Today, rather than on stage before thousands of adoring fans, his audience is a small group of four at a photo shoot inside the Deep Ellum Community Center. In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, which begins on May 1, Reddick partnered with photographer and Dallas Observer contributor Jason Janik to recreate an iconic 1965 album cover by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream & Other Delights. The recreation is a sort of alternative rite of passage, and for this shoot, they’re parodying the album as “Mental Health & Other Delights.”
"I don't hate this," jokes Reddick as he's being doused with shaving cream up to his chest, treating the prep like a free spa day.
In a few moments, Janik will instruct him to pretend to lick a dollop off of his finger seductively, as model Dolores Erickson once did. The shaving cream, being used in place of meltable whipped cream, tastes "dry" and smells like a grandpa, according to Reddick, who took it upon himself to actually try some of the Gillette cream.
It's certainly an eye-catching sight, perhaps serving as a physical manifestation of the openness and comfortability shown by Reddick in speaking candidly about his struggles with mental health.
“Being the funny guy,” Reddick explains. “I just felt like I always had a mask on.”
Around 2007, while on tour with Bowling for Soup, Reddick experienced his first recognized panic attack. It was the culmination of mounting anxieties that gave way to self-destructive behaviors. Reddick was amidst many life changes: moving, a divorce, and a subsequent custody battle. Each of them individually could’ve been a catalyst for struggle; Reddick was experiencing all of them simultaneously.
“When my mental state started to go, I let my physical body go as well,” he says. “I just stopped moving. I gained a lot of weight, and I was drinking too much. I had begun talking to my doctor, but I wasn’t as forthcoming as I think I really needed to be.”
Over time, Reddick’s steadfast commitment to improving has paid dividends. He was eventually diagnosed with depression and went through a long process with his doctor to find the medication that worked for him.
“There’s no magic pill,” he says. "It was eight to 10 months of trying different combinations of dosages and other meds. I tried them all, and I was just honest with my doctor. We managed to find the right combination, and it’s the same combination that I’m on to this day.”
In 2017, he spoke about his struggles with Louder Than Stigma, a Facebook page dedicated to mental health for Deep Ellum musicians.
“It was the first time I'd ever talked to anybody outside my friends and family or a doctor about my mental health struggles,” he says. “I left there feeling taller than I felt in a long time. I just felt so good that I got that off my chest.”
“The last thing I really ever wanted to do or ever planned to do was come out publicly with any sort of mental health struggle,” he added. “I’m in Bowling for Soup; we’re the funny band. The first thing I was worried about was just the bounce back of ‘Oh, the funny guy’s sad, he’s got a hit record, and now the world sucks.’”
But despite his reservations, Reddick’s vulnerability opened up an entirely new avenue for him.
“The response to that article was so insanely great and positive that I started to be open to answering questions about it,” he says. “I started posting a little bit more about it on my social media and then later started getting involved with some organizations such as Punk Rock Saves Lives and Amplified Minds.”
Now, Reddick serves on the board of directors for Punk Rock Saves Lives, an organization that prioritizes the health and well-being of the punk community. With Amplified Minds, formerly Foundation 45, Reddick has appeared in several of the nonprofit’s events and online programming.
Reddick’s advocacy can light the path for those who might be struggling and inspire others who want to be catalysts for change in their friends and family.
“If I were to send anybody someplace, I would say to reach out to a friend you haven’t heard from in a while and just be a good listener,” Reddick says.
Since his breaking point in 2007, Reddick has been on a long journey. Today, his path has led him to sit crisscrossed on the floor with 11 cans of shaving cream coated over his body. The path to recovery is never linear.
“I think it became something that seems natural,” Reddick says. “It’s almost like one of the reasons I'm here.”
