Sum 41’s Frank Zummo fosters conversation around mental health and music with Vancouver students

This photo, shared on Facebook by School of Rock Vancouver, shows Sum 41's Frank Zummo who recently performed with students. (Facebook/schoolofrockvancouver)

This week, Sum 41 drummer Frank Zummo took the stage of Commercial Drive’s Croatian Cultural Centre with the Vancouver School of Rock’s senior and junior house bands to deliver a set they had been working on for weeks.

The show, unsurprisingly, tore the house down, but it was the conversation that Zummo fostered afterwards that had the biggest impact on the students and the parents in attendance.

“Mental health was brought up by the kids and talked about often on stage,” says Zummo, speaking to CTV News on Sunday.

Zummo has been collaborating with the international music school company since 2017, hosting workshops and mentoring students througH Canada and the U.S. While music is the motive, fostering open conversation around mental health has become his newfound “calling,” he says.

“The teachers, everybody, is just so inspired by it, and is loving that we can have these conversations, because they just think I’m going to come in, we’re going to jam, and I’m going to talk about drumming only – and it’s just not that at all,” he says.

Zummo, who was in town for the Juno Awards fresh off the back off Sum 41’s farewell tour, says he has been weaving advice on mindfulness, health and nutrition and social connection around drumming tips while in sessions with students. He has delved into his own personal journey with mental health, and has talked honestly about his own practices of healthy eating, ice baths, and therapy.

He says he wants to offer budding musicians the guidance that wasn’t available when he was young, and the impact it has already had on students, across various School of Rock institutions, has been profound.

“It’s been so amazing. We’ve had parents that have had young kids that were depressed, or even suicidal – heavy stuff, who have pulled me aside and said that these events snapped their kids out of what was going on,” he said.

Thirteen-year-old Mya, who plays the bass, guitar and the piano with Vancouver’s School of Rock, says the drummer has been teaching students how a healthy body and mind helps performers be “mentally strong” on stage, and how she’s already inspired to be more mindful of the food she puts into her own body as a result.

“He says he always brings a blender with him on the road and, if he has a choice to go to McDonald’s or to just make himself a smoothie, he will choose to make himself a smoothie after a show to make sure he stays healthy,” she says.

Changing the preconceptions around what a rockstar lifestyle looks like is important for young musicians in the industry, says Zummo.

During the Vancouver workshops he says he showed text chains with other notable musicians to students, to show that the conversations they were having surrounded the likes of breathwork tips and supplement protein powder recommendations.

“The narratives are changing. When I grew up, it was Mötley Crüe, Guns N’ Roses, debauchery, sex, drugs and rock and roll,” he says. “When I was coming up, [mental health] wasn’t even talked about. I didn’t even know the words. The narrative is changing from ‘party, party, party crazy’ to healthy because, at the end of the day, everybody wants longevity,” he says, both physical and mental.

With the focus away from the revelling, musicians making their mark in the industry can instead use music as a tool in the mental health battle and a means of cathartic self-expression.

“Getting to play my drums is the most therapeutic thing ever, getting to connect with other musicians, getting to feel how an audience is reacting to what I’m doing on stage.”

Music, he says, is the “greatest therapy ever,” especially for youth who may not yet have access to their own therapists or mental health advisors.

“Having a connection to music often allows people, especially kids, to understand emotions and how to express them, and to hear about different experiences that they wouldn’t have otherwise,” says Justin Callison, whose son, 12-year-old Dylan, performed alongside Zummo on Thursday.

“It helps give a release to emotions, it helps create a connection with bandmates.”

Callison says the uplift in confidence and passion he has seen in Dylan since he was enrolled in School of Rock two years ago has been “astounding,” and the experience he had with Zummo on Thursday cemented what was already a “remarkable” few years.

“I know the experience [he] had the other day was a pretty wonderful one for all the kids. It was really amazing the way Frank interacted with them, he was so just gracious and generous,” says Callison.

“The way he talked about how important it is to take care of himself and his own mental health, it was really cool. And I know it’s going to make a world of difference to these kids.”