Ahead of his fall headlining tour, Teddy Swims has been spending the summer performing at festivals around the world. And that's fitting, because it turns out attending a festival as a teen is what inspired him to be a performer.
"One of the first concerts I ever went to was Warped Tour in 2007. And I was, like, 15 at the time," Teddy told ABC Audio. "That was the time that I discovered, like, 'This is what I want to be for a living.' That was when I really decided."
There was one moment in particular that made him decide: While he watched the prog-metal band Coheed and Cambria perform, their lead singer, Claudio Sanchez, did a stage dive into the crowd.
"I remember getting to touch his hair and being like, 'Oh my gosh, I gotta be this guy!'" Teddy recalled. In fact, he still remembers that Claudio's hair, for which he's famous, "smelled like strawberries." But he acknowledges that he can't do now what Claudio did back then.
"I'm a little too big to be out here stage diving and that's not the type of music I make," he laughed, noting that fans "would really be caught by surprise" if he did it.
"But that was when I was like, 'Guys, we have to do this. We have do this,'" Teddy remembers telling his friends. "And so that's been the dream since, is follow that."
Teddy and his friends started their musical careers playing in metal rock bands, even though their only audience at times was "somebody's mom." Teddy eventually began posting cover songs on YouTube, which landed him a record deal. The Grammy-nominated star's headline tour, The Ugly Tour, launches Sept. 22 in Kansas City, Missouri.
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