Ben Katzman: Rock Horns or Bust

“CRANKIN ‘MORNING GLORY’ ON 10,” Ben Katzman texts me as I’m pulling into the arrivals terminal at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to pick him up. He hasn’t slept in two days, still riding the adrenaline from his album release party in Miami, Florida two days earlier. In the late hours of the previous evening, rumors of an impending Oasis reunion began swirling online. Katzman, a documented Oasis superfan, will spend most of his downtime in my car scrubbing every corner of the internet for updates about the Gallagher brothers; at one point, he stops his scrolling, lets out a big exhale, and says, “I get the Swifties now.” He is wearing a Taylor Swift-style friendship bracelet that says “ROCK N ROLL STAR” across the beads, a memento gifted to him by a fan in London mere moments after he landed in the UK for an Eras Tour/Liam Gallagher concert double-feature. At a traffic light, we sit behind an SUV with a “BIG IS IN” license plate and Katzman snaps a pic. “This is for the Sex and the City crowd,” he chuckles, before sending it to one of his few-dozen active group chats.

10 months ago, Katzman was a stranger to the thousands of people who now consider him a hero, friend and celebrity. But he wasn’t just a nameless face working in an office cubicle in a blank-looking building in some American city. Before becoming a fan-favorite on Survivor’s 46th season, he was already a legend in Miami—having come of age in the company of some of indie rock’s most distinguished names on the East Coast, like his college neighbor Sarah Tudzin of illuminati hotties and Guerilla Toss, a band he regularly tours with. He went to Berklee but dropped out; in 2012, at the age of 18, he founded BUFU Records and put out cassettes and CDs for other bands from New England, like IAN SWEET, Mannequin Pussy, Designer and Krill, among others. While Katzman’s music, be it his solo stuff or in his longtime band DeGreaser, hasn’t always been at the forefront of rock’s modern climate, calling him one of the most respected current DIY figures would be a supreme understatement. His peers adore him; it was only a matter of time before the rest of the country did, too.

As we ping-ponged back-and-forth for months about what to do for our upcoming interview, we initially planned on concocting a Ferris Bueller-style day of hijinks in Chicago after Guerilla Toss’ recent tour—in which they opened a string of shows for Primus—concluded. But after some scheduling woes, Katzman and I landed on what should’ve been the only choice from the beginning: a day spent traipsing through the historical echelons of the very genre that makes Ben Katzman Ben Katzman, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This is the same guy who texted me his top three Queen albums while Season 46’s Final Tribal Council was airing, after all.

If you were clued into this past season of Survivor, you’re likely aware that Katzman is a true scholar of rock ‘n’ roll. He and his island ally Charlie Davis engaged in a song battle in episode two, challenging each other on who could name more Metallica or Taylor Swift tracks without blanking (the music nerd’s version of “guys naming random athletes”); the tattoo on his chest that production censored out on-screen is Mötley Crüe-inspired ink; Katzman and Survivor host Jeff Probst routinely made Van Halen references to each other during challenges; there’s a Bon Jovi, “Living on a Prayer” monologue at a Tribal Council that didn’t make the final cut of an episode.” When Katzman enters my car at the terminal, he immediately laments the airport’s inclusion of the Sammy Hagar-inspired restaurant, Sammy’s Beach Bar & Grill. When I queue up a Van Halen playlist, he skips all of the Hagar-fronted songs for us.

As Katzman and I are walking toward the Rock Hall, many blue shirt-wearing Clevelanders are walking away from it. As we are still 200-some feet from the museum’s front doors, a man stops Katzman on the street. He and dozens of others are in the middle of a solidarity walk to end colon cancer. His wife is with him, towing their child in a stroller while many other walkers pass us by. He tells Katzman that, a few years ago, he was about to go to a Survivor audition but, just days before, was diagnosed with colon cancer himself. He’s in remission now, and Katzman hugs him in response and calls him a real survivor. The man asks Katzman for some audition pointers, because he plans on resuming his dream of making it on the show. “You’ve got the story and you’ve got the physique,” Katzman tells him, referring to the stranger’s incredibly athletic build. “Just be yourself and you’re gonna rock.”

Before making it out of the first room at the Rock Hall, Katzman has already made two references to The Adventures of Pete & Pete. He recites LL Cool J’s season two monologue and then, upon seeing Iggy Pop’s gloves, he deepens his own lore even further: “Iggy lives down the street from me,” he says. “He signed my second season [VHS] of Pete & Pete.” Upon meeting Kirk Hammett just a few weeks ago, Katzman asked the Metallica guitarist to sign a picture of himself at 14 years old. That’s just the type of dude he is, always pulling from far within his bag of obscure rock knowledge. When we pass by 50 Cent’s bulletproof vest, he recites a “Get Rich or Die Tryin’” verse; unprompted, he tells the story about Jimmie Nicol filling in for a post-appendix-burst Ringo Starr on the drums mid-Beatlemania; he reveals that the David Ruffin-era Temptations are one of his biggest influences. “My brain’s a treasure trove of useless information,” Katzman contends. “Well, we’re in the right place then,” I reply.

In one room, a hand-written lyric sheet for “Enter Sandman” is displayed on a wall and Katzman goes off on a tangent about how the original lyrics for the song were “way more brutal” and “about crib death.” We see some Def Leppard artifacts and he tells me his “demented Def Leppard story.” “I got tickets to see them and KISS with the girl I was seeing at the time, but we broke up before the concert and decided to still go together,” he says. “She was late picking me up; we missed all of Def Leppard and half of KISS. I will play the victim complex on that one.” When we encounter Eddie Van Halen’s “Frankenstein” guitar downstairs, Katzman tells me he “needs a moment.” After some silence, he inches closer to me: “Want to hear something crazy? That’s the guitar from ‘Beat It,’ bro.”

When Katzman joined Survivor, he understood the ramifications of how his easy-going, terminally chill demeanor might be interpreted by the people who don’t know him. He is self-aware about the Bill & Ted type of laid-back charm he has, going as far as calling himself “Wayne,” a nod to the titular character from Wayne’s World. “I feel like I always suffered from being too on the nose with my jokes and my songs,” he mentions, referring to his 2017 EP We Bled to Shred. He’s as close to a real-life Dewey Finn as we’ll ever get, his rocktagious prophecies arriving as earnest, punctual affirmations about the genre that taught him how to live. “People are like, ‘When’s rock gonna come back?’ I’m like, ‘The industry’s turned its back.’ But, if one sick band can get an amazing opening slot on a tour, that could truly crush, because it needs to be experienced,” Katzman gospelizes, as we look at a collection of Jimi Hendrix’s guitars. “It’s all about moving energy and being insane. That’s why pop music is so popular, because it’s easy to digest. Rock’s about sticking it to the man. You need to have an outlet for your anger, and what better place for that than a sick rock concert?”

We come to the second floor of the museum, a room aptly titled “The Garage,” where you can take guitar lessons and, from the hours between noon and 4 PM, jam with Rock Hall employees. There are AC/DC and Led Zeppelin pinball machines sitting next to each other. “You know my opinions,” Katzman says to me, as he conveniently skips over the Zoso-themed machine. (He’s staunchly anti-Zeppelin, except for the acoustic songs.) As a bunch of kids strum some free-to-use axes, Katzman sets his sights on an acoustic Gibson. “Know what this is?” he asks me, as he opens up his wallet (which includes a credit card issued to the “Councilman of the Shred”). I know immediately that he’s about to pull out a BRAT-green guitar pick given to him by Hammett backstage at last week’s Metallica gig.

When the jam area opens up, Katzman runs into the room and, since there is already another museum-goer playing guitar, he straps the bass to his chest and plucks along to the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ “Californication.” The guy manning the six-string flounders through John Fruciante’s solo, but Katzman plays a near-perfect rhythm arrangement. The song ends and he beelines to the guitar. A young kid named Adam, who can’t be any older than eight or nine, enters the room and takes a seat behind the drum kit, hoping everyone else in the band will follow his lead on the Who’s “My Generation.” He’s quite good, too, keeping pace with everyone else and even flaunting a bit of finesse. The “My Generation” chords are a bit rudimentary for Katzman, who’s used to kicking up a fuss onstage with bombastic, head-splitting riffs. But the music instructor in him shines through in this moment, as he watches the kid’s technique and gives him resounding gestures of motivation at various points during the song. “Dude, you were killer on the drums,” Katzman tells his new bandmate as they exit the room together. “My one advice: Go a little crazier, bro. Let the tiger out of the cage!” His dad recognizes Katzman from Survivor and they all take a picture together, so he wraps his arms around Adam and his younger brother and makes a swift declaration at the camera: “Rock horns or bust!”

It can be hard for Katzman to separate his Survivor brain and his shredding brain sometimes, at least for now—and much of that has to do with the honeymoon phase of his tenure on the show overlapping with the rollout of his new, Survivor-influenced album, Tears on the Beach. What’s fascinating is, if you ever get a chance to spend enough time with Katzman, it becomes clear very quickly that having to perfect that balance is not as rosy as his social media pages might suggest. For every “I didn’t know Patti Smith was in Siga” joke he makes, there’s a real internal struggle that bubbles to the surface.

Ben Katzman wants to continue on as the rock star he first dreamed of becoming after his mother gave him a Jewish superheroes book that featured Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS in it. But now, he’s figuring out how to be that and the guy who almost won a million bucks on the greatest reality show of all time. And rather than settle into whatever life being a Survivor alumnus could provide him, Katzman is resistant to buying into brand deals or an identity that rests on something promotional. He was making a living deploying art into the souls of those who need it long before CBS came a-knocking, and he’s not going to abandon that (even though he was so beloved that I wouldn’t be shocked if he was extended an invitation to return for Survivor’s 50th season in a few years).

As the first couple of episodes of Survivor 46 started to air, Katzman was beloved enough by producers to score himself a generous edit—and a generous edit can, sometimes, be a good indication of how far a castaway might go. If episodes one through four were a strong enough indication, it was obvious that Katzman making the jury was a sure thing. But then came night terrors and his internal conversations about quitting the game. There would be scenes depicting him waking up in the middle of the night in a paralyzing, anxious panic. Katzman’s ally and tribemate Kenzie Petty was shown staying up with him until the shivers and the dread subsided. The edit then started leaving him out more and more, pinning the focus on characters like Maria Gonzalez, Venus Vafa and Q Burdette. And then, when the Final Tribal Council came around, Katzman’s mental health story became weaponized against him—used as ammo for why Petty was more deserving of the show’s grand prize. Him winning the final immunity challenge and earning a seat at the end was cast aside; the jury argued he played a game without agency.

It was a triggering resolution for Katzman and, when he returned to Miami, his life felt just as vacant and uncertain as it did when BUFU Records shuttered. “I remember feeling empty, like I wasn’t making real connections,” he says. “I had those friends, but you’re hanging out with people who just want you to put out the record and you, who wants to be validated and needed, are entertaining this psychosis that doesn’t rock. I remember, when I stopped running the record label, a lot of people just stopped hitting me up. The wounded child in me was like, ‘Oh, man, I must be worthless.’ You’re seeing some of your friends blow up and you’re stoked for them, but you’re like, ‘Damn, I was doing it. What’s happening to me?’”

When Katzman and I spoke on the phone months ago, mere hours after the Season 46 finale aired, he got stopped on the street multiple times by fans of the show. After an afternoon spent in public and taking lots of pictures with people, it becomes obvious that having to put an asterisk in the margins of every activity he goes out and does comes with its own hurdles. As drained as Katzman seems in my presence, which is likely a cocktail of him running on fumes and juggling the thousands of thoughts, anecdotes and visions scrambling his brain at all times, he never brings anything but 100% of himself to those interactions. It’s daunting, sure, but he’d never settle for anything less. It’s the kind of ethos that becomes ingrained in your DNA after you’ve spent so long clawing upwards in the DIY world. Every interaction is a gift; every vinyl record sold is more reason to press another batch.

An elderly woman at the Rock Hall watches a young couple take photos with Katzman and asks us why that was happening. “I was on television,” he tells her, “on that show Survivor.” She has no idea what he is talking about but takes a photo of him anyway. Then, as they share a nice conversation about teaching and retirement, Katzman’s eyes glow out of his head the entire time. When he and I hole up in his hotel room in Downtown Cleveland, he sits criss-cross-applesauce on his bed, clutching a pillow in both arms, and tells me that, once upon a time, he believed he was unlovable. “I did have my head so far up my ass in my early 20s,” he admits. “You go from being bullied in high school to people buying all these records you’re a part of and magazines writing about you—you definitely get this wrapped sense of being on top of the world. It’s like, you made it! And then you realize you haven’t.”

In his 20s, Katzman wore sunglasses all the time and hid behind his catchphrases. “Even though it was me, I would definitely psych myself up,” he adds. “I was like, ‘Oh, you’ve got to be in performance mode when you run into this party.’” Despite Katzman’s massive Oasis fandom now, he used to dislike them and their “in-your-feelings” style of songwriting, even though he considers himself, ironically, a very emotional person. But at the beginning of the pandemic, he didn’t want to live a walled-up life like that anymore. He wanted to let his guard down. And then, Oasis came on the radio after he took an incredible dose of mushrooms. “Here are these bad boys but they’re singing about holding hands,” he says. “That’s what I want to do! I don’t want to be a character. I want to be romantic. I want to be me. I had always championed just being yourself, but I really wasn’t being myself. People were seeing this one-dimensional version of me.”

Katzman decided he was going to put his novelty-sided music in the past and try “singing from the heart” and allowing himself to “step into that vernacular.” Gone were the days of Venus in Pisces and “Florida Man.” He wrote Transcendental Shreditation and buffed out songs like “Don’t Be a Poser to Yourself” and “Confronting Madness.” “It’s funny, because I’m into meditation and alignment, and I think the universe has its way of giving you bumps that you’re on the right path,” Katzman says. “I started singing about mental health and recognizing that I need to work on myself and I want to be positive about my journey. I noticed people were starting to pay attention now that the music was a little more serious. I was wearing my heart on my sleeve and I wasn’t hiding behind my sunglasses. I was speaking my truth in the moment and, all of a sudden, our shows started getting packed again.”

Talent scouts were coming to his show and trying to get him on reality shows for MTV and AXS, but Katzman had no desire to sell himself out for the sake of making a quick buck. He wanted to keep performing music and working with his students, and he feared that getting caught up in a brand like that would put him back into the same life-crisis mode he was in 10 years ago, when he quit music and worked at a Whole Foods amidst some serious burnout.

When it came to Survivor, which Katzman considers to be the Holy Grail of reality television, he applied on a whim to “see how far I can go being what I think is the true version of me.” In his application, he talked about teaching music and told a story about going to dinner with his parents on ‘shrooms. “I was like, ‘If this gets through the door, I’m in,’” he says. “And then I got on and my mission was ‘Don’t turn a heel. Don’t play some character. You’re used to being bullied and used to people making up archetypes about yourself. You just got to this moment because you were yourself. See how well that would do in the game.’” Instead of resting on his laurels, Katzman stayed true to his morals and struck up an alliance with almost every player he interacted with.

Tears on the Beach features illuminati hotties, Mannequin Pussy, GracieHorse, Shannon Shaw (of Shannon and the Clams) and Guerilla Toss on the tracklist. Missy Dabice of Mannequin Pussy was the first person Katzman spoke to when he returned from Fiji. “I got home, immediately took my dog for a walk and then hopped into a bath,” he says. “Missy called me and was like, ‘Hey, Bear [Regisford] can’t do a few shows, do you want to fill in?’ And she also goes, ‘Where the fuck have you been for the last two months, by the way?’ I go, ‘I can’t really tell you, but I was, like, in a jungle.’ It’s funny, because all my friends were guessing I made it far. Nobody thought I was out first, but I was so fucked up and trying to make sense of the whiplash from the cast and the night terrors that they knew I’d clearly gone through something—because you get that from being a first-boot.”

For Katzman, asking everyone to be on his record wasn’t some thinly-veiled attempt at populating it with A-list indie names. “It was my friends who were there for me throughout the whole process,” he continues. “Survivor is a thing you share with your cast, but it’s also a thing you share with your family and friends, because it’s something so transformative and I felt like I didn’t have to tell them anything for them to understand.” When he was in Fiji, Katzman had no concrete plans about making a record about his time on Survivor. “Early on, Charlie was making jokes, like, ‘Taylor Swift writes about everything!’ And I think the first joke I made was that I wanted to write a song called ‘Shelter of Pain,’ because the shelter we built was so shitty,” he says. When Katzman told his closest ally Tim Spicer that he was a massive LL Cool J fan, Spicer started reciting the rapper’s “I Need Love,” which then turned into the two castaways singing the “Brotherly Love” hook together on the island.

Then, when Hunter McKnight got voted out, Katzman started singing the chorus of “Buckwild Blindsides” to himself in his head. It wasn’t until he returned home to Miami that Tears on the Beach started to germinate, acting as a remedy for his post-game, hyper-active PTSD. “I got home and I still wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t make sense of anything,” Katzman continues. “When you get home, you can’t relate to anybody. You’re on your own island in your mind. I was fucking sitting by the computer and started writing riffs. Every player goes through those stages of grief when they get home. Even the winners can’t make sense of it sometimes. It’s like ‘What did I just experience?’”

Though Tears on the Beach is deeply entrenched in Survivor history—it features Season 45 winner Dee Valladares on vocals, includes collaborations with Spicer, Soda Thompson, Brice Izyah and Benjamin “Coach” Wade, and riffs on the show’s iconography with song titles like “Final Vibal,” “The Vibe Has Spoken” and “The Little Tribe That Could”—Katzman has managed to make a record that speaks greatly to the rigors of life itself. Opener “Dig Deep” is a reference to something Probst said to Katzman during a challenge, but he plugs it into something far more universal—a mantra of perseverance accessible for anyone, whether they’ve watched Survivor or not. “I’m writing these songs because it’s therapeutic,” he admits. “The Gene Simmons in me was like, ‘Yeah, I could potentially capitalize on it,’ but this was how I was dealing with my feelings.”

Some other “on-the-nose” tracks, like one titled “Enter Q and the Secret Six,” were cut because Katzman tried to “do away with anything that couldn’t work on its own,” though songs like “Dumb n Dumber” and “Brotherly Love” (which Katzman wrote about his alliances with Charlie Davis and Tim Spicer, respectively) did end up on the final tracklist. “It doesn’t have to be, but the best art is like a timestamp of where you’re at in your life,” he muses. “It’s a reflection of who you are in that moment. Who I was in that moment was best friends with those people.”

The original lyrics to “Dig Deep” included the Survivor mantra of “outwit, outplay, outlast,” but he retconned their inclusion because he “would never say that shit.” Instead, Katzman wanted to make an album about something he experienced as a human being, and the songs on Tears on the Beach are documents of self-resilience and remaining devout to the power of your own aura. The title track is a gnarly take on a moment broadcast to millions of people—Katzman having a tender breakdown as waves lap up against him, just after Spicer was voted out—contoured into a triumphant earworm of universal perseverance. “Working from the bottom, is this who I am?” he sings, conjuring the breakage of his old record label and trying to wade through the muck of broken alliances. “It’s not the life I wanted, it’s not the life I planned.”

“That was my experience, not quitting. There I was, in the middle of the jungle—the same way I was before BUFU dissolved, working with an artist that didn’t believe I was looking out for them and giving me bad vibes,” Katzman says. “All of a sudden, this passion becomes a real thing. It’s like, ‘You feel down and out. How are you going to keep going?’ That time, I quit. But this time, I wanted to keep going, because I believed in myself. The reason we love the Ramones or KISS is because, technically, they’re a bunch of dorks, too, but they sing about celebrating life and powering through. We listen to music to self-medicate and regulate and inspire us to keep going day to day. And why not do that?”

What makes Katzman’s arc so fascinating is his profound allegiance to rock ‘n’ roll. In his own words, “rock music is a tool to let it out.” “When you’re frustrated or sad or happy or angry, that energy needs to go somewhere,” he continues. “I have high-adrenaline issues, so I have to let it out by rocking out. It’s my way of healing. Rock music is this way to be loud at all times in a society that says you’ve got to be quiet or conform or put your feelings at bay. It’s a healthy way to eccentrically put your feelings out there. There’s something so visceral to it, that treble sound of a power chord that raises the hair on the back of your neck. My teachers always said, ‘Ben, shut up. Sit down. Stop doing so much.’ When I play a fucking sick solo, it’s like ‘Here’s the place I can do so much. Here’s the only place I can be egotistical in a safe way, when you’re trying to scream at the top of your lungs.’”

Katzman mentions getting beat up in school, never feeling comfortable broaching it with his parents (who were both pastry chefs with packed work schedules) and, instead, finding refuge in the triumphs of rock stars who were young and othered just like him. “My parents would ask me about school, but I wouldn’t tell them anything,” he says. “I’d go home and watch the Ramones documentary and read about Joey Ramone and be like, ‘I get that.’ It’s like the real life version of Marvel superheroes. Here are a bunch of people who come from nothing but can make something of themselves in this world we’re in. And yeah, the music industry sucks now, don’t get me wrong, but we might not ever be superstars. We might not ever make a ton of money. But when you’re 81, what are you going to think about—the time you played a bunch of six shows with your friends and people paid attention, or the fact that you went and got a good job but had to go to a cubicle every day for 50 years?” For my money, I think Katzman is going to remember the former. Just a month ago, people were coming out to the Primus shows holding “WE LOVE BEN” signs in the crowd. Phish played a show with Guerilla Toss at Woodstock a few weeks ago, and people came to the set wearing Jeff Probst shirts.

And it’s moments like those that makes Katzman grateful for his time on Survivor. People who’ve resonated with his story have bought into the music, too, filling out his shows, plundering the merch table and adding his albums to their collections. And it’s all because he’s never been anything but unabashedly himself and not afraid to let other people into his world—a life that wrestles with shadows of anxiety and doubt. “I think everybody knows what it’s like to not know where you’re gonna sit for lunch at least once and not want to be like a freak,” he says, “even though nobody’s looking at you eating lunch by yourself. Every day I was like, ‘Who am I going to sit with?’ Nine times out of 10, if I sat with certain people, I got made fun of for being how I am.”

As a kid, Katzman didn’t last long in music classes because he wanted to stand out. He left Berklee because he didn’t want to learn how to be “a bass player on a Disney cruise”: “Even in high school, nobody wanted to jam with me. Everybody thought it was a joke because I was always earnest and unapologetic and excited. I think a lot of people can’t handle that, they get psyched out by it.” When Katzman started his own band, Acidosis, promoters didn’t want to book him—so he did it himself and would promote shows so well that, sometimes, 400 kids would show up. He’d even headline bills that featured the very bands that didn’t take him and his friends seriously in the first place. On Survivor, his castaways saw that same confidence and self-worth and painted it as threatening, but Katzman isn’t much interested in fussing over living up to anyone’s expectations but his own.

“I hate the idea of playing to somebody’s ego for your own benefit, because that’s how the music industry is. It’s a lot of ass-kissing. When I started trying to maintain an image, that’s when you get worried about the rugs being pulled from under you,” he says. “Whereas, when you go and be yourself, there’s nothing anybody can ruin. How are they going to take you away from yourself? You’re gonna attract what’s on your wavelength, and I believe that now more than ever.” Katzman pauses, looks down and then back up at me, grinning from ear to ear. “KISS rocks,” he deadpans and then giggles.

Did Katzman think that Survivor was going to impact his music career? “No,” I thought I’d get some hype, sure, but even on the island, I wasn’t thinking about day 26. I was like, ‘If I think about day 26, I’m gonna be fucking booty-blinded by the money.’ You’re not thinking about how to get through to the next day.” Even when he and Charlie were doing their Metallica-versus-Taylor Swift song battle, it wasn’t a calculated move. He wasn’t thinking about the band seeing it or if it would even air on national television. “They just released [72 Seasons] before going to Fiji, and we couldn’t take our cellphones with us,” Katzman continues. “I took a cassette player and all of my Metallica cassettes. Metallica was the music I felt the safest in in high school, so I was trying to channel that young band that was trying to right the wrongs of that early journey.”

All of the DeGreaser shows from the past year, whether they’ve been in front of 20-person audiences or 200-person audiences, have been communal experiences rid of hierarchy. “Rock ‘n’ roll is a transformative platform,” Katzman says. “My #1 mission is to play music and have it connect with people. Not to quote Anthony Kiedis, but I don’t want anybody to feel the way I did that day.” Someone even went to Katzman’s album release show and told him that they listened to “Tears on the Beach” and quit their job. All he’s ever wanted to do is connect with everyone he meets, and that’s why strangers share their stories with him. Katzman showed millions of people his true self for 26 days spread across a dozen TV episodes, and now those who felt moved enough to stick by his side are realizing that his true self exists in his music and everywhere else, too. He’s an educator, a romantic and a friend. He makes music not to show off, but to heal—both himself and those around him who need healed, too.

“Bottom line is I’m a person who lives to please their inner-child. And, to me, playing with my band is the closest I’ll get to having Power Rangers time at recess,” Katzman says. “Nobody’s judging us for screaming at the top of our lungs. I hope that inspires people to let loose once in a while and fucking be free. Go apply for the show, go put out that music. Don’t worry about the paycheck. You’ll figure it out, but you gotta take that leap in order to figure it out. It’s an asinine thing to go and pursue anything, not just music. Even getting a high-paying job is like winning the lottery in today’s economy. You might as well pull an Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and take that leap of faith. You might find that you are more supported than you realize.”

Katzman shares with me a vision he’s been having recently, one that sees him in a retirement home, listening to all of his records and remembering his life. “When I got home [from Survivor], I was trying to make another fucking sick speed-metal record. I was so glued to it. I was like, ‘My mind is only on one thing and the only way to get it off my mind is to write about it.’ And I’m glad I did that,” he says. “Could you imagine going through my version of the journey and then having to go back to work at an office and be stuck filing papers or going to meetings and thinking about how you didn’t win or so-and-so stabbed you in the back for no reason? I wasn’t thinking about the big picture, I was thinking about making the most sick, Ben Katzman-ish possible thing.”

The mantra that Katzman took from his time in Fiji is simple but speaks volumes: “Deprived of comfort, you learn who you truly are.” After all of those foodless days and sleepless nights, he played his game. And you can say that about his approach to his music career, too. He’s gone through periods of having no record deals to lean on and going on long, net-negative tours, but some of his best work has leapt out of the ashes of those losses. Tears on the Beach is a phenomenal explainer on how to zoom out of life without losing sight on the details.

“I find myself living more moment-to-moment and day-to-day, thinking about the journey rather than the destination,” Katzman waxes. “More sick opportunities and things come that way. When you’re future-tripping, that’s the ego freaking out. It’s not going to get what it thinks it needs to survive. When you’re chilling hard and you can recognize that you’re hanging out with somebody or being one-on-one, you’re fully there. You can see everything that’s happening around you, and I try to wake up in that state of gratitude every day.” And too, I think about how, as we were driving away from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the sun cracked into the car with an unbearable white-hot glow. And yet, Katzman didn’t put his shades on. Why would he? He quit hiding a long, long time ago.

Matt Mitchell is Paste’s music editor, reporting from their home in Northeast Ohio.