My Dear Friends of Inked Meeting women’s dad that was always a hard thing for me because i’d get so nervous around dads because you know how you like yeah i’m uh i’m a tat i mean i’m a pizza boy and i live in my mom’s basement and i’m hoping that my music dreams come true it was just like not a good look for dads at all.
I’m teddy swims and i’m a singer from atlanta georgia and uh yeah my granddad was a pentecostal pastor my dad was not like that and i preferred being there a lot when i was.
A kid my parents divorced i think i was maybe four years old and uh he always would put me on to the to the good stuff when i go over to his house on the weekends you know marvin gaye stevie wonder that kind of stuff that’s where the real uh roots of of music came for me for sure i was in fourth grade the first time i.
Ever heard al green so we had this teacher her name was miss mary um i don’t know where where she is now but i was going to the school of middle ridge when i was staying with my dad for a few months and uh she used to tell all of us kids like if you if you shut up after after recess come back in everybody doesn’t talk they do their.
Work we’ll play the greatest hits of al green i didn’t know why these kids were so excited to like stop and not talk and do their work and uh i remember hearing i’m so tired of being alone and it just like shocked my whole world i had never heard music like that right i’d like growing up on country.
Music and like oh southern gospel tunes you know so i had never heard like soul music and uh i went home to my dad like yo who is al green this is like the most incredible incredible thing inside he put me on everything man from from al green to george strait to keith sweat to the beastie boys two lab crew just boys and men so i i was able to.
Always like do stuff i wasn’t able to you know on my mom’s side of the field when i was a kid my biggest dream was to be tattooed if somebody asked me what i wanted to do when i grew up it was either be a comedian or be tattooed every friday we would get ten dollars for our allowance doing little things around the house and so i’d save them up.
Till sunday we’d go to church and after church we go to mexican restaurant i get all ten dollars put in the quarters and i cash out on tattoos there’s there’s pictures somewhere at me just i would sit in and put tattoos all over myself and just sit in the mirror like this i might have been like six seven years old you know making flexes and.
Tattooed covered in them i always always wanted to be tattooed that was like my biggest dream as a child which is being tattooed is not a career i know now but it was my dream in florida you can get tattoos 16 years old with parents consent and uh at the time i.
Didn’t have my id either and so i had my mom like overnight my uh my driver’s license i just got in and so we could go get tattooed well we had different last names so um we had went to like three or four shops just to get like a highway robbed on a tattoo i ended up getting covered.
Up i got this tattoo of a of a cross right here and it had a banner with my last my real last name and it dimsdale and another banner that said established 1992. such a douchebag tattoo to get bro so of course at the time i was like on the football field and stuff cutting the shirt like the sleeves off of my shirts.
And feeling like oh tatted up you know what i mean and uh it was i mean a couple years later like when i started actually getting tattooed like uh that’s not a cool tattoo dog that is so lame lame ass tattooed again when i was in 18 i had everything pierced like my labret my tongue my.
Monroe my nose dermal i had inch gages i was just because i couldn’t get tattoos before so i was just piercing everything eyebrow everything everything was pierced and it wasn’t until after high school you know i had to get a job and take a bunch of my face but yeah i was so she let me she took me she took me like three different.
Places to try to get it and we finally finally got it i remember the lady that tattooed me too was nuts she had like there was nine piercings i counted no eyebrow just nine nine loops that wore her eyebrows you mentioned the pentecostal pastor yeah how did he react to the first test um man he was always he was.
Always good i think uh for him his uh his thing was always uh you know son uh you know the you know the calling of god is without repentance and you you’re meant to do this and like lead on this legacy of his and preach and preach the gospel and stuff and uh so he always told me when i first started getting really tattooed before.
He passed uh please just don’t get your face tattooed and uh funny enough my my first face tattoo i got home at last is uh something that my grandma said when he passed and so i got a face tattoo to commemorate his death as a just uh you know if heaven exists then he owes me a ass woman when i get up there just the.
Last chance to i mean he’s my hero i love him to death but just the last chance to piss him off one more time i started with this arm and actually got this tattoo was the second one well on my 18th birthday i got or i got this tattoo right here that says compassion and then i got my mom’s lips on one of these areas she she took me and like.
Kissed a piece of paper and put it on me and i thought okay i thought a senior in high school i was like daddy you know i thought i was really doing it and uh then shortly after i got this guy heroic bear the despair was my first metal band i was in after high school and i started my sleeve with that um we suck you can still find us on uh.
You can still find us on youtube horrible music but you know they they started me so here we are now it wouldn’t have been for that shitty post-hardcore band we wouldn’t have teddy swims at all when did you first notice strangers noticing your matches man uh i guess.
I guess since i got him you know i think i think for me it was always it was always tough like dating you know dating girls and like being tattooed meeting women’s dad that was always a hard thing for me because i’d get so nervous around dads because you know how you’re like yeah i’m uh i’m a tat i mean i’m i’m a pizza boy and.
I live in my mom’s basement and i’m hoping that my music dreams come true it was just like not a good look for dads at all i think that was uh that was the hardest time where i had a kind of coming up where i i realized that i’m more than my image if that’s that’s the that’s the phrase i like to say all the time i’m much more than my.
Image but i always liked that as a child even all the way through when i was painting my hair like when i was dyeing it or when i was when i was piercing my face i always i always loved the i always loved the idea of looking one way and and being another way i always like to i like i love this this winning someone over and showing people that.
Like it doesn’t matter this stuff doesn’t matter it doesn’t affect my heart my heart is always in the right place and i want to i want to show everybody that i can in the world especially in a small southern town you know you want to i always i always felt like that was my duty in the world was to show somebody that like i’m i’m a.
Good person and i can look like this you know and and there’s there’s people that look a lot crazier than me and are probably amazing people and they don’t get jobs that they should get they don’t get security they should get they don’t get the opportunities and the chances they could get and so i think for me my whole my whole life’s goal kind of has.
Been you know being a walking contradiction i guess or for people’s normal people’s perceptions of it rather so when you did that was that a moment for you yeah man it was the most liberating ever man i think that was the first one for me that.
Was like all right it’s it’s music or nothing i think i think a travis barker or something said it and i saw it one time where he was like i tattooed my whole body because i needed to not have a backup plan i needed to know that this had to work and uh so yeah getting my face tattooed was that first time for me like well.
This is it’s this or nothing and uh no no office jobs no nothing i could do just dead-end jobs until this paid off and uh i think i think you got to live like that i think you have to do that you have to make that promise to yourself and so me starting to get face tattoos was really more of a promise to myself that.
This was going to work and it had to work do you regret it it’s just that one yeah do you regret it no man i think uh i think it was i don’t know i wouldn’t even say i regret that one because it was a i mean definitely it was like such a wonderful moment you know and it definitely was my first.
Tattoo and it was like really the coolest ever for me but i wouldn’t i wouldn’t have any regrets for him man no regrets at all about about tattoos i think i feel like every tattoo i ever got as i was getting them i felt more of myself that the me that i always wanted to be you know so even.
Even the ones that have little issues or like little problems with them i think they’re like some of my favorite tattoos the off cuff like get whatever the hell you know i get a couple days ago i on tour our opener ashland they tattooed uh yontsum on me right here in my hand he was right in the.
Green room and so i think it’s i mean they got character and there’s so much to me and so many stories i can tell and it’s just i think it’s the most expressive beautiful thing in the world tattoos are the best you.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” Every person on this Earth will be asked this question at least 10,000 times by the time they hit the age of 18. Chances are that each of us has had at least a hundred different answers as well, but Teddy Swims always knew what he wanted to be—tattooed. We spoke with the singer about how he discovered music, the meaning behind his first face tattoo and the creative way he spent his allowance each week.
Welcome to Heavily Inked. In our newest series, we’re going to speak one-on-one with tattoo collectors and artists about what it means to be a heavily inked person. We’ll get deep as we go through the motivations behind their tattoo choices, the way they’ve been treated in society and much more.
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