Interview with Alex Morales

Will:

So I want to talk first about how you found drumming. And what like rah rah you to start playing drums.

Alex:

Cool. So as a even like a little little kid, my parent, my family was super musical growing up like my dad played at a like jazz salsa band. He grew up in Miami, and he liked that for most of his like adolescent and young adult life. And my mom has just always been really into music. So I just was always into music. But I had a cousin named Zach, who, when I was like, six or seven, we went to visit him in Massachusetts, and he had a drum set in his basement and he played the Red Hot Chili Peppers, give it away and I watched him play it and ever since I was like, I need to learn that.

Will:

That's awesome.

Alex:

So I've been into it ever since I got the drums from him. My first drum kit was from him at like, 10 He sent it to me for my birthday. And I've been playing ever since.

Will:

Wow. I didn't know if you had a musical family. Yeah.

Alex:

My mom just she's not musically talented at all. In fact, my mom's kind of tone deaf, but my dad is like very musically talented, played saxophone. He played trumpet. He never did any percussive stuff but he was just always like all about some music stuff. And because of his like wide range and taste in music, because my mom's like, white trash from Maryland. So she loves like a lot of 70s like classic rock band stuff like that. So I have like the rock foundation when my dad was super into like Afro be your OB bunch of like just worldly musics awesome at all that stuff. So I have a pretty like wide taste in music to

Will:

that's, I wanted to ask about that too, because you play metal.

Alex:

But I play like a really niche genre metal too. It's like not super accessible.

Will:

tell me about that.

Alex:

we kind of fall in this weird category, and Richmond is actually like really healthy for this kind of band. There are a lot of us. It's like this thing a lot of people have been calling like grindcore hardcore grindcore. Okay, we take a lot of elements of like music that's typically played between like 180 BPM and 290 BPM. Yeah, and we just play like 45 seconds, a minute and a half long song. But it's like very rooted very much in like traditional hardcore, and like, it's really obvious that a lot of us grew up listening to like Metallica and Slayer and all that shit. But because we also like are into newer stuff. We're always trying to push that boundary and we've just exceeded the normal I guess parameters of like death metal. It's not like caveman road. It's like a lot faster. more aggressive.Will:

That's really cool. And were you guys always that or did you branch into that?

Alex:

So I actually kind of branched into that. Drew and I the other guy in my band. He plays the guitar, insane setup. We played in like a really weird punk band in Harrisonburg. So after high school, I moved up to Harrisonburg and I lived there for like eight or nine years, just not really doing much other than playing music, and I played this band called savage Kenny. And we were like a really weird mix of bluegrass, like, our guitarist did that thing called Chicken picking. And he did a lot of that stuff. he played a lot of banjo, I have always played like kind of at least punk and more upbeat stuff, while keeping like rudiments and doing all the learning and basics. And when we started playing in that our music just started to get really weird because I wanted to just like branch out of any kind of like normal bottling or genre suffocation, yeah, or anything like that. And then drew. So Drew came to the band. And originally he played bass for that band, and he played a fretless bass, which gives it a really weird sound and like punk and then he also like listened to a lot of like Primus and tool and like Nine Inch Nails, and a lot of like the progressive alt rock from like the late 90s and early 2000s into that are like 2005 2010 era. And so all three of those things thrown into a blender just came out really weird. So that was the first band that I had that I was in. That was like kind of successful, but Drew and I always just kind of wanted to keep pushing that limit in that line. Yeah. So I moved here around like six years ago from Harrisonburg, and we convinced her and his wife to move down here and maybe like a year later in June, I've been making this music ever since. The first thing we wrote is the stuff we have up on Bandcamp under our self titled EP, A, we wrote that in January and March of 2020, like right when the pandemic

Will:

Wow, Where'd you guys record that?

Alex:

So we recorded that in Drew's house. We do all of our own recording all of our own production stuff. And savage Kenny we did like some studio time, but I don't really like I don't know, I like having the creative control when I record, and it's not like any producers fault of their own, but like, I can't just put my My brain into someone else's head and be like, make it sound like what I hear in my head. Yeah, so we do a lot of our own in house stuff. I do all of our band art, And I do a lot of the like production stuff, I do a lot of mixing and all that stuff. And then we record over Drew's house, we both invested a bunch of recording equipment, and we just do all the tracking ourselves. And we've actually done a bunch of recordings. By this point, I think when we record this new thing that we're trying to get done in the spring. It'll be like our 7th or 8th recording we've done together, not just with this band, but just like the two of us working on and producing something.

Will:

How are you guys like, planning on promoting that or

Alex:

that's really hard. Just because hiring like we're not signed on to any label, we have a small little collective here called Tired and Pissed, Inc, that we like put out stuff under and there are a can a good handful of like local bands. And once a year we do a compilation album. This past year, we did it and it was raising money for a women's rights group out in American Southwest called indigenous women rising that raises money for indigenous and Latin X women. So like health care, and all that stuff out in Arizona, New Mexico and kind of across the United States where they're based out of there. And we ended up raising like $1,300 for them with the compilation it was like 36 bands contributed a song, we just put it up on Bandcamp Wow, you can donate literally whatever you want. But just like buy it and we do all of our own promotion and so a lot of our promoting any of new material we put out or anything like that as well book shows, and then just flyer the shit out of Richmond because that's just how it's always been. And I don't know, we don't have a company to like do that through. We do all of our own social media stuff. And I'm bad at texting. So let alone doing social media stuff. Yeah, it's not even on my radar. That's, we go to band practice. We have band practice twice a week, and I know every Sunday for the last month we've been like, hey, we need to post something on the Instagram but we still have it.

Will:

Yeah, what's your guy's Instagram?

Alex:

Skin crawler RVA, I think that's it.

Will:

I can follow you guys. I think that's it. Yeah, skincrawlerrva. Oh, yeah. So you're guys's rehearsal process? Yeah. Tell me about like the dynamic. between you guys. Because you're also it sounds like you're, you're like best friends.

Alex:

Yeah. So Drew and I are essentially siblings. At this point. We've been playing music together for like, I think we actually founded savage Kenny was around 11 years ago. So Drew and I've been playing music together for a while. And we've reached a point where like, I actually get annoyed when I meet someone new, and I play with them. And like, we're just not on that same page. Again, it's not any fault of their own Drew, and I've been playing together for so long. So we understand each other's tendencies. Uh huh. And so that's how we write too, and that's another reason why we like it just being the two of us. Yeah, and a vocalist and the vocalist isn't like, They're a member of the band. Obviously, we just changed vocalists. Because our original guy lives in Norfolk. And that was just a logistics nightmare getting him to come up all the time. And we were putting a lot of expectations on him doing work in Norfolk. And that was just unfair. And I don't know if it was a lot. So we got somebody here. But they're only like, I say this with all respect to but they're like a half member of the band because this is like Drew and I's project and we write like almost all of the music. Yes. So are like practice dynamic is we we practice twice a week, like religiously, like that has to happen at least twice a week, not only because we're like just sort of perfectionists. But it's actually like, we have to stay physically conditioned to play the stuff that we're playing, playing things that are so fast, like, I've literally never played anything. As fast as we are writing music right now. We just wrote a song that's at like 220 BPM. And so I'm blast beating blink, like 220 BPMs. I literally, I have to go to the gym, to stay condition so that I can do it for like 40 minutes at a time and when we take time off, so we usually try to take like a week off after a show. And I noticed that first practice after a week, we started playing with a click regularly it will slow down like no one's business. And it usually takes about a week to get us back up to stamina to keep that sustained tempo time, because we've written enough music now to be like, 45 minutes long of us so we can like throw down for a 45 minute show for like an hour or something like that. But like, it's just a lot of energy. It's really, really high intensity. Yeah, that long. So we'll show up on Wednesday and on Thursdays because we schedule our practices around football because we're fucking losers. So on Thursdays, we rehearse our set, we just go through all the songs that we already have written and done, so that we have like a show ready so we get offered a show we can be like, yeah, we'll totally take that because we're we're always in practice with so the show set and then on Monday or Sundays. We practice in the morning and that's like our writing will be get together and we'll start to write new things drew will show up with probably like 10 or 12 riffs. And he'll just play them, we'll set a tempo to it. And I'll jam out a drum beat until I get something that I like. And usually our writing process is like a really long, long thing. Like so right now we have like, six, I've been calling them like seeds. But like, we have like six song structure basics that we're just playing every Sunday, and coming up with new every, every time like something new, something new added, taken away, we change something, something like that. And we keep it all fresh, too, which is really nice. And it'll help in the recording process a lot. We're trying to like develop our songs more, if that makes sense. So they're just two of us did one of our songs sound like Song skeletons like there's not drew can't really run with a countermelody because he's literally the only one playing melody. And so adding, we just added a vocalist, and we're expecting them to do like electronic stuff, but not like a cheesy lame like metal core keyboard type electronics. There's a lot of room I think for like atmospheric stuff, we're going to try and incorporate like some breakbeats into some things, which would be weird. I think it'd be cool if we could pull it off in the right way. So there's like stuff we can do that I think can add another element. But a lot of our practice dynamic is mostly us just trying to like, write new things and stay in shape.

Will:

But it sounds like you're like focused and driven.

Alex:

We're super focused. At this point, because I've been playing music for like this long and still doing this. I'm almost 40 And I've been doing this this long. Like I don't know, I don't really want to fuck around and like, play bullshit local shows anymore. I'm past that point. So we play out of Richmond as much as possible, which is a really big thing. So that's how you like, really, I think you like growing audiences playing outside of your hometown, one of the coolest pieces of advice I ever got from a band to my high school band because I was in another band in high school that like, we were a popular local band, but we never did anything outside of Chesapeake a we're on high schools. But be like, I don't know, we never really thought about that. Yeah, we always sort of expected it to just happen. But it's kind of like I don't know, we didn't realize that there was a lot of effort put into booking shows outside of your own town and like needing to raise that kind of like yeah, this about yourself. So once I got into savage Kenny, we started doing that. And I heard a thing from a guy in Chesapeake who was like, Dude, don't ever be a local band. Just don't just just keep moving. Just play out. Yeah, never be popular in your hometown. So I applied that lesson to the first band. I was in after high school, which was established Kenny up in Harrisonburg, and we started playing like North Carolina and New York, New Jersey, Philly, Miami. I played all over the place now. Pretty, pretty regularly. I've been on both coasts, I played Middle America, US, Canada, we did the southern coast, or the southern border of Canada, which we really that was super awesome to Canadians fuckin throat out. That was great. I love New England, the Mid Atlantic East Coast is probably like my favorite place to play. But like legitimately not playing in your hometown is probably the biggest part of like, keeping me focused. Yeah. Being like a successful band, if that makes sense.

Will:

Because then you can play the same show two nights in a row, right? To completely new people

Alex:

right. Yeah.Yeah. And you're still growing your audience, right? Because like, having a really big draw in your hometown is great and all but like, what are you going to pull like maybe 50, 60 people at a show maybe an hour away from your house. So the ability to have like a presence in establishment and other places not only like guarantees, you have people coming to your show, when you are like touring, you're out because that's where you make all your money. But it grows your audience in such a way that like people are ordering your T shirts from like, Massachusetts. Yeah, that's cool New York and shit, which is just it's really cool. It's, it's very like connective. And it makes me feel like I'm part of a much bigger community than just like the Richmond

Will:

right. So how do you guys go to a new town? And like, what was that process like just getting a

job as a band?

Alex:

It was really frustrating to just be me on my facebook hitting people up like as Alex Morales or even just the band me like hey, we're coming through on this day. Can you get me a show? Yes. Show promoters fucking suck.

Will:

Yeah, I'm running the problem too

Alex:

gatekeeping that happens in so many music scenes is infuriating, because no one wants to a a lot of promoters don't want to risk. I'm sorry. It's gonna take my thick ass sweater off. I'm still in my teacher clothes. So promoters don't want to take the risk of booking a show that has no one come out to it. Yeah, and headlining spots. reserved for people who play shows that have draw, but if you're an out of town band, you're not also they're not going to just book you on a possible opening show. So there's risk involved for them which I understand the thing that frustrates me the most about promoting shows or trying to book shows outside of town is when those guys literally just don't respond.

Will: They're all very flakey.

Alex:

Yeah, ghosts yes. Almost all of them and it's infuriating. Just tell me no. Just tell me no. And I'll go ask somebody. That's all I don't want to wait like two weeks to find out. Oh, this guy just never texted me back. Yeah. So I did find out that once we started tired and pissed with a bunch of the other bands here. So that's like an established name. When I moved here, I saw them promoting tired and pissed volume one. It's a local band, like from here, a bunch of dudes who started this thing to just with their friends just put on music and book shows. So we joined we've been a part of tired and pissed now for like two years. And I found out that if I just say I'm part of a record label, which really those words have no meaning I don't have any money. We have no capital. I'm not a company. We're not a registered LLC or anything like that. But if I just say, Hey, my name is Alex and I work with a record label called tired and pissed out of Richmond, Virginia, and I'm trying to book a tour for say, a skincrawler in Maryland. Yeah, instantly will hear back from almost any bar that I send that email to and they'll be like, oh, yeah, I got this dude. We can get you the show and got a lineup put together. So it's like a legitimacy thing. I feel like like if I'm responding if I'm seeking shows and booking stuff through like a label, it shows that I take my music seriously. Or that like at least the group does whoever's involved enough to consider it like professional enough to get a label. Yeah, and be that there are other people invest in it already. Cool. Which those other people are just me and my fucking pot smoking friends who make death metal music, but whatever it gives us an air of legitimacy. And we ended up getting booked shows out of town, which is kind of frustrating, but really nice that I know to do that.

Will:

Yeah, it's a good trick. is are there things that like you guys don't like about the Richmond scene that kind of drive you away?

Alex:

So yeah, there are a bunch of so the Richmond the Harrisonburg music scene is incredibly inclusive. It's super inclusive, like you and me could put together a band tonight, make a set and book a show in Harrisonburg in like a month? Oh, yeah, no problem, we could find like four bands to play with people would come out, it would be a really good time, here in Richmond. Now, if we don't have anything recorded, no one, we're gonna have a really hard time finding a spot. If we don't have anything recorded, and no one knows who we are, we're probably also not going to get any, like, we're gonna have a really hard time booking a show. And until we go through the proper avenues and channels, which there's not like flyers with that info around. You literally just have to meet those people. Yeah. There. You're not getting booked here. So I consider the Richmond scene to be kind of exclusive, which is really obnoxious. And I don't think that's like healthy for a music scene. Yeah. In the heavy metal scene, specifically, it's getting better. Because there are enough people now who have heavy metal bands here in Richmond who are really frustrated by not being able to book show. Yeah, so there's so many of us now that like, alright, well, we're just going to book our own shows. So like, a lot of the big bands that come through here booked through booking agents that don't live in Richmond. There's this dude named ace who runs the Richmond hardcore Instagram page, and he books exclusively books, the warehouse, the camel and the broadberry. He books, all three of those, like super regularly, he lives in LA, and he plays in a band that bills itself as being from here, he doesn't live here. He lives in LA. He went to VCU at some point. But so he is like the guy that you need to know. And he doesn't live here. He doesn't give a shit about any of the bands or the scene.

Will:

That's so annoying. Alex:

Yeah, it is frustrating. And he's the only guy who will book and three of the coolest places to book shows that are in Richmond with bigger bands.

Will:

I love the broadberry.

Alex:

So I can book the broadberry like on any like down night with a proper press kit in the right lineup. But not if I want to book it with like a really big deal band that's coming through that maybe shot me a message on Instagram. So that's something that does happen to the metal scene, I don't know outside of the metal scene. But the metal scene is from what I can tell or at least along the Atlantic seaboard is super interconnected through Instagram cool. They're like four or five pages that I follow that a lot of people just promote the shows through. And I see shows from Maine to Florida, like fairly regularly with kind of big deal bands that are on the national touring circuit. Now that hit up maybe like eight people on Instagram and they will go through and just message people they know in bands to try and book local shows. It's like a really interesting social media network. But like say converge messages me from Boston and they're like, Hey, we're coming to Richmond and we want to book a show. Unfortunately, no one is going to book them where I book because I book really small venues and converge is going to pack out like the fuzzy cactus or where's the other place? We just recently played? Bandidos. Bandidos is a space like this, like the size of like your party room here. They need to play like the camel or the broadberry. Or like an actual venue, yeah. And I'm not going to be able to put that band because that band is going to be booking that venue through a tour manager through that guy, Ace.

Will:

Wow. So just one guy just one guy just

Alex:

controls most of the really big deal national touring acts for the heavy metal scene that come through Richmond.

Will:

So oh, he's only a heavy metal guy.

Alex:

Yeah, he only books the heavy metal acts here in Richmond. As far as the rest of the music scene here in Richmond goes I'm not actually like too tapped in. I keep up with a couple of friends who play in like some of the jazz bands and I keep up with the hip hop artists here. Yeah, really like Richmond hip hop. I'm cool. But I'm not like in the scene. Ya know the ins and outs of like booking and all that stuff.

Will:

We're like, just starting to we like got a couple of shows with this guy who's like building two new venues. Okay, and his name is Justin. And he replaced cured you know, sullivan's. Yeah, we're playing at the new place. Cure on Friday. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, thank you, obviously but it's we're having all those same problems with the promoters they're just like it

shows like he's super flaky and like they I don't know I feel like

Alex:

they feel like they decide what's cool and what isn't. Do just let us fucking play yeah, just let me fucking play.

Will:

And we finally got in there and brought like 80 people and like that was it good. And now that now they're like chasing after us

Alex:

you know, it's funny as we finally booked the show here in Richmond and we just have been hit up in the last like six months with like, 10 show offers.

Alex:

Oh, sweet. So it really is a matter of just breaking into the scene. Yeah, initial break in. It's just hard, man. That's a tough fucking scene to break into. And where I grew up down in Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads area. That scene fucking sucks. Yeah, heavy metal scene down there fucking is like the most gatekeeping you don't hang out with us. We're not gonna fucking book your band kind if youre not in the scene. It's infuriating. Wow. It is getting better since I moved away. But like definitely when I was like down there in like the early 2000s Playing in like a fucking hardcore early hardcore band. It just didn't. It wasn't working all that well.

Does.

Will:

Does metal as a genre like feel culty sometimes?

Alex:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay. Yeah. 100% I think I think every like sub genre of music kind of has an ability to do that. But the metal scene especially feels like kind of exclusive to me, or not necessarily exclusive because it's actually made up comprised of like some of the most inclusive like people and progressive minded people. Yeah, yeah. But I think it's really intimidating to a lot of people because it's comprised of like, really intimidating, angry looking people. We always make this joke about my band is the three of us are incredibly nice, guys. We're super nice people. We just make really mean music. Like we're making we just put out a t shirt design that on the front has the band logo, and on the back it says nice people mean riffs.

Will:

That's great. That's great. Yeah. I'm gonna make sure this is recording because that was gold.

Alex:

Yes, it is really like I do firmly believe like, the metal scene is probably one of the most welcoming and inclusive scenes, especially for people who don't feel like they belong in a lot of other things, or in a lot of other places. But it would be intimidating and intimidating thing to just show up to.

Will:

And there's also kind of that like, I mean, I don't know metal that well, but I feel like there's kind of also that like, stick it to the man aspect.

Alex:

Oh 100% Yeah. 100% Well, so if you think about like the foundations of that entire genre, it comes from like, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Ozzy, Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and all of those, all of those groups. All three of those English bands are like a kind of protest music in general. And be there we're just breaking it's very, very, very deeply counterculture. It's very like yeah, critiquing the culture at large and like, I don't know if there's a lot to criticize going on right. Now, sometimes it gets a little problematic, and especially in the heavy metal scene, sometimes the aggression attracts like some of the worst elements of our society. So here in Richmond there are like a few neo Nazi hardcore bands that are like kind of excommunicated by a majority of us we're just like, Yeah, you guys are terrible people.

Will:

Oh my god you

Alex:

but it's like a common thing. And the heavy metal scene really is like, yeah, yeah. Because so a lot of the heavy metal stuff also comes from like Norway and Sweden and Denmark. argon, there are some pretty serious white supremacists there. I'm not saying that like culturally, that's something that like they hold up and hold in high esteem. But like there are those people who come from that region who are very much like black metal is for like the Aryan peoples.

Will:

Whoa, I did not know.

Alex:

Yeah, no, that's like a thing. So in the heavy metal scene, you come to like, recognize certain symbols, like that are those things. And like, a lot of the guys who show up were covered in like Viking tattoos. And you'll, if you're, when you're in the scene, and you're in it, like you learn to recognize it, you can totally spot those dudes from like a mile away and be like, Oh, you've got like, a guns hammer on your hand, you probably hate black people.

Will:

Whoa, that I'm so shocked by that

Alex:

it is shocking. Just to like, acknowledge and become aware of but once you're aware of it, and you realize that like most of the scene, not only like, refuses to let those people participate in our scene, but we do our best to like excommunicate them. Yeah. Violently if need be, from time to time. I'm kind of a small deal. So I don't really engage in a lot of that, but it has happened. And like, I don't know, it's really hard to have people who want to make a scene XClusive in an inclusive scene. Does that make sense? Yeah. Because it's so counterculture. We want people who feel like they don't belong, right. You feel welcome in our scene. And yeah, people who are exclusive just, especially like that. Because that's like a whole different level of discrimination. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's not we are better than you because I listened to more obscure music than he that's like my skin colors different color than you. Yes. Sucks.

Will:

that's fucked. Do you guys get Do you feel like, like, you get stigma kind of from outside the community?

Alex:

A little bit? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Especially so I teach, right? I have worked in a very, very, very professional community with very nice people who have a and this is something I noticed, because I was a career switcher. I was a chef for a long time. Oh, save a teacher. Thank you. Um, a lot of those people have been teaching their whole lives. They're very, very nice people. They weren't nice colleges. They enjoyed their family time. They were raised in a lovely setting. They're usually pretty like financially well off, it didn't really have to struggle for much. You know, they're great people. I talked about that heavy metal band, and I get that like, look like, we like worship the devil and do drugs and shit. No, I don't do these things. You're just making like a snap judgment decision, because I told you I play the heavy metal band. Right. And I think because I also work with a lot of older colleagues that that's the reaction they have because of the whole like Satanic Panic of the 90s.Yeah, know what that is?

Will:

Yeah, I know that. There's like

Alex:

that was when they were saying like d&d was brainwashing.

Will:

I love d&dAlex:

Me too. Yeah. So there was this period in the 90s, where a bunch of kids killed themselves because their d&d campaign who were crazy, those kids were crazy. And like there was obviously way more going on than just d&d, right. But so because of that, it got super popular and a couple of news hosts started saying things that like d&d, and heavy metal music were signs that your child is worshipping the devil and was at risk youth and all that stuff that just comes from people who like things that are maybe like counterculture, like, I wear all black all the time. And I'm not like a particularly angry or death worshipping person. I just like wearing black all the time. That's like my preferred color of clothing.

Will:

It's not that right, right, right.

Alex:

Yeah. And that's like, that's the stigma. And then I feel like a lot of people when they find out like you're in a hardcore band or something they think like if they come to the show they're gonna get like beat up or they assume that you have to have like a mohawk and facial piercings and like, I don't know you don't have to look like us to be one of yeah, like I wear a polo shirt and khakis to work literally every single day.

WillLYeah. Have you watched the new seasons of Stranger Things? Yeah, yeah, all of this literally all of it. It's so good, but it's kind of got that thing going on. Like the whole Satanic Panic.

Alex:

Oh, well, yeah, that last season of it is actually directly an allegory like to that yeah, that's what they're talking about for sure. Yeah, I love that. I don't know the whole shows great

Will:

show. Yeah. All right. I think we're almost at time but I'll ask you like

a couple more.

Alex:

Like in no rush you're the only thing you're cutting into my time for doing is Rocket League right now. I really Raju is great. Yeah. My kids found out that I play Rocket League and they keep bugging me for my Steam ID and like asked me at the end of the school be friends like that until I'm done teaching you

that's so funny. Do your kids know that know about your bandso it got out despite my I did not advertise it's not something that like I want them to know about just because I do teach and that is like the chosen battleground for the culture wars in Virginia and the last thing I want is some like crazy right wing parents right huge stink because yeah, their kids social history teacher also because I teach history. So That's like the hot topic issue. The last thing I need is some parent being like, "some liberal communist faggot playing in a death metal band." No, like, that's the last thing I need. So I did not advertise anything like that. But some kid found me a couple of years ago, they found my band on Instagram and they have like, publicize it to the student body. So I still have kids now who will come up to and be like, Oh, I listen to your band. You guys are awesome, like thanks. So don't tell people Luckily, I have stage name on the band camp. So I have like plausible deniability. Because on my badge, it says David Morales is my first name, but I go by Alex on everything. And so I have plausible deniability. I'd be like, that's some guy named Alex. I'm not Alex. That's crazy. Even though it's like pictures of me. Yeah. Some kids like it. Some kids think it's like really weird. Some kids think it's really weird that I play in like a death metal band. But I've actually been shocked that more kids than not have been like, that's really cool. And my kids I would never guess, and I don't think would have checked out that kind of music without like me being their teacher. I've been exposed to something like that. And I think I've like broaden their horizon, which is cool. That's really cool. Even if they hated it. I was like, Cool. I'm happy you at least like listened. That's great. You understand me now is more of a real person than just a teacher. Yeah. Kids always just think that like, you know, I live at the school and I'm not like a full fleshed out person.