Losing his voice gave this singer a new appreciation for God — and being alone

Transcript

SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:

And now I'm going to hand it over to my friend and colleague Rachel Martin for another episode of her series Enlighten Me. And a warning - this conversation includes mention of suicide.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

RACHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Trevor Powers went to the doctor in October of 2021 for a minor stomachache.

TREVOR POWERS: And I had brought it up to the doctor. And so he had recommended just this standard over-the-counter thing.

MARTIN: He took the medicine and then expected it to clear up in a couple days.

POWERS: The word insane is such an understatement because it did this thing with my digestive system where it completely flipped everything upside down. It turned my stomach into essentially a geyser of acid where it was coming up as a mist.

MARTIN: Doctors couldn't figure it out.

POWERS: I had visits with multiple specialists - ER, endoscopy, colonoscopy. I mean, you name it.

MARTIN: And it got worse.

POWERS: It was this mist that would coat - day in and day out, coated my larynx, pharynx, vocal cords.

MARTIN: Trevor lost his voice, which was devastating. He's a musician from Boise, Idaho, who performs under the name Youth Lagoon. His newest album "Heaven Is A Junkyard" chronicles this difficult season of his life, a season that gave him a deeper appreciation for home but also pushed him to his limit. At times, he wondered if his primary instrument - his distinct, inquisitive, magical-sounding voice - would ever come back.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MERCURY")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) Steal my words. In the world, I'm afraid.

POWERS: I had situations - like, my brother would come to town from Seattle to hang out, and we had to - we would do things like go to bookstores. And I would have to either text him when I'm standing right by him or hanging out with friends, I had, like, a notepad that I would write things down on.

MARTIN: Wow.

POWERS: Even with my wife, yes - she'd come home from work. And there were certain days where it was worse than other days, but it was such a long period of time where I would have to depend on writing things down rather than talking.

MARTIN: Were you afraid about the long-term consequences for your voice, or did you not let yourself go there?

POWERS: Well, I - no, I absolutely let myself go there.

(LAUGHTER)

POWERS: I was totally terrified. But that was another thing that I had really - I had so many months of - every day felt like a mini death where I would die to myself every single day, as in I had to accept this is something that, again, is out of my control. And I - my brain kept going to the whole thing of the what ifs. The what if I can't get this to stop? What if I can't speak again? What if I get throat cancer? What - you know, you name it.

MARTIN: Yeah.

POWERS: And that's the way my brain has always worked. But being in such a deep, dark tunnel - the darkest tunnel, by far, that I've ever been in - I actually hit this healing breaking point, after about four or five months in, to where I had nothing to do but accept. And that was something that was new for me is this acceptance. And when the acceptance happened, that's when I started getting into this other point where it felt very spiritual. I mean, it really turned into something spiritual.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TRAPEZE ARTIST")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) My voice is gone, and it used to be so strong. The reaper's ready for the harvest. And fear is where my broken heart is, in a circus tent all grown up and gone. She's climbing the ladder. God save the trapeze artist. Can we walk the shadow?

MARTIN: So you reference kind of a spiritual opening that happened in your life. You hear the reference to God right there. Can you tell me more about what that - what shape that took for you?

YOUTH LAGOON: I grew up in a very religious household, and Idaho in general is a very religious place. And so I've always been surrounded by this idea of God. And I would always have said, I believe in God. I would use certain terminology. But I never really knew what that meant because I hadn't had experiences myself that would shape what those words would mean.

MARTIN: Yeah.

YOUTH LAGOON: And like so many people, there's so much baggage attached to certain words, certain spiritual words. And even the word God...

MARTIN: Totally.

YOUTH LAGOON: ...Has become such an incredibly loaded word. And for a lot of people, which I totally understand, it's a word that people steer clear of because of certain trauma that they might have gone through with churches as children or, you know, you name it. But, yeah, so for myself, I haven't stepped foot in church in probably 12 to 15 years. And I always sensed that there was this other thing there, this greater mystery, this - I could feel it in the wind, on walks and see it in the trees and all of that.

And this experience taught me that - I used to think God watches people suffer. And this whole thing showed me that God actually suffers with you. And that was such a turning point with the way that I approach my life, the way I approach my music. And also, the subject matter of this whole album is centered around that, but then also, there's just so many - there's so many more things there. Growing up in a place like Idaho, there's a lot of lyrical content to pull from.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "MERCURY")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) Does heaven glow? Does heaven glow, glow like mercury?

MARTIN: I'm technically, I guess, a sixth-generation Idahoan.

POWERS: Oh, that's amazing.

MARTIN: So...

POWERS: So when did you leave?

MARTIN: When did I leave? Well, I left when I was 18 to go to college. I still have family there. Both my parents are Idahoans. They've both since passed, but my sister still lives there. My nephew still lives there. So it's very much still home for me. But I know it's sort of a complicated culture.

POWERS: Yeah. Like a lot of people, when you're young, you can't wait to get out. And so I thought, OK, when I turn 18, I'm going to get out of here.

MARTIN: Right.

POWERS: I'm going to move to...

MARTIN: See the world.

POWERS: Yeah. Exactly. I was going to move to another country or at least move to another state. I had all these ideas of the kinds of place I would live. And then what had happened was I started going to college just because I felt like that's what you should do. And at the same time, I started doing music, which is obviously what I cared about most. And when that started taking off and I was able to start touring, home - the definition of home changed pretty instantaneously because when I was gone for these extended periods of time, coming back to Idaho, I saw it differently. Everything felt a little bit differently.

MARTIN: How so? How did it feel different?

POWERS: It felt sacred because everything else in my life started feeling so chaotic. And to have that comfort - the comfort no longer felt like a cobweb or something that I couldn't get out of. It felt like something where I could leave and then come back. So that's what started changing things. Idaho is absolutely gorgeous. It's a stunning place. There's so many beautiful people. There's so many - there's so much here to offer, and it's an endless well of inspiration for songwriting. But I still have a really complex relationship with it because of, yeah, sometimes people here have a hard time letting others be themselves. And that really gets to me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THE SLING")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) On a lonely street, children still play. Families still eat. Father tells Eugene he'll only meet God if the kitchen is clean.

MARTIN: Can you explain to me the moment when your voice came back?

POWERS: It was such a slow - it came back so slowly that it wasn't - so even when I had recorded, which I had recorded all the demos at home, my voice was still - I had so much going on where certain days, it was way worse than other days. Some days, we steered into it. So if there was a certain song that - "Idaho Alien" was one of those songs, actually, where my voice was so battered that we had purposely recorded certain lyrics, certain lines on days that I was having a hard time singing.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IDAHO ALIEN")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) Billy, come home, and Billy's no punk. Daddy come home and Daddy's on junk. Videotapе, a fisherman's knot. Filling the tub and waiting for God. Therе was sadness in the water, too.

POWERS: Healing isn't linear.

MARTIN: Right.

POWERS: That was another huge revelation because it wasn't this thing where suddenly I woke up, and I had a voice. I'm still - I'm actually still healing. So here I am. Everything went down October 2021. My body is still bouncing back, and I'm way further along than I was, but I'm probably at about 90%. And so it's that patience - it's the - being in the suffering for really extended periods of time, that's when it starts becoming a teacher. It's not the - I used to think you go through something hard for a day and you learn something, but that's not really where the great teaching comes from.

MARTIN: So was "Idaho Alien" one of the songs that you had written before this happened?

POWERS: "Idaho Alien" - I had a sketch, but I didn't really know what it - I had a couple lines, and I had some melodies, but it wasn't - nothing was really too formed yet. And when I started going through this experience, it informed that song and it informed the entire album, but especially the chorus of that song, because that chorus is written through the lens of a narrator. And so it's easy to - if you're listening to that song, it's easy to view it as something that's detached, but it was actually because I was struggling so much at the time with my body feeling like a prison.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IDAHO ALIEN")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) I don't remember how it happened. Blood filled up the clawfoot bath, and I will fear no frontier.

POWERS: I don't remember how it happened, but filled up the clawfoot bath and I will fear no frontier. I - to be honest with you, I really wanted to - I was struggling a lot with not killing myself, and so I had turned to that song as a way to exorcise some of those demons.

MARTIN: Trevor.

POWERS: That is...

MARTIN: That's really hard.

POWERS: Yeah.

MARTIN: So tell me how you pulled yourself out of that emotional and mental darkness.

POWERS: Very slowly and carefully. Well, a lot of it is - those kinds of thoughts and mental places aren't totally new for me. I think the extent of where I was at was new, but I've dealt with anxiety and depression my entire life. And to people that know me, that's not - you know, it's a pretty - I'm pretty open about it. But the openness is what has really saved me, and whether that's being open with therapists or being open with friends and family. Not keeping things private - there's a lot of healing power in that, 'cause the moment that you try to hide something, that's when it really turns into a beast that you can't conquer.

And that's songwriting for me, too. That's why songwriting - it's such a sacred space because it has this - music has this ability of - you're able to get things out of your system, for myself at least, that I can't any other way. And even talking about it, it gets to be so difficult because I'll do these things that I can only do or say through music, and then trying to talk about it makes it impossible.

MARTIN: Yeah, or it feels like it's cheapening it in some way?

POWERS: Yeah. Yeah.

MARTIN: Sorry. I'm asking you to talk about it.

POWERS: Oh, no, no, don't be sorry. Don't be sorry at all. I do have fun trying to talk about it, but it also gets frustrating because what happens at the end of interviews, or even someone's talking with friends if they're asking questions, is I get frustrated with myself. I wish so bad that there was an easier way to dissect what it is, but there's not.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "RABBIT")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) This is how we score with our face to the floor, and there ain't no magic door, just a window where the storm took me. This is how we score with our face to the floor, and there ain't no magic door.

MARTIN: You talked several times about spiritual revelation through losing your voice and finding it again. What was your big lesson out of this whole thing? If there was a lesson in it, what changed for you that you've been able to apply to the rest of your life as a result of that kind of spiritual revelation?

POWERS: Knowing that I'm not alone.

MARTIN: Yeah.

POWERS: For sure, knowing that I'm not alone. I used to struggle a lot with - even when I was around people, I would have this sense of loneliness, and that's gone now. I could be on an island somewhere, and I don't feel alone. It took so many months of suffering and feeling all of this - my body is a prison, I'm trapped, all this stuff. And the more that I started the process of acceptance, deeper than that acceptance of who I am as a person and learning to love myself, but then finding ways in this world to actually be alone - find a forest or find a bedroom where no one's there. Sit with your thoughts. Be OK not watching TV. Be OK not doing anything. Be OK not talking to anyone. We - our culture is so distracted and it's...

MARTIN: You're telling me to get over your loneliness. You just learned to be OK with learning to be alone.

POWERS: That's totally it. That's how it was for me. Just be alone. Just truly be alone. And in that, I don't think that you will be alone. I think that you'll start hitting this point where you feel something else inside of you.

(SOUNDBITE OF YOUTH LAGOON SONG, "HELICOPTER TOY")

MARTIN: Trevor, it's been so great to talk with you. Thank you so much for making the time.

POWERS: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it so much.

MARTIN: Trevor Powers, aka Youth Lagoon - the new album is called "Heaven Is A Junkyard."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELICOPTER TOY")

YOUTH LAGOON: (Singing) Violent liquor. Look that I never knew.

DAVIS: If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or the crisis text line by texting home to 741741. And if you'd like to hear more of Rachel Martin's Enlighten Me series, you can tune in right here, same time next week.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HELICOPTER TOY")

POWERS: (Singing) Will the wind destroy or avoid it? Will the wind destroy the helicopter toy? Thrumming ghost across the eaves. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.