After high school I dove head-first into the touring Rock band circuit with my band, The Semester.
Throughout school I never had any intentions to attend college.
All I wanted to do was get on a stage and travel the world.
The band I was in was going to make it to the top.
I was with my best friends, and nothing could hold us back.
That is, until I got kicked out of the band.
One phone call is all it took to completely flip my entire world upside down.
I was crushed.
This band was everything to me and I had no idea what I was going to do next.
Little did I know, this was a stepping stone to greater achievements.
Around the same time, another band in town called Four Letter Lie was looking for a new drummer.
I joined the band and within a matter of months, we were signed by Victory Records and were touring full time with bands like Captain Heavy rotation on my stereo.
After a couple of really great years with Four Letter Lie, I felt it was time to enter the next step of my musical expedition.
I wanted to be speaking with more than my hands and feet, so I decided to step to the front of the stage and let my voice and ideas be heard.
Four Letter Lie was doing very well, but I knew deep down I wanted something else.
I had to leave a state of comfort for what I believed in, and that's what my new music was going to represent.
The very next day I started MOD SUN.
The name MOD SUN is an acronym for Movement On Dreams, Stand Under None.
I was going to make empowering music about positively and happiness.
I was now a front man holding the microphone and writing the lyrics.
I was no longer Derek Smith per se, I was now MOD SUN.
In the summer of 2009 my good friends Scary Kids Scaring Kids came to town as part of Vans Warped Tour.
I went to the festival and witnessed them putting on an amazing show in front of thousands of fans screaming out every lyric.
I was blown away at how adoring their supporters were.
Afterwards, in their bus singer Tyson Stevens asked me: "
Do you have a job right now?" I replied with a huge grin on my face. "
Well, not exactly".
He said, "why don't you come on the rest of this tour with us?" Now, keep in mind at this point I had just begun working on my new music as MOD SUN and knew I needed to focus on it and start to build.
But, I had also just watched the movie Yes Man a few days earlier.
I loved the movie so much, I vowed to say yes to every opportunity for a month straight.
So, true to my word, I looked my friend Tyson right in the eyes and said; "
Let's go!" I literally jumped on the bus right then and there with no luggage and headed to the next city.
This decision would prove to be an extremely significant turning point in my life.
The first concert I ever attended was Vans Warped Tour 2001 with Blink182, Newfound Glory, Sum 41, Alkaline Trio, Alien Antfarm, and many more.
The moment I crossed those front gates and entered this micro world of creativity and individuality, I knew what I wanted to do.
I looked at that stage and decided: no matter what it takes, I would be up there some day.
Now, here I was travelling along with the festival.
That first night on the bus, I played the very first songs I recorded as Mod
Sun to the Scary Kids Scaring Kids guys.
And they loved them.
I was so enthused just to hear opinions, but the fact they were so positive about my own music really blew me away.
Every day the band would do a meet and greet with hundreds of kids and they immediately mentioned the possibility of me rapping to these people in line waiting to get an autograph.
The guys pulled a few strings and before you knew it, I was doing my very first performances as Mod
Sun, on the one tour I had always dreamed of being on.
Of course, this wasn't an official set, but it was definitely as step in the right direction and I knew I'd be there soon enough.
I finished up the rest of the summer with them on the festival making nothing but memories.
I formed many great friendships and even reignited the friendship between Pat Brown and myself.
We had somewhat of a falling out after I was kicked out of The Semester.
He was now on tour with his new band called Sing It Loud and doing very well.
Not long after Warped Tour ended, the boys in Scary Kids Scaring Kids contacted me with one more opportunity.
They needed a drummer to play for them on their 2 final tours.
The first was a 65 day tour hitting every major city in North America.
The second was a 30 day tour in Australia and New Zealand.
I agreed on one condition: That I got to open up each show as Mod
Sun.
They agreed and within a matter of weeks I re entered the touring circuit, but this time as a solo artist playing sold out shows around the world.
From this point on, my career would continue to grow and eventually blossom into what I am today.
If my world hadn't been flipped into utter chaos so many years back, I wouldn't be here.
Every struggle leads to greatness.
There's no such thing as hard.
Chapter 7- Your Best Mistake: Wake up a student, go to sleep a teacher
One of my favourite stories in history involves the legendary inventor Thomas Edison.
We're all familiar with the name, but not many people know just how inspirational his life was.
Around the age of 12, young Thomas noticed his hearing was deteriorating.
Soon he would eventually go deaf.
Instead of letting such a drastic change affect him in a negative way, he considered it to be an asset.
It allowed him, he said, to work with less distraction and to sleep deeply at night, un disturbed by outside sounds.
How's that for a bright side, right?
One major misconception is that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb.
What Edison actually invented was the long lasting lightbulb.
The original lightbulb was very impractical.
It wasn't bright enough, and would burn out daily.
Edison had a passion to fix that.
For years, he made many attempts at finding a solution for the bulb, but just couldn't figure it out.
A majority of these attempts were highly publicised, and people began losing faith in his ability to solve the problem.
During an interview, Edison was asked if he felt like a failure. "
Young man," he replied, "why would I feel like a failure?
And why would I ever give up?
I know now definitively over 9000 ways that an electric lightbulb will not work.
Success is almost in my grasp." Eventually, on his 10, 000th attempt, Edison invented one of the most vital objects in our world.
Every slip up, malfunction, or accident he made was used as a valuable piece of knowledge.
Your worst mistake is your best advice.
The more mistakes you make only means the more guidance you have to offer.
You should embrace this mishaps with an understanding that you are learning from them.
You now know how not to do something, and that is just as valuable as knowing how to do something.
This is where rout universal IQ begins to rise.
Intelligence isn't intended to be personal acclimation.
It's meant to be shared.
We all enter this world as a blank page.
Throughout our lives we fill our pages with information that we find personally stimulating.
Knowing something someone else doesn't know will not make you more intelligent than the next person.
This only means you've been asked a question the other person hasn't yet encountered.
The first time we hear about anything, we know nothing about it.
Therefore, no one is superior to anyone else, but we can all learn from each other.
If you're not trying to teach, you haven't learned a thing.
In a song of mine called Hug Life, I wrote: "you can never learn if you're always right.
Remember that next time you're in a fight.
Instead of planning out your comeback, let their point of view be inside."
For a good portion of my life, I thought I was always right.
I would argue until I felt my point outweighed the opposition, and in the end if it didn't, I would storm out of the room.
I didn't know it at the time, but when I acted out in this way, my outlook and ideas became less valid to the people around me.
I would end up pushing away the people I enjoyed communicating with.
Finally, I decided to make an attitude modification.
The very next day I went on to just listen to others speak.
There's a serious difference between hearing and listening.
Someone who hears you it thinking about his or her reply while you're still speaking.
Nothing you say is actually digested as food for thought.
Whereas someone who listens will turn the voice in his or her head off while you're speaking.
There is a reason we have 2 ears and 1 mouth.
Listen more than talk.
Once we start really listening, the words we say become much more powerful.
What comes out of your mouth will determine the rise of demise of your intention.
The people that surround you are either working for you, or against you, and how you interact with these individuals will be the deciding factor.
Chapter 8- Peer Pressure: Building the army
How many times have you heard someone say: "
Fuck what people think!" If you're anything like me, it's a theme that surrounded your entire high school career.
In those days, all I wanted to do was stand out.
My hair went through so many cuts and dyes, it's a surprise I still have so much of it.
I wore scarves, band tees, and tight jeans, and instead of a backpack, I carried a briefcase.
I listened to music that no one heard of, and that's the way I liked it.
I learned early on that the outsiders of the school were usually the most interesting to me, so that's what I became.
The previous friendships I made through sports would remain, making me somewhat of an insider on the outside.
Looking back, I never really showed my true identity to any of my high school peers.
I was trying so hard to find myself that I got lost along the way.
When I hung with my skateboard and music clique, I tried to hide the athlete in me, and when I was with my sports clique, I hid the artist in me.
I lived in a constant state of transformation with no destination.
I wasn't being true to myself, which contaminated my intentions.
So many people think that finding yourself is narrowing down to one specific answer.
There is no limit on how many you's you can find within.
I finally accepted the array of different people I was and became an individual.
From that day on, I was able to communicate with others like never before.
Now that I was confident and proud of whom I was, I could share my story and earn a spot in people's minds.
Every positive thought is a brick in the foundation of our lives.
No one can take away any of the bricks we've laid down, but others can help us build the foundation.
