First of all, I love you. I think every serious discussion should begin like that.

This band started with Zach and I playing songs on acoustic guitar late into the night, coming up with two-man versions of our favorite songs and then versions of our own songs too. Everything we did, we did together, and that was key to all that we wanted to be as a band. As part of my senior honors thesis at Arizona State University, we had to come up with the key points that were going to make us different from every other pop-rock-punk-whatever band out there (thousands of them, many of them the same), and the number one difference we came up with was the two of us. Pretty much every band has one person as the singer out front, and the bands who have two or more don’t have the two of US — a dynamic duo, the “lovely lads” (thanks Mama Booher), whatever people called us, it was a bromance crafted so perfectly that the universe probably had a good chuckle when we were born. People sometimes didn’t know me from Zach, and most of our friends didn’t think about us without thinking about While We’re Up too. One person (and probably more) even thought we were dating each other (which, for the record, we weren’t — we wrote songs about girls for a reason). I’m sure it was pretty annoying at times to always hear about the band, and I’m incredibly thankful for everyone who stuck with us for so long.

Your brain does really weird things when your entire life changes in thirty seconds and you lose one of the closest friends you’ve ever had, so for whatever reason these were things going through my mind in the days after the accident that I lay in the hospital bed. The full emotional impact of it didn’t hit me until later, and it probably still hasn’t, but it was in those moments when I realized that it would no longer make sense to continue While We’re Up. WWUP without Zach is like The Beatles without McCartney, it’s like an &J sandwich. Also, what a lot of people don’t realize is that at the time of the accident the band was made up of just me and Zach. We’ve had a couple really great people play with us in the past, like Nick (who drummed for us in the Someday video and at local shows) and Gilbert (who played bass with us for a while), but us graduating and going on tour meant that it was just the two of us for a while — the same as how it all started in the first place, so we were good at that. But by myself, I’m not While We’re Up — Zach and I together, we were While We’re Up.

There’s really just one more thing that has to be done as While We’re Up, and that’s to release the CD of demos that Zach and I were working on before the accident. A lot more work has to be done before that’s ready, but it will be worth the wait — trust me. After that, the While We’re Up pages online will be used to let people know about important events and updates about Zach’s memorial fund and things like that, but I will no longer be releasing new material as While We’re Up.

BUT… I told you yesterday that I’m not going to stop doing music, and I completely mean that. My life has been defined by music through the good and the bad, and the times when I have been completely overwhelmed are the times when I spill my heart into the words and melodies that become the songs I sing. This has never been more true than now when my life has been completely turned upside down, and when my brother in music gave his life for the dream we were chasing. I owe it to him to keep trying, I owe it to myself, and I owe it to anyone who has ever been moved by the music we created. To you, if you’re reading this sentence right now. I don’t know exactly when, and I don’t know what, and I don’t know how, but at some point in the coming months I will be starting a new music endeavor on my own, and I would love to have you come along with me in that.

For now though, there’s work to do! There’s the CD to finish, and a benefit concert to plan — which, after much thought and discussion today, it has been decided to move the benefit concert back to early next year (probably the second weekend in January) in order to better organize and publicize it. Zach’s memorial fund has around $9,000 left before Arizona State will start giving out scholarships in Zach’s name, and ideally we would like to raise a large part of that money with this concert. Oh, and if you know anyone who knows anyone who knows Jimmy Eat World, please tell them that we would love for them to play at this concert since they were one of Zach’s all-time favorite bands. A long shot maybe, but you can’t hit a distant target if you don’t pull the trigger.

The final thing I want to say is a thank you to every single person who has ever supported While We’re Up in any way — from our family and friends who have spent countless hours, tears, sweat and dollars to support us, to the people who just listened to a song or two. Zach and I poured all of our efforts into this band in the hopes that someday our music would change lives, but I’ve seen that the day we waited for has been every day that one of you shared a story with us of what the music meant to you. Like a good friend of mine once said, today is better than someday.

as always, all my love.

<3 steven.

I remember when I posted the first blog post about Warped Tour when we were on the road, Zach laughed and said I’d written a novel. I guess this would be the sequel.

On Thursday, I went to the Atlanta Warped Tour date with my brothers Trevor and Will, my mom, and my good friend Erica—the first time Trevor and I have been at Warped since the accident.

We start off the day like any other day by volunteering with our friends Alana and Luke, passing out promotional bags to people walking in the gates. Then they take us to meet Kevin Lyman, the founder and director of Warped Tour. We’d met him several times before (really nice guy), and he thought Zach’s “Where is Kevin Lyman—I need to talk to him” shirt was really funny. One time, Kevin even introduced Zach to his family because of the shirt.

So we meet Kevin and the rest of the production team (Lisa is the tour manager and is incredibly nice), talk for a bit, and they give us VIP Warped Tour laminates to keep so that we can go anywhere we want. We had always wondered how we could get laminates, and came up with a thousand plans to try to get them. Nothing that would have ever worked. But we finally got ‘em didn’t we Zach? And all because of you man. If I could, I would give you mine.

We got to see a lot of our really good friends from the tour again, which was really great. The guys from the band Author and Finisher are some of our closest friends we made on the road (they’re doing the same thing we were), along with Wade and Erin who had been with Monster Aesthetics. We were also able to say thank you to the bands and other people who have shown us support over the past few weeks, like the Sleeping with Sirens crew and the guys from Bayside (they lost their drummer in a van accident in ‘05, so talking to them was comforting in the sense of having someone else who has been in such a similar situation). Seeing how the Warped Tour community came together for us after the accident has been one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen, and I’m just glad I got to see these people face-to-face again.

Occasionally throughout the day, random people would commend me for being out there in the heat all day with a neck-brace on, or make a joke with me about not moshing too hard. It made me realize that sometimes the reasons behind things are deeper than we know or even want to know, and maybe it’s good to just joke along with things. Or maybe it’s just a good reason to show love to everyone, because you never know what they’re going through.

That night, we went to the Warped bbq, where all of the bands and staff hang out after the show for the day is done and grab some burgers and such. There’s always a “bbq band” in charge of the food, and three “drink bands” in charge of the alcohol. I think that shows that everyone has their priorities straight.

Apparently this kind of thing doesn’t happen that often, but we were lucky enough to be there for a drum-off between drummers of all the bands. We got to see absolutely amazing drummers face off against each other, throwing all of their tricks into the few seconds they would play at a time, back and forth until the host (who was Yellowcard’s drummer) called time. Then everyone standing around would cheer loudest for whoever they thought did better, and the winner stayed while the other drummer was swapped out for the next challenger. It was amazing being there with such talented musicians—so many different kinds of people all brought together and enjoying the company of each other.

Sometimes it feels like a blessing to be able to experience all of these amazing events that most people never get to see, but it always weighs heavy knowing that Zach isn’t experiencing them with me. No matter what happened, we were going to be forging our way through this whole music thing together, come fame or failure—and now he isn’t here to be a part of all of these things. The reality of losing him hits me a little more each day. It would be impossible to stand if not for the love of thousands of friends and family—I rest in their hands.

all my love.

steven

Heading to Warped Tour tomorrow in Atlanta to meet up with all of our friends we met on the tour, and to thank everyone for all of the support they showed us. I really can’t put to words how amazing the Warped community has been since our accident… Everyone that we know, and tons of people we don’t know all came together to be there for us when we were in need. Recovering from the loss of Zach isn’t going to be quick, and it isn’t going to be easy, and it will never be complete, but I have been shown that it is still possible to stay strong with the support of all of the people who love us.

If I have learned one thing in the past weeks, it’s that the most important things in our lives are other people—you all give purpose to me in my darkest times.

There are going to be a lot of things happening over the coming weeks and months, including concerts held in memory of Zach and the publishing of some songs we were working on before the accident. More info coming soon.

all my love.

Steven

“Stars”

Zach’s obituary was printed in the AZ Republic newspaper today, but you can also read it here online.

If you can make it out, Zach’s services are at 10am on Saturday, July 21st, at Central Christian Church—we would love to see you there.

I still have the account information if anybody is interested in how to donate to the scholarship set up in Zach’s memory, just shoot me a quick message.

love. ♥

Steven

From Facebook, July 10

Yesterday morning as the band was driving from Chicago to Shakopee, MN, the rear right wheel of the car exploded, causing the car to lose control immediately and begin rolling on the highway. Steven and Trevor were airlifted to nearby hospitals where they have spent yesterday and today recovering—Zach Booher was killed immediately.

No one can speak in words the tragedy of losing Zach. He was notonly an amazing musician in While We’re Up, but he was also an irreplaceable friend to countless numbers of people. Hundreds have done so already, but if you have any memories of Zach you would like to share please feel free to do that here or on his personal Facebook page wall.

All of our thoughts go out to the Booher family, as they endure one of the greatest losses of their lives.

We love you Zach.

From Facebook, July 13

Updates since the car crash on July 8th.

Trevor was discharged from the hospital after a few hours on July 8th with minor head injuries and lung damage, while I remained there several more days for the doctors to monitor my condition. I was discharged two days ago with a neck-brace for my head and neck injuries, staples remaining in my head for the following several weeks and minor lung damage, but I am recovering. The past couple of days have been spent collecting the final belongings from the car wreckage and preparing for the drive back home to Georgia, taken care of by my mom.

Two Arizona news channels have run reports on Zach so far, Channel 5 and Channel 10, and these videos are available online. Services for Zach will be held on Saturday July 21st at 10am, at Central Christian Church, 933 N. Lindsay Road, Mesa AZ. Anyone wishing to remember Zach is welcome—the rest of the Booher family would love to see all of the people who were changed and inspired by Zach in his lifetime.

Lastly, I just want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart for all of the support that has been shown to us since the accident. I believe I can speak for the Booher family as well when I say that we have been absolutely overwhelmed by your show of love for us. I wish there were a way for me to adequately show how grateful I am, but just know that the long and dark days since the accident have been made infinitely brighter by every message, every text, every phone call. Special thanks goes out to all of the bands and our friends with the Warped Tour who have been collecting donations for the Booher family (we are currently working on a way for everyone else to give donations); we miss and love you, and are so thankful for the rush of help you have given us since this happened. And to everyone else—I have never been more thankful for every single person in my life.

My love and deepest thanks go out to all of you.

Steven

Posted today by Zach’s mom:

“We’ve received many requests for making donations to honor Zach’s name. We believe the best way to honor Zach is by establishing a music scholarship in his name at ASU. If you’d like to donate, please personal message me for the account details. We’re not allowed to post the account on the internet per bank rules. Thanks again for your prayers during this sad time.
-Joanna Booher”

Please feel free to message me here on the While We’re Up Facebook page or on my personal page (Steven Rouk) as well, as I also have the account details, and I’m sure the Boohers could use whatever small relief from things they can get.

If you know of others who would like the account information in order to donate, please feel free to share it with them privately. Also, please share this post with others so that everyone who wanted to donate can know how.

Love, as always,

Steven

♥

After the first day at Warped Tour, we were almost ready to give up. Here’s how it went down:

We get to Irvine around 6pm on the 20^th and head straight for the first open mic night we have on our list at a coffee shop called Paradise Perks. After eating some Subway and half-joking about rationing our meals from then on, we play a two-song set at the open mic, and our music in that room is like marshmallows in a kindergarten classroom (people love it). We get to meet a bunch of awesome musicians (including a Simon/Garfunkle sounding guy who sang a song about Tupperware), and some people bought our CDs too.

The matter of where we slept that night (and the next) is a subject for an entirely different post, and we’ll save that for later. Let’s just say the bedroom floor we slept two nights ago felt like a goose-down mattress.

So then the next day comes—Warped Tour!! The epic tour of all tours, a construct-a-concert-venue-in-a-day collaboration of half of all of the bands we like and aspire to be like, and where literally everyone who would like our music goes during the day of their tour stop (ok, maybe not quite everyone). This tour is the Super Bowl of pop-punk, where the gladiators of the genre like All Time Low and Yellowcard rock their way into people’s ears. I think I’ve ranted enough about it.

After parking, we load up our Warped Suits—backpacks with CDs, stickers, notebooks to collect emails for our mailing list, headphones and iPods (actually, a Kindle and a couple smart phones)—and head out to the quickly building crowd of people around the entrance gate, with our guitars in hand (actually, only Zach had a guitar—I was free to flail around while I sang as I so desired). We quickly realize that people are mostly just going to stare at us while we play and then not do too much after that (with a few exceptions), so we learn that it’s best to just show small groups of people our music with the headphones. This way we get to talk to everyone on a much more personal basis too: see who they’re there to see, get feedback on our songs, or say that their shirt is rockin’ (one girl’s shirt has pictures of bears holding dangerous weapons. I’d buy that.) (also, one girl offers to buy the shirt I’m wearing for a high five. Tough bargain, but I have to turn it down.)

We meet a bunch of the other bands following the tour that day too, really cool guys (and one girl helping the band Amnesia Beach) who all make really cool music. Their CDs are pretty much all that we listen to in the car now. The only downside to having a bunch of other bands around is that sometimes we talk to people who have already bought two or three other CDs from the other bands, so they have to pass on ours. Such is life, I’d probably rather have the company in the end anyways (and the tunes). Some of the bands are just there for the California dates, but a few are following the whole tour like we are. After an hour or so, we learn that the cops are ticketing bands selling CDs for selling without a business license, something that apparently hasn’t happened at any of the other venues so far. Not to mention the smoking ban (not like we care, but a lot of people there were getting a little nicotine-starved as the day went on), and the fact that the venue is basically an abandoned airfield that looks like it’s only used once a year for Warped Tour.

By the middle of the day, we’re overheated, sweaty, thirsty, and exhausted from being in the sun for four or five hours straight. We decide to go hit up a Starbucks for the air-conditioning and wifi, and pretty much sit there for four hours making incoherent noises at each other. The guy at the cash register asks us if we were just at Warped Tour—probably because we’re all sunburned, in tank-tops, and dead-looking. He refills our gallon jug of water though, and wishes us good luck with the rest of the day.

We head back to the venue about 6pm, when people are starting to leave for the day. The later it gets, the more people are willing to talk to us since they’re mostly just waiting for parents to come pick them up at that point. We keep talking to people until around 10pm, when pretty much everyone is gone, and then we go wandering around the shutting down venue because the car line to get out is at a stand-still and literally a mile or longer winding through the inside of this park (but we do sell a CD to some girls rocking out to All Time Low in their car, and then they popped in our CD to listen to—score). Since all the gates and fences are getting packed up, we can pretty much wander where we want to—which for us means straight to the heart of where all of the stages had been earlier that day. We ask a random guy if he needs help loading out his equipment, and he gladly accepts. We find out that he’s the drummer for the band Born of Osiris (double score), and we help him carry his drums back to their tour bus in the band parking lot. Super nice dude.

We wander into the dark parking lot where two lines of buses stretch on for quite a while, and the first thing we notice is All Time Low’s guitarist Jack Barakat hanging out with a bunch of people outside of their tour bus—this combined with the fact that every other band on Warped Tour is suddenly right in front of us makes it incredibly difficult to keep from fanboying all over the place. It’s also hard not to be a little jealous of the twenty-times-bigger-than-a-car tour buses that these bands are riding around in (and the drivers that take care of the long drives between places), but we know that it’s a work in progress. Besides, it’s kind of nice having an excuse to not shower.

After walking back and forth a little bit and saying goodbye to our new-found drummer friend, we make our way back to our car, where the line of cars leaving the venue still hasn’t gotten any shorter. We decide to crash in the car until the line is gone, which surprisingly was only about half an hour later when a security guard knocks on our window and says that the line has finally cleared out.

And there we were, sunburned and exhausted, looking at only about six or seven hours until we needed to be up again for the next day of Warped at Pomona. I was miserable beyond words, and Zach was faring about the same (being the most sunburned of us all). Lucas for whatever reason is just a tank and isn’t affected by anything, so I’m pretty sure at this point he was just burping happiness and daisies in the backseat or something like that.

Thankfully, these things are cured with a little rest and some wonderful people offering up places to stay—Pomona went much better, and on our off day before Ventura we just lounged around a friend’s house all day enjoying the availability of a shower (something we hadn’t had since leaving Phoenix) and couches to lay on.

I could write for another ten pages about everything that has happened, so I’ll just throw out some highlights from the past couple of days now:

-Using our family-given gift card to Chik-fil-a to eat a real meal

-Midnight bonfire on the beach with our wonderful couchsurfing host Missy

-Finding fifty bunnies behind a Walmart

-Brushing our teeth in that same Walmart

-A SHOWER (thank you Bryson and family)

-Pitching a tent in a parking lot

-Meeting Brazilian girls (apparently it would do us well to tour down there, they said) and a very drunk Australian

-Picnic in the park with the cheapest deli meats we could find

-Talking with fellow AZ bands Sleepwalker and A Step Ahead

-Listening to Mayday Parade through the fence

-Singing Pierce the Veil songs with people in the parking lot

-Giving Kevin Lyman (founder of Warped Tour) one of our CDs, a sticker, and giving his family a CD—and having him recognize us every day because of our “WHERE IS KEVIN LYMAN” shirt.

-Meeting the drummer of blessthefall one day, and then the drummer of Born of Osiris the next

-Having someone (several people, actually) demand to listen to our music and buy a CD (usually we at least have to ask if they want to listen)

-Meeting a TON of people, and having almost all of them really like our music =)

-Typical reaction: “Wow, I was expecting you guys to kind of suck like those other people, but you’re actually really good!”

It’s about 5pm at the Ventura date right now, and we’re about to head back to the venue now to start our “night shift”, where we’ll be until 11 or midnight when everyone is gone. We drive to Bakersfield tonight to stay with good friends for a couple of days, and then the real test begins as we start to crawl across the hottest parts of the United States: San Diego (not too bad), Phoenix (oh god), and Texas (NO NO NO). If you know anyone on the Warped Tour path who would want to host us for a night, please send us a message on Facebook—we’ll take whatever floor we can get for sleep =)

Time for me to shut up and get back on the road. More to come later peeps, we love you all and appreciate your support more than we can say. If you’re going to be a Warped Tour date let us know and we’ll meet up sometime during the day.

Til next time, all our love to you <3

-Steven (and Zach)