As you all know, Gypsyhawk is a band that I have been watching closely and been a huge fan of since the inception of this blog. I watched this band change lineups, tour relentlessly, sign a major record deal, and secure an ever growing fan base. I also got to be good friends with a couple of the guys, one of them being former guitarist Andrew Packer. Andrew and I hit it off immediately and we always kept in touch with each other while he was on the road or even chilling at home. When he announced that he was leaving Gypsyhawk I was part sad and part relieved. The touring life is hard both physically and mentally and I could see that it was starting to take a toll on Andrew.
At the end of last year, I spoke with Andrew on the phone for what I’ll call this “lost interview.” Lost because I literally lost it on my hard drive but miraculously found it backed up on a flash drive. Technology for the win! In this interview, Andrew talked about his bittersweet departure from Gypsyhawk, the toll that touring took on him, and his hopes and dreams for the future. This was a really special interview with a great guy and I hope everyone will read this and get something out of it!
Is this Mr. Andrew Packer?
Is this Don? What’s up brother?
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Long time no talk my friend. How are you?
I’m good man. Just living life. Haven’t seen you since Atlanta on the Valient Thorr tour right?
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Yeah, it’s been too long man. I hated to see that you left Gypsyhawk man. It’s bittersweet but I know you need to do what you need to do.
It was just something that had to happen.
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So what made you decide that bowing out of Gypsyhawk was the right thing to do?
I made up my mind about three weeks after we got home from the Valient Thorr tour last year. I was just thinking about some of the other things I want to be doing right now other than just Gypsyhawk. I’ve been working on a book for a while. It’s a satire about politics and life in LA. It’s really ridiculous but has been really enjoyable to write. I promised myself that I would work on it on the last few tours but the writing, like anything else, is something you really have to force yourself to do. Between all the riding in the van and listening to podcasts and books on tape it was all just way too distracting for me to get anything done. It just wasn’t a good place for doing that.
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So when you got home it all just kind of came to a boil?
Live in Atlanta, GA
2013
Yeah. When I got home all I could think about was how I wanted to be writing this book and how I wanted to my old band Suns Beneath, my band before Gypsyhawk, back in action. I had a plan and songs that I had been working and it was really the only music that I had been writing for the last six or seven months. I kept telling myself that I could do two bands at once but it is just really hard to do. Gypsyhawk guitar parts, most of them I wouldn’t write so I spent a lot of time learning the riffs and learning how to play them the way that the other guys who wrote them wanted me to play them. It just took a lot of time to learn all these Gypsyhawk riffs and then at times my mind would just wonder and I’d find myself thinking, “What if I just never went to practice and I could work on my book?” I think that’s just what I would rather be doing. It would free up a lot of stress and a lot of time for stuff that I really cared about. That’s what really made up my mind. I just felt like Gypsyhawk wasn’t worth my time anymore.
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That’s totally fair to you but its also fair to everyone else involved. I mean, if you’re invested it than all parties are affected.
Yeah, I thought about that too. They had been complaining about some of my performances and it was just clear considering that every time I tried to pick up a guitar and write something Gypsyhawk songs just wouldn’t come out. It just made me see that my heart just was not where it needed to be for the band to fully thrive. I just needed to stop having those guys stressing about my dedication to the band.
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You guys toured really hard with all the partying and what not that’s some hard living. Did that aspect of it have any impact on steering you out of the band?
Yeah, that was definitely applied. I loved touring. I did nine tours with Gypsyhawk, helped book the early tours before we got a booking agent. I loved it. I loved touring. I loved not having to be home. It was fun to play on stage, meet new people, and all the rock n’ roll lifestyle shit. That was definitely where I was at in my life but I turned 30 this year. I mean, I didn’t have that moment where I said, “I’m 30 now. I have to take life seriously.” [laughs] It just sort of started feeling that way though. I just was feeling different about being 30 and I guess that happens to a lot of people where they feel like they’ve had a good run partying but that it’s now time for some new things. With Gypsyhawk, or maybe even touring in a band in general, I was feeling that all I was really getting out of it was a rusted out liver and rotting off my dick living the party life [laughs]. In the end, I’ll be frank, we each came home with like 230 bucks. That’s after paying all the bills, paying back our merch company, our manager, our booking agent, all these fucking people. After all that touring that’s all we took home. It’s not like it’s anything you can pay the rent with [laughs].
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Look, I turned 40 in September and while I don’t feel “old” so to say, I just know that there’s no way in hell that I can physically live in a van and party like that. I just know that I can’t do that.
Man, we were touring in the summer, in the South [laughs]. It was fucking hot. Even though we had money, it was just decided by the lord up on high that instead of shelling out 60 bucks to get a hotel room that we were just going to sleep in the van at a Walmart and just baking. I just didn’t understand why we were doing that. Why? So I can have another 270 bucks when I get home? I would much rather have not had that money and spent those nights in an air conditioned bed. At the very least, you can get a good night’s sleep and play a good goddamn show the next night. I just felt like the rewards didn’t measure up to the amount of work that had to get into it all.
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I know it’s such a corny term but were there some artistic differences playing into things as well?
Yeah, my heart just wasn’t into the music we were playing. I was getting really frustrated with what I felt like was a new direction that the band was taking in the way we presented ourselves. I just didn’t know why I was doing this anymore. Just to party? It’s not worth it.
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What is this shift in direction that you’re talking about?
Well, it wasn’t like a huge critical shift. Eric and I differed on opinion of how we wanted to present ourselves early on. He didn’t like the idea of having any sort of serious image of ourselves, you know, taking ourselves seriously. He wanted to be like, “We’re a party band.” He didn’t want it to be somewhere between Municipal Waste/Toxic Holocaust and a band kind of like, oh, I guess Baroness who has influences in literature and art. I wanted to lean more in that direction. I just think it’s kind of gimmicky. I’m not into bands like that and I’m not impressed by that. I just wasn’t into that fratboy sort of lifestyle and that really wasn’t us. Ian, Ron, and I are all pretty heavy drinkers and we like our drugs but who doesn’t? I mean, who gives a shit? [laughs] I just didn’t care about that and it seemed like the band was amplifying that sense more and more.
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I was so pumped by the last album and the lyrical content of it all. I felt like Gypsyhawk was heading into a kind of progressive kind of literary almost Maiden-esque kind of area but then the live show just seemed to be disjointed from that as the band tried to be like, “No, we’re a party band!”
Yeah, I can totally see how you felt that. I think that Eric has always written some great lyrics and I’ve always been impressed with that because I don’t think he really tried writing anything until Gypsyhawk. He’s a smart guy. I would read his lyrics and I was always impressed.
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Live in Atlanta, GA
2013
Do you feel like all the touring and living hard has taken some life off of you?
I don’t know yet [laughs]. It probably has. I drank a bit at home and kind of kept it to that weekend warrior kind of level but on tour it was just every night drinking everything that we presented to me. Maybe I’m an alcoholic, who knows [laughs].
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Where there ever moments on tour where you were hitting it so hard and you thought, “I could die doing this”?
There were certain mornings where I wished that I was dead [laughs]. Nah, it never got that bad. It was like we were Motley Crue or had drug dealers hanging out back stage. I just knew that I was damaging my body. I’m not a bad drunk so luckily I never had to ever apologize to anyone. I just found myself concerned about the long term effects that all this drinking could have on my liver and my gut. It all just became less appealing to me. I was like chasing something that doesn’t exist. It was always like trying to top some moment of enjoyment that isn’t even really real.
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So how are things between you guys since you’ve left?
Things are fine between me and everyone in the band as far as I know. Eric and I had a pretty serious falling out and there’s still lingering business things that I’ve had to be brought in on that he just has the other guys call me about so that just always feels kind of weird. On my end, communication began waiting about a month or two before we went in to record the last album.
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So now that you’re out of the band and focusing on your thing, tell me what your thing is.
Well, I have two writing projects in particular that I’ve been working on. I’m writing this book and I’m also about 100 pages into this comedy action satire about this guy who moves to LA to become a rock star and then becomes all caught up in his obsession over his ex-girlfriend and gets involved in some terrorist organization [laughs]. It’s called LA: A Love Story. I’m really excited about that. I’ve also written this story for Gun Shy Assassin called “The Band.”
READ “THE BAND” HERE: http://gunshyassassin.com/author/andrew-packer/
Yeah, I remember you telling me about that. What is that all about?
That one’s cool. A lot of that one is just me doing it as a go along. It’s loosely based on all the guys in Gypsyhawk. It’s a kind of a surrealist horror action thing about this band. We never find out their band name, see them on stage, or even know what they sound like. I just really wanted to write about what its’ really like out there on the road.
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Have you been doing anything musically these days?
I’ve been rewriting all these old songs I had for this band I had called Suns Beneath. I’m writing all the drums, guitars, and bass and just taking my time with it. I want to finish that and just put it away for six months. Then I want to revisit it and then carefully choose the musicians. I may not even really care about putting together a band per say. I may just want to put it out as a record and maybe get my friend Brandon to play drums and I’ll do all the guitars and vocals myself. There’s this concept album I’ve been working on for 7 or 8 years now that’s essentially about the rise and fall of western civilization. I’m really happy with how everything is coming out with that one. I’m just trying not to get myself bogged down in too many other projects. The day everyone heard I left Gypsyhawk everyone was like, “Let’s start a band man!” [laughs] I was like, uh, sure, what do you want to do and then they’d be like “Well, we were hoping you’d figure that out for us.” Oh yeah, I get it [laughs].
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Now that you’ve stepped out of the band and the touring life, looking back on it all do you feel like you learned some sort of valuable lesson from
at home
2014
it all?
Well, I think that biggest, most positive lesson I learned is that if you will something, it is no dream [laughs]. I mean, if you put in hard work into something every day and you stay focused, things will start happening. It may take a long time or maybe it’ll never get to where you hoped it would go but results to happen. I apply that now with wanting to be a writer. I’ve seen firsthand that putting in hard work will get you results. It’s no small feat that we got to tour and put out records on Metal Blade. There are a shit ton of bands out there that never get this close. My time in Gypsyhawk is something to be proud of and I definitely learned that the possibilities are endless.
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Andrew, it sounds like you’re on your way towards finding yourself and finding what it is you really want out of life and that’s cool.
Thanks man. Yeah, I am pretty happy and I feel pretty optimistic about my future and doing whatever I want to do. Touring really is hard. You have to give up a lot at home and you have sacrifice a lot. People say that you should just do it for the fun and love of music but I don’t think I need to just be having fun ya know? It’s not just that. I don’t want to be 40 and hanging out at The Rainbow trying to bang some drunk slut [laughs]. I’m not 22. I’m fucking 30 now and I like having a comfortable place to sleep and I don’t want to be broke and having to rely on my parents to help me out. I’m just not into it any more.
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Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me today and to share your thoughts and plans for the future. This was really cool.
Thanks so much Don. It’s great talking to you too, Don. This was a fun interview. Keep on truckin’.
Atlanta, GA – 2013
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