“The Impossible Future” A new song from American rock band Dead Petties is about striving for a better future. “My life ain’t about how pretty I look on paper,” lead singer Joshua Ackley sings over a guitar riff. What he and his bandmates are running toward, though, is optimism. “I want an impossible life,” Ackley sings in the chorus. “This is the future now.” The song, which is out now on Spotify, is the lead single from the trio’s new album, which will hit streaming services on October 18.
“‘The Impossible Future’ is about rejecting what is safe and predictable, and overcoming seemingly impossible challenges,” says Ackley. Rolling Stone“When I faced this decision, I decided not to go to college because I felt it was too restrictive. I wanted to go through the toughest situations and fight myself to get to the other side. The excitement I feel when facing the impossible is the driving force behind it.”
The band, which includes singer and guitarist Ackley along with drummer Derek Pepin and bassist Eric Shepherd, formed in 2000 and has continued to fight bigotry from all angles, both by battling neo-Nazis who block them from venues and in their own lives. Ackley, in particular, faced heavy criticism from conservative media outlets as vice president of communications for the Girl Scouts of the USA a decade ago for simply supporting the Dead Petties, whom Breitbart described in square quotation marks as “homeopunk” and “homeocork.”
“The conservative media attacks during my time in the Boy Scouts were ridiculous but not surprising,” Ackley says. “Coming out in the early ’90s taught me to turn hostility into success. When those stories broke, I was promoted to director, kept working hard, and then was promoted again to vice president. Turning impossible situations into fuel has always been my strategy. It works every time.”
But Ackley also received support from allies. One supporter was Kathleen Hannah, lead singer of Bikini Kill and Lee Tiger. Ackley previously worked as an assistant engineer to house her archival tapes at NYU’s Bobst Library. Ackley describes the experience as a dream come true. “Kathleen’s wisdom is in her actions—she welcomed me in and created an inclusive community,” Ackley says. “Through her, I ended up at parties with Joan Jett and Kim Gordon. She really leads by example.”
Models like Hannah Ackley have helped him realize what he wants his “impossible future” to be. “My ideal impossible future is to live without sacrificing individuality, creativity, or vision for the sake of fitting in,” he says. “We’ve become so self-controlled today that we’ve become our own censors. I want to eliminate even the idea of self-censorship from my life.”
