MELODIES OF LIFE | TOBY GAD

We're heading towards the end of the year which always makes us think of our favorite songs! This month, we caught up with Toby Gad a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum songwriter/producer who has written some of our favorite songs from Beyoncé's If I Were a Boy, Fergie's Big Girls Don't Cry and Demi Lovato's Skyscraper to name a few! We wanted to know more about how he got into the industry, his passion for songwriting, collaborating with fellow entertainers and his legacy project, Piano Diaries!

ATHLEISURE MAG: When did you first fall in love with music?

TOBY GAD: First it’s so great to be able to talk with you and thank you for having me! I started with music when I was maybe 5/6/7 years old? My parents had a jazz band and probably when I was already in my mother’s womb, I heard all of these jazz songs that they did. They had a very limited repertoire so I always felt that one day I wanted to be able to write different songs because by age 3 I knew all 30 of the songs that they played!

AM: I love that!

How do you feel that your parents influenced you as jazz artists. My great-uncle was the late tenor saxophonist, Joe Henderson -

TG: Yes! Amazing amazing saxophonist!

AM: I love jazz, I love a lot of the elements of it. How did it influence your music?

TG: My mother always listened to Keith Jarrett, the piano player.

AM: Love Keith Jarrett!

TG: The Köln Concert by Keith Jarrett is probably the one record that I have listened to most in my entire life. It’s accompanied me my entire life and it always makes me feel like home. It’s such a great record and just how Keith Jarrett just improvises. He used to start concerts by just playing one note and then taking it from there without making any plans. He’s just very intuitive and just playing in the moment and I just thought that that was so special. I try – I mean, I’m not that good on the piano. I try to do it myself too sometimes and I lose myself in the piano playing. It’s just such a beautiful feeling when you just watch your hands take you places and explore.

AM: We saw Keith Jarrett a few years ago at Carnegie Hall here in NY and you’re right!

TG: I was there too! I saw him also in Carnegie!

AM: Yes! It was such an amazing show and I felt that I barely breathed during that concert, it was transformative! It was so beautiful and I’m so glad that I had a chance to see him because I had never seen him in person but have heard his records. Such a genius!

When did you realize that you wanted to work in the music industry?

TG: My brother and me, we always had ambitions. At first we emulated our parents and they rehearsed in the living room and when they were done, we would take over the instruments and pretend that we were musicians too. Then I think at the age of 6 or 7, we started to have our own set of a few Rock & Roll songs and we would play them in the intermissions of our parent’s jazz band. When our parents went back onstage, we went through the audience and collected money. That was our first experience of, “wow, we can actually make money with this.”

AM: Exactly!

You’re a music producer, you’re also a songwriter, what’s your creative process like and where do you start in terms of creating a song?

TG: It's very much lyric driven. It's always collaborative. I usually start with a conversation with the artist and see where they are at that time in their life. Are they heartbroken, are they in and out of love, angry, happy? What’s the mood of the day? And out of that conversation, sometimes, quite often something sticks – some line.

Like with BC Jean, when she said, because she was angry at someone, she said, “if I were a boy, I would kick his ass” and I was like, “what did you just say?” She said, If I Were a Boy (editor’s note: originally performed by BC Jean and later that year performed by Beyoncé) and I said let’s get back to the studio now and write this song. That’s often how it happens.

AM: Wow!

What do you love about being a songwriter?

TG: Well, it’s the feeling of coming full circle. Like you do something that starts so small with an artist and you record it and then if you’re lucky, it travels around the world. Then you hear it on the radio wherever you go. That is an incredible feeling when people know you by your song. It’s amazing and I love that.

AM: How do you get inspired and where does that part kick off for you?

TG: It’s always the artists that inspire me. If I know that I am going to work with someone, like recently I worked with James Arthur and Tom Walker and those are voices that I love. I love listening to their voices and working with them, I really looked forward to it and it inspired me to really work hard and to create some good music for them.

AM: You’ve had so many accomplishments from 3 Grammy Awards, Grammy nominations, and so many people that you have worked with. What do you look for when it comes to collaborating with an artist? Are there certain things that a person or group has to have in order to go forward?

TG: It's always important to me that the artists are kind of their own boss, they have something to say, they are driven to collaborate and to write their own lyric with someone like me. It’s very important that the artists are part of the creative process and that the music that they record somehow feels a bit autobiographical. Then of course, the voice. I love great voices. I worked with Celeste recently and there are just some singers who I could hear it day and night.

AM: I mean, when I was prepping for the interview, realizing the work that you have been on from Big Girls Don’t Cry, If I Were a Boy, I Do – these are songs that I really love! What have been some of your favorite projects that you have been part of?

TG: I think that Love Song to the Earth has been a song that we did for the Paris Climate Accord and that was a song that just meant a lot to me. At my heart, I’m an environmentalist as well. I care for the planet a lot and that was a little contribution that we could do and I wrote the song with Natasha Bedingfield, John Shanks, and Sean Paul. We got more and more artists on it and by the end, we got Paul McCartney on it as well. Jon Bon Jovi as well as a number of other big name artists wanted to be on this song too. So that was a great experience!

AM: Well, you have worked with a number of artists, but you have also crossed over into a number of genres in music. Does the process change for you when you’re working on an EDM song versus a pop song?

TG: I think that for me the core is that you can always play it on the piano. A lot of good EDM songs start with a good vocal and from there you can explore all different directions. Now, with Piano Diaries, it’s stripping these songs back down to the bones and it’s just for the vocal performance and the really marvelous piano and maybe a little string accompaniment and then the remixes which go all kinds of places and I just have fun with them. But I think that all of these songs at their core, if you can just play them at the piano, that’s great!

AM: What led you to want to create Piano Diaries and to embark on this legacy project?

TG: Well most of my career has been next song, next artist, next session and trying to get a hit, hit, hit! This is the first time in my life that I feel like I can take a breath, look back, and reflect a little bit. I’m happy to rediscover these songs, but I feel that I wanted to record them in a way – how I hear them today and with artists of today, but then I also want to hear the bones of it. For people to be able to hear how it could sound stripped down and just let the lyric carry it. Then of course, to have fun with these new originals and then make crazy remixes.

AM: I love that! I mean, what is it like to work on something that obviously we already know what it’s like, but now having to reimagine it? Is that stressful or is it almost like a sense of freedom?

TG: There’s a real challenge for the original version with piano vocal to create something that feels new.

AM: Yeah.

TG: And to make sure that the singers perform it in a way that feels very original. Like for instance, the next single, Skyscraper, will be with an artist, Camylio a Universal Republic artist with a very strong voice and he sounds so different from the Demi Lovato version, but he kills it.

The current single, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Victoria Justice has such a beautiful soft voice on it that sounds so different from how Fergie sang it when we did that song back then.

AM: I can imagine that that is such an interesting process.

What was it like working with Victoria Justice on that?

TG: Victoria and I, we go way back! Back when she had this very popular television show, Victorious, we had a song, All I Want is Everything that we wrote and she was 17 years old. Ever since, every few years, we would get together and write more songs. We did a song, Girl Up, to empower young females around the world for the United Nations. Love Song to the Earth, she was part of that. So over the years, we kept in touch and she’s such a precious soul and I love her. We actually, it wasn’t just the song, we spent days together just having fun climbing mountains, going surfing, and going through Downtown LA and we filmed a lot of that and put it on social media so we have 30 or 40 little clips on TikTok and Instagram of us talking, asking each other questions, and doing fun things together.

AM: You have your own record label, Kite Records, can you tell me about that?

TG: Well, about 10 years ago, I started Kite Records and we had several records out. But back in the day it meant that you had an imprint and that the record company takes over. But now, it’s such a new perspective that you can do so much on social media and on your own. I couldn’t wait to restart the label and to hire a few new amazing people. Now in the first 2 days we have almost 70,000 streams which I think is incredible that we can achieve that on our own! I’m so happy about this!

AM: That’s amazing!

Obviously you’re focused on Piano Diaries, but are there other projects that are coming up that you would like to share with our readers to know about?

TG: There is a Christmas single, LITTLE HOUSE IN THE SNOW, that came out on Nov 24th with Marisha Wallace, she is a musical star and I am working with her on an Etta James musical that is still going to be a year or two in the making. We decided to do a Christmas song. We’re promoting it in London, there will be shows in the Royal Festival Hall on Dec 15th and 17th and we’re performing with an orchestra. We get to do this song and there are a few TV and radio performances alongside that and that’s also on our label. So I’m very excited about this! Marisha is such a great singer!

AM: That’s fantastic and I can’t wait to hear more about the Etta James musical as I’m such a fan of her music.

When you’re not producing, writing, or doing other projects, how do you take time for yourself?

TG: That’s a learning process and I think that I am getting better with it after all of these years. I love surfing! Right now you can see where we are.

AM: Um that’s an amazing view! We just had Laird Hamilton and Gabby Reece as our OCT ISSUE #94 cover!

TG: I saw that! Incredible! I’m such a fan of Laird Hamilton and I think that it’s remarkable that early on, he decided that he never wanted to compete, he just wants to have his own experience with the gigantic waves out there with the natural forces. I have a lot of respect for this man!

AM: Do you go to Nazaré and surf big waves?

TG: Ha! I think that the biggest wave that I surfed was maybe 6 – 8 ft! To me that is very big!

AM: We also had Kai Lenny for our MAY ISSUE #89 this year as well on our cover who is also known for surfing those really epic waves! Watching him on HBO's 100 Foot Wave was insane! There’s no way I could do that, but watching him do it is so impressive!

TG: Kai Lenny is such a trailblazer with all of the other things like Foiling, Wing Folling and what he does at Nazaré is unbelievable! He does back flips on those 100 foot waves!

IG @tobygadmusic

PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Toby Gad

Read the NOV ISSUE #95 of Athleisure Mag and see MELODIES OF LIFE | Toby Gad in mag.

THE SKILL OF IT ALL | ELIZABETH BEISEL

As we're less than a year away from Paris 2024, avid readers know that we enjoy chatting with Olympic athletes whether they're still competing or have retired from competing, but are still in the community. We caught up with 3X Olympian (Beijing 2008, London 2012, and Rio 2016), 2X Team USA Swimming Medalist, and Team US Olympic Team Captain, Elizabeth Beisel. Known for the individual medley as well as the backstroke, we wanted to find out about her Olympic experience, the importance that surfing has as a sport as well as a skill that has served her, how she works with USA Swimming Foundation to ensure that the next generation is able to swim and potentially be able to become athletes in the sport as well! She also talks about the importance of representation and inclusivity in the sport. In addition, we find out what she has been up to, her partnership with Dermasport, embracing her second passion as a violinist, and more.

ATHLEISURE MAG: I’m so excited to be able to talk to you as I enjoyed watching you during your Olympic journey and watching you compete and I know our readers are going to love to know more about your passion for the sport, competing, and what you’re up to now!

ELIZABETH BEISEL: Thank you for having me and I just want to say that it’s an honor to talk with you as you’re a bad ass!

AM: Amazing and thank you!

When did you first fall in love with the water?

EB: Honestly, 6 months old! I went to the Mommy and Me classes at the YMCA. I grew up in Rhode Island which is the Ocean State. So luckily, my mom and dad had the means to put me into the YMCA Mommy and Me classes and introduced me to the water at an early age. I swear that I was the only baby there that wasn’t screaming bloody murder! I love the water! I would only sleep if I was in the water that day. Like it became a thing. I think from the beginning, I was in love with the water and that never left me. I did other sports and other activities growing up, but I think that stuff happening in the water was where I was most comfortable and passionate. So, that was pretty much my entire life!

AM: I love hearing that!

EB: It’s great!

AM: You specialized in the backstroke and are known for your individual medley. What was it about these specialties that you wanted to compete in them?

EB: So, a lot of swimming, you don’t necessarily get to choose the event, the event chooses you. What you're good at is what you morph into. For me, I was one of those swimmers with the individual medley which is all 4 strokes in one race (Editors Note: the medley includes the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle). So I had pretty solid strokes across the board. But backstroke is definitely the one that I excelled in the most. So, since a young age, I kind of always swam all 4 strokes and then I really of honed in on the middle distances which is where my body thrives. I’m not necessarily a long distance swimmer, but I definitely have no sprint fibers in me. Like, I cannot run fast in a sprint, I can’t swim fast, it’s just who I am. I really found that happy medium in the 400m races and it really was just a matter of, “oh wow, I’m really good at these strokes,” in these events compared to everybody else. Why don’t I start focusing on these in practice and swimming on them more in meets. It’s kind of a snowball effect.

AM: I love hearing that as we have interviewed a number of Olympic swimmers and I have never asked how they chose that particular one. But I like that you’re saying that it kind of finds you.

EB: Yeah, trust me, if I had my choice, I’d be swimming a 50 free and be done in 20 seconds, but my body is not made for that!

AM: You’re a 3X Olympian, you have 2 Olympic medals, you’ve served as the Olympic Swimming Captain. What was your Olympic experience like for you and what did you love so much about it?

EB: I think that each Olympic experience was super different and for many different reasons. You know, my first one I was 15 and my last one I was 23. So that’s a completely different human! It was such an honor to be able to reach the pinnacle of the sport that I loved so much and be able to compete in it at that highest level for our country. I remember watching the Olympics when I was 7 years old on TV and having that be the first moment where I really grasped what the Olympics were and how monumental they were in my sport. I knew that I wanted to do that one day. That was my goal and I knew that I was going to make it happen. I’m just a small town kid from Rhode Island, I didn’t grow up in a family of Olympians and swimmers. I’m just like a lot of us where you have a dream. Maybe the fact that I was 7 years old and that kids have that beautiful way of just thinking nothing is impossible, I kind of went for it. I was like, “yeah, why not me? Of course!” It ended up being such an incredible experience and standing up on the podium, winning Olympic medals for your country and doing it alongside your teammates is so special. I have met the best people through my life in the sport of swimming. I think we’re forced to be pretty humble because, well, swimming is not an A-list sport. It’s not football, it’s not soccer, it’s not baseball. So we have once every 4 years to kind of shine at the Olympics and then nobody really cares about what we’re doing. We don’t make any money so it’s really a group of people that do it because they love it. I think that breeds a certain type of person and archetype. It’s just like the blue collar hardworking type of people that are really in it because you love it, not for the money, or the fame, or any thing like that. It’s just, “yeah, we love to swim.” Longwinded answer – Olympics are amazing!

AM: So, we always love knowing how athletes stay fit and obviously, you’re in the water which is a huge part of it. What are the workouts that you do in and out of the water when you’re training or even now when you’re doing what you do?

EB: I try to lift weights twice a week. I know that that doesn’t sound like much. When I was swimming, I was lifting 2-3-4 times a week depending on where we were at in the season. Towards the end of my competitive swimming career, I started implementing yoga and I’m now a certified yoga instructor, I love it that much. What I found while I was an athlete and now, and I still consider myself an athlete even though I am not actively competing, is that I leave yoga feeling so calm and like it’s almost like it’s opened up my body obviously, and my mind as well. I see things clearer, I think clearer, and it’s super relaxing. I’m kind of a 1 million miles a minute type of person so I need an outlet and something to force me. Because I’m not going to do it at home. I know myself. I’m not going to put on the meditation and do it at home. I wish I could. But I need to go somewhere and have somebody leading me and once I discovered yoga, not only did it help me athletically because you need to be stretching and you need to be opening your body and your muscle tissue. It helps with recovery a lot, but my mind too. It helps me slow down and shut off and just give myself that parasympathetic nervous system a break. So I would say yoga, lifting, and then I try to walk. It sounds simple, but I think that walking is good and I like to multitask and if I have calls, I will do it when I’m walking. So just nothing crazy to be honest and I think that’s the thing about Olympians, people probably think that we’re doing this out of the box really fancy stuff and it’s like, “no, we do the exact same thing that you guys do, we just do it 40 hours a week.” Instead of you doing it on the weekend or an hour here or there. But yeah, it’s just taking care of my body or anybody’s body is when you’re going to feel better. So that’s why I move now, because it makes me feel good.

AM: It’s so funny because I have probably been doing yoga for the last 15/20 years or so and once I went to my 40’s I went from a love/hate relationship to desperately needing it because like you said, it’s calming your mind down and having someone else stopping me and forcing me to do the things that I do. Hot yoga is my jam!

EB: Same! Oh my God! Give me a hot power vinyasa and I’m good!

AM: Same! I get so happy with it, it breaks me down, and I can quiet everything around me and I so appreciate it now versus in my 20’s I was like this is something to do for my mobility and flexibility. Now it’s like, no I need it.

EB: Exactly, this is like water and I need it.

AM: So you partnered with Dermasport. Can you tell me about the brand and why it was synergistic with you to work for them?

EB: Ok. So Dermasport is a skincare brand so it’s face wash, moisturizer, eye cream, and SPF. It’s designed by swimmers for swimmers. Right off the bat, synergy. Throughout my entire swimming career, I was always struggling to find – especially sunscreen, I was swimming at the University of Florida and I ended up swimming there for 8 years.

That’s 8 years of swimming under the sun outside and I really struggled finding a sunscreen that wouldn’t smudge my goggles and I know that that sounds crazy, that would stay on during the entire practice, would protect my skin, and on top of that, the chlorine itself is so bad for your skin. It strips away every good oil and thing that you have on your face. So I was struggling to find a post swim face wash that really felt like it got everything off. Not only the residue of the sunscreen, but also the chlorine that had seeped into my skin. Once Dermasport came out and approached me, and sent me samples for me to try out, I tried it out for a good 2 months indoor and outdoor swimming. I knew that this was the stuff. It was like I was the one going to them asking them that if they wanted me to do anything, to let me know. I think another thing is that element of protecting your skin. I lost my dad to cancer 2 years ago, although it wasn’t skin cancer, it was a huge wake up call for me being like, you’re healthy until you’re not. You’re cancer free until you’re not so what am I actively doing that’s preventative and ways that I can alleviate the possibility that I don’t ever end up having cancer. So sunscreen has been like, it doesn’t matter if it’s a cloudy day, if it’s the dead of winter, it’s part of my morning routine now. So it just really hit a lot of the elements that I am really passionate about in my life and so it was kind of one of those things where I was like the universe just bestowed this upon me and I thought it was beautiful.

Of course, since retiring from competitive swimming, I really started to surf a lot now that I have time in my life to do things. It’s mineral based, the packaging is either recyclable aluminum or post consumer recycled bottles so I feel good about it across the board. It’s the best!

AM: That’s amazing!

What’s your discipline in surfing? What are you doing in surfing? Are you doing wake boarding or looking for the ultimate big wave?

EB: Well, I interviewed Carissa Moore once so you and I have that in common!

AM: Yup!

EB: I’m sure you had the same experience, she was the nicest person in the world!

AM: She was our FEB ISSUE #85 this year and it was on Super Bowl Sunday and we had a huge tie zone difference and she was the loveliest person.

EB: Exactly and I was in Tokyo for the Olympics 2 summers ago and I was working with NBC and of course it was surfing’s first time in the Olympics. Carissa wins and part of my job was interviewing the athletes after they won. Carissa was not in a rush, she never made me feel like I was annoying her and trust me, the amount of press that she did on that day, like she did not need to talk to me. She was just phenomenal and she was beautiful and lovely as a human!

I have been doing it for a few years now and it’s been really awesome because I love learning new things. I took to surfing easily because of my paddle strength and my arms. So I’m getting better I did a surf trip in the Maldives for a month in April and the thing is with anything, if you’re not doing it consistently, you’re not going to be better. Here where I am in Rhode Island, we get Hurricane Season waves in the fall and then nothing for 10 months. So, I’m trying to go on more trips to get better, but the camaraderie, the culture, I just love it! It’s amazing.

AM: Do you think that you’ll go to Nazaré?

EB: Ha! I’ll watch! Listen, I love to live my life and be alive! Like you know what’s even crazier Kimmie? The tow people with the jet ski! They have to be equally trained, if not more! You know, it’s unreal!

AM: HBO's 100 Foot Wave, but you see it and you’re like, holy shit!

EB: I know right?

AM: What does your partnership look like with Dermasport? Are there events coming up or is it just organic integration?

EB: A lot of it is organic. Obviously I have been sent the product as I need to use it in order to talk about it. We’re going to do some appearances at a lot of Masters meets so that is basically older swimmers just because I feel that those are really the people that are tuned into taking care of their skin and their health whereas kids may be a little harder. Mom says use your sunscreen and the kids are like, “but I’m invincible, why do I need that?” And then, just like genuinely and organically posting about it. I’m at the point in my life that if something doesn’t align with me, I don’t give it my time. We have too many things going on in our lives and so this is one of those things like I said earlier where it just hits every pain point in my life that I am genuinely passionate about – swimming, being in the ocean, surfing, and being in the sun. I’m a lifeguard too and I sit in the sun for hours throughout the day. My connection to cancer and so it’s a really genuine partnership. I’m so excited to be involved.

AM: So tell me about Block Cancer. Why did you want to launch this, what is this lifestyle brand, and what can we expect to see from it?

EB: I’m so excited! It launched July 19th. So I’ll give a quick backstory. When my dad was going through his diagnosis and treatment, I was going through all of the books and cancer had never touched my family. I didn’t know what to do and I was super green in that world and all the things I read said to give something to your loved ones to look forward to. So I thought that I had this amazing swimming platform and there’s an island off the coast of Rhode Island, that only 2 people have ever swum to and no female had ever done it. So I was like, “this could be something cool.” I could share my updates with dad and we called it Block Cancer because the island is called Block Island. It’s like a play on words.

Unfortunately, I did the swim, but my dad passed away before I could complete the swim. I know that he knows that I did it because I fully believe that he was there that day. But after the swim, we were like we had this modest and humble goal of raising $5,000-$10,000 and we raised $665,000 all going to in lab cancer research. That was my thing.

I didn’t want to be funding the renaming of a hospital wing, that’s not my jam. If there's no funding there's no research, no research, there’s no cure. So how can I bridge the gap between the oncologist and the researchers and actually making some progress. So after completing the swim, sitting on it for a little bit, digesting what had happened with my dad and all that stuff – I was really looking to relaunch it and I didn’t really know what that looked like. What it turned into being organically was this collaboration of creatives all designing really cool designs for Block Cancer and selling the merch and donating 90% of the net profits to a non-profit that I have worked with my entire life that funds lab research. It is 100% going to in lab research and I get to be apart of the vetting process and the grant writing process so it’s really really awesome. It’s not just hoodies, hats, and bracelets, but it’s also chemo hats, scarves, port shirts, and cancer care packages. I wanted to do something that really put the cancer patient first. I have also compiled resources like cancer diagnosis resources, grief resources, and when you get a cancer diagnosis, what the hell do you do? What questions do you ask, who do you go to and what do you do when you lose somebody?

For the past year and a half, I’ve been compiling all of that, putting it together and it’s just been this real passion project. It’s never felt like work. It’s a way for me to stay connected to my dad. Actually, Dermasport to bring it back in, we’ve been in talks to have the sunscreen be sold on Block Cancer and maybe a portion of the net-profits go to the Block Cancer Fund. It makes sense right? You use sunscreen and it protects you in skin cancer. Again, Dermasport fit in seamlessly to this beautiful passion project that I am working on and it felt like this beautiful symbiotic relationship. It’s all good stuff and I’m so excited! I have literally, my eyes are all over the place the place – I’m not a website builder, but I have done all this work myself because I don’t have an investor. I don’t have 15 grand to pay for a website developer. So it’s been actually great because I have learned a ton. I've learned skills that I otherwise wouldn't have had.

AM: That’s great, because when you do all of the stuff, as you bring people on, you know exactly how long it takes, what it is – because when you can do it yourself, the person who you bring on who definitely has the skills to be able to do that should be above and beyond what you can do.

EB: Of course! Yes, absolutely. I think that the website came along great.

AM: What other projects are you working on beyond Dermasport and Block Cancer? Are there other things that we should keep an eye out for?

EB: Actually, super exciting news! So I mentioned earlier that I did other activities growing up. So I grew up playing the violin. That was actually my equal love to swimming. But it always had to take a backseat to swimming because I would always choose swimming. So violin is beautiful because it is something that you can always do for the rest of your life. So I’m in a band called Laden Valley and we’re developmental, super early in our stages. But we got asked to play Newport Folk Fest – we’re a folk band.

AM: That’s huge!

EB: Yeah! Huge like Brandi Carlile, Paul Simon, we’re the opener on Fri of Newport Folk Fest and this is like – if this goes well, in the folk world if you’re playing Folk Fest in Newport, you’re doing well!

AM: Oh I’m well aware, that’s why I perked up!

EB: Yeah and we’re very excited, I got all of my outfits planned and I’m like, what are we wearing? So it’s me and 3 other guys and so I’m picking the outfits and the color scheme and they all have can match me.

AM: That is so exciting congratulations!

EB: Yeah and it’s one of those things where this – I don’t want to jinx it. But I truly believe that maybe it could be something, but we will see! It’s by far the biggest crowd that anyone of us have performed in front of. I think it’s 8,000-10,000 people, but for us, it’s like huge and it’s so exciting!

AM: That’s exciting! The Newport Folk Festival is amazing and I knew what it was as soon as you said it as they don’t let just anyone play it. This year it’s Lana Del Rey, Jon Batiste, Maggie Rogers, that’s amazing.

You do so much! How do you give back to the sport that you originated in and how do you give back to the youth that is coming up?

EB: Yeah, so I’m an ambassador for the USA Swimming Foundation and that’s the philanthropic arm of USA Swimming so what we are trying to do is save lives and impact communities. Saving lives is – ok we know that swimming is a fun sport and we get to win Olympic medals and stuff, but at the end of the day, nobody gets into the sport of swimming to become an Olympian. They get into the sport because it’s purely a skill. It’s a life saving skill, but if you come from a socioeconomic background, culture, or city where swimming isn’t really a part of your life or the people that you’re surrounded with – you’re not going to learn. Formal swimming lessons reduce the risk of drowning by 88%.

So it’s like, I don’t know if you heard the story of the quarterback a couple of weeks ago that drowned in the NFL. But what I try to tell people is listen, the water does not discriminate, it doesn’t care if you’re an Olympian, it doesn’t care if you’re an NFL quarterback, it doesn’t care if you’re a 5-year-old. You can drown. So what we do is basically go around the country on a tour and it’s every May. We provide grants to local Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCA’s and we’re like, “here’s $15,000. We ask that in the next year you provide transportation to kids that cannot afford swimming lessons. You bring them from school to the YMCA or the Boys & Girls Club whatever it is and you get them in the water and you teach them how to swim.” I kind of call myself the out of town hero right? We go there and it’s inner city kids in Detroit or in Chicago. They have never seen a pool before, we make it all shiny and fun for them, but it’s like there’s some follow up here. We’re kind of the catalyst and you just have to continue it. So that’s been really rewarding to give back to the sport. At the end of the day, those Mommy and Me Classes that I took with my mom, they’re weren’t about me winning medals. Not at all! They were for me to learn how to swim and to be safer around the water.

That's been the way that I have given back in the past few years since being done.

It’s awesome because it’s also a diversity thing. You watch the Olympics, there is 1 Black person on the Olympic Swim Team. There’s 1.

AM: Yup.

EB: Like, what a microcosm of society right? Because that is what swimming looks like. So, it’s like, we’re trying to come in and we have Cullen Jones – have you ever met Cullen Jones (2G, 2S)?

AM: No, I have not, but I want to!

EB: He was literally my first friend on the National Team. He’s my big brother. I cannot say enough good things about him. Cullen, the first Black person to win an Olympic Gold medal in swimming, to break a world record, the first of everything! He’s kind of like the face of this tour. To be able to do this on the road with him and to watch, because I can say something, but I’m white. It’s not going to resonate as much as when he does it. Watching I get chills, watching him talk to an entire auditorium of kids who honestly may not even know what the Olympics are, but he gets through to them because he can relate to them and they go into a pool and they’re inspired to learn how to swim. That’s what it’s all about. It’s so incredible! So, I mean that this is a 100 year project!

AM: Oh yeah! That’s why representation is so important you have to have what needs to be reflected and if you have 1 maybe you get 4 and then 10. Like you said, it’s going to be 100 years for sure.

EB: Yeah, it’s always safer around the water. It’s never completely safe as I said earlier, you, me – no one is completely safe. Being around and having that impact on the sport and who it is accessible to is like – that is way more than any Olympic medal – it’s saving lives.

AM: Can you tell me about the Lead Sports Summit and what your involvement is with them?

EB: So Lead Sports Summit was founded by one of my best friends on the Olympic Swim Team, Kara Lynn Joyce (4S). She saw a need for a summit for just women and female young teenage athletes. So 13-18 and she gets the all-star team from the Olympic Team. The heavy hitter names that you watch on NBC at the Olympics come to Lead Sport Summit and we have breakout groups, we have panels, we have really open and honest discussions and we give these teenage girls a safe place to talk about stuff that maybe they are dealing with on their team, in school, with relationships at home, it’s a judgement free zone. It’s cool because I think there is an element of humanizing Olympians and what we do. Maybe it’s inspiring because of what we do. It’s like, “oh wow, I was putting Katie Ledecky (7G, 3S) on this pedestal and I thought that she was untouchable, but now that I have met her, spent time with her, and I know she has dealt with the same issues that I have dealt with – now this scary thing that felt impossible is possible! It is something that I say to Kara all the time that she needs to have one just for adults because I would go. I tell her too that by the end of the weekend, I have cried 48 times and I feel that I have gotten more out of it then the actual teenage girls did! Also, I’m not in the social media world that they are in. You and I did not grow up with those same pressures.

AM: Exactly.

EB: So it’s super eye opening to hear them talk openly about the pressures that they feel from social media and society. It gives me chills and makes me say, how can we help? It’s an incredible event and it’s over Labor Day Weekend every single year. Kara is opening it up to other sports now and it’s taking on a life of its own which is really beautiful and I will be at the one in DC which is over Labor Day Weekend this year.

AM: That's fantastic!

EB: Yeah and I think that it’s sold out. Which doesn’t surprise me as it’s done that every single year. It really is worth every single penny. It’s the best!

AM: I love that when people empower and infuse people. Even if something is for a lower age group, I always say that I feel like we’re adulting while we are dealing with our own traumas that are unresolved.

EB: Yes! There’s some stuff that happened to me 15 years ago that I should probably figure out!

AM: Without a doubt!

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PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY | Elizabeth Beisel

Read the AUG ISSUE #92 of Athleisure Mag and see THE SKILL OF IT ALL | Elizabeth Beisel in mag.