Choosing life, choosing a legacy: Ben, Brian, and Cherie Herrman
“I want to heal the scene because it's broken. Because the people who are in the scene are broken. I can say that about myself at the same time. I'm not saying I'm perfect or fixed, but music is what gets me through life.”
— Ben Herrman
It was Christmas in Connecticut in the late 2000s, and a young Ben Herrman had a decision to make: what cause mattered most in the world to him?
His dad, Brian, was offering Ben and his brothers an unusual gift. As a financial professional, Brian Herrman knew the power of a worthwhile investment. So he was offering a teenage Ben the chance to select a charity of his choice, where Brian would make a $500 donation on his son’s behalf.
This might have stumped the average young adult, but Ben immediately knew where his gift had to go.
Ben was a diehard August Burns Red fan, routinely traveling to attend their concerts and chatting with the band members afterward at their merch table. He’d heard from lead singer Jake Luhrs about the beginning sparks of an idea: a vision for an online space that would offer mental health support to heavy music fans. At the time, Jake was calling it Your Life.
“So the first thing I thought of was Your Life because I loved Jake,” Ben remembers. August Burns Red’s music helped save my life when I was a teenager. That was a really big part of it for me: the organization seemed like something I could have benefited from at the time when I was struggling.”
Ben Herrman, HeartSupport Donor
For Brian, it was important to steward his financial resources well. At first, he struggled to understand how donating to the lead singer of a metal band was a worthwhile investment.
“My dad was so much a businessman that he could always see what needed to be done,” Ben explains. “But then I showed my dad the song lyrics Jake wrote. My dad saw him at a show and then met him. My dad was like, ‘This guy is serious.’”
August Burns Red was on their annual Christmas tour, and Ben and Brian attended— with a check in hand. They had no idea that in handing it off, they were making HeartSupport history.
As HeartSupport grew from a start-up blog to a legitimate nonprofit, Brian offered his own financial savvy to help them get off the ground. Ben, Brian, and eventually Ben’s mom Cherie were all caught up in the vision of what a mental health organization like this could accomplish.
“Brian took Jake under his wing and helped him get HeartSupport started with the right forms and 501c3 financial stuff, and he gave him a lot of seed money,” Cherie says as she looks back on her early awareness of the organization. “Over time, I saw what they did, who they were talking to and interacting with. The people that HeartSupport is reaching out to are an unreached people group. They're the front lines on the mission field, and they're really trying to help.”
Cherie Herrman, HeartSupport donor
The mission came to mean so much to the Herrmans that when the staff of HeartSupport needed to expand, Brian personally bankrolled therapist Taylor Palmby’s salary for her full first year.
But as Ben mentioned earlier, none of this would have happened if his life hadn’t been saved by an August Burns Red song.
Ben’s adolescence was marked by deep struggles with his own mental health. His dad’s career often kept him away from home, and the relationship between father and son was often tumultuous. Ben was left feeling like he was never good enough.
“I think the absence of a father figure was detrimental,” he says. “There were also some friend issues. I always seemed like the one left out of things in my group of friends at school.”
Ben spiraled into pornography addiction to cope, which ultimately just made his mental headspace darker. He honestly admits, “I didn't really see a point in living at the time.”
So he made a plan to end his life. When the night came, he was getting ready. But the song “Redemption” by August Burns Red kept playing through his head.
“I trust in you for life to live, and air to breathe
Purity fills my lungs
I trust in you for life to live, and air to breathe
Purity fills my lungs.”— “Redemption” by August Burns Red
August Burns Red
“That's really what made me not go through with it,” Ben explains. “Later, I got to tell Jake about it. I'll never forget what he said to me in that moment: ‘don't give me the credit for what God is doing through our music in your life.’ And then that kind of made me realize like, this guy is a real one. He's not just doing this for money or fame.”
That experience meant that from day one, Ben could trust that the vision behind HeartSupport was authentic. His dad’s involvement became a reparative force, healing a relationship that had so often been broken.
Marveling, Ben reflects, “My story was able to help create this thing that can then help people who are going through what I was going through. It was like, I needed this. So other people are definitely going to need it also. That's kind of like the way my life has panned out. It's why I've always wanted to be there for other people, to love other people, and to make sure people aren't alone.”
The Herrmans watched HeartSupport grow through the Warped Tour days, sweaty summer tours where the message of hope was carried across the country. Ben fondly remembers one Warped date where he and his dad both attended, both experiencing the day from opposite sides: Ben from the front of the mosh pit, Brian from backstage as an investor. Both of them had their role to play.
Cherie was increasingly impressed by the mission as she watched it unfold.
“August Burns Red were at Warped in Hartford, and the one year I went, I got a lot of street cred with high school kids who were there,” Cherie says with a laugh. “There was a young girl who also really liked them and wanted to meet them. So I brought her to the front of the line, and she got to talk to them a little bit. She was having a rough time. Her dad had died, and she was just hanging on by the skin of her teeth. You never know what someone says briefly might stick with somebody and keep them from harming themselves.”
Ben says, “Now that Warped Tour is gone, seeing that HeartSupport has still thrived enough that it's being sponsored on these other big festivals that so many people are going to? Insane is the only word for it. Seeing that it's thriving on its own is what excites me the most about it.”
“And it's not stagnant,” Cherie adds. “They're still hiring more people and training more people. They respond to messages. They're moving forward. Whatever that looks like, they're moving forward.”
Brian got to spend the final few years of his life watching that forward momentum. He passed away in 2024, and HeartSupport’s Executive Director was in attendance at the funeral. Ben shared about HeartSupport in his eulogy, knowing that it’s such a massive part of his father’s story.
“Sometimes it hits me talking about this, because I do get really sad that my dad's not here to see all of the progress,” Ben confesses. “But I do know that he would be immensely proud of the work that everybody's doing.”
Ben and Cherie joined the HeartSupport team at Capulet Festival in 2024. Together, they celebrated what’s ahead— while reflecting with gratitude on the past.
Ben recalls, “We got to remember and honor my dad and what he had done. And the stories that we all talked about were a lot of, this is what your dad taught us. Things the mission is based on and still doing because of something my dad said about how to run a business.”
This is redemptively bittersweet for Ben: the relationship that once caused him so much pain became one of the most rewarding facets of his choice to live.
“It’s always tough for me because I said earlier, my relationship with him was really rough. Learning to forgive is a whole other thing,” Ben acknowledges. “But to be here now, I’ve realized that this guy I used to spend most of my time hating as a kid, I've now learned to love. He may not have been there for me then, but he was now. To see what his life and mission has turned into? It cuts deep. The viewpoint I have on my dad has completely changed from what it was 15 years ago.”
For the Herrmans, HeartSupport has been a full-circle moment, a place of purpose— a legacy. And it remains more important to them than ever.
“We need more people involved in healing the scene than we ever did before,” Cherie states with conviction.
“HeartSupport really is trying to reach an unreachable community that is oftentimes ignored or looked over by other people because the genre of metal is oftentimes scoffed at,” Ben summarizes. “HeartSupport are the ones out there on the front lines being like, ‘No, these people are struggling. That's why they need this music so much. What can we do after they're at a show, after they go back home?’”
The Herrmans’ support means that those music fans can continue to have mental health help that meets them exactly where they are, whether it’s at a festival or behind a phone screen. You can be a part of ensuring that those resources keep reaching new people — making mental health help part of your legacy too. Make a tax-deductible donation today and help heal the scene.
