Rest In Power, Andy Williams

On the 5th of September this year, many of were thrust into the stages of grief and loss as the world received the tragic news of the passing of Andy Williams

This sentence could either mean nothing to you, or everything to you. If it's the prior, it's because you don't know Andy Williams (which is fine and fair), for the latter, it's with a now broken heart you knew of the absolute anomaly of a legend, Andy Williams

Wrestling fans knew Andy as the Butcher from AEW wrestling, fans of heavy music  knew Andy as the guitarist of the band, Every Time I Die. Most who worked & operated within the music and wrestling industry's at any capacity knew him as the nicest, sweetest and most genuine guy around

This loss really rocked me upon hearing the news, Andy was the first person of notoriety who I low-key idolised to meet and give the best interaction a fan could ever have.

It's so rare to meet your idols, and sadly, when a few of us do, they can really let you down by being jerks, for me as a young lad to set my baseline on what it's like to meet your idols based off of my first meeting with Andy, was probably from then impossible for anyone to succeed.

The bittersweet echo from the loss of Andy has been everyone sharing their own experiences meeting and knowing him, which has been a beyond overwhelming wave of voices, all saying how he just literally was the best human ever

My own experience started as this;

I grew up in a hellish landscape of a town up in North Queensland, in which any form of expression drew attention in the form of intimidation and violence. I hated it.

I discovered nu metal first as my escapism identity and outlet for catharsis after first hearing Metallica and knowing distorted guitar music was gonna be my thing. As a teenager Nu metal was all I had but it wasn't enough, I needed something way more raw, cooler, underground, emotional and musically intelligent if not more frantic. Thus entered the dawn of what I call 'white-belt-era-myspace-core'

Meanwhile on the other side of the world back in the year 2000, the fore fathers of the yet to be established 'white-belt-era-myspace-core' were finding allegiance at a music festival called 'Hellfest'. 5 years prior (1995) a band called Dead Guy had released an album called, 'Fixation on a Co-Worker', this album spawned influence so hard, that many of the bands playing more alarm clock riff style breakdowns instead of beatdown type breakdowns documented on the the DVD of this festival, 'Hellfest' from the year 2000 are very Dead Guy inspired, that being Converge, Nora & Every Time I Die

Also from this DVD is the first evidence of this white belt, mall-core aesthetic, being Eighteen Visions and to an extent, Every Time I Die

To Circle back to my teenage era needing something different to Nu Metal for catharsis and art satiation, this Dead Guy inspired style of music was starting to bleed through into my peripherals as the scene and emo culture started to form, as what felt like a bi product of style and media from MTV's Jackass and Bam Margeras CKY revolution

Let me preface by saying, I'm old, like not super old but at the time of writing this, I'm just shy of being forty years old, so just in the reasons of bringing that up, it's worth mentioning that around this formative era, all we had was DVD's

The internet was TERRIBLE back then, especially in my home town. Our economy was awful, it was strict divide with poverty and privilege, in this time of wanting to express ourselves in the way we thought were cool, often incurred as mentioned before, intimidation and violence.

I felt around this time, moshing, community and hardcore really started to appeal to me. If I was walking to a friends house at night, it was likely at any moment eight kids would appear with weapons and try assault you. So to be in tribal mentality, to find my tribe in other kids who liked this new style of music and aesthetic, who all bonded into a community of outcasts but also threw fists in tribal like circles, yet was somehow still safe, comforting and where I would spend most of my adolescence

From this clique are still many friends I have now, and we all bonded around the myspace era. With this whole social climate illustrated, it's now where I was introduced to the art of Andy Williams and his band, Every Time I Die

A DVD was released around this time that I found randomly, it was of an American music festival called, Sounds of The Underground. On this DVD, were live performances from each band, as well as each band partying and being social before their performance section played

I've gone on to love pretty much all these bands featured on that DVD since, when I was in my very early twenties, my house was kind of a party house in my hometown, and this DVD was ALWAYS playing.

We all loved it, it was the perfect mix of what the vibe was at the time, cool M'fers partying and this absolutely EPIC live performances from what were now becoming our new favourite bands.

Out of all these bands, one in particular stood out as the kings of cool and the best/funniest section, that was of Andy and the members of Every Time I Die.

It just made all of us wonder where did they come from, and how can we get more.

Soon after this, Every Time I Die, released their own DVD, called 'Sh*t Happens'. This was everything, it was a full length DVD of these personalities we'd just grown attached to giving more of what we wanted, which fit beautifully in that time of Myspace, scenecore and Jackass Hysteria

It wasn't too long after this, Australia was introduced to it's most impressive and devisive music festival of our era, Soundwave

Every Time I Die were announced on the year 2009 to play, I was pumped. I hadn't left my hometown too much at this point, this was gonna be my third time in the big smoke (Brisbane lol).

At this point, I hadn't met any of my idols, as I was nervously ( as awkward and anxious as I am now, that was ten fold back in this era) walking through Brisbane city, in the sweltering heat, I saw two guys wearing all black, jackets and beanies inside a nearby buidling.

Anyone who was there for Soundwave would have seen them and gone 'oh, band', especially seeing as they were wearing layers of clothing in a QLD summer

I took a deep breath and entered the establishment (Hotel near Botanic Gardens) to investigate further. As I walked into the cool inside air conditioning, all the road & street noises silenced as the doors behind me closed. I could now hear these layer wearing, musician-looking gentleman talking, they indeed had American accents

Then I completely transfixed my gaze, as I recognised this was Andy from Every Time I Die and their drummer at the time, Ratboy. I'm confident my presence made them distracted from their task at hand and they then started to acknowledge my existence

Andy leaned forward and said 'Hey, man!'

I lost all my cool, I just verbal human machine gun let it out like 'Dude, I think you're freakin' awesome, I watched all your DVDs, I've listened to all your albums' he smiled raised his hand as if to welcome me into his arm width and asked 'Wanna get a picture?'

This picture is the thumbnail of this Blogpost and posted in my (at the time of writing this) latest carousel on Instagram

You can see in my 22 year old, blushing face how much that moment meant to me, and still does. I cried when I found out about Andy's passing and still can't think about it too much without getting salty liquid pool in my eyes

After we took this photo, I thanked the boys for their time (I'm not actually sure though, it's all kind of a blur) and was euphoric for the rest of the day in how much that meant to me

Every Time I Die went on to play a (as per usual) iconic set at that years Soundwave, at one point asking the crowd to throw as much rubbish as they could on stage while they played, leading to one of the most chaotic sets I've still seen to this day

My next experience meeting Andy was in Melbourne 2014 after they played an absolutely crushing and chaotic set at the Corner Hotel

At the time, the coolest bar to go to was Cherry Bar in ACDC lane. Also at the time, I lived in a loft with a fair few staff of Cherry Bar, so it was cool having this experience witnessed by some friends I was living with at the time tell it back to me

Essentially, after this performance, myself and friends all went to Cherry Bar, low and behold, there was Every Time I Die, all hanging out

I immidiately had that same reaction I had 5 years prior in Brisbane, so in the moment, I hid, went through my phone until I found the photo Andy took with us. I then walked over and introduced myself and met the whole band, Which was and still is, huge to me

After briefly meeting them all, I pulled out the old photo with myself, Andy & Ratboy (who no longer was their drummer) they all kinda froze, gathered round, huddled and low talked, then gave me back the phone with the photo and said 'Cool, man'

I took this as my opening to talk to Andy all night until one of us left

I'm not sure what initiated it, but I sat on the couch, in a crowded popular Melbourne bar, after their show and talked one on one with Andy for hours following that. I told Andy I was a tattoo apprentice and I really thought it was cool that him & Oliver Peck were friends

Andy proceeded to tell me himself & Oliver were roommates and he would get tattooed whenever someone would cancel last minute on Oliver, which he thought was crazy because Oliver Peck is such a legend. I asked him to show me his Oliver Peck tattoos and Andy did.

Andy that night gave me so much of his time, of which he absolutely didn't need to give me any. Considering my adoration of him, this did and still does, like the first time meeting him, mean SO much to me

My flatmates at the time whom worked at Cherry Bar were all telling me weeks after 'we saw you gushing over this dude we had no idea who he was and you were like aww you're so cool' and I was like, damn, accurate 😅 They re assured it me it was incredibly wholesome and warm to witness. Thank you, Jess :)

The third and sadly last time I shared a room with Andy was in 2016 in Berlin. I'd just wrapped up my year abroad and had REALLY attached to Every Time I Die's latest album, Low teens.

The lore and back story on Low Teens is one of great turmoil and horrific human experience, this is also where I assume (which I can only project, I can never know) the schism within Every Time I Die began to manifest, which would be a slow burn into their greatest show of art and eventual break up

Essentially, not long after I'd last seen them in Melbourne, their singer Keith and his then pregnant wife ran into terrible medical complications in which the chances of survival of Keith's then wife and unborn child were very low and critical. The only ones who actually know what happened during this time are those involved, I can only put together information the band has shared since these events.

What resulted was Keith leaving a world tour to be with his hospitalised wife and unborn child

While he was in this hospital, he wrote all the lyrics to the album, Low Teens, and they are brutal as well as beautiful

To this day, it's probably my favourite album, as it's raw authenticity was unparalleled. Keith's words and the bands performances were the best they'd displayed yet, which is an enormous statement as their prior work itself was all truly great.

During this year of 2016, I was wrapping up my time living in Europe, heading home and stopping in Berlin before doing so to decompress before I migrated back to Australia shores.

During this Berlin stay, My two treats were to get tattooed by my favourite tattoo artist, Uncle Allan and see Every Time I Die as they were on tour promoting their just released album, Low Teens

This performance was Incendiary. I've seen Every Time I Die at this point at almost every opportunity but this performance was different.

The band was tighter, more aggressive and more showmanship than they'd ever been. Andy was more ripped and muscular than ever as you could tell his transformation into a wrestler had well and truly begun. Keith's voice was better than it had ever been and lyrics were more poetic and cathartic than ever & his presence was truly the last time he would stand alongside his bandmates without harbouring resentment and malice

The room was tiny, but filled beyond capacity with bodies, everyone a bigger fan than the next, rolling each person like a turbine throughout. You were either on the floor, in the air, or on the stage, and at no point at either section for too long. One of by far my most favourite gigs ever, it's true, the smaller the venue with the more packed the bodies, the better the vibe

I bought all the merch I could, including Keith's recently released book, Scale. A quick pivot to provide context, Europe is bittersweet for bands, especially Germany.

The government subsidises venues to feed and provide for touring bands, so bands can take opportunity of land mass for a tour and also get fed courtesy of the venue when they tour Europe. The downside to this is, most of the time, there is no backstage area, the band has to get ready with the crowd, in the venue. On a side note to that, in Germany, they prefer Buffet as a way of serving food, so it's always likely in Germany, instead of being served a dish, you are to fill your own dish from a served Buffet

At this particular Berlin show, I wanted to meet and talk with Andy again, however, after I left the performance area, I could see the whole band was exhausted, huddled around a buffet, being slapped on the back and yelled at (in a drunken 'friendly' sort of way) by all the German patrons.

Sometimes I do have the ability to read a room, and in this moment I read the room as a good time to leave the band be, they had plenty if not too much stimulation happening around them

I've seen the band play a couple of times since, but never had the opportunity other than in quick passing to talk to Andy again. I kept up with his career all the way up until recently as we all learnt the tragic news

Every Time I Die unfortunately broke up not too long after the pandemic. It's clear, like any relationship, issues had boiled over, made all the more difficult to navigate seeing as the two brothers in the band, Jordan and Keith had issues that meant a severed connection that ended the band entirely, sadly with a lot of drama and heartache

It seemed the issue was met with animosity and aggression from the brothers to each other, meanwhile Andy was heartbroken, from all accounts, distraught and in tears over the whole thing

Which truly makes it all the more sad, Every Time I Die is now officially a project that only exists in history and can no longer be an active band. We were able to mourn and move on, knowing Andy was on a new trajectory with wrestling, a second impossible dream career he was now achieving success in. Until sadly on Sept 5th this year, Andy suffered a cardiac event which also lead to a severe head trauma, leaving the world in a loss no one saw coming and everyone affected deeply devastated

We're lucky that Andy shared SO much of his journey along the way, were truly unlucky to lose him at all, especially when he had so much to give, however his memory left is one worth preserving, as well as taking inspiration and influence from

The stories I've heard from Andy in podcasts, interviews and conversation are by far some of the best out there. For anyone involved in Hardcore media, you'd be aware of the podcast HardLore, in which Andy was a guest on very early in their run. This still is one of my favourite episodes of theirs, which is such a hard listen now knowing both Andy and Bo are gone, but still somehow comforting as well.

Colin of HardLore tells that Andy was always his biggest supporter and when he released his band, Twitching Tongues album, Disharmony, Andy had him convinced it was one of the best albums of the time.

Which was refreshing for me to learn recently, as this is exactly why I saw Twitching Tongues play in Europe during their run of this album and bought merch as well as their album, because Andy said they were cool, and that was enough for me

Thanks for reading, there's so much more in my notes to share, but I believe this enough from me for now. I'm still so upset by this death, but that's the cost of caring is the grief you feel when they are gone.

Andy shared so many stories over the years and amazing moments on multitudes of media. It's been bittersweet rewatching all the Shit Happens DVD clips since this has all happened, but it's also been a stark reminder that Andy was that awesome. You don't know what you got to it's gone, your whole world misses you, Andy

Rest in Power </3