Judah & the Lion Open Up About Heartache and Joy That Inspired The Process: 'Hopeful' It Can Be 'Healing' (Exclusive)

• New album by Judah & the Lion Procedure is divided into five different stages of grieving
• The album covers a difficult period for frontman Judah Akers that included divorce and mental health issues
• Akers has since found happiness again, and will marry Son George’s fiancee in June

Sitting in the sunny courtyard of an AirBnB in Los Angeles, hours before they’re set to perform before a small acoustic show just down the road, Judah & the Lion’s Judah Akers and Brian Macdonald chat — or rather, the Southern drawl that Tennessee-born Akers brought with him to college.

“I came to Belmont [University] to play baseball, and a lot of baseball players were from Chicago,” he says. “It was very obvious that I was a peasant girl from the South, so I remember going back after that first semester and practicing. I was so aware of that.”

It wouldn’t be the last time Akers lost his sense of self. During the last few years, the musician went through a difficult period that included a painful divorce, the death of an aunt and uncle, and psychological problems.

But now he has come out the other side a healed man. His and Macdonald’s new album Procedure (out now) chronicles those highs and lows, breaking down his playlist into five stages of grief.

“The heart of the record is hope and healing and love,” says Akers, 33. “I like to believe that music can do that for people. We hope that in the way it was healing for the two of us on our own journey, I hope it can be healing for others as well.”

Through a series of headphones that range from folk tunes and surf rock tunes to pop-punk anthems, Akers and Macdonald laid bare the denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, ultimately, acceptance that came with what Akers calls his “lowest” point. ”

Judah & the Lion are performing in San Francisco in August 2019.

Steve Jennings/WireImage

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“We wanted to call it Procedure because I think accepting and forgiving yourself or others means being able to hold it all at once,” says Akers. “It’s a process, finding a way to be okay with the fact that sometimes I wake up and I’m just angry at the world. But when I started looking at my anger and asking myself, ‘Why do I feel this way?’, dealing with it became a process for us.”

Akers and Macdonald, 31, founded Judah & the Lion in 2011 after meeting in Belmont. Both of their mothers are therapists, something Akers says helped him deal with his feelings, especially as a Southern jock who was encouraged to “roughly” get his emotions out for most of his life.

Although the band released their fourth album Revival in 2022, the record didn’t cover everything Akers was up to at the time. Around 2017, he lost his aunt to suicide and then his uncle in the middle of the pandemic.

Judah & the Lion perform in San Diego in November 2022.

Tim Mosenfelder/Getty

On top of that, his marriage to wife Lindsey Riley was ending; Akers filed for divorce in May 2022 after nearly seven years of marriage. Although the emotional pain that followed (a doctor telling Akers he was suffering from “broken heart syndrome” inspired the song’s title) was overwhelming, he struggled to channel his feelings into song.

“Divorce is like failure in many ways. It’s definitely a defeat. It’s embarrassing. You feel guilty, and all these kinds of emotions happen at once,” he says. “I didn’t love myself. I didn’t like being alone. Even when I was going through it, when we were writing the last record Revivalme and [Macdonald] had these conversations, ‘I don’t know how to write about this, and I just write angry songs.’ But you have to write them.”

And, at the end, write that he did it. Akers says a series of panic attacks scared him and made him realize you never know what someone else is going through at any given moment — and with that came a renewed sense of empathy.

Soon, forgiveness was within reach, and writing songs like “Long Dark Night,” in which Akers sings about “cheating” on his ex-wife, helped start the process.

“I felt bad for not being honest. We really debated bringing it up at all. Now I don’t have an ounce of judgment towards her, and I also didn’t want to make her feel bad,” he says of his ex. “I didn’t want to hurt her, that wasn’t our intention with our music, but I wanted to respect it because someone was cheated on, and that sucks, that’s part of healing.”

Songs like “Heart Medicine” show how far Akers’ healing journey has come. In June, he will marry his fiancée, Sina George, whom he proposed to last September.

“My best friends at the time tried to do everything they could to stop my self-loathing. He looked at me and said, ‘Why do you think you don’t deserve love?’ And I said, ‘Well, no, I know I deserve love, but I just don’t know if I’m ready,'” Akers recalls.

A friend encouraged Akers to try hard and have fun — and the first date he went on was with George.

“Of course the first person I met was this lovely, beautiful person,” he says. “I am so obsessed with Son. This is going to sound so cheesy, but when she really looked into my eyes and it stayed, I really felt seen. Then I thought, ‘OK, you’re kind of matching my intensity like I’ve never felt before’. And I think it was when I was gone.”

With his toughest stretch now behind him, Akers is focused on the good that lies ahead.

“Writing these songs was about going back in time and really empathizing,” he says. “I think the record kind of forced it. You don’t really realize that until you go back and resurface those emotions from a healthier place like, ‘Damn, that was hard.'”

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Source: HIS Education