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Apr 4

The Avett Brothers’ Joe Kwon finds community in online fitness platform – WRAL.com

Fitness Comments Off on The Avett Brothers’ Joe Kwon finds community in online fitness platform – WRAL.com

By Kathy Hanrahan, Out and About editor

Raleigh, N.C. Joe Kwon is baking bread - one of the hobbies he took up over the COVID-19 pandemic.

The cellist with The Avett Brothers started baking bread recently when he couldn't find a good loaf for his avocado bread.

Kwon, 41, holds up the perfectly baked loaf and admires it. He said life in the past year has been about finding connection and balance.

When COVID-19 hit and live performances were canceled, Kwon, his wife and their rescue dogs had just moved from North Carolina to Davis, Calif.

"We moved here a month before everything shut down. So we didn't even have a chance to meet anyone. We didn't have a chance to explore," Kwon said.

Already a fan of working out, Kwon started spending even more time in the gym.

"Then the pandemic hits and all of a sudden I'm out of work. And, so I'm finding myself just in the gym, like more and more because I started to realize it was, my wife pointed this out, it was where I was getting a sense of accomplishment," Kwon said. "Where I was getting that sense of accomplishment on stage before, now all of a sudden I was like, this is where I'm coming to get that, that feeling of like, 'Oh, I did something today.'"

Kwon said he missed that sense of community he had in North Carolina, so when Raleigh-based investment and management firm MDO Holdings reached out about starting a fitness platform with him, it was a natural fit.

MDO Holdings also operates O2 Fitness, Midtown Yoga and Cyclebar. It recently teamed up with Suprema Fitness and Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte for his own fitness platform as he trains for the 2021 games.

"They barely had to get the words out of their mouth before I was like, 'Yeah, let's do it. I'm down,'" Kwon said.

"I'm one of these people who really has to have, like, a task. I just have to, I have to have stuff to do. Having a lack of work was a really tough time for me, and this CARV platform was born from that kind of, idea, just to go get people together and workout, get people fit."

Kwon also saw it as an opportunity to perform again.

"I was like, 'How can we make it so that we can help people out with this thing?' Because for me, it's not about the money that we were going to bring in. It was more about me doing things and kind of getting in front of people again and in a way, performing again, even though it's more coaching than it is performing," Kwon said.

For $8 a month, subscribers can participate in live and on-demand workouts with Kwon via Zoom. A portion of the profits go to help pay his Kwon's crew members as they remain out of work.

CARV has pre-determined workouts that involve no equipment. There is a short stretch and then 15 to 20 minutes of intense activity with minimal rest.

"It's based on kind of pushing yourself in your own ability level," Kwon said. "Some people are able to get through the whole workout without taking any breaks at all. Some people need to take multiple breaks."

Kwon works out too but also provides motivation, while keeping an eye on each member's form.

"It's a very like hands-on correction constantly and looking at all the screens," Kwon said.

A live restorative yoga class is held every Sunday night. "It's like five or six poses over an hour."

In early March, NBC's "This is Us" star and musician Chris Sullivan joined one of Kwon's live cardio workouts. Following the workout, Sullivan and Kwon held an honest discussion about mental health in this time of uncertainty. Sullivan is heavily involved with the mental health nonprofit To Write Love on Her Arms.

The intimate nature of CARV's platform helped create an emotional Q&A session with people sharing their own experiences with mental health issues.

Subscribers can also participate in a live cooking class once a month with Kwon and a professional chef.

"It's so nice to see my chef friends around the country and just kind of cook with them," Kwon said. "

Kwon said CARV's focus is on feeding the mind, body and the stomach.

"CARV stands for Community Achieve Recovery and Victory," Kwon said. "The C for community was a huge part for me because of the whole give back nature of things. There's something really great about seeing the same and people in live videos and getting to know them virtually."

Kwon's obsession with working out started in 2015 when he was on tour with Broadway star Ramin Karimloo in Japan and Korea.

"Since I was born, it was my first time back to Korea, which was pretty exciting. Then just kind of seeing how Korea, it's this foreign place for me, even though I was born there, but as soon as I landed, it was just like, this familiarity hit me," Kwon said. "I understood where I came from. I understood ... why my parents were the way they were. And it just kind of triggered these like really cool emotions in me."

Karimloo was hitting the gym for several hours a day and Kwon decided to start working out with him.

"It's like being in Korea made me realize my dad had tons of health issues, multiple heart incidents," Kwon said. "It was inspiring to see Ramin so dedicated to working out while we're in this foreign place."

Kwon said he could barely walk the next day. "Literally, was having to hold onto the railing as I walked down the stairs," Kwon said. "I loved that feeling right away. That's a nice pain."

After years of working out without a real plan, Kwon said he decided to get a personal trainer to help him understand how to work out my efficiently.

"It reminded me so much of playing cello as a young person, because it was just like, well, you're not just going to jump into like playing a concerto without learning how to play a scale first, you know?"

The gym became the place Kwon went to clear his head and take stock of everything. During the pandemic, he found himself working out sometimes five hours a day.

"Now it's gotten to a point where, I've kind of balanced it out," Kwon said.

A few years ago, The Avett Brothers (which include brothers Scott and Seth Avett) began carrying a gym on the road with them.

"Scott was actually preparing for a potential (film) role. And so he had like a trainer and everything," Kwon said.

Having opened for the Rolling Stones at Carter-Finley Stadium a few years prior, Kwon said he couldn't help but think about frontman Mick Jagger.

"He works out a lot. He does a lot of yoga, and we started working out pretty regularly, regularly on the road, and it was shocking how much of a difference working out can make for your shows. You would think that it wears you out and you're more tired by the end of the day for show time, but it gave you, like, a second bump of energy. And that was really a great thing," Kwon said.

Kwon has been playing the cello for 32 years. He started when he was 9, and it wasn't by choice.

"I didn't choose it. I was forced into it by my parents," Kwon said. "The crazy part was, I didn't know what a cello was or anything like that and my parents, just, my mom just took me to a cello lesson at this lady's house."

Despite not knowing what a cello was, Kwon fell in love with the instrument.

"I loved it from day one. It was so perfect for me," Kwon said. "My mom tried to teach me piano when I was like 3 and there was like total rejection of that instrument, which now I'm kind of sad about, but the cello was like an immediate love at first sight."

Kwon played classical music only until his sophomore year at UNC-Chapel Hill when his best friend and fellow musician, Leon Godwin, got him to play music along with him without a set agenda. Before that, Kwon only played cello by reading music.

In 2006, Kwon and Godwin's band, Big Pretty and the Red Rockets, played a dive bar in Winston Salem. The Avett Brothers were playing a large festival in downtown.

Kwon and his band caught some The Avetts Brothers' set.

"There just like full of energy on stage. They rock hard," he said. "We went into (our second set at the dive bar) just with that energy, playing like crazy."

Bob Crawford, the bassist for The Avett Brothers, checked out their set and asked Kwon, Leon Godwin and Ingrid Stenzel of Big Pretty to work on a side project with them called, New Jersey Transient.

"We recorded an album and we played some gigs and played a wedding, stuff like that," Kwon said.

NJT also opened for The Avett Brothers in Rocky Mount.

Then, Kwon was asked to play cello on some tracks for The Avett Brothers' album Emotionalism.

"Maybe seven months later I got a call from Bob asking if I would join the band full time on tour," Kwon said.

Kwon said the band has toured 49 states and hopes to get to the final one - Hawaii - at some point. For now, he's just hopeful that live music will return sometime this year.

"I'm hoping that it comes back this summer," Kwon said, noting that the band has some summer shows booked but expect them to be at a limited capacity.

Kwon thinks that full capacity shows likely won't be back until late this year or early 2022.

"I would love for it to come back soon, obviously," Kwon said. "It's how I feel alive and I feel like I'm doing something with my life."

Original post:
The Avett Brothers' Joe Kwon finds community in online fitness platform - WRAL.com

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