Interview: AVATARI On Resilience, His New Song "Hold On", and Performing at This Year's Outside Lands Festival
A common theme amongst musicians is that of rising from the ashes of darkness and destruction. It is a brutal industry filled with rejection, resentment and hardship. Often, this hardship gives birth to creativity, inspiration, and resilience. It’s a weird double-edged sword, and it is at the heart of AVATARI, a solo artist whose walked this path and had his fair share of battles.
Speaking with him over the phone ahead of his performance at this year’s Outside Lands Festival in San Francisco, he is candid about his former addiction, staying sober, and creating songs like “Hold On” - a new anthemic track from his catalog - that tackle these subjects. Check out our interview with AVATARI below, and be sure to catch him at this year’s Outside Lands Festival this weekend in Golden Gate Park.
Note: This interview has been edited solely for the purpose of context and clarity.
Shameless SF: You recently released a new single called “Hold On” and I wanted to know just if you could tell me a little bit about it and how it came about. In everything that I read, it seemed like it was kind of about breaking out of the seclusion of Joshua Tree. Is that where you live, or where you just recording there?
AVATARI: Yeah, so the song came to me in Joshua Tree three years ago initially. I was out there with my family for a little retreat, and it's one of my favorite places. I just think it's really beautiful, naturally, but I also would feel a deep spiritual connection there. It's so quiet, you know, I just kind of feel like I can get in touch with myself. At the time, there was just, you know, a ton of stuff going on in the world, [along with] navigating some personal struggles with grief and loss. I wasn't planning to write a song there. I was just there to be with my family, but I started to hear this song coming through, and I heard the melody. I remember just hearing “Hold on, like, no matter how dark that it gets, just hold on until till you get to the other side”. And so the song came to me. I got home from [Joshua Tree] I wrote the rest of it.
So I pretty much finished it with just me on acoustic guitar, and then I put it on the shelf. I can't remember why, but it didn't occur to me at the moment to kind of produce it to play it live, anything like that. I kind of felt like it was an intimate little journal experience, almost like a diary. It was on the shelf for a few years, and then the song started to come back to me at the end of last year, with all the stuff going on in the world, along with some more personal stuff. I started to feel strongly that I wanted to share it with the rest of the world. You know, at the beginning of the year, there was all the stuff with the fires down here in Southern California.
Shameless SF: Oh yeah. The Palisades.
AVATARI: My family and I had to evacuate. They got pretty close to us and, you know, I have two kids and I have a wife, so that feeling of safety and being able to take care of them, along with all the stuff in the world, the political stuff, the wars.… It was just such a time. I started to, feel like I wanted to give something to everybody to just feel like, you know, “let’s stay together with each other but also, you know, find that root in the ground for ourselves to hold on. So I went into the studio, recorded it, made a music video for it with my wife, and put it out.
Shameless SF: You're also a very big advocate for mental health. I know you have a podcast called Mental Health and Music. What is it that draws you towards um advocating for mental health specifically?
AVATARI: I have all these things that I love to do. Music is way at the top of the list. Uh, I'm also an actor and a filmmaker and I also just love helping people. I love mental health recovery, the spiritual side of things. In the last kind of year and a half, I've started to ask myself “what's the connector with all of these things?” What unifies all of it? There are many challenges with this where the music industry and world are today, but one of the things that I really like about where it is and where it's going is the idea of music being a draw to something bigger in a community. I feel like the people that I really admire who are doing music right now, that’s kind of the way they’re doing things. So, I sort of ask myself, “what's my community and what's my deeper purpose ?” It really is around, I would say, mental health, for a place for people to go to feel deeply connected to who they are and where they are in the world. To feel like whatever you've been through, there's a way through it.
I'm a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, and that's deeply connected to who I am musically and artistically because once I got clean, I just started to write tons and tons of music. It was one of my new medicines. I've always loved music and found it to be a medicine, but when you took all that stuff away [drugs and alcohol], then the music started pouring out of me. In the last few years I’ve basically become more intentional and conscious about how the music connects to my mental health journey and then the one that I want to help uh in the community that I want to create for others to join in uh together because I think that that's a big, you know, It’s hard for me to get better and feel better in a vacuum; it's really been through music, through connecting with other humans, through sharing stories together, but I feel like the healing can really happen.
Shameless SF: Absolutely. It’s kind of like, when you take all of those things out of the equation, you go, “Oh wow, my focus is completely cleared up” and then that floodgate of creativity opens. That’s not the first time I've heard something like that.
AVATARI: A lot of my music is about facing demons. What are demons? They look different for all of us. They are these outward manifestations of things that are going on inside. Mostly going on inside of me is fears, frustrations, anger, blocks, resentment, secrets, shame, all that stuff. That is very human but that is the stuff that keeps me from really being, you know, my fullest self and having the best possible life that I can. So I think, you know, a lot of us humans, we spend a lot of time there to different degrees. For me, what I've dedicated my life to is facing my own demons and then ideally sharing that journey with the world, and with anyone that it might benefit. I think that that’s what music is about for me: connecting, sharing stories, finding these like deeper human relationships that we have together and growing through that stuff together.
Shameless SF: Over the lastfive years alone, you've consistently released music. You’ve released a different single, at least a few singles, every year since 2020. Are there any plans for you to release an EP or an album in the future?
AVATARI: That’s a great question. The single model has worked well for me thus far, and it's allowed me to develop as an artist and develop my voice and what I wanna say along the way. [Releasing singles] also kind of gets to the state of the world and how people, uh, you know, currently I think people are really processing things. There’s so much content and music out there, which is wonderful, like the tools to be able to make music, share music is just so readily available from where it used, where the gates were held [shut] for only a few and now it's available to everybody, which I love.
But the flip side is there's just so much of it out there. The competition for getting in front of the right people and then listening to stuff, especially as you're an independent or growing or an emerging artist, just getting people to listen to a song is kind of the goal. So I've totally bought into that, but as I grow, as my vision grows, I have been thinking about how all the songs that I've made so far and the ones that I'm currently working on are about to sit together, which is really exciting.
I have a song that I'm gonna release next, or at least very soon, that I think is gonna be the tie together of this body of work that I've done over the last three or so years. It’s called “Identity Crisis,” and it's really about the search for meaning and self. It’s all about addiction and grief, and also just the joy of finding out and discovering who you are and how you fit into the world. So I do think there's either EP or an album that's gonna tie all this stuff together.
Shameless SF: Last question: We’ve got Outside Lands coming up at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco [Friday August 8th to August 10th]. What can people expect from your performance, whether they've been a longtime fan since you've been releasing singles, or are seeing you for the first time?
AVATARI: Well, I grew up in San Francisco, so it occupies a very special place in my heart. It’s a big part of who I am, and I just love the city so much and what it stands for, both spiritually and aesthetically. It’s such a great place. I’ve been to Outside Lands quite a few times. I love the festival and the vibe there. So just on a personal level, I’m excited to play it. There’s obviously an amazing lineup and a great vibe.
It also kinda throws back to my favorite eras of music, the 60s and 70s, the Summer of Love, all those amazing bands that passed through San Francisco. I think festivals are one of the best things happening in music right now, just as far as discovering new music and creating that vibe for people to have a communal experience around live music.
I am really excited to play my set there. As a music appreciator, but mainly as a musician, my favorite thing is to just get on that stage. My goal is always to give every ounce of what I have and who I am as a person. I love to do it, being an actor and a storyteller. I love when musicians and artists really engage deply on all levels and take people through a journey. So that’s my goal. Whoever comes to the show at Outside Lands, my goal is to give them an opportunity for a fully cathartic experience. That’s always my goal.
I am really excited to, to, to play my set there, um, and so live music, um. As a music appreciator, but mainly as a musician is, is probably my favorite thing, so just get a, get on that stage, uh, you know, my goal is always to give every ounce of what I what I have and who I am as a person, so that's both in the moment and then the, the kind of crafting of the set also. I, I love to do it, you know, being an actor and storyteller, I. I love when um musicians and artists really engage deeply on all levels and take people through a journey. So that's my goal. Whoever comes to the, the show at Outside Lands is to give them uh an opportunity for a fully cathartic experience. And so, that's, that's always, that's always my goal.
AVATARI plays at 12:00 PM on the Panhandle Stage at Outside Lands Festival on Friday, August 8th.
