Focused/Tim Mann

I grew up in Anaheim, California in a verbally abusive home and to a divorced family at a young age. In the 70s they called us latch key kids because we were kids that came home from school with no parents at home. We had keys to the house and basically no supervision. I was already running the streets by 12-years-old and starting to get into trouble. I dealt with the hurt from my mom tearing me down verbally with drugs because when it was offered to me I remember that day being depressed. When I got high, I wasn’t depressed anymore so it wasn’t so much as peer pressure or partying. It was me self-medicating to escape the feelings I was struggling with.
 

I went to my first punk rock show when I was twelve and I saw X, Black Flag  and The Germs. I felt like I found something that I could be apart of and it didn’t matter who you were. I also had skateboarding and it went hand in hand with punk rock. And both of those things gave me a sense of identity that I desperately needed because of my low self esteem.

Alcohol wasn’t my thing and marijuana wasn’t my thing, but when I first tried cocaine, I was hooked because I liked the feeling it gave me. Not to mention it gave me confidence I could do anything! I’d been doing it all through high school, but my senior year is when a dealer I had taught me how to smoke it. Then I lost everything.  I stole money from my parents’ business until they figured out it was me. They kicked me out of the house, so I went to Colorado. I lived there before for one year (when I was in junior high) with my dad and stepmom (who were Believers). But when I had to go my dad and stepmother’s, they had already moved back to California. But I had some friends from junior high that I had kept in contact with, one was a former girlfriend. And luckily her mom let me stay in a  house she owned for a while, so I could get on my feet.

 

I lived in a college town where it was hard to get a job, so I struggled most of the time. I stole food to eat. Now I lived right across the street from the college and they had a radio station on campus and this kid did a show that was all punk rock on Friday nights. I would go to the payphone to call him up and make requests. And one night I just asked him if I could come down and hang out. And Paul and I became close friends and he introduced me to all of the punks in Fort Collins. And I ended up living with a bunch of them. So to get money to eat, I figured out I could steal VHS tapes and sell them to the used record store guy. He gave me 10 bucks a pop for them. Well, one time I got caught, and I ended up getting a couple misdemeanors and a felony. And so I ended up at the county jail and my dad was calling my roommates to talk to me on the phone. My roommates we’re all telling him 
 

“He’s not here, right now
 

He was wondering what was going on and he called the buddy and said go check the county jail and see if my son is in there, so I got a visit. It was my dad’s friend.

He said, “You should call your dad. He is really worried about you and he is praying  for you.”

When he said my dad is praying for me, I remembered going to church on Sundays when I would visit my dad on the weekends (when I was a kid), so I went and got a Bible from the library. That night in my jail cell, I said

“God if you’re real, change my life.”
 

 I didn’t hear His voice or see fireworks, but every day after that, little things started changing. My life was completely different since that day.

 

The judge was going to give me prison time and that’s when my parents got involved with my public defender. With them being in California and me being in Colorado,  they got me into a program called teen challenge. So the judge probated me to complete the program and I was back in California I was on a waiting list and I had to attend a bible study every Thursday to get in. So this meant that I started going to church with my parents in Seal Beach. So that basically gave me my foundation in my Christian walk before I was even in the program.

Now I was probated thirteen months and I only did six for a couple reasons I left and I didn’t finish and when I left I was afraid that I was going to have to go back to Colorado and go to prison. I had never met my probation officer. And so I had to call her up and tell her I left the program. Now this is how God intervened! She basically said.

“Tim I never met you, but I can tell you’re a completely different person. Pay your restitution and you’re off probation.”

God definitely had plans for me.
 

 I kept going to church in Seal Beach, and I got my own place living in Long Beach. That’s when we started focused, five guys went to the same church that all loved hard-core music. We thought you know we could do this and share the love of God so we were attending a club in Long Beach called to jam and we saw the band inside out which is Zach de la Rocha from rage against the machine first band. And this would be the night that we met the guys in strife couple weeks later they called us up. Ask us if you wanted to play in. Our first show was a straight edge secular hard-core show down south in Chula Vista a border town in San Diego. But we also had a show the next day which was a huge Christian heavy metal & hard rock festival at UCI Brent Center with bands like deliverance mortal scattered you and the crucified after we played we did an interview for a kids zine. And none of the people that were at the show had ever heard anything like us we weren’t punk rock we weren’t metal so the kid asked me. What do you consider your music to sound like it just came to my head spirit filled hard-core that phrase is now worldwide, but I’m blessed to be very humble about my accomplishments that God has kept me levelheaded and not become a rockstar. Focused also did some things. A lot of people didn’t know about like being nominated for Dove award for the hope the lies within. Which to me was pretty special just to be nominated by the gospel music association we’ve had ups and downs, just like any band went through different members, but ultimately we did what we set out to do, and that was to share the Lord in the hard-core scene. By playing with some of the biggest bands and hard-core music like strife, outspoken, undertow, snap case the bouncing souls and downset. And even in the Christian music scene like the crucified mortal precious death, the prayer chain and many more I know that God used us and and we basically brought a whole new music scene to Christian music