Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm has opened up on his voice and the various misconceptions he has faced about it over the years. In a new appearance on HardLore, Bolm revealed that he suffers from mutational falsetto. Also known as puberphonia, that voice disorder often afflicts an individual with a high-pitched voice after puberty.
Bolm went on to reveal that he’s been self-conscious about his voice for most of his life as a result of the condition, and how his ability to hit other registers with it inspired the name of his label, Secret Voice. Speaking on that, he stated [transcribed by theprp.com]:
“You know, it’s funny. I’ve thought about going into this here. Because I’ve never been open about this. So, It’s a condition. So, throughout all my years, especially being in Touché, and having to do interviews on the road, and every time having to do an interview on the road, my voice is thrashed or whatever.
Or just people hear me talk regularly and they’re like, ‘That guy fucked up his voice.’ I’ve always sounded — you’ve known me a long time — I’ve always sounded like this. It is a condition… I have a record label. It’s called Secret Voice. And that’s been an inside joke for people closest to me who like know what that is. Okay. Because [uses deep voice] “if I wanted to, I could talk like that.”
After the show’s hosts joked that he sounded like a rapper or The Incredible Hulk with his so-called secret voice, Bolm went on to say:
“This ties in to all to like all things Touché. I can’t talk louder than this. Like comfortably, I just can’t, my voice breaks up. But I yell in Touché, ‘Hey’ [speaking], ‘Hey.’ [yelling] That’s that. So, it’s two different things. So, it’s called mutational falsetto.
And it is like ‘curable.’ So when you read about it, it’s basically like… So if we can get personal, I thought about talking about this too because you guys have a great platform. And I think I’ve historically gotten really frustrated by the amount of people who just think I’m bad at my job, you know? Or just like, ‘oh, that guy can’t do this’, or or something like that.”
He went on to say that in a way launching his own ‘The First Ever Podcast‘ was a bit of therapy for him:
“The podcast for me was my way of kind of confronting my… ’cause this is the thing, I’m like absolutely most self-conscious about [my voice.] Like the amount of times in my life when I meet somebody for the first time and they’ll be like, ‘Huh, can I get you some tea?’ That type of thing. It’s just always been something that I’m like super [self-conscious about]. It’s why I don’t like being in loud environments like going to a bar because I can’t project and it’s that sort of a thing. So I get really stressed out about it. And so I was a late bloomer, and I think having all my friends mature faster than me made me then nervous about my voice then changing.
So without me realizing it, it kind of like stuck me in this place where I mentally just wanted… I refused… this is what I’ve learned about reading about it. It’s kind of like you refuse to like let it all happen naturally, even though your body completely changes in every other way. So that’s at least what I’ve learned from it. Like if you read [about it], it’s like oh this is something that is curable through going to basically like voice therapy.”
When asked how many people know about his voice condition and his ability to hit different registers, he stated:
“So this is interesting. It used to be my party trick on tour with bands that like I become close with. It’s like not something that I talk about. My family didn’t really even know I could do it. I don’t know that they even ever talked about it. So for me it was like a fun party trick and it was always called secret voice.
But I’ve almost also been very protective of it, where like if you and I were on tour together, and I did it for you, and you thought it was a riot. And then we’re at a show a year later and you go up and you’re like, ‘Yo [do the voice]’, I would never.’ So that’s also why it’s like, here, it’s like because I think a part of me wanting to potentially talk about it was maybe put to rest the amount of people who just don’t understand what what’s wrong with me…”
You can hear Bolm‘s ‘secret voice’ in the below timestamped video embed.
