PicoBlog

Nov. 23, 2009. It was a stroke of irony befitting the band's dramatic lyricism. On Oct. 20, the day before platinum-selling San Marcos group Blue October was to launch the mental health-themed Pick Up the Phone Tour, the band's singer, Justin Furstenfeld, had a breakdown and ended up in a psychiatric ward.

The monthlong tour, co-sponsored by the 1-800-SUICIDE hot line, was canceled except for the final dates this past weekend at Stubb's.

Minutes before he was to take the stage Friday for the first time since being hospitalized, the 33-year-old Furstenfeld stood off by himself in a hooded sweatshirt, calming his nerves in the cool drizzle. Just don't forget the lyrics, he told himself. During rehearsal the day before, he had flubbed lines from songs he'd sung hundreds of times.

"I'm not used to my new medication," he said Thursday. The antipsychotic drug Geodon made him lightheaded and unfocused.

He was the last of the band's five members onstage, and when he put on his guitar, he stared at the floor. "Committed at twenty two/ Just to get over you," he sang in a somber voice on the opening number, "HRSA," which, like most of Furstenfeld's songs, is autobiographical. His body was hunched over, his eyes darting. Too soon?

But as the set continued, a transformation took place. "Dirt Room" found him bouncing around like a boxer entering the ring. “Into the Ocean,” which was used in The Sopranos as A.J’s attempted swan song, was a bouncing light in the darkness. "Life is a crazy, crazy thing," the singer said midset. "I believe that there's a reason for every negative thing in the world. I can't wait to find out what the reason was for what happened a month ago."

Furstenfeld attributes the incident in the Minneapolis airport that reduced an 18-city tour to a two-night stand to "a bunch of stuff that's been going on in my life," including a painful separation from his 2½-year-old daughter, whose name is tattooed on his neck. The singer, who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, had visited his daughter in Nebraska- or had tried to- and was changing planes in Minneapolis when, he said, he blacked out.

"My brain just shut down, and I don't remember anything," he said, adding that he wasn't on drugs or alcohol. "They tell me I was in the airport with my arms raised, yelling, 'Police! Police! Police!' I must've felt really unsafe."

He was headed to Washington to address Congress the next morning on such issues as funding creative writing and art therapy programs as alternatives for mental health treatment. Then he was to kick off Pick Up the Phone, designed to help remove the stigma of reaching out for help in times of mental crisis, with a solo acoustic set on Capitol Hill.

Instead, Furstenfeld sought help himself. After a couple of days of observation at Tennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, he was admitted to the Laurel Ridge Treatment Center in San Antonio, where he spent two weeks before being released. It was while spending a month in Laurel Ridge at age 22 that Furstenfeld came up with the name Blue October. He said he grew up thinking his deeply sad thoughts were normal. "I saw the world as a dark place and thought everyone felt the same way I did," he said. When he was 14, his parents took him to a psychiatrist, who prescribed Paxil.

Furstenfeld's lifelong struggle with paranoia and depression is well-known to his loyal fans, many of whom flew to Austin to show support last weekend.

Mike Oshel, 37, and Courtney Gustafson, 34, of Salt Lake City were undeterred by Friday's rain, which started in the morning when they were among the first in line and didn't let up until about three-fourths of the way through the band's set. "When it comes to Blue October, we don't waver," Gustafson said. They estimated that they spent more than $1,000 on airfare and a hotel to see their favorite band.

Florida couple Jaime and Michael Taylor drove 17 hours from St. Augustine and got in line outside Stubb's at 7:30 a.m. Friday. There were eight fans already there. "We had tickets to all four Florida shows," Jaime Taylor, 39, said of the canceled Pick Up the Phone dates. She also drove up to Washington for the Furstenfeld solo set that never happened. "When he sings, even in a big crowd, it feels like Justin's singing just to you."

Furstenfeld needn't have worried about forgetting lyrics; the crowd sang every one back to him, turning such loneliness odes as "Hate Me," "Into the Ocean" and new single "Should Be Loved" into unlikely anthems. The Stubb's shows resembled religious revivals for the outpouring of emotion.

"The past few years have been the fastest, wildest roller-coaster ride I've ever been on," Furstenfeld said Thursday. Houston natives Justin and Jeremy Furstenfeld, the band's drummer, formed Blue October in 1996 while students at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos (now Texas State). It took 10 years of constant touring and recording before the band broke nationally with Foiled, which sold 1.2 million copies in the U.S.

This year's Approaching Normal debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard album sales chart, despite being ignored by critics, who've tagged the band as emo or overly dramatic. When Twilight series author Stephenie Meyer cited the band as one of her faves and took Furstenfeld and his guitar out on a book promotion tour last year, Blue October didn't need any help from the rock press.

While he was at Laurel Ridge, Furstenfeld bonded with some soldiers from Iraq dealing with PTSD. "They were talking about hearing voices, and I felt like I'd finally found someone who understood what I was going through. I think our music connects with some people like that. They identify with the lyrics. It's like 'finally someone understands.'"

Sept. 26, 2013- "It's my favorite record we've ever done," Justin Furstenfeld says on the phone from New Jersey, where his band Blue October had a show the night before. But he's not talking about the terrific new LP Sway, the band's most melodically uplifting effort yet. The record he's proudest of is the one that came before, Any Man In America, which didn't do much for the San Marcos-based group's career.

"I didn't make Any Man for critics or for fans or for anyone else," he says. "I made it because it needed to be made. When my oldest daughter is 21 and she hears that record, she'll know what I was going through. Maybe it'll all make some sense to her."

On the album, Furstenfeld describes his emotions during a nightmare custody situation after his ex-wife moved to Nebraska with their child Blue. "The last three times I've flown up to see her, I ended up sitting in a hotel room for a few days," he says. "They never showed up." Furstenfeld says he hasn't seen Blue, now 6, since last Thanksgiving.

"I used to be this crazy madman who didn't get to see his daughter," he says. Furstenfeld was briefly hospitalized after a mental breakdown in an airport in Minneapolis in 2009 after an unrequited visit to Nebraska. "It was so painful and I self-medicated. But I got some help in grieving for the loss of (the relationship with) my daughter. Now I just pray and move on."

The drinking and drugs got worse, he says, after his crusade for the rights of divorced fathers on the Any Man In America tour seemed to have absolutely no effect. "I was, like 'hear me roar! I was going to be the guy who changed it all and I guess I was just naïve."

About three years ago, Furstenfeld had planned to spend his birthday alone at home -- a private party -- but, to cheer him up, a friend brought by some women he wanted Furstenfeld to meet. One of them took a T-shirt and smacked him in the back of the head with it. "It's your birthday," she said. "Smile!"

That was Sarah, who became Sarah Furstenfeld about a year later. They got pregnant. He kept using. She told him that if he didn't stop, he'd never see their kid. He swore he would, but because addicts lie like they breathe, there was an intervention the next day and Justin was off to Nashville for 75 days of treatment.

"I ate it up, every minute in rehab," he says. "I could see what I was doing to myself with (the previous) two years of debauchery. I didn't want to live like that anymore and I don't have to."

Sarah and new baby Sayde Belle are on tour with their husband and daddy, traveling on a sober bus. He goes to meetings based on a 12-step program in every town the band plays. "Life is so amazing," he says. "I never knew that. I spent all my time just regurgitating my turmoil."

Last week, Furstenfeld went to pick up food for his family at a restaurant and had to sit at the bar while it was being made, so he ordered a large ice tea with three lemons. "I took a picture, it was so beautiful," he says. "It was right there in the middle of all these bottles of booze and all I wanted was that ice tea."

Fans expecting the usual misery-loves-company album from Blue October won't get that with "Sway," which contains a 25-minute segment from the title track to "Fear" that is perhaps the strongest work Furstenfeld's ever done. Such tracks as the rescue anthem "Angels in Everything" and "Debris," with its slinky '70s arrangement, find a man not coming to grips as much as coming to his senses. It's an honest album about being grateful for a second chance.

"All my life/ Been running from a pain in me/ A feeling I don't understand/ Holding me down," he sings on "Fear," the Peter Gabriel influence shining through. "That song comes right out of the exercises I was doing for step one," he says. "I had to write down 50 things I've done that prove that I'm powerless against drugs and alcohol. It was just so devastatingly embarrassing to see the way I was treating people."

He's now been sober a year and five months. The hours he used to burn getting high are now spent trying to be the best person he can be, to himself and others, he says. After taking personal inventory, Furstenfeld has restocked the shelves.

"Fear in itself/ Will use you up and break you down/ like you were never enough/ I used to fall but now I get back up."

Justin Furstenfeld believed the myth that to be an artist you must be messed up, crazy. Manic, depressed, high as the clouds, twisted and tangled in deep pain: That was the Justin that sold a million albums in 2006 singing "Hate Me" and "Into the Ocean."

That guy's still here, but his mind has lost the shrink wrap. Friday at Stubb's when he sings "Hate Me," the song's theme of self-sacrifice will dissolve in the lusty singalong of loyal fans. You don't need chaos to create order. You don't have to be out of your head to do your best work.

Sway proves that.

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