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A year after losing a bandmate, Tickle Me Pink balances looking back with moving forward.
It’s February 12, 2009, in Portland, Oregon, and Fort Collins’ Tickle Me Pink is shooting the video for their new single, “Madeline.” This shoot is a far cry from most Hollywood video sets, which often feature loads of actors and paid extras. “Madeline” is a personalized tribute, filled with real fans and their photographs of loved ones lost.
For the band, the shoot was cathartic and a way to say goodbye. Amid the collage of photos that serves as the video’s backdrop, there is one image that stands out: former Tickle Me Pink bassist and founding member Johnny Schou, who died one year ago next month.
“The ‘Madeline’ video definitely hit close to home,” says lead singer and (now) bassist Sean Kennedy, 21. “There is a part where everyone is hanging up photos of a loved one they had lost, and our manager went and put up a picture of Johnny. I was doing pretty OK until that point, and then it just kind of hit me.”
One year ago, Tickle Me Pink went from buzz band to tragedy literally overnight. Just days away from releasing their indie-label debut record and launching their first national tour, the quartet of barely twentysomethings were gaining momentum with Warped Tour sets and sold-out local gigs. The band’s first single, “Typical,” was just starting heavy rotation on KTCL 93.3. Then on July 1, 2008, the same day their record, Madeline, was released by Wind-Up Records, Schou, 22, was found dead in the band’s Fort Collins home. The momentum came to a crashing halt.
On the Road
It’s been a long road since that fateful day. The album-release party at Denver’s Independent Records became a memorial service, and it was unclear whether Tickle Me Pink would go on or simply become a blip of heartbreakingly lost potential on the local music radar.
After a little deliberation, the boys decided to continue, both to honor Schou (“I know that if we regretted stuff, he would slap us in the face and say, ‘You guys worked hard for this,’” says Kennedy) and because the road offered them a needed opportunity to get away (“There were so many familiar things,” he says, “so us leaving, I thought, was a good thing at the time”).
They launched into a more than seven-month-long national tour July 18, less than three weeks after losing their bandmate. Guitarist Joey Barba, 23, who had grown up with the band and played with them occasionally in the past, filled in (Kennedy switched from guitar to bass), joining fellow original band members drummer Stefan Runstrom, 21, and guitarist Steven Beck, 22.
Barba, who was living in L.A. at the time and had flown home for the funeral, only got in a couple of practices before the first show in San Diego. “It was shocking, given the circumstances,” he says. “We hadn’t had proper time to fully mourn, I don’t think, at that point. We were just kind of on the road.”
At a headlining show in Denver at the Marquis Theater in March, one of the last of more than a hundred performances since last summer, the band still had an infectious energy, despite the exhaustion. They had crisscrossed the country several times, going from city to city in their 15-passenger van, only stringing together maybe three weeks of total days off between July and March.
There have been lots of highlights: They shared the stage with bands such as Hawthorne Heights and The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus. They played at hundreds of historic venues, including the original House of Blues in New Orleans, and they hosted sponsored afterparties, hanging out with countless members of their loyal fan base — perhaps so loyal because the band makes the effort to get to know their fans.
“You hang out with so many people. It’s so much fun, and we’re all at the perfect age to be experiencing this,” says Kennedy. “But I don’t know that many bands who tour this hard.” While the escapism factor, given the circumstances, is part of the reason behind the band’s travel schedule, it’s also a necessity these days for up-and-coming musicians trying to make their big break. “Digitally, some bands are doing well, but record sales are down so much you have got to take advantage of touring,”
says Kennedy.
“You Didn’t Have to Die”
The band is now happy to be back in Fort Collins, resting, writing their new record, and slowly evolving past the tragedy that shaped the early trajectory of their careers. Despite their ability to come off as lighthearted and carefree kids in their early twenties (because, for the most part, they are), they still carry a heavy burden. Schou died of a heroin overdose, and because of that, speculation ran rampant afterward about their personal lives and habits.
“Right after Johnny’s passing, some people wrote some pretty messed up things,” says Kennedy. “I mean, who cares how he passed away? He was our best friend.”
But heroin is not something expected in Fort Collins with its almost bucolic small-town reputation. Schou did have a history of depression and prior drug use although the band says they thought he had gotten clean.
“Our band is drug-free,” Kennedy says. “If we would have known about the stuff going on with Johnny at the time, obviously we would have gotten him more help. I couldn’t watch a drug like that take someone’s life away. We got all this crap after that happened because people asked, ‘How could you live with someone and tour with someone and not know?’ But we really did not know.”
The “Madeline” video, which premiered in April, now serves as a reminder of the bandmate they left behind. The video also matters deeply to many fans: Not only did dozens send in photos for the shoot, but several fans actually traveled to Portland to appear in the video and post their own photos of loved ones who died.
While, ironically, Schou helped write the song, which, on the surface, is about a girl who dies of an overdose, several lines in the chorus sound as though they could have been written for him. On the band’s Website, Kennedy says “Madeline,” which was written several years ago about a combination of people and events, “illustrates how sorry I feel that my impact on some of my friends has not been more positive.”
Now the band says they hope their own experiences can help other kids become more aware of each other’s issues — and, perhaps more importantly, be less hesitant to take action when a friend might have a real problem.
At every Tickle Me Pink show, when it’s time for “Madeline,” the crowd shifts from moshing and crowd-surfing to sweet and sensitive. Kennedy asks everyone in the crowd, as corny as it sounds, to give the person next to them a hug. For many, including fellow bandmates, the sentiment does not wear thin.
“Every night, at the part when Sean says, ‘Hug the person next to you, you never know when you might lose somebody,’ it never got old,” says Barba. “I just try to cherish every moment being on stage with my friends because you truly never know what is going to happen.”
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