Former Football Star Darren Waller on His New Journey Into Music and the “Courage” It Takes

There are two kinds of games—those with finite boundaries and those without. This is the subject of James P. Carse’s book Finite and Infinite Games. It is also the reality former NFL All-Pro tight end Darren Waller is living today. Waller, who is also the great-grandson of the famed jazz pianist Fats Waller, excelled at the game of football. In 2020 with the Las Vegas Raiders, he finished with nearly 1,200 yards from scrimmage and nine touchdowns. And over his nine-year NFL career, he earned tens of millions of dollars. But he gave all of that up at 31 years old. Now, he is pursuing a new dream. He is following in his great-grandfather’s footsteps to become a musician.

“I love the courage that the artist has to muster just to go into the studio and record,” Waller tells American Songwriter. “To just put it out into the world where people can be so critical and judgmental and eager to tear something down.”

Indeed, if there is one rule in creativity it is that someone out there won’t like what you make. And Waller, who boasts hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, has heard the criticism—along with praise. But today’s world is all about naysayers. Sadly, social media has empowered millions of people who never attempt to create something meaningful to express hate towards those who do. But for Waller, their concern means little.

“Excitement and Vulnerability”

“I swing back and forth between both excitement and vulnerability,” he says. “They are both there. It’s crazy because I want to put my music out there and put out who I am now and it’s met with resistance because people are like, ‘No, you’re my entertainment, you’re my tight end, you’re my fantasy football workhorse, what are you doing out here doing something completely different?’”

Waller has released several EPs over the past couple of years, including his newest, Internal Warfare: This Too Shall Pass, on October 23. He says he’s taking the negativity in stride, and laments he’s “always been a people pleaser,” wanting to be “in alignment with what people wanted me to be.” But while he’s heard plenty of resistance to his music, he also notes he has the “endurance” to keep pushing through. “It’s not about them,” Waller says. “I can’t just fold up on something that I’m choosing because people don’t necessarily understand the journey to this point. It’s quite a bit scary and quite a bit exciting. But I feel faith growing in myself as time goes along.”

But here’s the thing: Waller’s music is good. Sure, some can quibble about the intricacy of a line here or there or the seasoning of a beat. Waller is, after all, still in the early stages of his burgeoning songwriting career. And because he is a public person, those early stages are being worked out in the public eye not, say, in the bedroom as with most budding songwriters. But what he has down-pat is the messaging. His songs like “All In Your Head” and “This Too Shall Pass” are about perseverance, about belief in self, about honest personal evaluation. They aren’t hokey club jams about getting money and women. No, they are songs about reclaiming your identity after letting yourself walk down the wrong paths.

A “Spiritual Journey”

Much has been written about Waller’s faltering. He’s been open about substance abuse and drug addiction, about codependency and his divorce with WNBA star Kelsey Plum after a short marriage. Now, though, Waller is sober. He seems to hold no ill will towards his former partner. All he wants to do is continue to find himself, continue his musical journey, and take whatever clarity he can get from it moving forward. Isn’t that, above all else, the point of art and the life of an artist? Self-discovery through process?

“Sometimes I feel like it’s not even really truly revealed to me yet what I’m looking for,” he says. “I think there’s some type of spiritual journey for me through music.”

Waller says he takes inspiration from the Pixar movie, Coco, which is about a young musician learning about himself and his family through song, including his famous relative who came generations before him. In this way, Waller may even look to sample music from Fats Waller’s catalog in his own future songwriting. He can still remember his own origins in the genre, which includes a CD Walkman, artists like Jay-Z, and his family’s tastes like Michael Jackson, smooth jazz, R&B, the Dixie Chicks, Destiny’s Child, and Michael Jackson. He remembers taking a jazz history class in college when his professor reminded him who his great-grandfather was. Waller knew vaguely the family history but it wasn’t until then things were really driven home.

“I remember my teammates [who were also in the class] looking at me, like, ‘That’s really your great-grandfather?’” he says. “I always felt this draw towards music in a different way. Now it’s like, alright it’s my turn!”

Self-Critic

For Waller, football was important. But music in many ways was more so. He always gave his all to the game, he says, but it was music that helped replenish him during his off hours. He’s like several other athletes-turned-songwriters—NBA stars Damian Lillard and Victor Oladipo, for example—who are talented in both arenas—at both finite and infinite games. When he was abusing drugs, he says, it was almost as if he was searching for the rush music now gives him. Today, he no longer has to find it by doing things that hurt him. Music is constructive and that’s the very messaging he puts out into the world. But his efforts also aren’t some flippant toss-off. He’s very self-critical, even when he’s pleasantly surprised at what he’s made.

“When I record in the studio,” he says, “I won’t listen to it until the next day because I’m so analytical and critical. But when I hear it the next day, I’m like, ‘Wow, this is awesome!’ That feeling of being able to get that feeling without sabotaging myself or doing damage to my mind and body or to other people is an amazing thing that music has been able to provide for me.”

To leave his football career at times, he says, feels as if he’s wandered out into the wilderness. As the character Don Draper said in the television show Mad Men, to be creative is to live in the “not knowing.” And Waller is finding that out more and more. When you play sports, you know what the score is. You know when a touchdown is made. But when it comes to music or poetry or painting, you have to have faith. To do so, he says, he has had to prioritize himself and not think about how other people will react. He has had to shed that skin of codependency.

“I’m realizing through a lot of the work I’m doing,” Waller says, “that my brain has been programmed to look at stats and public perception as a definition of success. Now, I’m changing that framework for myself.”

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Photo by ARod2Up / Courtesy Big Hassle