pops. I sent it to my boy Rob. That's in the transplants with me. Weird enough, Chris does the same thing. I don't know that he does this, but he sends a picture of him in front of the plane to his wife.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  We get in the flight. There's like a really young pilot and it kind of like eased off some of the pressure because she was really young. And I was like, wow, you look really young. I was like, you fly the plane? She's like, yeah, I'm like getting my hours up or whatever. You know, she's basically, you know, she's with like an OG captain that's, you know, flying with her, you know, teaching her. So we get in there and she's basically like, okay, well, there's no room for a stewardess in this plane. So I'll be up in the cockpit. If you guys need anything, you know, just come knock on the door, whatever. So we get in the flight and I'm fucking baked, man. I smoked so much weed and I've taken so many pills. It's my normal concoction to get on the flight, you know, especially this one, I'm going heavy, you know?

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  We get on, everyone's like, there's actually a video, man. I have the video of it. AM, back in the day, there was these flip cams. I don't know if you remember, they were like the coolest thing before every phone had one. And he's on the flight and he's like, what do you know about a drummer, a DJ and a PJ? Like, you know, like, kind of like, kind of flexing a little bit. We're on a private jet, whatever, having, trying to have fun. And Chris is like, you know, what's up, Chris, whatever? We're just goofing off, like, you know, thinking we're just living in the lap of luxury on a private flight home. Everyone else is, I'm scared to death already, you know? So Chris falls asleep, Che falls asleep, we're still on the runway. And I'm like wide awake, man, I'm just sitting there.

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  Adam's sleeping.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  We go up and down the runway, we're going the wrong way.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  And they turn around.

• 1:13:22Rich Roll?

  Wrong way on the runway.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Rich Roll?

  Like so right out of the gate.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  They're like, sorry, yeah, we're, uh, sorry, we went down the wrong runway. And then I was like, oh my gosh, man, what the hell, you know? And then, uh, and then I'm kind of like dozing off. And then finally, you know, you feel like the engine start up again. And we go to take off and our, uh, our, our landing gear, like the tire, basically our tires explode.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Sounds like gunshots, you know, not very many people will know what it sounds like when your tires explode on your plane. So it sounded like someone shooting at the plane.

• 1:13:55Rich Roll?

  Multiple tires.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:57Rich Roll?

  Like if you, like if one went out.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. It sounded like someone was, you know, like throwing rounds, you know? So I hear like these, these loud bangs. And then the plane is like skidding on the runway. So we have no tires. So now it's landing gear against the runway. And then smoke just starts filling the cabin and fire immediately because the friction from

• 1:14:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  the landing gear on the runway. And then we go up in the air. And then.

• 1:14:29Rich Roll?

  Ah, you have liftoff.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we, we lift off. So.

• 1:14:32Rich Roll?

  Were you hearing from the captain from the cockpit at all?

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  No, I'm just screaming because I, I feel like I know something's wrong. Once the bang bang happened, the plane kind of got out of control. Then we, we were up in the air. So I'm screaming, man, and it's just black in the, in, in the plane and smoke everywhere. And then, uh, the plane is basically going up high and then it's dipping down and then going up. And then dipping down and, uh, and then it started, it started getting lower and hitting the, the cement. Going up and down.

• 1:15:04Rich Roll?

  Bouncing.

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, bouncing off the cement. And I'm screaming, man, I'm screaming like, but obviously they're, they have their hands full in the cockpit. Who knows what's going on? And then we go and by this time there's fire everywhere and I, I'm looking at fire, no longer smoke, it's fire. And, um, we swoop up, I think we swoop up and down like five or six times. And then the last time we go really high in the air, it almost felt like we were almost like going vertical. And then all of a sudden the plane swoops down and we hit an embankment.

• 1:15:37Speaker 01

  And we stop. And I'm somehow alive, you know, every time I'm just bracing myself because I'm looking out the window. I'm wide awake. I'm numb. I'm on so many painkillers and whatever else. So I'm seeing a swoop down. So I can kind of like brace myself every time we hit.

• 1:15:53Speaker 01

  Finally, we hit and I'm on fire.

• 1:15:57Rich Roll?

  Like literally.

• 1:15:58Speaker 01

  I'm on fire, yeah, like my, my hands are on fire. Um, I'm trying to move forward to see if I can get to Chris or Che.

• 1:16:05Rich Roll?

  There's four of you in the cabin?

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, and then my, my whole, everything catches fire. My, my shirt catches fire. And then I turn to my left and AM's knocked out and I grab him and I shake him. He wakes up. I can't get to Chris or Che. It's just a wall of fire. I can't see anything. So I open, I open the emergency exit, which I always, I forgot to say, but I always sit next to an emergency exit in any plane. I sit, I, I open the, kick open the emergency exit. I jump out and I land in the jet. So I land in, in the jet, which if anyone knows about like planes.

• 1:16:45Rich Roll?

  Like behind the, like in the jet stream behind the engine.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is filled with fuel.

• 1:16:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  So my whole body catches fire. I jump into a, basically a pool of jet fuel. Um, my whole body catches fire. AM jumps out over the jet. He's not on fire and he's basically on the phone. I'm running and he's screaming. He's on the phone with our manager going, our plane crashed. He's like crying, screaming. He's like, Trav's on fire. So I'm just running and at this time, the embankment was right next to a freeway. So I have cars that are watching me run on fire and I'm just stripping off my clothes. My gut tells me to strip off my clothes. I don't know what else to do.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  You're in the middle of the road this, at this point and cars are coming in both directions?

• 1:17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, the cars are like facing us and there's no one on our side because everyone sees the plane there. And, um, and I don't realize my, my skin is soaked in jet fuel. So it doesn't matter what I take off. So I get to the point where I'm butt naked and I'm just running, but my whole body's on fire. And then I just hear one guy, man, like, I don't even, I don't even know where he was. I know he was off to the left of me that just says, like what you learn in elementary school, like stop, drop and roll.

• 1:17:59Rich Roll?

  Drop and roll, yeah.

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  And sure enough.

• 1:18:01Rich Roll?

  Like yelling from a car?

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yelling from a car. And I, I just lay down and I start rolling and then Adam comes out, DJ AM, and he, he gets his shirt and he starts patting me out. And that's how he, um, got burnt a little bit, got a little burn on his arm. And on his neck, but basically after a couple of minutes, he pats me out. And then as he pats me out, the plane explodes.

• 1:18:29Rich Roll?

  And you were the, you're the only two guys who made it out?

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, we're the only two guys. Um, me and later, we found out, we found out Chris and Che, my assistant in my security, they weren't wearing their seat belts, so they, they died immediately of head trauma. Probably the first couple of times the plane did the, the crazy, you know, up and down.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  Found out unfortunately, the, the pilots, um, were burnt.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  And, uh, and we were the only two survivors.

• 1:19:02Rich Roll?

  So intense, man.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was insane.

• 1:19:05Rich Roll?

  And you, I mean, you two guys, like you just, I mean, the fact that you even made it out, it's just, it's unbelievable.

• 1:19:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, knowing, I mean, watching the plane blew up like seconds afterward, maybe fifty, sixty seconds afterwards. That's just.

• 1:19:21Rich Roll?

  And it's like, that's like out of a movie. Like that doesn't happen.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  No. Yeah. I mean, I think it had everything to do with maybe where I was sitting. I was always so crazy. I'd sit next to the, uh, the emergency exit. I always had my seatbelt on.

• 1:19:38Rich Roll?

  Studying that card.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:40Rich Roll?

  Instructions.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just always so freaked out, you know, I wouldn't sleep until takeoff. I would listen to every little noise. But yeah, and then, uh, long story short, I, I spent the next four months in a burn center. I had twenty-eight surgeries.

• 1:19:58Rich Roll?

  Twenty-eight. So second and third degree burns all down your legs, right?

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, all my feet, my legs, all the way up to my waist. Um, yeah, just surgery after surgery, skin grafts and.

• 1:20:08Rich Roll?

  And you know, you, you came close to losing your foot or your leg at one point?

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, my right foot was almost amputated.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it was, uh, there was that, you know, there was four months at the burn center and then there was probably another, I think we played our first show. Seven months after the plane crash and I couldn't have done it any any sooner. I didn't even, once I got home, I was so, I was just, it was, it was insane. The medicine they had me on in the hospital.

• 1:20:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that must have just amped up all of that, like big time and just, just medicating like the trauma of what you had experienced, right? And the survivor guilt.

• 1:20:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had tons of survival guilt. I had um suicidal tendencies. I was crazy. Um, and then I was on so many drugs, I didn't even realize, maybe a month into being in the hospital, I said, where's Chris and where's Jay? I want to go in their rooms. I just figured they were in there with me.

• 1:21:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you just checked out.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  It was, it was insane. And then when I got home, um, fast forward, you know, four months after the burn center, I go home and I'm on like nineteen different drugs. And they say, you're gonna be on these the rest of your life. You need this bipolar medicine, you need this. And it was even scarier, man. I would like.

• 1:21:22Rich Roll?

  Bipolar?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Rich Roll?

  For like PTSD or like what is?

• 1:21:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, for PTSD, because I was, you know, I was fifty one fifty in the hospital. They were, it was, uh, there was some really dark times there, but um, and even when I got home, I would walk down the street. It took me a month to even go outside and then I walked down the street and I saw a plane in the air and I would run and hide in a bush. I was like, it was, it was, I was a crazy person. I didn't even, I was scared, you know?

• 1:21:49Rich Roll?

  But Adam being kind of like a, you know, well-known, long time sober dude, like, you know, was he, where is he at this moment? So is he, is he trying to, is he trying to like, you know, shock you out of this condition that you're in? Is he trying to help you out at all?

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Well, Adam goes and we had therapists that we had spoke to, leading up before the plane crash, just to try to get me sober and to keep him sober. Um, and after the plane crash, he started seeing someone different.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  And I mean, he would come and visit me. On- once I got normal, about a month after I got home, I wouldn't call it normal. But I was a little better. I wasn't, you know, as strange and, and, uh, you know, even, even when I got home, there was a week, probably a week of threatening to commit suicide and trying to get my gun and just really, I don't know, just in a really dark place. And then maybe a month later, Adam and I, you know, started kind of meeting up and he's like, let's just talk, man. I wanna know what you remember and what I remember. And we would just share stories and he would tell me, you know, I finally, at one point, which is good to note, I just, I said, you know what, man, I, I had heard my uncle talking about me and I heard one of my best friends going like,

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  dude, Travis isn't the same. He's like slow and he's, you know, I heard people talking about me and to me it was like, these medicines are fucking me up. Like I shouldn't be on them. I feel weird on them, you know? And my doctor was like, you're probably gonna need them for the rest of your life. And one day I just grabbed them and I threw them in the trash. I flushed them down the toilet. And I had like, a week of anxiety, some of the worst anxiety I've ever had, just weaning myself off of them. And I just smoked weed. I smoked a little bit of weed every day to go to sleep, you know, cause I wasn't, when I got home, I don't think I slept for like seventy-two hours straight. I was just having flashbacks and somehow the medication from the hospital versus the medication,

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  you know, I was on morphine for five months straight in the hospital. I got home and the medicine wasn't the same. I was losing my mind, you know? I was like, I couldn't sleep. I was having flashbacks. I was like, oh, I swear, like, I was just supposed to die. It was like Final Destination. Someone was gonna come out of the sky and kill me. And then, uh, I got to an okay place and Adam and I started talking and he said, Trav, we need to go to this spot where they retrain your brain. We've gotta do this. And I said, I'll go with you.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  So we do this therapy and I just told him, I said, man, for me, sixty-five percent of my body was burnt, man. I'm not gonna forget what happened. I'm not gonna forget.

• 1:24:28Rich Roll?

  That was the idea, trying to make it so that you couldn't remember it?

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what this place supposedly sold us on, you know? And I was like, I'm gonna look down every day and know sixty-five percent of my body was burnt in a plane crash. And I lost my two best friends and it's not, you're not gonna, there's no way you can convince me that didn't happen, but I'll go. So we went to all these therapy classes together. But then on the side, he was seeing a new therapist just for PTSD. And I was seeing the same one that I was in the hospital with that talked me out of, you know, there was a point where in the hospital, I said, I called one of my buddies and I said, man, I'll transfer a million dollars to you if you just smoke me. I'm, I'm done.

• 1:25:08Rich Roll?

  Just off you.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:10Rich Roll?

  That's how dark it was.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't get to see my kids. I didn't even like, I didn't even, it sounds weird to say, but I didn't even, I couldn't see them. I was in, no one could come in my room because I was so prone to infection with all these open sores. I just was not in my right mind. So he starts seeing a therapist that says,

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  you were in a plane crash, it's okay to take Xanax.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  To a guy who has like,

• 1:25:37Speaker 01

  I don't know, I think thirteen years sober.

• 1:25:39Rich Roll?

  He had a lot of time at that time.

• 1:25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, he was, I mean, he was the guy getting me sober, you know? So she says, it's okay, you know, you, you went through this horrible experience, a horrific experience. Take whatever you need to take. And he starts taking Xanax, um, because he's flying.

• 1:25:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  So he's taking that and I can kind of tell there's a difference in him, but uh,

• 1:26:04Rich Roll?

  Activate the demon, you know?

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And at this time, I'm home, I'm with my kids. In a matter of two weeks, I throw away all their medication. My kids are my, dude, they're my strength, they're my support, everything. I have like, You know, I have the best support team ever. They're, they're, they're watching me recover and I'm like, I'm finally in a good headspace. I'm talking to my PTSD person every, every day. Everything was getting much better. And we had lunch one day and he's just like, man, I don't, uh, you know, you have the kids and you have like, you know, these things to live for and lead by example. I don't have anybody.

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  And you know, at that point I was just like, well, I mean, we, we looked online. There was no like, uh, like plane, plane crash survivor support groups, really. There was like, hey, if you've lost someone in a plane crash, come here. This is a support group. But we were kind of in a unique situation where we didn't have a lot of survivors to talk to. So I said, man, we have each other, you know? Whatever you need, anytime of day, just like you were there for me before the accident, whatever. Uh, I'm here, you know? So we would talk all the time and just, you know, keep each other straight because we had a, we had something very special that we, we lived through together.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  And, uh, one of the last times I'd seen him, we played, we played in Vegas and you know, we just played New Year's. We were back on track. We were playing all these cool shows. And we played this incredible show and it was awesome. And, and Blink was, it was actually Blink reunion. And we played two shows in the city and then AM and I played at night afterwards. It was just so good, man. And then after the show, you know, we, we talk and I'm like, what a great show. And then he's like, man, um, he says to me, he's like, man, I just feel like doing a shit ton of drugs and saying fuck it. And I was like, of course we both feel like that, but we're not going to do it, you know?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  Especially you, you're sober. You know, you've, you've helped so many of us be sober and get sober. Um, and at the time I'm not even smoking weed anymore. I needed, I needed maybe a month of, month or two of smoking weed just to wean myself off those, those toxic drugs that, that the hospital gave us. And then that was the last time I had seen him. Sadly enough, and that was the last words he said to me.

• 1:28:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's brutal. So it's unclear, you know, whether it was just a relapse overdose or whether it was a conscious choice to, you know, end his pain.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were in New York and I knew he was gonna be there at the same time. We were, we would talk online, like, I think I said something on Twitter, like, I'd said something like, "Ah, it's so good to be back with my boys playing shows," or whatever, and referring to Blink. And he hit me and he's like, "Work," everyone could see it too on, on his timeline. He's like, "Man, I knew you liked playing with them more than me." Fuck, man, like, I, I, you know, something to the effect like, "I hope, I hope you don't stop jamming with me," or whatever. And I was like, "Are you insane, man?" Like, I love, what him and I have was, was so strong, it was so...

• 1:29:19Rich Roll?

  There's, it's impossible for you to be more bonded to another human being.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, my gosh, there was nothing or no one I was closer with than Adam. So, he was in New York and I remember I was in a session, I was in a session with Slaughterhouse,

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  this rap group, and I was working on my album, and he was in New York, so I was supposed to see him. And the day before, we were supposed to meet up, and I see one of my managers, he's like, "Aim's not gonna come out tonight." And I was like, "Why?" He's like, "Dude, I think he's going back to rehab when we go home." And I was like, "Why? He does, he's sober, man. He's like, he's strong as nails, man." So I hit him up. I don't hear back from him, you know?

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  Continuing to hit him up that night before I go to sleep, don't hear back from him. The next morning, I have a show in New York, I'm in the studio with Slaughterhouse, and, uh, we're in the middle of recording a, a song called "Devil's Got a Hold of Me," and, um,

• 1:30:16Speaker 01

  someone had me, uh,

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  it was a laptop, and it just has the news that Adam, you know?

• 1:31:03Rich Roll?

  It's kind of baffling and powerful, you know, it really is. And all the more heartbreaking when it's somebody not only that you love deeply, but that's somebody that you respect for their sobriety, you know? And we forget, now I'm a long time sober, you know, we forget that as alcoholics, as addicts, that that's our natural state, you know? And for some people, the pain just becomes so overwhelming that it becomes the only choice, you know? I didn't, uh, I didn't know A M, but I have lots of friends that knew him. And the guy was just beloved, you know? Universally like beloved. Tragic loss.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's still difficult because we don't, you know?

• 1:31:51Speaker 01

  All we know is he was, he was planning on going to rehab the following day. But I know there's like a history with people having one last parade, you know? And, uh,

• 1:32:04Rich Roll?

  It's this idea that, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go out one last time and then I'm gonna clean up and not appreciating the fact that like, it doesn't always work out so well.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Rich Roll?

  Just because you want to go out doesn't mean that you can come back, you know? And it makes you appreciate and really realize what a gift sobriety is and how fragile it can be.

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And then after, you know, we found out everything, it was kind of like, for me, it was the question of, well, what was it, an accident? Or, you know, was it?

• 1:32:36Rich Roll?

  Well, the, the fact that he had plans to go to rehab speaks to it being, you know, sort of balancing more towards accident.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Rich Roll?

  Some kind of premeditated.

• 1:32:47Speaker 01

  It was like, was it an accident or was it the last words you said to me? Which was, you know, I want to do a bunch of drugs and say, fuck it. So for me, I think I struggled with that, like when I was from, I still, I still struggle with it a little bit. I wish I knew clearly what it was, but, um,

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  After that, it was, it was, uh, I really, it was like Final Destination. You know, it was even more survival's guilt. Like, am I supposed to be here now? Adam's gone, um, and Adam, the strongest human being, who I can't even count on both hands how many people he got sober, are friends, you know, or was like a support group for them, including myself. So for me, it was just like, damn, did he, did he purposely do this? Or was this an accident? And, you know, I, I beat myself up over it.

• 1:33:37Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it, clearly he was in pain. He had, you know, he was in, he had some unresolved pain. And the pain became unbearable enough where drugs and alcohol or drugs became just the logical option.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:51Rich Roll?

  And I think you can just leave it at that. You know, what happens beyond that? You know, you can't, you know, he knew that you loved him and you can't carry the mantle of responsibility for what happened. You know?

• 1:34:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:05Rich Roll?

  You've got, you've got to be able to find a way to free yourself from that.

• 1:34:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there was probably about, I was a, we were on tour. We were on, I think we were in the middle of a tour. So I had a month left of tour and it was just, man, it was the hardest. We had a show that I think, I canceled the show that night.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  But, you know, for that next month, I think I probably played every show with my eyes closed. I couldn't even like look up. It was just, you know, I, I knew too, he would want me to go out there and play. But, uh, at the same time, it was just tough. You know, especially it was like, it was just, I mean, a friend passing is hard enough, but a friend I went through that with passing, like the only person I could really, you know, speak to about that or kind of see eye to eye and really kind of get each other. That was, that was a tough one to lose.

• 1:35:02Rich Roll?

  So how do you start to, you know, put together the pieces and heal from this so that you can be, you know, integrated and functional?

• 1:35:13Speaker 01

  I think it was just gaining my strength back again.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  That's what I had to do. And like I've said a couple of times, like my kids were the, you know, kids.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  It was, it's easy for me to look at them and say, I have to be strong and, and get my strength from them and, uh, and set an example of not letting this take me down or, you know, you know, falling victim to drugs. It was really easy for me to be sober after AM passed away.

• 1:35:48Rich Roll?

  So that happened pretty quickly after that?

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:51Rich Roll?

  You just got, you just got shocked clean?

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. There was, that was like, it couldn't have been a bigger eye opener.

• 1:36:00Rich Roll?

  Did you just go cold turkey and do it yourself? Or did you go to 12 step? Or like, how did you?

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  No, the last thing I did was, you know, weed was the thing I was, I was just doing very, very little, but still doing it from time to time. And it must've been maybe like a month after AM passed. I had a, I had this weird thing. I was recording an album and I think we were smoking heavily that day. And, and I had this weird lump on my throat that wouldn't go away. To the point where I was kind of freaked out. It was like sticking my finger in my throat. I was like, what's going on? It's, I'm smoking weed. It's grown from the earth. You know, there's nothing bad. I was giving myself every possible excuse. Uh, and I ended up going to the doctor and I get diagnosed with Barrett's esophagus.

• 1:36:51Rich Roll?

  What is that like pre-cancer?

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that was it. There, if there was any question, that was it. My, I talked to my doctor who's a, he's not my, my, my normal doctor out here, but he's a friend I, I've, I've known for years that lives in San Diego. I said, doc, he, he's saying I have Barrett's esophagus. He's like, Trav, this is your warning shot. Stop right now. Like, you know, do whatever he tells you. You cannot reverse pre-cancer. Like, there's no reversing any damage that's done to your esophagus. And I was just, that was it for me.

• 1:37:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  It was, you know, that was the last.

• 1:37:30Rich Roll?

  But you were able to hear it. You had the willingness, right? You know what I mean? It's like, dude, I mean, plane crash, you know, losing, losing AM, you know?

• 1:37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:40Rich Roll?

  Cancer in the throat, like, come on, dude, wake up, like, the universe is, is trying to gaslight you a little bit here.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and sometimes I think before that, with every horrific thing that happened to me, it was like, dude, this happening, what's the big deal if I smoke weed, you know, and it's like, nah, and then, you know, like you said, it all came together, it was a plane crash, Adam passes away, um, still that one therapist resonating going like, you know, if, uh, if, you know, you were to die today, would you be remembered as the man you want to be? I was like, well, I'm still, I'm still smoking weed, I'm, I'm not completely sober, so that was it for me, and, and it was, uh, it was so great, man, and I, and I felt, you know, obviously, the first couple of weeks was, was weird adapting to not doing anything,

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  just getting rid of bad habits, but even the people around me, man, I, the minute you get sober and you stop doing drugs, you stop doing everything, and you're around people who do, maybe in studio environments, and they go to hand you a joint, or hand you a drink, or hand you some pills, and you say, ah, I don't do it no more, they're like, how'd you quit? And I noticed so many people were like, why, why'd you do it, you know, because they knew how bad I was, and they knew how everything was in excess for me, everything.

• 1:38:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, psychotic, you know, I mean, I can't imagine the detox from oxys and, you know, coming down from that state that you were in, that must have just been horrific.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  Well, that was easy to stop after the plane crash, because in the hospital, I woke up, I woke up during about ten surgeries, because they, they couldn't even medicate me.

• 1:39:18Rich Roll?

  Your tolerance was so crazy.

• 1:39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd wake up in the middle of surgery.

• 1:39:21Rich Roll?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:39:22Speaker 01

  It was horrible, and I don't know if you could imagine the pain you feel when you wake up, too, like, I, I would feel, and I would see tons of doctors around me, and I would just swing on them, I was like, I was insane, like, there was, you know, I said, I said it, I think in my book, it was like, it was sad that it took such a horrific experience, like the plane crash and Adam dying, for me to get sober. But it did.

• 1:39:46Rich Roll?

  It takes what it takes. You know what I mean? Like, what's it gonna take to get your attention?

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:52Rich Roll?

  And go, huh, come on, dude, there's a better way to live. There's a better plan for you, but you're gonna have to grab onto it.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:58Rich Roll?

  So it's like all these signals the universe is throwing at you that you need to course correct.

• 1:40:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:03Rich Roll?

  And what's your pain threshold, you know?

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  Yep. And now, I mean, now I don't, you know, I never, I never went to a 12-step program.

• 1:40:12Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. And so what has it been like, what is it, five or six years now?

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's six years now. I've had great people that are in the program that have taken me to meetings. And I've gone every once in a while. I usually go, I usually go to one on the anniversary of our plane crash.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Or the anniversary of Adam's passing. Because those are days I feel like I just need some motivation.

• 1:40:37Rich Roll?

  Which was recently, right? Wasn't it just like a month or two ago?

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:40:41Rich Roll?

  Seeing like the, the anniversary of AM's passing.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And in September is the, is the plane crash anniversary. So those times I kind of, I kind of go reach out or I just have a conversation, you know, like one of the producer I work with that I do a lot of production with is sober. And he's just great, but honestly.

• 1:41:00Rich Roll?

  Is that Feldy?

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Feldy's great, man. He's sober. He has meetings at his house. It's really cool.

• 1:41:06Rich Roll?

  That guy's a cornerstone of sobriety.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:09Rich Roll?

  He's helped so many dudes.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and I, like, once again, I have to say, you know, being a full-time father, I, I get so much joy, man. That's my favorite role in life is being a dad, you know? My favorite production, more than any album I've produced, or hip-hop song, or anything, you know? It's like my kids, man, just, just, uh, just being a, a role model for them. It's, and, and being with them has been, you know, the happiest thing ever.

• 1:41:39Rich Roll?

  Right. It's beautiful. And, and speaking of your kids, I know you gotta, you gotta pick them up in a couple of minutes here.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Rich Roll?

  Which is like crazy, cause there's so many other things I wanna talk. We've been talking for almost two hours and the word vegan hasn't even come up once.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  I know. That's insane.

• 1:41:54Rich Roll?

  About that, yeah. But I can't, I can't segue to that without at least asking you, and then I gotta let you go, I know.

• 1:42:03Rich Roll?

  You know, now that it's been a couple of years since the crash and you have some objectivity on your sobriety and that experience, like, what do you, you know, what do you, what do you glean from that that can be helpful to somebody because it is an experience that's so unique? I mean, there are so few people on planet Earth that have under, you know, sort of undergone such traumatic experience and survived, right? So does that shift your perspective on how you live your life?

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it shifted everything. I was very careless before my accident. I would, you know, I was a great father, but I would still, I mean, to me, taking tons of pills and self medicating myself to get on planes isn't the most responsible.

• 1:42:49Rich Roll?

  And you don't fly anymore, right?

• 1:42:50Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't fly. That was, that was one thing I had to do is, is after my plane crash, I said, I'll never fly again. I'll never put myself in a situation where I feel like I have to medicate myself and, and, and, and take myself away from my family. If the day comes, my kids want to fly, I'll fly with them and I'll, I'll do whatever they want. They're scared. They're really scared to death of flying, obviously because of what happened to me and they were really close to little Chris and Che who passed away in the, in the plane. And then they're, they're just as afraid of drugs because of, they saw what happened to Adam. So I take, I take a lot from it, you know, I, I live every day

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  like it's my first and last. And, and I'm healthier than I've ever been. I'm 41 and I'm healthier now than I was when I was 20, or when I was 30, or when I was 35, you know, it, I've, I've, I've got new addictions as I let go of my old addictions.

• 1:43:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, fitness is like a big part of your thing now, right?

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:54Rich Roll?

  Fitness, wellness. Every time I go into Arowan, I see you and you're scoping out like some healthy food product, you know?

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 1:44:01Rich Roll?

  It's all about the battle ropes and, you know, this routine to sort of be your best self.

• 1:44:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I replaced all the bad stuff with the good stuff, you know? I eat well. I'm vegan gluten free. I've been vegetarian since I was 15 and I became vegan right after my plane crash.

• 1:44:21Speaker 01

  I exercise every day. I just traded all the bad stuff with the good stuff, you know, and I love working out. I've directly made the connection between working out and playing the drums and applying, you know, lots of things from both to each other and it's helped me so much.

• 1:44:38Rich Roll?

  Well, they were, they seem to, you know, meld seamlessly. I mean, the way you drum is like athletic performance art, you know, and I can't imagine, you know, trying to do what you do without being in good physical shape. Like, it is an endurance sport.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:44:54Rich Roll?

  It's an artistic endurance sport.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:44:57Rich Roll?

  So, I gotta let you go, man. It's such a bummer. I wanted to talk to you about creativity. I'm obsessed with unlocking creativity. I want to talk to you more about the vegan stuff and your daily routines and all this stuff, but I do have to let you go. You've been very generous with your time, so maybe I can

• 1:45:11Speaker 01

  It was an honor.

• 1:45:12Rich Roll?

  Hoodwink you to come back and we could talk a little bit more about that stuff.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be awesome.

• 1:45:16Rich Roll?

  All right, man. So, thanks so much, dude. That was really cool.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, man. Thank you.

• 1:45:20Rich Roll?

  I appreciate your openness and, you know, honesty, talking about some difficult stuff.

• 1:45:24Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:45:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, very cool.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 1:45:27Rich Roll?

  So, if you're digging on Travis, the best way to connect with him is probably your website, travisbarker.com, @travisbarker on all the internet sites.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Instagram is just Travis Barker.

• 1:45:38Rich Roll?

  The book, can I say, which I still have to read. I gotta pick that up. This interview came together pretty quickly, so I didn't have a chance to read it, but I'm looking forward to digging into it.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:45:47Rich Roll?

  So, pick that up. And you have any shows coming up soon or any dates?

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Um, we are heading over to Europe for the summer.

• 1:45:55Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we'll be out there in Europe and I have

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  With Blink?

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, with Blink.

• 1:45:59Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:46:01Rich Roll?

  Back together again with the new album and all that kind of stuff.

• 1:46:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been amazing. I think, I don't know, we got nominated for a Grammy, so we'll see. I think they're still announcing who's performing, so, yeah, who knows?

• 1:46:13Rich Roll?

  Very cool, man.

• 1:46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:14Rich Roll?

  Awesome. And you just did Kimmel the other night, right?

• 1:46:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And you did, uh, you did, you had some crazy show, uh, New Years with, um, Steve Aoki, right?

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Well, no, I actually-

• 1:46:24Rich Roll?

  Was that just you solo?

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a DJ drum routine. Um, you know, me being around, like, I played with so many great DJs. Well, of course, Adam, DJ AM. And then after he passed, me and A-Track did-

• 1:46:35Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Uh, a routine together, then me and-

• 1:46:37Rich Roll?

  The Walking Juice Sero billboard.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:46:40Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  So I've been surrounded with the best DJs, you know, ever. And, um, and I've always loved DJ and scratching. So I actually have a routine and I have a residency in Vegas. So-

• 1:46:52Rich Roll?

  Oh, you do? Oh, wow.

• 1:46:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:53Rich Roll?

  That's like back to the entrepreneurial kind of approach to your career.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  So New Years was really fun.

• 1:46:58Rich Roll?

  Who does that?

• 1:47:00Speaker 01

  That, you know, that's what's always been my thing is like, how do I, how do you, how do I keep creating, keep evolving and keep things interesting for myself and do what I love? And that's, that's one of them, you know, I'm taking like what, you know, being inspired by what AM and I started and just the evolution of that.

• 1:47:20Rich Roll?

  Great talking to you, man.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, you too. Thank you.

• 1:47:24Rich Roll?

  Plants.

• 1:47:36Rich Roll?

  All right, we did it. That's this week's show. What'd you guys think? How'd that one land for you? I don't know about you guys, but I think that guy's super dope. Uh, I really enjoyed connecting with him and I look forward to, uh, part two of our conversation. Uh, and also congrats again to Travis and to his band members on their Grammy nomination. That's super cool. Uh, if you want to learn more about Travis, you can go to travisbarker.com, @travisbarker on all the social medias. Uh, check out his apparel line, Famous Stars and Straps at famousas.com, famousas.com. Uh, and pick up his memoir, Can I Say? By using the Amazon banner ad at ritual.com. Uh, and while you're at it, make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at ritual.com. We've got tons of links and resources, uh, all about the

• 1:48:21Rich Roll?

  world of Travis and his music. Uh, and we put a lot of time and effort into these to kind of- Curate a sort of curriculum to extend the edification provided by the podcast to kind of take it beyond the ear but so check that out. Thank you for sharing the show with your friends and on social media for leaving a review on iTunes for subscribing for grabbing your friends iPhone and subscribing them to the show. I'm not against that kind of behavior. And for making a habit of always using the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases, or just by typing in richroll.com/Amazon, which takes you to Amazon. Buy whatever you're gonna buy. It doesn't cost you one cent extra, but Amazon kicks us some loose commission change at the end of each month. That helps us keep

• 1:49:04Rich Roll?

  the lights on. So we appreciate that. And of course, mad love to everybody who has taken that extra step to support the work that I do by contributing on Patreon. Really cool on just, you know, heart, heart touching that, that you would do that. It means so much to me. If you guys would like to receive a free weekly email from me, you can do that. It's called Roll Call. You can sign up on my website. Basically, every Thursday, I send out a short blast and it has like, I don't know, five or six items in it. Things that usually just things that I've come across throughout the course of the week. Maybe it's a couple of articles I read, long reads, or, you know, a book that I'm enjoying, or a documentary that I just saw, or a new product, or a cause. Every week, it's something different.

• 1:49:48Rich Roll?

  And these are things I usually don't share on social media. And the idea behind this is just to cultivate a little extra connection and, you know, connectivity and community around the kind of themes and ideas that percolate up through the podcast. So, never any spam. I don't use affiliate links. I'm not trying to make any money off of you. This is just, you know, useful, fun information. So that's it. You can subscribe on my website. And while you're there, I got all kinds of plant power. Schwag and merch stuff, got t-shirts, tech tees, Plant Power stickers, signed copies of Finding Ultra and The Plant Power Way, all that kind of cool stuff. So you can check that out there. Thank you, everybody who helped put on this show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production.

• 1:50:32Rich Roll?

  Shawn Patterson for his help on graphics. Chris Swan for additional production assistance and a lot of work that he puts into compiling the show notes and theme music by Analemma. Thanks for the love, you guys. Let's try to follow our hearts this week and I'll be back with you guys in a couple of days. See you soon. Peace. Plants.