Artist Exclusive: Buddy Nielsen of Senses Fail

Three days out from his national tour with Rise Against and The Used, Senses Fail founder and frontman Buddy Nielsen ties up loose ends and chores before heading out for life on the road again, bringing with him, eagerly awaited work from the band’s latest album, “Hell is in Your Head”. 

You’re an Aquarius Sun.

That’s right. (laughs)

On the track “Death by Water” you write about horoscopes and looking to them as a type of coping mechanism.  What’s your relationship to astrology like?

I'm open minded for sure. I don't know if I'm set on it guiding any decisions I make– but it's definitely sometimes interesting to see the similarities. I think there's got to be some correlation between the moon and tides and all that. It's kind of hard to think that we're not somehow influenced by massive bodies moving in space-time; it seems obvious. I don't know how you can quantify it.  There has to be some connection, you can't really separate it from the whole.

Walk me through your approach to meditation, how have you made the practices yours?

At one period I was meditating every day for like four years– no matter what.  I was doing retreats; extended practice…I kind of just go through modes and phases of it, the more you do it, the less you need to sit to have there be benefits. I drop into mindfulness a lot; not by just sitting—most of the meditation practice I've done has been Vipassanā, which is very O.G. and has the four foundations of mindfulness: Mindfulness of body, Mindfulness of breath, Mindfulness of feelings, Mindfulness of Dhamma. Those are really the things that are like my anchor; complex and simple at the same time.  

It’s the complete awareness of all running senses.

The four foundations are like your sense organs coming in contact with sensations and the way in which your mind interprets them and starts to proliferate thoughts based upon your contact, through your sense organs of the external world. And then Dhamma is all the teachings of Buddhism. So when you're doing mindfulness practice, you're supposed to sort of move through these, not linearly, but in a way that you have mindfulness of body. “I'm aware that I am sitting. I'm aware that I am standing. I am aware that I am, you know, in a chair. I am aware of where my body is.” And then you're feeling, like, “I feel my feet on the floor, I feel my skin, I feel my breath arising”…and then your mindfulness of mind, you start to be able to watch your mind and you label it, like, “Is this pleasant, unpleasant or neutral?”

Sometimes you have to force practice–  you have to have some level of training. I think Buddah had said “practice, like your hair's on fire.”  I'm always sort of thinking through the lens of meditation. There has to be some level of training your mind and training your body and training awareness. That's the rewiring, the discipline.

Do you consider yourself to be a Buddhist?

I guess I'd be considered a Buddhist/Atheist or like a Post-Buddhist, because I don't really necessarily believe in reincarnation the way that it's taught in fundamental Buddhism, I kind of ignore that section.  It's like, you can't really be fully Christian, if you don't believe in Jesus Christ, you can be Christ-like, but it's like, the thing, you have to believe – that Jesus Christ is the son of God or else you're not fully Christian.  But ultimately, you’re not supposed to be too attached to the teachings. I believe one of the last teachings the Buddah said was to “be a lamp onto yourself”, which is pretty much to guide your own practice and not be an island and to not be beholden to someone else's practices.

How do those teachings play into Senses Fail?  

If I didn't change the perspective of my life through Buddhism, I don’t know if i’d still be making music, or where I would be. It’s hard for the Buddhism to have not directly affected the band.  

Do you have any experience with Kundalini Yoga and Breathwork?

Kundalini and Pranyama can be pretty destabilizing, depending on who you are. I had a Kundalini experience that was pretty wild, a super out-of-body experience, I’ve only done it once. Kundalini has been a bit re-branded, but if you look at where it came from, it has been around for thousands of years. It gave me a lot of insight into reality, in a way that was destabilizing for me, but I guess that’s what needed to happen.  I don’t know if it’s any more true than anything else, but it can certainly fast-track people.  The insights were more like ultimate truths of sort of the universal reality, but I don’t know if they are useful for operating in this reality: What am I going to do with that information? Like where do I take that? If I just proceed down that path and transcend—What is the purpose of being here? Pretty much, what I realized is that everything is fine, everything is going to be okay, there's nothing to ever be afraid of.  When people have ayahuasca trips, to me that is even more dangerous, at least with Kundalini, you don't automatically have that experience, there needs to be some training and knowledge there. With ayahuasca, you’re really ripping something open that should be trained for, people spend 20 years getting ready, and when westerners go and have these experiences, I'm not quite sure it’s as useful. They are trying to get out of what they should be working through. I’m not supposed to disappear into the ether. I’m supposed to explain it all through music, not by throwing myself into the void.

Your dedication to martial arts has been a growing part of your life.  Have you discovered any parallels between training for competition in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and performing with Senses Fail? 

Oh yeah, absolutely; it’s definitely similar. I think a lot of people get super stressed about competing, just because they're not used to going out in front of people. I don't have that same stress level.  I'm gonna get anxious because I’m excited, but it's not debilitating. It’s just competitiveness. I don't necessarily think it comes from fear.  I have the ability to just sort of snap into that. 

Do you think that presence of mind gives you an advantage over some of your competitors?

I definitely lose, so clearly not that much! (laughs)

Where do you feel the most thrill and excitement around this tour and album?

I mean, this stuff is now old to me. I'm in a different place already.

So, it's sort of like when it comes out, it’s like, okay, cool. I can move on. The process for creating these songs happened like three years ago. So for sure, it’s not the same, as like, “Oh, I just created this and I can't wait to show people.” Usually once it gets out to the public, it's more about being able to move on to the next project and I feel like I could be creative again with a purpose, that's what gets me most excited…excited to move on, rather than the excitement of wanting feedback about it. Once you put it out, you don't have control over whether people like it or don't like it, or what they say about it or what they think about it, it's all through their own lens of whatever their thing is. I don't have much expectations, I don't have control over it. So that's where I like to live.

It’s a practice of non-attachment.

It’s not really a reflection on me at all. I'm not absolving myself. If somebody doesn't like it, because X reason that might be, you know, true. But it also might be partially because of what they're experiencing in their own life.

I like performing and touring and traveling and that is really what music allows me to do. So it's like the creative process happens and then there's a massive length of time in-between all that; it's just the nature of it. You kind of have to not get hung up on it—you create it and are excited about it and then move on to other things in life.

It's brand new for people, you know?  But it's been…it’s reached for me. It reaches the end of its life. Once it gets released, it’s like, okay, now it’s the beginning for everybody else.

And now you can let go, you’re free to give life to something new.

I look at it as the end of it being mine really. It's no longer mine.

Once a piece of art is created, what is it? How much does it belong to you after that?

Grab Tickets and Catch Senses Fail out on tour near you!

https://senses-fail-official.myshopify.com/pages/tour

Pick up the new album “Hell is in Your Head” out now! 

https://sensesfail.com/collections/music

Keep up with Buddy on instagram @budthechud