Sellin' Out

[music]

JUSTINE BOWE: You have to play a bunch of shows and be really bad. You have to release a bunch of stuff you don’t stand by. You have to record a bunch of vocal takes that are absolute garbage. And it, you just have to accept this before you will make things that are even passable.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: You have to do all that stuff! You have no choice. I don’t make the rules, I’m just Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / Please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hey, you’re listening to Sellin’ Out, the podcast about music and appearing in a blink-and-you'll-miss-it walk-on role, money! I’m Mike Moschetto, and today I’m taking things out of the basement again.

[SFX: thump, Barney Gumble shouting: “ARGH! Natural light! Get it off me! Get it off me!”]

MIKE: My guest today is Justine Bowe, who you may know from her time as part of the synthpop group Magic Man, and if that doesn’t sound familiar maybe, some of the bands they supported on tour might, like Walk the Moon, maybe? Panic! At the Disco ring a bell? Anyway, since leaving that band she’s been recording and performing her own material under the name Photocomfort, she has a new EP that came out not that long ago called “Understudy” and she also backs up another local singer/songwriter from around here called Anjimile, and she’s just all around a great friend that I’m lucky enough to have recorded and written with her in the past. And I’m grateful for her perspective here on being involved with music in something approaching the big leagues. So, without further ado, here's my chat with Justine.

[music: “I know you’d totally break my windows / if you even knew where I lived / I let the cops into your party / but you didn’t know I did / I say hello to all my neighbors / say ‘how’s your wife and brand new baby?’ / but in real life I keep walking / the dialogue never leaves my brain / you don’t want to get in my head / you don’t want to get in my head / there’s no room for you in there anyway / I’m nothing more than a drawing of a girl you like”]

MIKE: Seeing that this is the first episode that I’ve taped outside of, we’ll call it One Sellin’ Out Plaza, I feel like I should probably mention that we’re at your workplace.

JUSTINE: Yes, welcome.

MIKE: What do you do in here?

JUSTINE: Well, you know...

MIKE: In a nutshell.

JUSTINE: Yeah. Let me just... fuck, it’s hard not to just launch right into the fact that acknowledging that I have a full-time job that is, that I'm somewhat serious about, is, um, a little hard to square with my musical persona.

MIKE: Does that feel to you like defeat as well, a little bit?

JUSTINE: Yeah, oh absolutely. I realized that-

MIKE: I don’t wanna be melodramatic, but that’s what I have felt whenever I’ve thought about.

JUSTINE: I mean that is the, you know, I had gotten, um, like more than expected satisfaction out of saying that I was a full-time musician when I was a full-time musician.

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: Um, and as much I didn’t really want to talk about it with people then, because they would be like oh my God like you get to go on tour, I’d be like yeah, leave me alone.

MIKE: I hate how people sound like that too.

JUSTINE: [laugh] It’s like learn how to talk, people. No but, I mean yeah, I’ve got a full-time job. I work remotely from here, in Cambridge.

MIKE: You don’t have to disclose the location or buzz market the, uh, space that’s renting it to you.

JUSTINE: Mmm. Mmm. It is a good space, it’s a nice group of people.

MIKE: I like it.

JUSTINE: Um, but yeah, so I manage a sustainable coffee growing certification program from afar, which is actually a quite serious, quite a serious job.

MIKE: In addition to being the first remote taping, also the first bandmate in a serious manner to have appeared on the show. So the band we were in together, was that like the first, I mean I know that you were musical, I didn’t really know you in high school.

JUSTINE: [laugh] Yeah I guess that’s true.

MIKE: I knew about you, I knew your cousin that I graduated with.

JUSTINE: Mmhmm she’s very nice.

MIKE: But your reputation preceded you.

JUSTINE: My reputation established at North Andover High School talent shows?

MIKE: That’s the one.

JUSTINE: I think that’s the only one I had.

MIKE: Yeah, but uh, from that I knew that you were musical in nature.

JUSTINE: Mmhmm.

MIKE: Was the band that we were in the first, like proper band?

JUSTINE: Yeah, for sure. But you were in that band while you were in college, but I was still in high school. Um, ‘cause you’re older than me.

MIKE: Really?

JUSTINE: Yeah, I was still, I was a senior in high school.

MIKE: Wasn’t it the summer after that we really got that rolling?

JUSTINE: Um, well, I had been, we had been writing the songs while I was still in school.

MIKE: [snorts]

JUSTINE: Um, so yeah. Shit, I actually just-

MIKE: That was a decade ago.

JUSTINE: I know, my ten year high school reunion is coming up.

MIKE: Are you gonna go?

JUSTINE: Hell yeah I’m gonna go!

MIKE: Really? I haven’t gone to any of my high school reunions.

JUSTINE: Yeah, I wanna like show up there and dance like no one is, um, acknowledging my existence.

MIKE: Like Elaine.

JUSTINE: Yeah, [laugh] just like Elaine.

MIKE: [laugh]

JUSTINE: Just like Elaine. And not like Liz Lemon in the, um, high school reunion of 30 Rock where it turns out she was actually a bully the whole time.

MIKE: Your reputation as a bully didn’t make it to me.

JUSTINE: Ok, cool.

MIKE: Um...

JUSTINE: But yeah. Uh, Ferris Wheel was my first band.

MIKE: Wow. I feel special now.

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: That band was maybe the only, to this day, band that I have been in that felt like it was kind of in tune with the zeitgeist of the time, like I’m thinking like Pitchfork and all that stuff. And that was the first thing that I ever was in that felt like oh maybe this has legs.

JUSTINE: Even though you know it was like a high school, early college project, it, it always had ambition, and the ambition was to be heard by, you know, a wide audience. So we definitely pulled on what was really resonating with people at the time, I think intentionally.

MIKE: I think both intentionally and not.

JUSTINE: Well, I mean it’s hard because those things were of course also influences on us.

MIKE: Sure.

JUSTINE: But I mean, I remember, whoa, working on one of the songs, “Paper Cranes”, and being like, fuck this could be in a MacBook Pro commercial.

MIKE: Yeah, that was the Apple commercial song.

JUSTINE: Yeah, that was the Apple commercial song. And I think that before that, I would not have had any desire or interest in making music that would appeal to commercial applications. I don't know why that was a prompt that helped me finish that song. Um...

MIKE: So that idea, like the way that it was shaping up, that’s kind of what led you in that direction.

JUSTINE: Yeah. A really important thing to note is that, this, at this time was when so like Feist, “1234”, uh, was on every commercial possible. And then, I feel like that was um a huge moment in connecting indie music with brands, and before that that just didn’t really exist in my awareness. And then, for, for me as like a woman songwriter and not a freakin’ pop star, you know, feeling reflected like in, even though it was in, you know commercials, felt like being reflected in media.

MIKE: I hadn’t thought of that, that is interesting.

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: Um, and so, it’s probably safe to say that that experience has kind of influenced your musical aspirations downstream from it?

JUSTINE: Maybe too much.

MIKE: Maybe too much?

JUSTINE: Yeah, maybe too much.

MIKE: You think you got away from something, or?

JUSTINE: Well, kinda to backtrack, I had been touring, with a band called Magic Man-

MIKE: Oh, we’ll get there.

JUSTINE: Well, we will get there, but um, the experience of, um, playing with something that definitely had the mass appeal and was already resonating with a wide audience made me feel that in order to, you know like re-establish my own project and myself as an individual that I would need to do something as commercially viable pretty much as that project. It was hard for me to see other ways of, um, establishing myself as an artist, so, I think I made some stuff that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise done, but.

MIKE: Yeah, I guess let’s get into Magic Man, right?

JUSTINE: [laugh] Oh, okay.

MIKE: So, it seems like, it seems like you kind of joined up with them at a fortuitous time.

JUSTINE: Yeah. I met them in college, and um, started playing with them, uh, it was, they didn't do anything before releasing a full-length record which they recorded on a MacBook microphone-

MIKE: Wow.

JUSTINE: -in GarageBand. And then it became one of like the first, like well-performing albums on Bandcamp.

MIKE: Really?

JUSTINE: So, it kind of like, because of the way it was-

MIKE: What year would that have been?

JUSTINE: -performing on Bandcamp, it got into the hands of a lot of people. It would have been, that would have been like 2010.

MIKE: I guess I, I can’t really remember the first time I was exposed to Bandcamp.

JUSTINE: Right.

MIKE: I guess that makes sense.

JUSTINE: It would have been around that time, I think.

MIKE: Damn.

JUSTINE: But, yeah. So that was the first record I ever saw on Bandcamp, and that, that’s how it helped, um, Bandcamp helped that record get seen by people. So, they were signed, um, to a subsidiary of Columbia Records before I graduated college.

MIKE: Were you on that record?

JUSTINE: I...

MIKE: The one on Columbia?

JUSTINE: Yeah, yeah. My voice is, I, you know, for the parts that had actual acoustic piano, I, I played piano.

MIKE: And, is it clear to you that things are really taking off for them, at the time that you’re getting involved? Or is this before that?

JUSTINE: I had no sense of what taking off even looked like, at the time. So, I, you know, we were playing-

MIKE: Well I guess what I mean is like, um, as you’re involved and there are more meetings, and, and phone calls, and talks with labels and talks with publishers and agents and all this stuff, and there’s looking like there’s going to be more of a, you know, touring opportunities, or I guess touring obligations depending on how you look at it, like what’s running through your head?

JUSTINE: Well, so the, the real obligation on my part was only ever really in the recording and touring processes. So I was only ever involved with the music itself and never the business of it. So, it never seemed real to me, until the manager kept being like Justine, and I’m gonna do an Irish accent ‘cause he’s Irish, but he kept being like Justine this about to get serious, like you’re gonna have to leave your work like, it’s, it’s gonna get real. And I’m like [skeptical half-laugh] yeah, ok buddy.

MIKE: [laugh]

JUSTINE: Um, and I was like I’m not leaving this job, I’m rich! Um, I wasn’t, obviously, but, you know, I had an income.

MIKE: That’s the first step to being rich.

JUSTINE: Right. Right. Uh, but then you know the time commitment for touring kept getting greater and greater, and then I, surprise, got laid off with my entire department at the full-time job. Um, and I was going to need to quit a week later in order to go on our first major national tour.

MIKE: Divine intervention.

JUSTINE: It really was ‘cause I got severance.

MIKE: Whoa.

JUSTINE: [laughs] yeah.

MIKE: Ok, I see how that helps.

JUSTINE: Yeah, ‘cause otherwise I would have just quit. But anyway, it was a, it wasn’t real until we did that national tour and I remember walking on stage for the first show, and being like fuck, am I gonna like remember how to play a synth bass line? And then like there were 3,000 people there, and we had never played, I had never even heard what an audience like that size sounds like when you’re backstage. And it was so surreal. But as soon as we got out there, I was talking with the band before, and they were actually, they’re friends now, but I was talking with the band before, and I’m like do you guys ever get nervous? Like when you play? And they were like, never. Not with this crowd. And it ended up being, like the, the Magic Man fanbase, which, you know, they sort of garnered from a bunch of these national tours, so they just sort of picked up more and more people, really wonderful young people.

MIKE: They love you.

JUSTINE: They are loving people, yes.

MIKE: Yes.

JUSTINE: They are full of love.

MIKE: It seems that way. So, when these tours are being pitched to you, I mean how are they kind of trying to sweeten the deal? Like, are they, are you being reassured that you’re gonna be taken care of without a job, or how does that kind of crop up to your understanding?

JUSTINE: Now, I’m trying to think of ways that I can answer that, that are, um...

MIKE: Well, yeah, without getting into what the pay is, obviously, so-

JUSTINE: Well, I won’t tell you-

MIKE: -for an example would be, that I had a guy on, um, a couple of episodes ago, who toured for a living, now as a tech, so he didn’t have other revenue sources that he could count on. Like he didn’t, you know, he wasn’t an artist so he didn’t have royalties, streams, anything like that. But he would get a salary whether he was teching for eight shows a week or two shows a week or he was sitting at home playing video games. Was it something that was set up like that, or was it kind of from a run to run, like tour to tour basis?

JUSTINE: So, uh, at first I was gonna say that I, I wouldn’t get into that, but I actually, like, you know, to the extent that this is helpful for people to hear and maybe create structures around it, um at first I really struggled with the pay structure because it didn’t seem equitable. But then it actually worked out ok. So the way that it would work would be, so we would play a show, and uh half of the show fee that we would get would go into a band fund, at first, and the other half would pay us out in cash. So that band fund was allotted to, you know, pay for gas and incidentals on the road, and then we would get, you know, paid a small amount per show.

MIKE: Does that, is that just the band or is it include like, crew?

JUSTINE: There was no crew at that time.

MIKE: Ok.

JUSTINE: Um, so that was how it started out. And then it ended up working where, um, they got like a business manager, and um decided that instead of doing it that way even though we would all continue to be equal live partners which was actually kind of generous of the band to do, because I didn’t write any of those songs, um, but uh, they decided to set up like a stipend. So we would all perform, and get the same amount paid to us every month.

MIKE: Interesting.

JUSTINE: I think the band fund thing is an important... right now I’m not doing that for my own project, because I just want to pay my side people as much as possible. But, it would make more sense to start saving some money on behalf of the band so I can pay them for shows that we don’t get paid for. Um, and so that I can pay their gas every time and things like this.

MIKE: I had, I talked with another band about this. Um, as your star kind of rises, maybe the revenue comes up a little bit, maybe your guarantee gets higher, and all this stuff, you sell more tickets, but your production costs go up. Like, I’m thinking like vehicle, like transportation, overnight drives, longer, more gas, right? Lighting, visuals, whatever other kinds of production costs like a front of house mixer, tour manager.

JUSTINE: Mmm.

MIKE: Does that affect- do you find that affects your take home?

JUSTINE: yeah. I think that, um, in a world where bands seem to be like increasingly composed of people who are writing the songs and maybe even producing the recordings to, to completion and then hiring live bands, it just makes sense to have your income stream separate. So, anything that uh is from your live production, uh should potentially be self-sustaining. So, your merch. And um, your ticket sales, and like any, any income from that should go to support that venture and to support your live band.

MIKE: Right.

JUSTINE: And then the other, the other half of it, you know, would be, ideally also self-sustaining. But for instance, I would never like, have my band play a gig, and then put that into some fund where then I go to pay for recordings for it.

MIKE: Right.

JUSTINE: But yeah, I mean I’m still, my own project is still small enough where the production for the live show is not, I’m just doing one-offs because like, I can’t afford to do anything else really right now, from a time and money perspective.

MIKE: As in like a tour?

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: Okay. Well, I would also, in a way, um, I wanna get back to where we were, but we’ll put a pin in that. In a way I almost think like a tour for some people is a way to kind of break even, in a sense. I guess it depends how you like at it, right? So like, the kind of touring that I would do, um, the culture was that, there’s no allotment for lost wages. Right? Like if you take a month off for tour to do like a lap around the US, you’re not really factoring in like oh, I lost a month’s worth of work.

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: You’re factoring in like, oh by doing all of these shows, and, you know, certain markets where I don’t have a long drive, we’re gonna just make more money. You know what I mean? Like, the income is gonna be higher than the expenses. So I think of a tour as being something that is in a way more sustainable, and maybe that’s..

JUSTINE: Hmm. I’ve always thought about touring life as the way that you lose money.

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: And the only-

MIKE: That’s definitely true too.

JUSTINE: The only way that-

MIKE: Two things can be true at once.

JUSTINE: I think that that is true. I, it’s a question of scale I think.

MIKE: Maybe one is good for the band pot, and one is not so good for you. Like, your personal...

JUSTINE: Hmm. My personal debt to myself.

MIKE: Mmm.

JUSTINE: Yeah, touring’s really hard.

MIKE: Now when you were on the road with Magic Man, did you do anything else form the road that could bring you income?

JUSTINE: I did a little bit, I did some, some sync work for advertising applications. And then toward the end I took on a job with the company that I now got hired at full time.

MIKE: Oh, cool.

JUSTINE: So that was like a writing-slash-research gig from afar. And that enabled me to be even a little bit more flexible, ‘cause, at a certain point the money felt tight.

MIKE: Sure.

JUSTINE: But uh, fortunately that band was always able to, you know, pull it together for us.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah. That’s good. And, I mean, we don’t have to get into it really, but it’s like, you and two other members all left at once.

JUSTINE: Uhh...

MIKE: Is that relevant, or is that just kind of like..

JUSTINE: Well so, one of those members was my partner in my project at the time. So we actually left at once in order to establish our own thing. The other person leaving, the drummer, was actually unrelated to that. But uh, yeah. I think that that was ummmm, difficult.

MIKE: Difficult to leave?

JUSTINE: Difficult to...

MIKE: Justify for them?

JUSTINE: Difficult for them to recover from. I mean, from a morale perspective.

MIKE: Sure.

JUSTINE: That is also, I mean I’m not, uh, ashamed or conflicted to say that I was also in a relationship in that band, and um, I left the relationship to pursue my own life.

MIKE: Sure.

JUSTINE: My own project. So it was a break up in numerous sense of the word.

[music: “get these golden handcuffs off me / get this piano off my back / I wanna run / I wanna run / hit and run types of conversations / can't get a word in edgewise / except "uh huh, uh huh, uh huh" / I remember you told me there'd be / I remember you told me there'd be / I remember you told me there'd be days like this / What about years?”]

MIKE: So you leave Magic Man to basically pursue Photocomfort. And, uh...

JUSTINE: The folly!

MIKE: Well, we can, we can discuss that, but basically the hope was, I suppose, that there would be momentum from your notoriety in Magic Man-

JUSTINE: Mmhmm.

MIKE: To provide kind of like a parachute, a soft landing, whatever, a running start for Photocomfort.

JUSTINE: Mmhmm.

MIKE: And uh, work in progress?

JUSTINE: The problem was that, uh, coming back to what we were talking about earlier where I think maybe I sort of had the um, the wrong motivations? ‘Cause I thought that, you know, synthpop was just the way you become a musician who can work as a musician, and live and tour as a musician. Uh, I felt compelled to make things that, um, maybe I didn’t like love, didn’t stand by, in in the fullest sense of my soul and artistry? Um, so, I uh, I sold out. Um...

MIKE: Don’t lean into the mic when you say that.

JUSTINE: [whispering] I sold out.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [laugh]

JUSTINE: Um, and you know kind of as a result the things that I made around that time, I’m like well, they are very representative of, you know, my mindset at the time. I don’t like, love the production work around them, maybe there were some songwriting questions that I have. But, uh, because that, um, process resulted in a lot of angst from me, because I was making something I don’t know if I really stood by with my whole heart, um, I, the production of that stuff ended up being really slow. So there was momentum, and then we kind of lost momentum. Um, and then, uh, I would say that um, it’s almost as if none of it happened, now. In a way that I’m actually ok with, ’cause the slate is pretty blank.

MIKE: So, this is funny, and I hadn’t made this connection before, um, you know, I think I know what you’re talking about. Like the first couple singles you had, right? Which...

JUSTINE: Like the tunes themselves, you think you know which tunes?

MIKE: I think so.

JUSTINE: Or you think that you uh, relate. Mmhmm.

MIKE: Well, I think I relate, too. I mean, I’ve been parts of things that I’m, not the most proud of, but, uh..

JUSTINE: Mmm. Yeah. Well, you have to be. I mean it’s just part of the..

MIKE: It’s part of the, part of the process.

JUSTINE: Part of the thing.

MIKE: But um, uh, I hadn’t kind of made the connection to the EP that we did together, that being kind of like, stricken from the record in some sense. Well, I mean, aside from some, some hero uploading it  to YouTube.

JUSTINE: [quiet laugh, whispers] Who is that person?

MIKE: Well I mean I got a lot of positive feedback on it, which is why I was like huh, it’s gone.

JUSTINE: Well, the, part of it was that, um, yeah so you and I made a record in 2011.

MIKE: I mean it was a drawn out process as well.

JUSTINE: Sure, yeah, that took a, that took a while, but I was really proud of that. And, um, I think that, the, the whole process of me, you know, doing that before I actually became a professional musician at all, and then having that, um, in the world as representative of the project, when I’m trying to get the project off the ground to represent something entirely different. Everything just sounded so different, and it was really hard to make a cohesive statement as, as an artist when there are so many conflicting vibes.

MIKE: So you’re trying to broadcast like a very specific thing, and it doesn’t really fit in to that. I could see it.

JUSTINE: Like, in a very pretentious way. I was all too concerned with the thing that I was trying to project as opposed to just like making something I liked, putting it out into the world, and seeing if people liked it.

MIKE: Well, I don’t think anyone can fault you for being too concerned with the way you present yourself because that’s, like, it, right? Because that’s the first impression, is, you know, you wanted to make a big splash. You want people to come back for more.

JUSTINE: Mmhmm.

MIKE: Um, I wonder if, it would have made an interesting reference point, do you know what I mean?

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: Like, to say like, oh, here’s this kind of like baroque, very orchestral, I guess maybe that’s not the word, but-

JUSTINE: It was intricate.

MIKE: -a very organic feeling music, into something that’s streamlined, and, modern I guess you would say.

JUSTINE: I, I think that you’re right. I think that having a, you know, some artists come out from nowhere is the stuff of, of fiction. So I was trying to, now that I look back, I feel like I was trying to contrive that moment. Like, band breaks on the scene and has big pop song, how do they do it, already?

MIKE: Well, I think there’s a difference between contriving that and having it contrived for you. Like having a team around you to like, ok, we’re gonna like call in some favors, right? ‘Cause that’s, that’s how much so much behind-the-scenes stuff works.

JUSTINE: Mmhmm. Well I had a, I had a tiny team.

MIKE: You had a tiny team.

JUSTINE: I had a tiny team.

MIKE: Better than no team.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [laugh]

MIKE: [British accent] May I have some more?

JUSTINE: Tiny team. [laughs]

MIKE: Oh boy. Yikes.

JUSTINE: It is better than no team, although it pushed me to making some decisions that, again, I just don’t stand by. Um, but, that isn’t to say that I regret them, because this entire process of feeling I had a, feeling like I had promise on a certain trajectory and then pretty much losing that promise has been humbling to the point where I can see the mistakes that I made.

MIKE: And if you can’t learn from mistakes, then what good are they?

JUSTINE: Yeah. I was a young, silly-

MIKE: Someday I’ll learn from mine.

JUSTINE: I know, I know.

MIKE: Hopeless.

JUSTINE: Hopeless.

MIKE: Um, so, you just released this EP.

JUSTINE: I did.

MIKE: And this is less team-oriented. This is, this is maybe more authentically you, would you say?

JUSTINE: Yeah. Um...

MIKE: You stand by it.

JUSTINE: I stand by it big time. And you know...

MIKE: I also stand by it, by the way.

JUSTINE: Thank you. Uh, at this point I produced it, or we recorded it, um, more than a year ago.

MIKE: Oh, yeah. I went to, I feel like I went to the release...

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: Right, or the listening party, more than a year ago.

JUSTINE: It was in October.

MIKE: It was Halloween.

JUSTINE: Yeah, it was Halloween.

MIKE: Mmm.

JUSTINE: That was so great. Um, but uh, to create something that I stand behind a year and a half after the fact, is, is, is hard to do. Um, so I feel really proud that, proud that I'm there. The, uh, the thing that’s been happening just with me, is, as I like increase my capacity to produce myself, even to record myself, I’m just happier and happier with the outcome, because it’s closer and closer to the initial vision. Um, so, I co-produced this EP with close friends of mine in a band called Carroll, and, um, we produced and recorded it together and did some, you know, additional, did some basics over at Converse Rubber Tracks when that was still a thing.

MIKE: RIP.

JUSTINE: RIP, dude.

MIKE: I would love to have somebody from that on, talk about how that happened.

JUSTINE: You should talk to Benny Grotto.

MIKE: I should.

JUSTINE: Yeah. He’s great.

MIKE: I’m gonna.

JUSTINE: But, uh, having, having people, I don’t know, it’s just about, feeling like you can, if you don’t know what you want, be vulnerable in expressing what you think you want. Um, and I had struggled with that previously, big time, ‘cause I was so, um, caught up in not knowing the right words, not knowing the right, uh, approach. Um, and so, that was a big stressor on me. I actually dated somebody that, uh, I was recording with. And uh, he was producing some of my stuff, and it ended up being really, really tense because I was so insecure with the fact that I just didn’t have all the answers. And, so it was really hard for me to be vulnerable in those, uh, in that situation. So, I just found a, you know, it was easy when I was recording with you too, because I, I didn’t know that I didn't know anything.

JUSTINE: I was like, let’s make it sound like an Italian sunrise.

MIKE: [laugh]

JUSTINE: And you were like you got it.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [laugh]

MIKE: Nailed it. I haven’t, I haven’t produced a good Italian sunrise since then.

JUSTINE: I know, it’s tough.

MIKE: Um, um, so in a way it’s weirdly come full circle, to a point where you’re back to something individualistic and really, uh, not concerned with... I mean maybe you're partly still concerned with how it does for you, right?

JUSTINE: Yes.

MIKE: I mean, we talked earlier about your comfort level, and having a job, and like, that kind of, that kind of panic that sets in. Is that something that you think that you can maybe wield, almost? To your advantage in advancing your...?

JUSTINE: Yeah. I have to say that, uh, having this job has taught me so much. And it’s not even that it, um, it’s not even like time management, it’s not like necessarily hard skills, it’s having a diversity of thought and of tasks in the things that I need to do. And that has influenced the scope of my musical project in ways that I can’t even measure. So, because I have a job that has, that involves a lot of strategy, um, and that has some kind of marketing angles, now, I just am more creative in the ways that I solve problems of like trying to reach new people. Trying to partner with new people, lessening the choke hold that I have on my own music, and like trying to make it bigger than just me. And I wouldn’t have, uh, I wouldn’t have that, I have never had that approach before. And it just makes me better. And the fact that my income doesn’t depend on the performance of my art has allowed me to feel a little less like trash every day. [laughs]

MIKE: [laugh] Did you ever kind of come to resent having to perform as, like to kind of like make your living? I mean I think, I think a lot about, um, when I was just at The Office, when I just had the studio, and I would have to take on projects that I didn’t really want to do. And, uh they wouldn’t come out great, and I wouldn’t be happy, they wouldn’t be happy, but I had to keep the lights on somehow. Um, is there a parallel there, is there kind of an adversarial relationship with your income?

JUSTINE: There used to be a lot more so, when I, uh, you know, would find myself playing some pretty shitty gigs. Um, and you know, in contrast with the good ones that I used to play, you know both with my band and with, um, with others. And there was actually also a lot of other labor that I resented. I resented, um, needing to have a public persona, um, so, you know needing to have a social media that perpetuated an image of me that was created by somebody else’s band. Um, so that was, um, difficult, trying. And then, there was also labor like you know, hanging and hugging fans after shows, signing autographs, that didn’t always feel real to me.

Um, but now I kind of see it as, it is, which is no matter what job you have, for the most part if people are paying you money you’re performing for them in some respect. So, at my other job, I just sort of put on a mask of professionalism in this new field, and I go out and I do the thing. Which is the exactly the same as going out and playing a show. Sometimes it’s to a lot of people and it’s really fun, and other times you’re playing to an empty bar, and it’s just all the same. At this point, for the musical project, I do, I love playing in bands, and I always have, and so at this point, I kind of take on, sort of whatever anyone will, uh, will send my way, in terms of shows. Provided I’m not stepping on anybody’s toes by taking on too many shows. But like it is a joy to play with my band. They’re wonderful players, I want to do that. So now I’ll do it, and it’ll be shitty, and that’ll be fine. And I’ll realize that I’m blessed.

MIKE: I guess the idea of retroactively assigning something as being labor, or laborious, is something that I hadn’t thought about. Because, you know, putting on that public-facing persona and coming out to greet people, I mean, it’s draining. And you wanna just be yourself without, I don’t know, I guess that’s part of being a full-time musician, that’s part of the job. I guess, right? Like...

JUSTINE: Yeah, and that was never really outlined to me to start with. There was never, well first off, I don’t think that we knew that we were going to have a fanbase that had certain expectations like this. But you know, never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that it was part of my job to sign autographs. Um, and I don’t mean to be cocky about it, it was just totally fucking weird. And so the whole time, I, I got used to it in that it was a task that I did a lot. But it never felt like I was giving my own autograph, it felt like I was giving an autograph as, the person that people had imagined me to be on stage, which was dictated by this project that I was not the owner of.

MIKE: I think that there’s something to be said for having that separate, having that separation in your life where you work a job and you don’t really take it home with you and it doesn’t dominate everything. Like my job, I, you know, clock out at four and don’t really have to think about it ‘til I’m in the next day and then I can focus on whatever. Uh, I didn’t, I had a larger point, or maybe I didn’t. But that is, I guess that is the point. I guess there is-

JUSTINE: No, there’s something to be said for it. That’s-

MIKE: There is.

JUSTINE: That’s-

MIKE: I just said it.

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: There it is.

JUSTINE: You just said it, there it is.

MIKE: I mean, no, there is though, a separation I think, where you have to be on all the time. And so, we’ve, I’ve talked before on this show about how being a full-time musician is not like you’re working eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, it’s kind of, it’s the fullest sense of full-time.

JUSTINE: Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s your whole life, and when your, um, when your art is on trial, it’s also your self-esteem and, um, your worth as a creative individual. It’s madness, It's totally mayhem. Um, [sigh] I really have appreciated the fact that yeah, I do have a job that lets me go home, and not worry that I am not... um, performance is just a totally different thing when I feel that it is external to me. When it’s my art, it’s totally internal and it’s almost unsustainable, you know?

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: Um, that being said, I struggle to, uh, in a world where I feel like we increasingly define each other by our job titles, as speaking to who we are as people. When I was a musician professionally, I didn’t feel like I was really a professional musician because I was, you know, somebody else’s hired gun, and it wasn’t my art, necessarily. And, now I also don’t feel like I’m a sustainability professional. And then I realize that I don’t want to esteem people by their job titles either, and what they do for money. I hate being in a crowd that’s like, what do you do?

MIKE: Yeah, something like-

JUSTINE: Like, fuck you. Ask them how they like to spend their time.

MIKE: Yeah, no I like-

JUSTINE: It’s a more interesting conversation anyway.

MIKE: I unclog toilets.

JUSTINE: Right.

MIKE: Right.

JUSTINE: But what do you like to do?

MIKE: Unclog toilets. It’s really just the ideal scenario.

JUSTINE: [laugh] Right, right right. You’re getting paid for what you love.

MIKE: You know, never work a day in your life.

[music: “tie me down with your holy ropes / but cut loose the ballast on my high hopes / my concrete heart would sink me so deeply, ever so quickly / oh no, oh oh oh oh...”]

MIKE: Given all of that, could you see yourself at a place where you’re back to being a full-time musician in the sense that we defined before, where you’re out touring all the time, where it’s like, in an ideal world, Photocomfort is it for you. Yes? No? Maybe? Somewhere in between? Nuances?

JUSTINE: In an ideal world I am not solely focused on my own music. So, if Photocomfort is also a production powerhouse, maybe it’s not even just me, that’s really cool to me. Um, and that’s something I’m on board for. Having the job of touring previously to crowds that, if I were in high school would have, or college, would have made me quake in my boots made me realize that I like, you can get used to anything. You can do anything. Having, adjusting to this new job where I have to put on the professional person mask and walk the walk, it just like, it is constant demonstration of the fact that like, people are adaptable. I could adapt to tour life again. If there were a real good reason. If people are responding to the music and they want to hear it in their faces, in remote parts of the United States, I’ll go to them. I would.

MIKE: Billings, Montana.

JUSTINE: I’m going to Billings! We’re going to Billings, baby!

MIKE: Might even stop in Helena.

JUSTINE: [laughs] I don't mean that I’m gonna hit all the rural spots, I just mean...

MIKE: Well, I think that in 2018 I think the forgotten man is crying out for Photocomfort.

JUSTINE: [laugh] I don’t know if I have a single forgotten fan.

MIKE: You remember them all? [laugh] That’s good.

JUSTINE: I remember them all. No, I only mean to say like I think they’re all in cities.

MIKE: You think they’re all cosmopolitan.

JUSTINE: Yeah you’re cosmo.

MIKE: Well, you know, I don’t wanna get into demographics here.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [laughing, joking noises]

MIKE: Um, yeah I guess I just, my default is to frame this around touring so much, because like, the whole idea of being a full-time band in the DIY punk rock paradigm is that you are signed to a label and have management and have all this team built around you, predicated on the fact that you are willing to put yourself out there and grind and be out six months a year. And I think that that doesn’t necessarily carry over to every other genre, or every other milieu of music.

JUSTINE: Oh I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t really know. I mean, I, we were expected to grind, in the pop world.

MIKE: But I think that, I think that the Magic Man thing started as so like bedroom pop, like electronic bedroom pop, and then you very deliberately made it a live rock band thing, where maybe other, uh, similar-sounding artists might not have.

JUSTINE: Yeah but I think that, um...

MIKE: Like, hit play on a laptop, and just dance around and sing.

JUSTINE: I think thought that, because everybody is now a producer of content, actually having a legitimate, enjoyable live experience is still the edge. And people are increasingly seeking that out. Now as like festivals become more and more mainstream, which are [choking noise], um, but uh, I think the uh, the average listener now, compared with ten years ago, wants the quote experience, um, driven music consumption. And that means a live band, still. It doesn’t necessarily mean like live rock band, but it means a show, where you’re physically out there, quote grinding it out, city after city.

MIKE: Yeah, I, I think a lot about, um, that spectacle has become necessary almost, where it’s not enough to just enjoy the music and put it on and be, and be compelled to support that creator. Right? It’s weird to square what will really take, what will really leave an impression.

JUSTINE: One thing that I have increasingly have learned and have felt alternately grossed out by and, um, inspired by is the fact that like it matters what you produce, but the thing that matters more is the story around the thing that you produce. And I hate the way that that machine works, because I wish your, your work could just stand by itself. But I still look back on like, the records that are, you know, some of the biggest ones for me and they each have some like greater context than just a bunch of people getting in a studio and making a record.

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: And like, I-

MIKE: Like I’m thinking of Bon Iver, right?

JUSTINE: I’m literally thinking of Bon Iver.

MIKE: He was like bummed out and he went to a cabin.

JUSTINE: Right, it’s a great example!

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: Yeah.

MIKE: I mean, we’re all bummed out, and we’re all going to cabins, but maybe the cabin-

JUSTINE: Nobody can go to cabins anymore. The cabin’s taken.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [laugh]

MIKE: Gentrification.

JUSTINE: Gentrification. [laughing] Yeah.

MIKE But maybe the cabin is in a brick building.

JUSTINE: Right. Which is a recording studio down the street.

MIKE: And maybe you're really just happy to be recording with your friends.

JUSTINE: I mean, but nobody’s going to buy that record, unless you fake it.

MIKE: I don’t know, there’s so many things that are successful that I don’t know what the story is and I also don’t care, that I’m like-

JUSTINE: But it’s like pretty much a guarantee that there was one at some point.

MIKE: You know what’s an interesting one? Is like Vampire Weekend.

JUSTINE: What?

MIKE: In the sense that like, oh they’re like rich college kids, so in like, who in their right mind should care, but extremely care?

JUSTINE: And then that’s the story.

MIKE: I guess, I guess so, but it’s like a non-story. In a way. They’re revolutionary, is what I’m trying to say.

JUSTINE: It’s just still about the context.

MIKE: Yeah.

JUSTINE: And that the context is everything.

MIKE: We have plenty of content but no context.

JUSTINE: Right. I guess nobody’s gonna listen to it. [laughs]

MIKE: I, you know, I’ve grown to not care as much if people listen to stuff... He said on his podcast.

JUSTINE: [laughs] Um, no, I agree, I mean at this point I have received more inspiration from writing songs explicitly for my friends, and producing them in a way that will please them, uh, than I could ever have otherwise. Um, I think it’s just a more honest way of going about making music. So, um, you know... Uh, I... don’t care. Fuck it!

MIKE: That’s right.

JUSTINE: Maybe nobody’s gonna listen to it.

MIKE: I think it’s just making it that is like a real pleasure to me.

JUSTINE: I acknowledge that that is the true joy. The making of the thing. I remember the first time you and I were um, um, the first thing we started working on that really, really clicked on that album that we worked on in 2011, um, was the Italian sunrise guitar. Uh, for-

MIKE: Is this Holy Ropes?

JUSTINE: -this song called Holy Ropes.

MIKE: Yes!

JUSTINE: So we, you know, had like this tiny nylon-string classical guitar-

MIKE: It only had three strings on it. The others were-

JUSTINE: It only, that’s why it was tiny, because they were the three highest strings.

MIKE: Couldn’t track...

JUSTINE: [laughs] Um, and I just remember, we just like had this idea, we laid it down, and then you were like setting things up in the other room to track the next thing, um, there was really only on it, there was like shaker, and um, acoustic guitar, and like a little bit of flute. And that, it was like-

MIKE: Fuckin’ busted out the flute for you.

JUSTINE: You busted out the flute for me. And it was so hard that we had to record it in multiple takes. ‘

MIKE: OH, well, it wasn’t hard, I was just bad. It’s different.

JUSTINE: [laughs] Right, right. Uh.

MIKE: Hard for me.

JUSTINE: Right, well it was hard enough for a person to record-

MIKE: The resident-

JUSTINE: -the resident flautist. Uh, and then you were just get- in the other room, like getting ready, and you had it on loop, and I was like, we just created something that is, like a place, that you could like walk into. It was like, evocative in a way that, you know, things that I had created before hadn’t. Hadn't done. And then I realized that that is truly the greatest feeling in the world, like recording music and creating a space for people to enter into. There is no better thing.

MIKE: Totally, and I contrast it especially to performance, where it’s like you have to put yourself in a mindset, recreate that, and you’re maybe not always there.

JUSTINE: Totally. Yeah, sometimes you gotta fake it.

MIKE: Gotta fake it.

JUSTINE: It’s harder to fake it in recording.

MIKE: Most times, I would say you gotta fake it. I think a lot-

JUSTINE: At this point I’m still steeped in the novelty of playing my own shows. That I’m like, wow! I’m up there, singing the song!

MIKE: [laughs]

JUSTINE: [singing] Look at me!

MIKE: That’s the song. I feel bad, that uh, I haven’t seen you yet. Uh...

JUSTINE: Oh, right. Um, August 16th at Great Scott is my first headline gig in Boston, which I can’t believe I haven’t really done yet, but.

MIKE: Didn’t you have the one in, wasn’t there supposed to be at Great Scott that had gotten snowed out or something? Or it was like real bad weather?

JUSTINE: There was one that got snowed out-

MIKE: That was a headliner, right?

JUSTINE: -and there was another one at Great Scott that I had to cancel because I got emergency oral surgery.

MIKE: I remember that! Yeah, that was with, like, the trio. That was like...

JUSTINE: A long time ago.

MIKE: That was like a million years ago. That was maybe in the “Don’t Stand By That Stuff” period?

JUSTINE: A little bit.

JUSTINE & MIKE: [gulping noises]

MIKE: I have so many fucking-

JUSTINE: I was still trying to make electronic music then. [laughs] Don’t do that!

MIKE: I, I liked it for what it was.

JUSTINE: Thank you.

MIKE: I did. It’s the sort of thing that I would, you know probably wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, but like, there’s something about like, when your friend makes something, or somebody that you know that you can kind of like, visualize their process a little bit, and it makes you more sympathetic to it than you would be if it were just some, some schmuck off the street.

JUSTINE: I think you’re just saying you give it the benefit of the doubt, man.

MIKE: You get the benefit of the doubt, yeah.

JUSTINE: B of the D.

MIKE & JUSTINE: [laugh]

JUSTINE: Um, which is a, an acronym that I use, uh, I used to use when I was less confident when I was recording vocals, ‘cause I used to double everything. So before I would judge the quality of a vocal take, I would give it the benefit of the double. The B of the D. I’m sorry. That’s awful.

MIKE: You would record a vocal take. And then you would be like, can you autotune that, and I’m gonna sing to that, and then that would become the primary and then you’d do another one?

JUSTINE: Which honestly I thought was ingenious.

MIKE: Still do it?

JUSTINE: It was a-- no, because I’m a much better singer now.

MIKE: Oh, come on.

JUSTINE: No, seriously. Um, I just like practice with everything.

MIKE: I don’t think you’re bad now, I think you were good then.

JUSTINE: [laugh] Thank you. [laughing continues] Oh, come on.

MIKE: No ,you’ve gotten worse, come on.

JUSTINE: No, I, uh, practice was everything and I didn't realize at the time. You have to play a bunch of shows and be really bad. You have to release a bunch of stuff you don’t stand by. You have to record a bunch of vocal takes that are absolute garbage. And it, you just like have to accept this before you will make things that are even passable.

[music]

As always if you want to know more about Justine or about Photocomfort, I’ve got links in the description of this episode. You can also find the link and subscribe to the running Spotify playlist of all the music featured on Sellin’ Out. You can reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter @SellinOutAD. For transcripts of this and every episode, visit sellinout.tumblr.com/transcripts. You’ll notice that it’s woefully out of date, I think I may have to just start paying someone to do it. So, if you want to support the show with a small monetary contribution and get some bonus content in return, visit patreon.com/sellinoutpodcast. If you’ve been enjoying the show, if it’s added value to your life, if you are also interested in driving a stake into the heart of taboo and having these kinds of conversations, consider leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred podcast app, please, it helps others find the show. Or you can pay to have your post boosted and just reach the same 200 people who are already, frankly, sick of your shit. Thanks, Zuckerberg.

Theme music courtesy of Such Gold, photography by Nick DiNatale, I’m Mike Moschetto, this is Sellin’ Out.

[music]

JOHN SNYDER: I was digging parts out of the garbage at my old job and I built my first pedal with that. And a light bulb went off. I was ok at writing songs, and I was terrible at making pedals, but when you can make your own it’s a very liberating thing.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: There’s whole creative realm outside of arranging tones and pitches over time. And get this, sometimes people pay for it! I’m Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / Please put your money in”]

MIKE: You are listening to Sellin’ Out, a podcast about music, and money, and the mystery that has plagued promoters and artists from time immemorial: if there are 150 people who clicked ‘Going’ or ‘Interested’ on this Facebook event, where the hell is everybody?

I’m Mike Moschetto, and my guest today is John Snyder, a musician and PhD candidate, and I guess I would say an aspiring mad scientist if he isn’t one already/ He’s the founder of and considerable brains behind Electronic Audio Experiments, which is a, dare I say, bougie guitar effects pedal company known for innovative design that go way beyond your run-of-the-mill overdrive tones. This is starting to sound like an ad so I’ll just say that we talked about the degree of success that he’s had in the brief time since he started making pedals professionally and how his time spent recording and touring in post-hardcore bands contributed to that rise in an increasingly competitive field. We also went into more detail about several of his musical endeavors which you’ll hear, starting with the genesis of his band native Wildlife. So here’s my conversation with John. Enjoy!

[music: “what’s left I only have to guess / no more feelings no more songs / the best has come and gone / come and gone”]

JOHN: I had a lot of, a lot of fits and starts when I was in high school and college. I had been doing my ambient thing since I was in, gosh like a sophomore in high school, and uh, so then people were like, oh you’re like the pedal guy! So, you know I got sucked into bands before I even knew what I was doing with stuff. But I had, I had a metalcore band, and you know, there were some riffs, but there was nothing else of substance. And then, uh you know like I tried to start things here, there were some other friends, none of it really shook out. Native Wildlife was like, ok, me and four other people are gonna start a band. We’re gonna play music, we’re going to record in a studio, we’re going to attempt to tour, we’re going to attempt to have a vehicle in which all of our things are at the same time. Um, all these were revolutionary concepts at the time. We were really feeling the La Dispute ‘The Wave’ zeitgeist.

MIKE: Oh that was, that was an era.

JOHN: That was an era. Um, you know like, I think you talked about this podcast before about how certain genres are sort of en vogue in DIY and then just gone. And post-hardcore is that genre. [laughs]

MIKE: I think it dies with you guys, honestly.

JOHN: We, we killed it.

MIKE: Yeah, nice going. I think, well so I think that the way that you guys conducted yourselves is probably pretty common to a lot of the people who are listening. Right, so you’re a college band, so like your formation and your peak like active period is primarily while you’re an undergrad. You’re maybe not all at the same school, but the academic calendar kind of dominates the way that you do things, it’s like the Sword of Damocles hanging over you.

JOHN: Yeah. Winter break, record; spring break, tour; summer break, tour.

MIKE: Exactly.

JOHN: Hibernate, rinse, repeat.

MIKE: Yeah. So I mean, go a little more into detail about the balance of that, like how you guys, especially where you’re living out of state to everybody else.

JOHN: Yeah, so at our peak we had three members in Boston and two in Connecticut. Um, or I guess at our peak number of Boston members. And then eventually it shifted so that I was the only one in Boston. But I also had a car, was fairly mobile, you know, and I was also at that point the only one who was still in school. So actually being on the academic calendar made me more free than everybody else. Especially, you know, our drummer Nick, for the longest time, was working a union manufacturing job, so he, and he was working third shift, so we were like on polar opposite schedules. And there were times even when I was living in Connecticut where we couldn’t rehearse at the same time. The logistics were always all over the place. It was always, you know, we were always only looking one or two months out, except when we were writing a record in which case it was, we would have these binges of writing and rehearing and then we wouldn’t see each other for three months and then we would, you know, it was weird.

MIKE: But you also have ways that you made your college experience kind of play into it, like feed off of each other, right? Like practice space shows-

JOHN: Yep, yep.

MIKE: -those little under, I mean now that the place has totally been overhauled, right?

JOHN: Yeah, bootleg showed that must not be named somewhere on BU’s premises. They happened. Um...

MIKE: As Boston University employees we’ll probably cut this section. [laughs]

JOHN: [laughs] Yup! Redacted.

MIKE: Paywall.

JOHN: We, we had those shows at BU Central, which you know, despite it being a resoundingly like not Punk TM place, uh, had a nice energy to it, had good sound, and it felt nice to say that you could book shows on your home turf which really was meaningful to us especially at the time. And uh, I always really believe in if you have a platform just like pulling whoever you can onto that platform in the way of friends. And so it was like well obviously we have to book Aviator on these shows, obviously we have to book Cerce on these shows, obviously, you know, just it felt, it, you know who else are we gonna put on there? It was, you know, it felt natural and fun and it was just a cool experiment to do.

MIKE: So, this is not something I had planned to ask, but how does the post-college, well actually you’re not really post-college though, you’re kinda still in the, you’re still a student in many ways.

JOHN: Mmm, post, post-college in the way that purgatory is post-life.

MIKE: Hah!

JOHN: The, uh you know, like grad school um, if you’re in a master’s degree then you basically have to be a monk and just devote all your energy to your, you know to a year’s worth of really intensive course work and everything and then you’re, all of a sudden you’re spit out back into industry or whatever. With a PhD it’s a, you know it’s a marathon, because you have to be grinding the whole time, you’re not a student in that you’re not classes all the time, I finished all my classes in about a two year span. And you’re also not an employee in that there’s no HR department to be like hey I would like to take a vacation now please!

MIKE: Yeah, I guess, I guess what I’m thinking of is like, are you, you’re not paying loans, you’re still kind of on deferment because-

JOHN: Yup, the loans are on deferment and that’s the only way my life works right now.

MIKE: Now you grew up learning violin.

JOHN: Yes.

MIKE: And if you’re anything like me, it took you a long time, ‘cause I played flute in my school band, um, not ashamed, uh, but it took you a long time to kind of realize the investment that your parents made like financing the instrument itself-

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: -and lessons and then the transportation to and from rehearsals, and concerts and all that. So, were your parents of a musical background? Or...

JOHN: Um, my mom did Suzuki piano lessons when she was young, but my dad didn’t play any instruments. He just uh, his dad, my Papa, worked for Magnavox, and so they always had the late great uh, you know, receivers and you know, like they ended up with a lot of-

MIKE: This is new information to me.

JOHN: Yeah, he-

MIKE: Makes a lot of sense.

JOHN: -so, yeah, he was an electrical engineer, he worked, this is my grandfather, my dad’s side, um, he worked at the, like the Philips-Magnavox plant in Greeneville, Tennessee making TV tubes.

MIKE: Wow.

JOHN: And uh, ironically, I did not really get into anything vacuum tube-related until after he passed away but there’s a very fascinating legacy there. But long story short, my dad and his brothers would just blast AC/DC records on you know, whatever state-of-the-art Magnavox hifi system was, and they were blowing speakers constantly, and then his dad would get them at the employee discount. Um, so my dad really like music of all kinds, my parents were very adamant about having music be always on. It was, you know, just such a, a crazy smattering of stuff from classic rock to folk music to show tunes and classical music, and um. So my brother and I, my brother is uh, a little over a year younger than me, started music lessons at the same time, he was doing piano, I was doing violin. And uh, we were just steeped in it. I started at age six. And it was just, uh, you know, Suzuki method is great. For the people who don’t know, you basically learn by ear before you learn how to read music, and so uh, you’re forced to repeat things, and you can internalize a melody by hearing it and then playing it back. It’s great for developing memory and pitch and things like that.

MIKE: I didn’t know there was a name for that.

JOHN: It’s cool.

MIKE: That’s kind of just how I, that’s how I kind of process it. I, I can read music, not very well, I can read tablature but I’m much more of like a by ear player.

JOHN: Mmhmm.

MIKE: That’s cool. Um, now how old are you when you start down the left-hand path, we’ll call it, of rock’n’roll guitar?

JOHN: [laughs] Oh man, the left-hand path. Um, so-

MIKE: All its excesses and...

JOHN: So, we got my brother a guitar for his 13th birthday? I think? And uh, he played it for like a summer and then kind of, it fell out of favor, so I started noodling around on it. My fantasy was to tune it into violin tuning so that I could just immediately port over, and I was turning the high E string up and it snapped on me and, uh, that was clearly, I wanted it to be, um, well gosh no it wasn’t the E string. I wanted the, uh, anyway, I was trying to tune to violin tuning, it was a catastrophic failure.

MIKE: [laugh]

JOHN: And uh, but in, but eventually, I was like alright, let’s just try to do these basic chord shapes that everyone, you know, tries to do.

MIKE: From the book.

JOHN: Yeah, and uh, I was never happy with how the guitar sounded, even from like the very beginning. There was this little Ibanez, you know, practice amp. And I remember going to Daddy’s Junky Music, long live Daddy’s Junky Music-

MIKE: Long fuckin’ live, dude.

JOHN: And uh, saying, “I really, I feel like I need a clean distortion.” and the guy was like what are you talking about? And I was like well, you know, I pointed like whatever pop punk record du jour I was, you know, listening to. I was listening to half classical music and half pop punk. I was a very, very confused 13, 14-year-old. And I was just saying like well yeah, like now I say, I can say ok these guys were probably using like a JCM 8, 900 in the studio. It’s a basic, high-gain tone. But it was articulate enough that you could chug on power chords and make everyone happy. And I couldn’t even do that with this little, crappy 10-watt amp. And so, but that just sent me on a path of like obsessively, critically listening to my guitar sounds all the time, even before I could really play the instrument.

MIKE: I mean you and I have obviously done our time in the uh, the mines of like, gear Tumblrs, right?

JOHN: Yeah, yup yup.

MIKE: Uh, AmpWorship and all that sort of stuff, which I was only trying to be as smart and cool as you. But uh, is your interest in electronics and tinkering kind of nascent at this point? Or does that come after, or maybe even before?

JOHN: Well I, so I grew up playing Legos all the time, so that gave me the like, you know obsessive, sort of like building things nature. You know, when I was a little kid, I would wake up at six in the morning and go down into my super cold basement and build spaceships and then wake my parents up with them. And uh, so there was always that drive to just make stuff. Um, and that took on different forms. Honestly when I was in school, I was so busy doing homework that a lot of my like hobbies and passions really dwindled. Um, homework is not good for teenagers. Um...

MIKE: Hear, hear.

JOHN: It certainly wasn’t good for me. And uh, but you know I was so busy doing it and all, all I cared about was getting into a college that I just sort of forgot about it. But I was also, had this like sort of heady oh I want to be a philosopher of physics thing for a bit. And then when I got back into electronics by way of trying to repair broken pedals, I was like wait a second! No, I’m actually an engineer at heart. That’s, that is what I’m supposed to do.

And so I built my first pedal in high school, um, it was a ZVEX Super Hard On clone, it’s a clean booster. And uh, I got parts out of the trash at this internship that I had. I was working for this electronics company in Connecticut called PQ Controls, and they make industrial joysticks, like for, you know, like personnel lifts and construction equipment. I would take parts out of the trash can, and out of like, we had junk drawers just full of stuff from decades of engineers tinkering and then throwing things away. Like if you breadboard, you pull the parts out and you don’t want to sort them out again, so they, they’re trash.

MIKE: And how do you know what all this stuff is already?

JOHN: There was a lot of Googling, and just like looking up things, and sort of experimenting, and also asking people. Saying like hey I wanna build this thing, do you know id we could find like uh, this kind of, you know, pot? Like do you guys have any knobs in like the back? And they would help, ‘cause like, the engineers were just very curious as to what I was up to. This is when I was like 17, I think.

MIKE: I’m just thinking of somebody listening to this, like divorced of context and being like, what kind of pot?

JOHN: [laugh]

MIKE: Sorry.

JOHN: Oh, yeah, potentiometer for the informed I guess.

MIKE: I’m barely keeping up, so I’m just thinking of...

JOHN: Anyway long story short, I was digging parts out of the garbage at this old job and I built my first pedal with that. And a light bulb went off, in a huge way. Like I had been, you know, using pedals at that point, but when you can make your own, it’s a very liberating thing. Um, I was ok at writing songs, and I was terrible at making pedals, but I was like, you know like wow, there’s like the whole new axis of the creative process that I’m tapping into now. And that’s what it was really, and so many people can share this very same story. They built their first kit or they mod something, or you know, they break something enough to fix it, like there’s all sorts of ways that comes out. And then you realize that a guitar is a electronic device and a musical instrument, and both go together.

MIKE: An electric guitar.

JOHN: An electric guitar.

[music:]

MIKE: Maybe it’s because we both went to our friends’ last show-slash-reunion, but I do want to talk a little bit about the end of Native Wildlife. Because, you know, at one point the original vocalist of your band left. And that’s like a death knell for almost any band, and the fact that you guys could not only survive that but thrive, is kind of a testament to your ability to find, like, once you lose your literal voice, being able to retain your figurative voice is huge. Right? So, at one point you find out your drummer Nick, who you mentioned before, is going to be moving across the country. And obviously this is not meant as a knock on Nicky, but, there are far more bands that have lost a drummer and pressed on.

JOHN: Yes.

MIKE: Than lost a vocalist and done the same. So, just take me through the decision making that made you want to just call it a day rather than find someone else.

JOHN: Nick was the band dad, but to just say, and obviously that’s a very, very important thing for any band, you gotta have your band mom or your band dad. Um, but, you know, it wasn’t just band dad, it was, you know, there was a lot of informing the artistic direction, there was a lot of just, you know, positive energy, motivation. He was the hardest working member of that band for sure. Um, you know there were times when, you know, comparatively Adam and I are phoning in our parts and Nick is just playing his heart out all the time. And uh, you know like, and, no decision was made without any of us, so when it came time for him to leave, and for such a good reason, you know he really, you know, Connecticut can be kind of a boring and soul sucking place, especially-

MIKE: Nooo.

JOHN: [laughs] especially in the sort of center of the state, it’s a cultural void. Very beautiful, but it’s a cultural void. And uh, you know, he wanted to go start his life over. And if you have to scrap a band to do that, like, he it’s worth it. And for the record, he’s a dad now, he’s killin’ it.

MIKE: He went from band dad to real dad.

JOHN: He went from band dad to real dad, and nobody is surprised. Um, so yeah, like, I completely support that decision that he made, and we had enough time to make a new record, and uh, it was everything we wanted to do at the time and it felt very good and natural.

MIKE: Yeah, I guess I just bring it up because I think for me, like, the takeaway from the other night, from the Cerce/I Kill Giants reunion thing is that when you kind of make that decision to end something, it feels like oh, I can just start, there’s always a song to write, there’s always a band to start.

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: But I feel like, uh, momentum, especially creating momentum but also sustaining it, that’s harder than it seems like on the other side of that equation.

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: Now from recording you and your bands on multiple occasions, I could always, it’s clear to everybody that you had a more sophisticated understanding than everyone in the room of how gear, like amps, guitars, pedals, all work under the hood.

JOHN: Mmhmm.

MIKE: Moreso, maybe even especially more so than me. Um, now is there a specific moment in your kind of tinkering around that you come across, was it like a specific design, or, some instance that made you say hey I could monetize this.

JOHN: Um, I think it was the idea that, uh, you know like when I, when I transitioned into making my own designs it was because I had a very convoluted setup to achieve a certain sound. The, uh, final Native Wildlife record, and then the split we did before that, I was running basically the same signal chain which had come from a tour that we did prior to that first recording. So I had the same static setup for a while, but it took a lot of components to achieve that, and I was never quite happy with how it sounded live. And so there was a part of me that said ok I have to dive into the nuts and bolts of this to get, uh, a one-size , you know or just one thing that does what all these things do in terms of sort of you know pre-processing a guitar, and then doing a thing to it, and then making that sound good with an amp. Um, just in the broadest terms.

And so, but when I made that, people would say, oh well I really like how you sounded on your record, like, can I, can I try this? Or even when I was talking about making it, people said, well I always trust your judgement on guitar tone, so I would love to buy whatever you make. Which was a scary thing because that person had not heard what I was making. But it did mean that for the first fifteen pedals that I built, I did a batch of fifteen of my Longsword overdrive, and uh, people bought it. Almost sight unseen. I didn’t have the money to make a demo. Um, I basically sold off half of my pedals to buy the parts to make those, and then that seed money turned into the company.

MIKE: Wow.

JOHN: Which is crazy to think of now. Um, but it was just, yeah it was those fifteen pedals. I didn’t, I didn’t pay myself a dime from those. It was more like, can I make fifteen of the same thing and have fifteen people want them? And then the answer was, I guess so.

MIKE: Like initial capital, basically.

JOHN: Yeah, yeah, and so it ended up working up, which is, it’s nuts, but...

MIKE: I’ll say. And, I mean, when we talk about the market for guitar gear, there’s, there are so many forces at work right? There’s, there’s uh like an explosion of boutique and specialty builders kind of at the same time anyway, seemingly overnight anyway, which could help or hurt, I suppose. There’s, you know, internet knowledge bases and communities where you kind of bounce ideas off each other. And then on the flip side, right, there’s people who buy limited run things just to flip them-

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: -there's obvious plagiarism.

JOHN: Yep.

MIKE: How do you not only navigate those factors but also stand out from like John Q. TubeScreamer? Right? Like, every unoriginal here’s a Klon clone, right?

JOHN: Mmhmm. I think, so, I actually, I like to use this analogy a lot. Which is that, you know, a pedal to me, is an artistic, it’s a form of artistic output, a design. And you can play in a cover band, you know, cover bands are fine, they make a lot of money. And in the same way you can take a design which has been sort of subsumed into the public domain for 40 years and you can make that. That’s fine, whatever. Or, you can say alright I’m gonna write my own song and I’m gonna, you know, learn the chords, I’m gonna try to write a solo, I don’t know, whatever. And then you make something new. But you are still playing, you know, the same notes and borrowing the same chords that everyone else is playing. It’s the meta-structure, the narrative, it’s the personal connection.

You know, like there are so many bands and genres that I like, but I’m more inclined to listen to the ones of people I know. Just in the same way I’m more inclined to buy something, like a pedal from somebody I know. And I think that’s something that helped me early on, was having a connection with people, with musicians I knew both locally and as like a broader touring network, to sort of get things out there and just have a personal connection and say I trust this person’s artistic sensibility, and I’m going to support their work.

MIKE: This is something that I’ve experienced a lot too. Like when I was touring a lot with Aviator, that kind of gave me, sort of a platform but also I don’t think I would have a lot of the recording repertoire that I do had I not been out there getting in front of people’s faces, and also doing the work on my own end. And I think Native Wildlife, and to some extent Tiny Fractures and Ember Wreath, kind of also put you on the map in that way.

JOHN: Yeah, I think that’s that’s definitely accurate because I would, you know I talk a lot about gear, you know it’s a, both as a passion but also as a social anxiety anchor. [laughs] To talk about stuff I’m super into. And so that kind of like fueled the reputation a little bit, just being a huge friggin’ nerd. Um, and uh but yeah also caring a lot about how studio recordings sound. I love listening to how songs are made and what they’re made with and learning about the process. And also the process is as important as the actual product to me as well. Um, so it’s only a natural extension of, you know, making a record is like, oh well I made the stuff that’s used to make the record! That just makes it more personally significant, more in the moment, um, you know just more personal, I guess.

MIKE: Yeah, and the thing that I actually always appreciated about Native Wildlife, you guys took your time, more than other bands that I worked with, especially bands of the same, you know, if you have five songs? We’ll do two days, but you guys would book three. Or if you had two songs you’d book a whole weekend, and we’d really spend a lot of time dialing in sound.

JOHN: Mmhmm.

MIKE: And that has done nothing but favors for you, and for me.

JOHN: Yeah, definitely.

MIKE: Win-win. Love it.

JOHN: It’s the right way to go, I think. If you could afford it.

[music]

MIKE: When does Electronic Audio Experiments actually take shape?

JOHN: So, I think in the fall of 2014, I was starting my PhD, um, we were writing what would become the Native Wildlife, it was going to be a full-length originally and then we scaled it back, we were writing a Tiny Fractures EP, um, and then, uh I was also tinkering with pedals and building one-offs for friends, kind of just to get my chops up. I was like I don’t even know how to wire stuff, I’m just gonna, you know, just dive head first in. I was building things and selling them at cost to people. I was living with my parents at the time, well, up until September 2014, so I just, I had a lot of time on my hands. I was doing all these things in parallel. And then, once, my goal was to have a prototype ready for those recordings. Which, if you remember, I’d brought that box that I’d Sharpied up. That was the first Longsword.

MIKE: Yes.

JOHN: Um, and so that was used on the Tiny Fractures record and to a lesser extent on the Native Wildlife record. And so it was at that point, then it was the summer of 2015, which was when I did the first, uh, the first batch, so at that point Native Wildlife was sort of winding down. I think we played our farewell show in May of 2015, and it was in July to August of 2015 that the first batch of Longswords came out. So I sort of, once I had the mental bandwidth to get into pedals, then it was like alright, I’m just going all in and we’ll see what happens. And that, that mental bandwidth has been occupied with pedals rather than bands ever since. [laughs]

MIKE: And, obviously this a show about music and the economy of its seedy underbelly, and, so as such, it’s kind of a first for me to have someone on the show who has created jobs, in a way? So, from that humble beginnings in summer of 2015, you now have like, kind of a staff-

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: -at Electronic Audio Experiments.

JOHN: I have a network of people who help me out, and uh, you know they’re all people with multiple gigs. You know, like my right-hand person is, uh, Zach Weeks from Cerce and Lovechild and a billion other, now in Animal Flag, and... you know, like Zach does a lot of mastering, a lot of mixing. He is an assistant at a major recording studio, and when he’s not doing those things, he helps me build pedals. Which is, which is great, because there’s time to tour, and there’s time to, to do audio jobs. You know, pedal companies are a surprisingly good way to fit into the gig economy as a musician because a lot of the manufacturing work is something that is kind of muscle memory. You already have good hand eye coordination if you can play an instrument, you can learn how to solder in a weekend, and there are a surprisingly number of little pedal companies here and there, and a lot of them need help. And uh, so that’s something where I sort of, I don’t have any one person who can work full time for me, and uh, also, you know, we’re not exactly printing money, so, uh, you know, a full-time employee would be a lot. But having people here and there to help me out. Um, you know, one of my other right-hand people is, uh, Brad, um, from uh, formerly of that band Lunglust, um

MIKE: I forgot about that band.

JOHN: Really great heavy hardcore band from the Boston area.

MIKE: Oh yeah.

JOHN: He was also in The Proselyte, who shredded.

MIKE: I don’t know them, but I do know that I, that Plague Survivors played a show with Lunglust once. And then like we left as soon as we played, and like not that many people were there, so I think they like have it out for me.

JOHN: Uh-oh.

MIKE: But! I’m sure, I’m sure Brad’s above all that, I’m sure I’m in good standing with the community. [laugh]

JOHN: [laugh]

MIKE: So, sorry I cut you off.

JOHN: Um, but yeah, the uh, you know so that’s like a, that’s a thing that’s really great because obviously if a job is music-centered there’s a lot of sympathy for touring, and whatever. And uh, it also just broadens that network, it feels more community-based. Um, you know there are so many things, if you don't mind me going on a tangent here about-

MIKE: Please.

JOHN: the, the musical instrument industry, that are bucking trends of consumer electronics and capitalism at large. In the way that, uh, there’s still a demand for products that are handmade, products that are built locally, but without the sort of like, jingoistic bent to it, because you know, like art is naturally a local phenomenon in a lot of ways. There’s this sort of idea that, uh, you know like you are, you know like you’re supporting small businesses, like you know, and not entrepreneurs more auteurs, I guess would be a better word to put it, without being too pretentious. Um, you know.

MIKE: No, I, I get behind that definition of it.

JOHN: It’s vertically integrated, right? Like you know the same people are coming up with ideas, and then making them with their hands, which is a really nice notion.

MIKE: You basically have like artisanal creators on, from, not only from the design that you make, but also the vendors that you contract for etching and for enclosure building and even for people who put together PCBs.

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: And uh, you know, do the wiring like Brad and Zach.

JOHN: And uh, you know so when you put all that together, and uh, you know it’s not a race to the bottom either, you know you don’t wanna buy the thing, I mean there are people who buy the Wal-Mart stuff, sure, um, and there’s, there’s certainly an argument to be made for working musicians buying affordable gear, um, but it’s also my experience that that’s the stuff that’s gonna break on you when you need it the most.

MIKE: Oh yeah. Quality controls.

JOHN: Yeah.

MIKE: In the shitter.

JOHN: You know, I don’t want to be self-aggrandizing about my music career, I don’t really think I’m coming from a platform where it’s like, oh this veteran of this touring band, has gone and, you know, is now imparting his wisdom. Um, but, I know what it’s like to be on tour. I didn’t tour as much as some of my peers, but, I know enough about things breaking on the road and doing triage with a, you know, a   soldering iron plugged into the AC adaptor of a van, um going down the highway, like, you know like that’s the thing you have to be aware of, is you know all these little details.

MIKE: Yeah, I would never, uh, fault anyone for not having the same kind of touring experience. And, you know, there’s always someone who’s done a little bit more, and had a little bit more boots on the ground than, than you have, right? And, I agree, you have done your time, you know what it’s like, you know, I think It’s just about knowing the calculus involved, like, I haven’t done that much. Like, the way that I’ve described it before, probably multiple time son this show alone, is like whenever I would go on tour, we would go on tour for like two weeks here, wait for three months, go on another like four or five weeks. And then, you know, where there’s people who will just turn right around and go back out on another tour with a different band or a different lineup or something like that.

JOHN: Yeah. And at that point, you know like, you’ve learned your lessons about longevity of equipment and vans, and things like that. But, I guess I haven’t experienced the mental anguish of repeated touring [laughs]

MIKE: I mean I don’t think-

JOHN: Nor do I have the wherewithal.

MIKE: And neither do I, I don’t think. I mean, I, not to out myself as unqualified but like I’m sitting here doing this instead of being out there doing that, right? So like how much can I possibly know. And like I’m sure that just in the two years since I stopped really touring kind of a lot, I’m sure a lot has changed. I’m sure the dynamics are different and I’m sure that the returns from everybody are different, and especially like, both return on investment in a literal sense and also fulfilment-wise.

JOHN: Mmhmm, mmhmm.

MIKE: I’m sure that it’s just a very different equation as time goes on, ‘cause I’ve, other people have kind of opined that maybe the band thing is going the way of the dinosaur a little bit?

JOHN: Yeah, I think, you know, um, if pedal sales are an indicator then you know people are still very interested in making music. But, uh...

MIKE: I think, I think that’s such a, not only a luxury thing, if I may say that, but like a niche item that, that core audiences is never gonna dwindle that much.

JOHN: Yeah, I mean I kind of wonder, like how many of my things are going to, you know, um like 35-year-olds who work at tech jobs and have a lot of money and are just playing in their bedroom. Um, and how many are going to, you know like a 19-year-old who’s gonna write the next great like emo record, you know?

MIKE: Yeah, and I think that you do something smart and you send out your prototypes with, uh, touring groups as like a stress test, and also like a what do you like, what don’t you like, like focus group kind of thing.

JOHN: Well if it doesn’t work on the road, then like it doesn’t really have as much value to me, um, because you know like live music is what keeps everything going.

MIKE: It’s funny to hear you say that too, because you put so much emphasis on the studio, and having this artful curation of sound, right?

JOHN: Mmhmm.

MIKE: Like, we haven’t even talked about Ember Wreath at all, which is like, talk about an artful curation of sound and texture.

JOHN: Oh my God, I remember being call, oh, somebody called me a “soyboy curating soundscapes.” Um, that was an insult lobbied to me via YouTube comment.

MIKE: That’s a badge of honor to somebody like me.

JOHN: Yeah, I guess so. But they, the “curated soundscapes” was the exact phrase they used. [laughs]

MIKE: And you’re like, you understand that’s a good thing, that’s what I’m going for.

JOHN: Yep [laughs]

MIKE: I mean, I don’t know what your opinion on soy is, I don’t know what I would do without it.

JOHN: Completely fine.

MIKE: Totally fine. Yeah, there you go! Nice, middle of the road answer. Um, and so, give me the decision-making that led to, well, I can’t do this alone, was it just balancing it against the PhD?

JOHN: Yeah, it’s, well first it was like, man I really don’t have time to be in a band, so let me see if I can have someone help me out so I can go to band practice. And then the demand just eclipsed that still, so um, but gosh, you know, working in a lab is a very demanding thing.

MIKE: And what, and yeah, just give me like a bird's eye view of your job, just so it can sound smart.

JOHN: So I make devices which are for, uh-

MIKE: Oh actually, I should clarify, you make devices as one job, but your primary job, your PhD work-

JOHN: Yeah, so my, in my PhD program, my thesis is about making a new kind of optical device. And so, day in and day out I am working on those devices in a clean room, and then when they’re ready to test I have this laser-based setup for measuring what they do. Um, and clean room work is very grueling, you have to suit up in, you know, bunny suit, gloves, the hair net, the beard net, the whole shebang. Um, and it’s uh, a lot of communal equipment so you work very odd hours cause you’re fitting into a schedule with a dozen other people all trying to make stuff. Um, you know, it’s very, it’s very lonely work, it’s very loud work, there’s equipment thrumming in your ears all day. Um, and so sometimes coming home and soldering is just way too exhausting. Um, not to mention trying to maintain a social life and a partner and a dog, you know, there’s, working two jobs is a brutal thing.

MIKE: You got science up the ass going on here.

JOHN: [laughs]

MIKE: Um, now, obviously you work in a space at least with the pedal thing, and with the amps that you’ve designed, and guitar work, whatever else you do. You work in a space that’s almost reverently analog.

JOHN: Mmhmm.

MIKE: Right? But,you can almost forgive people for going to more digital, audio solutions, right? Like, because, I don’t know, as cash flow from, you know, music sales continues to trend downward you want to keep production costs low, so maybe there’s a plugin for everything. Like I don’t wanna buzz market more than I have to, but an example right now is like, the Dark Glass B7K, like the plugin version of it.

JOHN: Yep, yep. I mean it’s amazing that that exists.

MIKE: It is.

JOHN: I have a, a very deep reverence for DSP, the only reason I haven’t gotten into it is because I do enough coding at my day job that I don’t want to mix, uh work and pleasure, but. It is one of those things I would love to dive into-

MIKE: So, so you could see a future where there’s like, uh, an AAX or VST version like the modelFET for example?

JOHN: Uh, maybe, if someone, someone smarter than me can figure out how to code that up. But also, I really like the idea of digital pedals in general because there are so many possibilities that you can’t do with a physical, you know, circuit. Once you’re in the coding realm everything becomes abstract and you can do sounds that people haven’t even dreamed of yet. I’m not really into the emulation side, I have a deep respect for it because the math is very complicated, but I think digital sounds are where there’s sort of new frontiers of creation, and I love it for that. It’s something I would love to dive into.

MIKE: You also don’t have to worry about stock, either.

JOHN: Yes.

MIKE: Inventory.

JOHN: Mmhmm. Or even, also, if, you know, from a manufacturing perspective, you can make one platform and then program it in different ways, and um, have that sort of flexibility, which is also really cool.

MIKE: Anything in the hopper for you? Like what’s...

JOHn: Oof, talk to me in a year.

MIKE: That’s probably when this’ll come out, knowing me.

JOHN: [laughs]

[music]

[music]

DYLAN HANWRIGHT: It’s not comfortable, but there’s a little bit of hope on the horizon, of how can we keep ourselves afloat personally, while also having money for the van, the trailer, the gear. Just striking that balance is really, uh, is a tough thing.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: What’s the old saying? If it wasn’t for a mic check I wouldn’t have a check at all? I’m Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / Please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hey! Thanks for listening to Sellin’ Out. Proud to be the #1 rated podcast named “Sellin’ Out” that I am personally aware of at the present time. If you’re listening for the first time, welcome, thank you. I’m mike Moschetto. But if you’ve been along for the ride up through this point, it’s probably become clear by now that I’ve been sitting on the oldest episodes of this show for over six months, in some cases closer to a year now. Just waffling about it like a coward. And so once I finally embraced my more narcissistic side and mustered up the courage to releases this stupid thing, I was fucking mortified to find that another show called Selling Out, that’s with a ‘g’, had released its first episode literally a week before I started the submission process for this one.

I think the only course of action when it comes to being beaten to the punch in something like that is that they may have had the name first, but I will utterly crush them in ratings and reviews and buzz. So if you enjoy what you hear, please consider going to Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcatchers and help me bury these guys deep down in the search results with a nice review. I don’t know, I’m sure they’re nice but what can I say, I’ve got the spirit of a warrior.

Anyway, my guests today are Dylan Hanwright and Malia Seavey, and where do I even begin? Uh, Dylan was one of the primary songwriters in I Kill Giants, who, I know, they just had a big weekend of reunion shows, and no I didn’t talk to them about it, and yes, this episode was taped months before it was even announced, so, I’m trying to get about that. But you’ll just have to appreciate this episode for what it is.

You may also know Dylan from his various other projects including Great Grandpa, Trashlord, Apples with Moya, Logfella, Slothfella, there’s probably even more that I don’t know about. And I was also joined by his partner Malia Seavey, who plays in Salt Lick, Dogbreth, and a number of other bands herself. And she’s also active in design work and screenprinting, which is such a huge economic engine within this kind of music I could do a whole episode just on that, and maybe I will.

Anyway, uh, Dylan and Malia and I talked about the role of college and its value to people pursuing creative fields, the lure of the new startup job, geographical isolation, and making do in a major American City and so much more. So, I’m pleased now to give you Dylan and Malia.

[music: “it’s just the kids these days they make me feel so old / I don’t feel comfortable in my own skin / I think the best is only over / the night is slowly closing in / and I’m staring at my thighs / you watch an episode and nothing more / I think I'd rather not be sober”]

MIKE: I met you, Dylan, through mutual friends, while they and you were at Berklee College of Music. What were you studying there and, uh, you know, this might be a stupid question for anybody who's in the know, but why Berklee?

DYLAN: Uh, originally I went in for um, the major music production engineering, which is basically recording, it’s engineering, producing, all that. That’s what my draw was, I couldn’t really find that anywhere else. Yeah, I just wanted that specific, I, you know, I didn’t just want to study music or music history or something, I wanted like a specific sort of education. So, that’s why Berklee, and I had pretty much had Berklee in my sights since I was like 15 or so.

MIKE: Right, ‘cause you’re like a player and a musician, and there’s something about that school that appeals, I mean it’s obviously the most prestigious in a certain sense, unless you’re trying to something like really classical.

DYLAN: Right, right. It’s, it’s like the more contemporary of the like, the, you know, bigger music schools, and um, and that’s definitely where I, like I didn’t do jazz band or anything in high school. I didn’t really, I was more of just like playing punk shows and stuff like that. So, so even Berklee was, it felt like a little bit of a stretch but, uh, yeah. And so when I got in I kind of had explored a little more and found a different major that seemed a little more interesting to me which was called Electronic Production and Design. And that was a little more focused on synthesis and creating sound, sound design, um a lot of like EDM folks went into that major. Um, so kind of the more like lonely end of production, just the like, you know, programming and sort of using the computer to, to get what you want done in music. And it took me, took me three semesters of applying to get into that major. So I was-

MIKE: Whoa.

DYLAN:  Yeah, I was pushing hard for it and finally got in.

MIKE: Wow. And uh, Malia, do you have a formal like college education, like a post-secondary, any kind of vocational music thing, or..?

MALIA SEAVEY: Not really, I went to school for like visual arts, mostly costuming and textiles.

MIKE: Oh, okay.

MALIA: I took like one music theory class, but I really, it didn’t click [laughs].

MIKE: That’s all fine too, and do you do anything in like costuming now? Visual, kind of..?

MALIA: Um, not really, I still sew, I make like um, accessories and like guitar straps and stuff like that, and fanny packs. But um, I don’t really costume anymore, yeah.

MIKE: Okay. And did you, you had like aspirations of that maybe, like for theater, or...?

MALIA: I did, yeah, for theater. Um, I did, I wanted to do movies and stuff to but it’s, you have to dedicate a lot of nights and weekends to that, and I like to play, and usually, you know, practicing ends up at those times, and shows and stuff end up during the weekends and stuff like that, so-

MIKE: So your like music habit kind of got in the, got the better of it?

MALIA: It did, yeah. Which is funny ‘cause it was definitely like more of a, just a fun side thing for a while, and then I took it more seriously, put the other stuff aside.

MIKE: I guess I’ll throw this to both of you, did, when you were going to school for something so, I mean I think a lot about hyper-specialization, so like, music production, electronic production, sound design. I went to college for audio post-production and sound design, which is so specific that it’s like everyone from my major went to LA to work in film and TV.

DYLAN: Sure.

MIKE: Except for me. Did you get any kind of push back before you went to college for something so specific that, you know, the chances of it being lucrative are so-so?

DYLAN: Um, I feel like I was incredibly lucky with my parents and like my support system, and even like friends and everyone I went to school was like yeah this is what Dylan wants to do, Dylan's the music guy, he’s gotta go do this. And my parents knew that's really you know, all I really wanted to do. My grandparents went with me to visit the school, and you know-

MIKE: That’s nice.

DYLAN: -that was a little like scary, I was like you know, what, what are they gonna think, and they came out thinking it was incredible, they loved it, they, they helped me fund my education, and uh, so yeah. I feel really lucky that I didn’t have that push back, ‘cause I feel like, you know, a lot of folks would and, I think that definitely helped me decide, like ok, I can do this. Like, people support that, and I don’t want to let them down, so.

MIKE: Of course, yeah.

MALIA: Mine wasn’t taken seriously, until I started to get work, I think?

MIKE: That’s, I mean, the best way to prove anyone wrong, definitely.

MALIA: Totally, yeah. And to be fair I did get like a art degree from a non-art school, so I think that maybe that had something to do with it, but um, yeah. Once I started making money off of it, then people were like, oh yeah cool!

MIKE: Yeah, there you go, yeah.

MALIA: It makes sense now!

MIKE: Yeah, yeah.

MALIA: ‘Cause, ‘cause people care about money apparently.

MIKE: There’s a lot to be said, I guess, especially in creative things, for the networking, uh, parts of it. Somethings I think, like I wish someone had said like, hey you don’t need to go to like a private college, like an extremely vocational school for this. Um, and I guess it depends on what you’re doing, right? Especially if it’s networking in the sense of like, the only way into an industry, definitely? But, you know, I also like met the woman I’m about to marry at that college so I can’t really complain that much, but I mean... is there anything that you can say about the value proposition of getting a degree, like an advanced degree in music, or art, or design, or whatever. Could you recommend it to anyone, or is it totally from situation to situation?

MALIA: I personally think that one of the major reasons to go to a school like that, is like how you said the connections that you’re gonna make with the people, so I think that if you can find those kind of connections elsewhere, and um like, intern and get like on-the-job experience, I think that that could be just as good and a lot cheaper.

MIKE: Absolutely.

MALIA: But I think that school offers a lot of opportunity to get jobs through professors or meet collaborators and stuff like that, that’s really what I took away from, from going to school.

MIKE: Oh, totally. For sure.

DYLAN: I think what helped me kind of break out of my shell was college, and, and like allowed me, like I, you know, I wouldn’t have met you had it not been for meeting all of my bandmates at college, and I wouldn’t have toured as heavily and like gotten that experience had I not gone to college. And like, the most I learned about myself musically um, was outside of the college playing in bands. So it was like, a lot of the experience I got outside of the schooling itself was the most valuable-

MIKE: Extracurricular.

DYLAN: Right, and...

MIKE: Right.

DYLAN: And I think I wouldn’t have done that, I wouldn’t have been so extracurricular had I just stayed, you know, tried, tried to like intern or tried to go to local venues and stuff and just gone that route.

MIKE: Yeah.

DYLAN: To, to like break into the music scene. But I think that it’s up to, it’s totally a personal thing. I think a lot of people totally have the ability to get that knowledge and expertise and experience just by getting their feet wet, getting in and doing it.

MIKE: Of course.

DYLAN: But I think college helped me kind of like have a community to like surround myself in, and get comfortable with, and, you know, we all, we all kind of held each other up, and helped each other out and, um, I think that’s something really valuable.

MIKE: And you still do, I’m sure, even, however many years later.

DYLAN: Yeah. Oh absolutely, yeah.

MIKE: And that’s actually, you’re kind of doing all my work for me here, and, uh...

DYLAN & MALIA: [laughs]

MIKE: So while you’re, while you’re at school, obviously you get involved with I Kill Giants, and I don’t think I really appreciated this until maybe after, but like that band got-

DYLAN: I don’t think anyone did.

MIKE: -got huge, it got huge! It got huge. And I, I don’t know if this is maybe what drove it home, but like the reunion set, the Broken World Fest thing?

DYLAN: Yeah.

MIKE: Was that a surprise to you? That, I mean obviously you put in the work for it, but, were you, was it kind of an unexpected response?

DYLAN: I think that I knew that it was gonna be a big show, I knew that it was, you know, that band was a big deal to a lot of people. You can’t really realize that until you’re, you know, on stage and experiencing and having a blast. But um, yeah it was a weird thing, ‘cause I know that when I left the band, I left Boston, it seemed like such an easier choice. It seemed like yeah, you know, we don’t, we don’t have that much going. Like, career is more important, but uh, you know, months later after I’d moved and kind of like saw the, the like legacy quote-on-quote? Um, that really like set in, and, it’s just like grass is always greener, you know it’s...

MIKE: Yeah, of course.

DYLAN: It, you don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone, that sort of thing, so.

MIKE: ‘Cause you did a last EP and like a last tour, and then the reunion show and all that, do you think to tag something with that kind of finality has some effect on the response and…?

DYLAN: Oh absolutely, yeah. Yeah, um, giving people one last chance or whatever, I think, you know, it makes it a little more special, a little more memorable. It means we’re gonna try harder on our end, it’s not just another show, you know, I think, I think that, in any, in any capacity, any band doing that sort of thing is gonna see... it’s gonna feel a little more special for that reason.

MIKE: I mean Aviator never did like a last show, I think we kind of fizzled out with the understanding like, ah if you’re not riding with us now then like, we don’t wanna give anyone the pleasure, I guess, which is what-

DYLAN: [laughs]

MIKE: -what, maybe why we never really got there.

DYLAN: Sure.

MIKE: I do wanna, I wanna circle back to, uh, the reason that you left Boston, and I’ve always been curious about this. Tell me about the opportunity that brought you back to your home state of Washington.

DYLAN: It was kind of a classic start-up situation. Um...

MIKE: Okay.

DYLAN: Looking back, like, maybe a little naïve at the time, but, right as I was kind of finishing up school, someone who I had been in touch with for a long time, um, really talented game developer, programmer, who, we’d always talked about collaborating and stuff. We worked together on like, you know, a few small things throughout college. As I was finishing up, he hit me up and was like hey, I’m starting a startup, we’ve got investors, we are, you know, we’ve got this house in Redmond, WA that they’re paying rent for us, we’re just gonna turn it into a dev house. Um, you’re welcome to live there, set up a, you know, set up a studio, and basically make music for our, for, and they were working on this game, that looked amazing, felt amazing, it was a really, from my experience with it, it was a really great product that I really wanted to work on. Um, and so after, you know, a lot of like back and forth and a lot of figuring out what would be best, I decided I wanted to move back, join this startup, get into the creative world professionally. There’s that panic of being done with college and being like, oh God what do I do, I don’t wanna, don’t wanna go work at food service, you know, like... Like you’d kind of said before, going to college for something like that, you know, if you don’t have something like that afterwards, it’s like a failure.

MIKE: Oh yeah, I mean I delivered pizza, I was a mailman, I did all that stuff.

DYLAN: So, that’s kind of what made the decision for me, and uh, I told the guys I was gonna quit the band. They were all really cool with it, they were stoked for me. Um, we recorded our last EP, booked our last tour, did all the stuff, and then once we were done with that tour I pretty much got back to Boston and moved out. Moved right into the house in Redmond, and I think within like a month the startup tanked.

MIKE: Wow, I didn’t know it was that quick, I thought it was at least a...

DYLAN: It was pretty quick.

MIKE: So the project never was like, completed then?

DYLAN: Nope. No, it was uh, they had an issue with like, someone who originally was part of the team, and they decided they didn’t want to be, they didn’t want to have them as part of the team anymore, then this person threatened to sue, the investors got freaked out, were like nevermind, we’re out, and that was it. Pack up and get out of the house, and kind of moved back in with my parents, and just like started from ground zero, not, not two months after leaving Boston.

MIKE: I mean I don’t pay really, really close attention but it seems like there’s been kind of like, or maybe this was the start of an indie game development renaissance almost?

DYLAN: Yeah.

MIKE: Have you, is this something you’ve continued to try to pursue in the meantime?

DYLAN: I, it’s been, there’s been like an on and off, you know, I’ll get really inspired, I’ll get, you know, just get my shit together, and you know redo my website every you know several months, and decide now’s the time. I’m gonna write some game music. I’m gonna get some stuff out there. Let’s see what we can do. And then like, a few months later, decide it’s too hard, decide it’s just like so hard to break into, and be like, maybe another time, I’m just gonna focus on writing my own music right now. So I, I feel like I’ve gone back and forth between that for the past four years.

MIKE: Was it the major change at Berklee that kind of prompted you to get into composing for something so specific as video games? Because a lot of that has to be responsive, right, like it has to be, it’s like a totally different mindset of writing.

DYLAN: Right.

MIKE: I would think.

DYLAN: Yeah, it’s very different, and uh, I actually minored in video game scoring at Berklee, which was like, just the fact that they had a minor for that, I was like ok, this, this is doable, this is like what I want to do. Um, and I can be taught how to do it, so.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah.

DYLAN: Um, it is, and it’s, there’s, it’s a lot of tech-heavy sort of, um, knowledge that goes into it and understanding how to write for an interactive sort of experience. It’s different, but it’s something I always felt like I was good at, I’ve always loved video games, I’ve always listened to soundtracks obsessively, and...

MIKE: I mean it’s some of the most, kind of culturally memorable music for a whole, like a growing generation of people.

DYLAN: Sure, yeah absolutely.

[music: “What a gift to feel stroked off by a phrase / to be so simple and so happy and undoubting / I keep commission on the TV and I’m PKD / What a mercy we’re perpetually occluded / we crave the twangy void of the perfect diploid / I am irrational - an expert eraser”]

MIKE: Malia, are you from the Seattle area originally then, or..?

MALIA: I Grew up in Olympia, I’ve been in Seattle like eight or nine years.

MIKE: Tell me about your, your music, your bands.

MALIA: Um, I’m in a few projects. My main project that I write the most for is called Salt Lick, and it’s with a group of close friends that, a few of us have been making music together for, I don’t know, two or three years, although this project is pretty new.

MIKE: Same people, kind of reconfigured.

MALIA: Yeah.

MIKE: Okay.

MALIA: Yeah, totally. I sing in that band and like, write the words and stuff, and I joined Dogbreth last August, I think? So I drum in the band. We actually, I got home at 4:30 this morning [laughs] because we were recording for the last week or so, um, at the Unknown in Anacortes, so. Really excited about that.

MIKE: Wow.

MALIA: And, I’m in another project called Super Projection. So yeah, pretty busy, pretty busy with the tunes.

MIKE: And, do these all tour, I mean, it sounds like you were record, were you recording remotely, or somewhere nearby?

MALIA: Um, Anacortes is about an hour and a half away.

MIKE: Okay.

MALIA: It’s like this old church turned into a studio.

MIKE: Ooh.

MALIA: Um, it’s really great, loved it, I recorded there with Super Projection about a year ago as well.

MIKE: Oh cool, cool cool.

MALIA: We, we tour mildly, nothing like something people I know. [laughs] Like you know, a week or two here and there.

MIKE: Regionally, obviously.

MALIA: Totally, yeah, the coast kind of thing, maybe over to Montana, but nothing too big yet, hopefully someday, you know.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah of course. I mean you have to, especially in, in your part of the country it has to be so gradual that you get outside of your home base ‘cause everything is like, I don’t want to say we’re like lucky around here ‘cause it’s not always, results may vary, but you know, you can drive an hour and a half and you’re in like a different market.

MALIA: Yeah, I know, it’s crazy.

MIKE: I’m haunted by the three days I did in the northwest.

DYLAN: [laughs]

MALIA: Oh, long drives?

MIKE: Nobody, nobody told me that like you should really have a day in between Portland and San Francisco. So we did the whole thing-

MALIA: Oh yeah that’s a long one.

MIKE: We did an overnight drive, and we were just fucking zombies, and didn’t get to-

MALIA: Sleepy gig? [laughs]

MIKE: Oh, boy.

MALIA: Yep, been there.

MIKE: Just running off of fumes. Um, so take me through some of the, you know, you’re obviously playing in bands too, and trying to support recording and all of that, how are you making money? You said you got some work doing like costuming, and design and stitching, how else are you paying the bills?

MALIA: Um, so I worked at a sewing shop sewing and then eventually managing for like four years after school. And then eventually, about a year ago, I left to do some screenprinting, I started screenprinting on the side while I was working at that shop. So that’s mostly how I make money right now, is printing shirts for organizations and like bands and all sorts of different things. Shirts and um...

MIKE: You own all the, you own like the presses and all that stuff?

MALIA: No, no.

MIKE: NO? Oh, okay. Do you work out of a studio?

MALIA: Yeah, I work out of a couple studios, I work out of um, a place called Fogland for flatstock and then I um, I work out of the Vera Project for some t-shirts and other, other stuff like that. And then, I’m like a dogwalker, like I had a dog walk today. I do like random jobs like here and there like that, and I don’t know, we do some random like, pickup work and stuff like that.

MIKE: Sure, sure.

MALIA: Yeah, mostly that.

MIKE: Like gig economy stuff.

MALIA: Yeah, I guess so. And I, I do some sewing, freelance sewing for people. I also have a company where I sew like um, accessories and straps and stuff like that, and I sell them at like craft fairs and stuff like this, to friends. Fix people’s stuff.

MIKE: So, going from working for a company for several years, and uh, you know, at the time we’re recording this, it’s tax season, that surely won’t be true by the time this comes out but, have you, like what has been the difference between working for someone and working for yourself when it comes to that sort of adult responsibility shit?

MALIA: Totally. Well, it’s definitely hard at points, but then it’s, it’s really nice to have um, the freedom to decide what I want to do and when I want to do it.

MIKE: Yeah.

MALIA: Um, that can also be kind of scary though. It’s hard to stay motivated sometimes, but I feel like I, I do a really good job at keeping busy [laughs]. So, whether it’s something-

MIKE: That’s, I mean, you have to, yeah.

MALIA: Yeah, whether it’s something that’s making money or not. I do a lot of inexpensive things now, like um, creating art, and stuff like that, like, you know, playing music, but. I mean, traveling is expensive, but I, I feel more creative now that, you know, I’m not like drained all day at the sewing shop somewhere.

MIKE: yeah, I mean that’s, that’s worth everything if you can make your schedule work for you, then that’s, I mean, so, I was a, I was a, I mean I still kind of am, but I was only a recording engineer for, I don’t know, two years maybe? And I remember the first year that I filed taxes and I owed like $1000, and I was like AUGH!

MALIA: Oh yeah.

MIKE: And then I got a side job and that kind of all balanced out, and I was like ok, alright I can like surrender a little bit, and then you kind of just inch a little bit more toward giving more and more of your time.

MALIA: Mhmm.

MIKE: Um, is what you do kind of feast or famine? Are you like loaded with work at times and then there’s a dry spell for a while? Or is it fairly constant?

MALIA: It’s pretty even. It’s, yeah, I mean, there are definitely, it, I’m always working on a project but sometimes they do stack up. So. Sometimes it can be a little bit overwhelming in that sense, but um, I don’t know I think I strive off of being incredibly busy, so, it’s good for me [laughs].

MIKE: It’s good, I mean, there’s nothing worse than getting really busy and then having a drought and then having to kind of string yourself along financially through all of that. Um, I guess I should get back to, so take me through, you alluded to this Dylan, within two months of moving out, you’re kind of back to the drawing board. You’re freelance now, but how are you kind of stringing yourself along between then and now?

DYLAN: So, um, I moved back in with my parents, they live like an hour south of Seattle. And so, that was kind of when I was back there, it was kind of a scramble, I was, you know, broke, trying to figure out like well, do I move back to Boston? Like I spent so much money getting back here,. but maybe if I can get a job and raise some money, like I can get back to Boston, just kind of, just resume what I was doing. Um, and so I moved to Seattle ‘cause I got a job teaching children how to ride bikes.

MIKE: Whoa.

DYLAN: That was my first job in Seattle. Uh, did that for a summer, basically took that whole summer to just like catch up to my credit card and pay off debt. So at that point, I’m like, now I’m, you know now I’m maybe a little bit in the black, but still nowhere near able to move back to Boston. Even, nonetheless pay for a plane ticket. So, I was like well I guess I’m here in Seattle, I gotta get a new job. Um, you know, I worked at a hospital doing, like, sound and video for conferences, and then I worked for a game company for quite a while. And then during all this, just kind of let go of the idea of moving back to Boston. I started to like make friends, I Started to meet people, started a band. And just like in all of this, sort of working a day job, just kind of like doing music when I could. A year or two after, you know, I had to move back with my parents, it was like, I’m in Seattle now, this is where I'm at, this is what I'm gonna do. Because it’s a great city, and it/s, there’s still, it’s like you said, it’s kind of a, you know there’s a renaissance for indie gaming, and there’s always gonna, it’s always gonna be there so, you know, I might as well just grind and grind and see what this can do for me.

MIKE: Let’s, I guess let's talk about Great Grandpa, right? I mean that’s going pretty well, huh?

DYLAN: Yeah, uh, as well as anything has gone for me in a band.

MIKE: It seems like it anyway.

DYLAN: You know, we put out a record on a label, and we had a booking agent, and we were like cool, let's do this, let’s do this music thing full time. And that was in July of, uh, 2017.

MIKE: How has that been? How is that, how would you describe...?

DYLAN: It's a strange world because it’s just like, it’s not that you have a better job, it’s not like you have more of an income playing in a band. It’s that maybe down the road-

MIKE: Whaaat?

DYLAN: -you will, you really have no idea but the only way to find out is just to do it. And so, that’s kind of where we were at. We had finished recording this record, we spent a lot of time on it, we got a booking agent through it, Greg Horbal, who, you know, maybe that wouldn’t have happened had I not gone to school also. So it’s like all these things that just, all these experiences, all these people, all these connections just kind of like culminated in like, great! We got a booking agent, our booking agent helped us get on a label, the label is, you know, run by folks that I’ve known for a little while too. And it’s like, sort of a, all came together at once. And um, we’re like great, we’re ready to release this record, Greg got us on our first full US tour with the band Rozwell Kid, who are some of my favorite people that I’ve known for a little bit. And uh, so it all just, it worked out so perfectly, we all felt so like, you know lucky and blessed and just kind of went for it. So, ok, let’s quit our jobs, let’s tour, and during that tour we got our offer for the next tour, the Citizen tour. Um, and then during that tour, we got an offer for the Diet Cig tour, and just kinda like, you know, you just kinda keep going.

MIKE: It’s kinda rolling at this point.

DYLAN: Yeah, you just do it. Maybe it doesn’t really work out monetarily, you kind of flounder a little bit, but, you know, when we’re on tour, we get like daily per diems to eat basically, that’s just like what we’ve budgeted for ourselves based on how much we make per show. Um, everything else pretty much just goes back into the band fund, we don’t really see a lot of that, so, um, really I just kind of saved up enough at my old job as I was preparing to quit to really just help me get by those months when I was back home, or like you know, paying rent when I’m on the road. But really, it’s like we don’t see a whole lot from the band itself, it’s still just kind of an investment towards our own future. And recently we, like, we were like feeling you know pretty, like ok, we just kind of settled down, we’re you know, about to finish off this eight months of touring, what do we want to do as far as money? Like, we get our payouts every day, but you know...

MIKE: You still have like phone bills.

DYLAN: Right, exactly. Like, what, what should we do, and so we kinda looked at what we had and just like decided on a fair amount that everyone should get, just because we had just gone through all this, you know, stuff with the record, we got like a publishing deal, and, you know. And so they gave an advance that says like, as a a band you get paid when something gets placed and licensed and used, but when a publishing company, sorry and this was all new to me when this started happening. I learned pretty quickly.

MIKE: Right, this is all kind of stuff that I’ve heard peripherally about.

DYLAN: Right, right.

MIKE: It’s so alien to me that it’s never really made sense, but.

DYLAN: It’s bizarre. It’s just insane that someone would just give you money to, to have the rights to your record whether or not it’ll get placed, you know, they could potentially not make any money off of us, you know, and, but, they kind of put their faith in us and said here’s this advance. And, so anyway, without going into like, you know, too much further into like what we make as a band.

MIKE: Sure, sure.

DYLAN: It’s, it’s not comfortable, it’s still sort of like we’re grinding, but there’s a little bit of hope on the horizon of like, ok, this happened, you know, how can we keep making this happen. How can we keep making enough to like keep ourselves afloat personally, while also like having money for the band, you know, so many expenses. The van, the trailer, the-

MIKE: Oh my God.

DYLAN: -the gear, just, yeah it all adds up. So, it’s like striking that balance is really, is a tough thing, but.

MIKE: Is there anything that you, or your bandmates, either of your bandmates, uh, that you could do from the road and like kind of generate some income while you’re, while you’re out?

DYLAN: For most of us, it’s work, work, work while we’re home, have enough to like survive on the road and pay rent, but uh, Pat from my band, uh, he’s a 3-D environment artist. Um, he does, yeah he works on video games and like VR experiences.

MIKE: Wow.

DYLAN: And so, yeah he’s been able to do a ton of work from the road, um, you know he’s had like business calls in the van, and you know, [laughs] shit like that. So, uh, it’s possible, I think it, for me unluckily, it’s, I can’t really, I don’t have a, I don’t have like a laptop, I can’t really work on music on the road in that capacity. I really prefer to have like my whole setup. So yeah, it’s more of just kind of like marinating on ideas and stuff, if that counts, but other than that, no.

MIKE: Sure it does.

DYLAN: There’s not a whole lot of money to be made, you know, freelance-wise on the road. For me, personally, I don’t know.

MALIA: I do some like, poster design and stuff like that, and I can like prep artwork for screenprinting when I get back and stuff. Uh, that’s pretty much the extent of mine though.

MIKE: Yeah. Can you like-

MALIA: Do like some clerical stuff, Photoshop.

MIKE: Can you like book work while you’re out and take like deposits or whatever? That was like, that was my bread and butter for a while.

MALIA: Yeah, definitely. I don’t really take deposits on stuff, but um, just like, yeah having, having work ready when you get home is important, or when I, for me at least.

MIKE: Oh yeah, of course. If you can line it up in advance, then, it feels a little better to be like ok I got two more weeks, one more week.

MALIA: There’s money on the horizon! [laughs] Yeah.

MIKE: Before you start calling home for a handout or anything.

MALIA: Oh my God.

[music: “I never thought it’d be easy / I never wanted to see it / and I don’t want to need it / like I do anymore”]

MIKE: Dylan, you’ve spent time outside of Seattle, like I won’t pretend to know enough about the music scene here that I can make this comparison, but at least, talk me through maybe the differences between Seattle and Boston in terms of like, I don’t know, just the cost of living, the opportunities that you get.

DYLAN: You know, I think Boston’s definitely, it costs more, but I also have a, I like got lucky with my situation here, and you know, pay a lot less than average. So that’s, you know, just my experience. But uh, cost-wise, it’s definitely seems more expensive to live in Boston, however, the community, the music scene that I was involved with, and still like tangentially am, in Boston, feels a lot more supportive but at the same time kind of like tight-knit. And I feel like I, I luckily have that tight-knit community around me, and that was really, I was really fortunate for that, and I think that helped me sort of like, exist in the music scene and, and you know, um, succeed. Uh, whereas here, it’s there but it’s not as, it’s not as like close, it’s not as friendly, it’s like everyone in the scene are, they’re my acquaintances, and I have some very close friends in the scene, but it’s all kind of-

MIKE: IT’s almost counterintuitive to think that a bigger music scene that’s kind of centered on these institutions like Berklee for example would be more cooperative, ‘cause you’d think that kinda breeds competition in a way, and kind of like shitty attitudes. And I think there’s probably that, too, occasionally.

DYLAN: Right. Well and that’s the thing, I feel like, you know, I’m sure that in Seattle there are these tight-knit communities, you know, through the college, or you know, just, there’s so many different communities, and there are very close communities where people have positions where they can book at prevalent venues and like you know, help out, sort of the DIY scene and help kind of raise it up. I feel like Boston, I saw that a lot in Boston. I saw people got positions at these venues, people like moved up and used that to like try to help each other out, and I just saw people turn from DIY people to like music professionals, but they’re still grounded in DIY.

MIKE: The rising tide lifts all boats kind of deal.

DYLAN: Yeah, absolutely. And so like I said, I’m sure that exists here, I just, it’s, I’m part of the scene in a different way here, I’m just a different sort of...

MIKE: Tapped into a different vein of it.

DYLAN: Right, right.

MIKE: Malia, have you lived in this area you’re whole life?

MALIA: Um, I’ve lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of my life that I can remember [laughs]

MIKE: Sure, and is-

MALIA: But like I said, I moved here like eight years ago or so.

MIKE: Of the places you’ve traveled is there anywhere else you could kind of see yourself, like doing what you do in kind of, or is it really all about your social circles here?

MALIA: Um, I really appreciate the connections I have in Seattle, and I think that that makes it really difficult to imagine moving, but unfortunately, Seattle is getting um really expensive. So, I have lucked out in that I have a really affordable rent, but that is kind of, it’s not easy to find that, you have to kind of have an in to a house or something, or like, be willing to live with a bunch of people. So, eventually I’ll probably have to see myself in a different place. But I, I think my skills are transferable. I think I can do this kind of thing.

MIKE: Oh, no doubt.

MALIA: Live this lifestyle, you know, in a lot of different places so I’m not too worried about it.

MIKE: I mean anywhere there’s an artsy enough community to sustain it. But I guess in terms of the price of rent, like, that’s something that obviously Boston has down, um, well I should say up.

MALIA: Is it expensive there too?

MIKE: Oh my fucking God. It’s, it’s out of control, and it’s only, I feel like it’s only gotten worse since I initially lived here for college. Like you could find places for like $675 a month and now it’s [whistles] off the charts. Um, how close to the city are you?

MALIA: Dylan lives lieka  five-minute walk to a light rail that brings you right in. ANd I, I live, it’s called the U DIstrict, it’s like where the University of Washington is, and it’s like a five minute bus to downtown, but, other than that, my neighborhood has, you know, a lot of what I need anyways. It’s like got a lot of, I got a lot of friends living around me and lot s of little house venues here and there.

MIKE: And how is that connected to, where do you practice with your bands, where does your, how far of a commute is the different places that you do screenprinting or whatever else?

MALIA: Um, I practice in Ballard, which is, you know, like a five-minute drive, without traffic from my house, so it’s not that bad. Or you know like, 15-20 minute bike ride.

MIKE: In like a rehearsal room, or uh, somebody's house?

MALIA: Yeah, I have a practice space. And then I practice at, um, my bandmate’s house, for Dogbreth, which is literally two blocks from mine so it’s like incredibly convenient.

MIKE: Oh, awesome. So all your gear lives there, and all that too?

MALIA: Mmhmm. Yep.

MIKE: Cool.

DYLAN: Yeah, and for me, I’ve kind of built, [laughs] built everything I need into my house. Uh, I, like I live with a bunch of people but I’m fortunate enough that they’re willing to, you know, have, let bands have practice here, and have me record here and all that stuff, so, um. Yeah luckily everyone comes to me for practice, in all three of my projects, so that’s pretty cool.

MIKE: Yeah it’s nice isn’t it?

DYLAN: Yeah, yeah. But like Malia said, I’m pretty close to downtown if I need it, you know, I think we’ve both just kind of set up our lives that, the stuff we need, you know the stuff about a city that you need, so like, you know, just accessible public transportation, accessible groceries, and somewhat of like a social scene. I feel like we've kind of got all those bases covered, sort of where we live, we kind of live on opposite sides of downtown.

MALIA: Dylan even brings the gig to him.

DYLAN: That’s true, yeah.

MALIA: [laughs]

MIKE: That’s right, you do.

DYLAN: We have shows here, and uh, yeah so really I don’t have to leave the house, ever.

MIKE: I mean, I’ve talked to, I’ve talked to folks who do gigs at their house before, and that’s a whole, that’s a whole ball of wax that, I mean there’s so much personal liability that comes into it. Like, you obviously know I had a house set up a little like yours, I didn’t share it with people, but um, you know, I, the night that I had to move out, like, somebody had said like when you get out of here, you should do a show and just like tear the place up. And that’s the only, that’s like the only outcome i can imagine, just like so much destruction. How do you, like, how do you navigate that? Is everyone pretty respectful generally? Do you find yourself putting a lot of rent money into like-

DYLAN: No, you know I kind of started out the venue, you know started booking shows with this sort of understanding that it’s like not a party house. We do shows here, and that’s it. You know, and, I want people to have fun and I want people to have a good time, but there is like, I’ve just seen, yeah, I’ve seen you know, what you’re talking about. I've seen some pretty rough DIY spaces in both audience kind of like unruliness but also sort of like promoter just kind of like, yeah we could have a show! And then they’re not there for an hour. You know, after bands are supposed to show up and they’re just drunk, or like whatever it is, so I think like my goal for the venue is to kind of like make it a place where people felt safe, where bands felt like they were communicated with, and like you know are willing to play here. And yeah for the most part it’s like kind of part of this venue now is that it, it is a pretty mellow, mellow place to see a show. And, I tend to even avoid like, you know, like louder punk bands, which part of me feels bad about, because that, you know, I still like that music. But, it’s also like-

MIKE: That’s sellin' out, dude. [laughs]

DYLAN: Yeah.

MALIA: A lot of thought goes into, um, like the promotion of the shows too, that’s like specifically respect the space, and I don’t know people are reminded that throughout the night sometimes by the bands.

MIKE: Doesn’t it suck to have to remind people of that?

MALIA: It does, I get it though. I think that people that don’t organize shows, they don’t really think about that, you know. They just go to this show and they’re like it’s a party! But um, you know, when you’re like hey this is our fuckin’ house, like, can you please [laughs] respect it, and like-

MIKE: Yeah, I see like, like pillows on couches and-

MALIA: -clean up after yourself, and you know.

MIKE: Yeah, of course. I, uh, in the interest of like journalistic fairness I should probably interview some like ornery landlords or something.

MALIA: [laughs] yeah.

MIKE: Uh, what’s your ideal situation, either of you? Like in terms of like earning, and making a living, like how does that, how does what you’re doing now play into it, into like a larger goal?

MALIA: I mean hopefully in the future my ideal would be like making a little bit more money, but like as for what I’m doing, like, I don’t really see myself wanting to anything much differently. Which is like a nice place to be in in life, I don’t, I feel really content with the activities that I do on a day to day so to speak.

MIKE: That’s great, that’s always nice to end on a high note.

DYLAN: Yeah, and it, to go off of that, I’d be stoked to like be similarly like, in any realm of possibility making more money off of music to support myself and, and be able to fund my insatiable need for video games and uh, and music gear. That’s all I need.

MIKE: Oh man, that’s a money pit right there.

DYLAN: It is, it really is, I don’t think anyone can really afford it.

[music]

MIKE: As always, if you liked what you heard today, I urge you to support Dylan and Malia in their numerous endeavors however you see fit. There is a veritable plethora of links and info in the description of this episode, including a link to the ever-growing Spotify playlist of songs featured on the show. You can find a transcript of this and every episode on my blog at sellinout.tumblr.com. If you want to support the show and get exclusive bonus content you can find out how to do that at patreon.com/sellinoutpodcast. Follow the show on Twitter, @SellinOutAD. Leave a nice rating and review on your favorite podcatcher, it helps others find the show. Or you can screenprint some bootleg Sellin Out merch, sell maybe two, and leave the rest to be eaten by moths in the attic.

[music]

ERIC ANNICCHIARICO: This person said something, and I was like, “you’re young, aren’t you? Just wait a couple years.” And then in that moment I felt like that shitty old person. You know, I’d like to follow up with them and see how they’re feeling.

MIKE: You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become that shitty old person. I’m Mike Moschetto, this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / Please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hello! How do you do? You’re listening to Sellin’ Out, I’m Mike Moschetto, thanks for joining me. Especially if you’re listening on Spotify where I’m pleased to announce this podcast is now available. I mean you’re not listening most likely because this is the first time I’ve made it public knowledge. But perhaps you’re a shrewd internet user and you found it anyway ‘cause you don’t need every link laid out for you like a baby. Or, more accurately like an octogenarian.

Speaking of having links laid out for you now, now that the show is on Spotify, I’ve got a running playlist of nearly all the tunes that have been featured on the show so far. Probably only with the exception of those that are on Bandcamp or whatever, not on Spotify, and probably a few from episodes that haven’t come out yet, so I don’t forget to do it. You can figure out who’s coming up in future episodes. That link is in the description for this episode.

Anyway I’m particularly excited about my guest today, because it was one of his posts on social media last year that gave me a bit more motivation to go through with doing this show because a similar sort of conversation was being encouraged. And we’ll get to that later in this conversation. But, my guest is Eric Annicchiarico. He plays in the post-rock band Au Revoir from New Jersey, but also from many places other than New Jersey and we’ll talk about that later as well. He also plays in a screamo band called What Of Us, who sadly we didn’t talk enough about but I recommend them highly.

So, when I caught up with Eric he was home for a brief spell between his band’s second and third European tours in less than a year’s time. So, we talked about that, about maintaining gig/life balance, about van politics, credit debt, bankruptcy, and so much more. This was a lot of fun, I love the guy, here’s my conversation with Eric.

[music]

MIKE: You hit the ground running like touring, pretty early.

ERIC: The point of the band was me to build a band that would tour because that was always something I wanted to do. Just, it was me living out, you know, my dreams.

MIKE: Sure.

ERIC: So right as like I got people that wanted to play and travel, I was like let’s fuckin’ do it and Have been, you know, trying to do it as much as possible since, I guess.

MIKE: So did you have any kind of foundational touring experience before that? Or you just kind of dove into it?

ERIC: Uh, just dove into it.

MIKE: Wow.

ERIC: In the MySpace days I was playing in like a-

MIKE: [laugh]

ERIC: [laugh] like a, like a indie rock band. And I was like I’m gonna book a tour! Something I always wanted to do. It was really hard to get them on board, but I started getting into it, or looking into it at least, and I was like how do I book shows on weekdays? I don’t get it.

MIKE: It’s funny ‘cause I went from being in like a, when I was in college I was in more of a pop-punky band that toured a little bit, and then I was in an indie band after college that I was like, oh let’s do a DIY tour! And it was like, oh, these bands don’t do this, like there’s no, there’s no network, no infrastructure, that’s like oh. You get on a blog and that’s like, you can hope for maybe a festival or something.

ERIC: I mean there are open mics on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at everyone’s local bar.

MIKE: Oh, that’s pretty much what we subsisted on.

ERIC: [laugh]

MIKE: Um, [laugh] yeah, so, let me actually jump back to, when we met, your line up and your home bae were almost completely different than they are now. And I normally wouldn’t dwell on kind of the mundane lineup change things like this, but-

ERIC: Sure, sure.

MIKE: -the details seem to kind of be really important to how you all function. ‘Cause when we all met it was you on guitar and Tyler on drums, but then it was Corey on bass and Dayn on guitar and you were all based in Jersey except for Tyler who would commute back and forth from here in Boston.

ERIC: Yeah, which he would do a lot, Tyler.

MIKE: Yeah, God bless him, you know? And now, it’s you and Tyler still, but he’s back in Jersey, you have Carl on bass, he’s in Richmond, Gregg also in Richmond on guitar.

ERIC: Just, wait, just moved back to Richmond.

MIKE: Yeah, right.

ERIC: So he, within a day or two is just back in Richmond from Champaign, Illinois.

MIKE: He’s been all over. And then Tyler, Tyler Mandich who seems to have lived all over as well-

ERIC: Mmhmm.

MIKE: -and, I mean, this kind of geographical spread for a band isn’t like totally unheard of, right? Like, I know Defeater for example has existed in that state for a while, but just help me understand how exactly you handle all the normal day-to-day band stuff when you’re all remote from each other.

ERIC: Bless the group chat, you know?

MIKE: That’s right.

ERIC: [laugh] It really, it keeps us connected in that way, but a lot of the business-end stuff will be, I’ll take care of it.

MIKE: Yeah, it has to, it has to fall on one person, and that person I presume is you.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah.

MIKE: But like, when you wanna go on tour, well actually, let’s go, let’s break it down even further. When you want to write, do you hall have to be in the same room? Or how do you, do you kind of bounce, like recorded demos around? What’s the process?

ERIC: Uh, the remote thing has never quite worked for us.

MIKE: Oh, okay.

ERIC: Uh, where in the past like I have sent demos or something, uh, and it really just didn’t matter until we were in a room together.

MIKE: Got it.

ERIC: Which, you know, with the distance has made things very slow, and hard, for output.

MIKE: Do you think that the fact that you can’t get together super often contributes to maybe the length of the tours? So like, if I’m gonna travel all the way to New Jersey to practice, or Richmond, or whatever, that I’m gonna make it worth my while and we’re gonna go out for five weeks as opposed to like, oh I don’t wanna uproot my life for like ten days.

ERIC: [laugh] I think we, we have a group that generally doesn’t give a shit. So...

MIKE: Yeah, yup.

ERIC: You know, like, when we played dunk!USA, Gregg and Tyler drove from Champaign which was like 16 hours to Burlington, Vermont-

MIKE: Oh my God.

ERIC: -just for that one show. Like yeah it was a good opportunity-

MIKE: Oh yeah.

ERIC: -but still, like, it was, you know, it was one fucking show.

MIKE: That’s insane. I thought you toured up and down from it.

ERIC: Nope. [laugh]

MIKE: No, why do that?

ERIC: A lot of it comes down to time. So, as, you know, we’re all older, or whatever, you know, we, things like money become more of an importance for stability, and you know we can’t live in our parents’ basements forever, I guess. I don’t know.

MIKE: Right, definitely.

ERIC: Whatever, yeah, whatever you’re, it’s on you for your quality of life. It’s, you know, your choice.

MIKE: That’s a good way of looking at it. Now when you guys have to meet up from your, you know, different corners of the country, is everyone totally on their own as far as getting themselves where they need to go? Or do you kind of subsidize each other’s travel, or band money allocated toward it, or anything like that?

ERIC: Uh, because we’re not a band that really makes money, generally it is on whichever person to get to that spot. A couple of the tours, well, I guess most of the tours we have started from New Jersey.

MIKE: Mmhmm.

ERIC: There have been times where I think from, from the dunk! show in Burlington I was able to give Tyler and Gregg like $100 of some, like you know, to, here’s something.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah I mean, 16 hours.

ERIC: Yeah [laughs]

MIKE: I mean you might as well, yeah. [laughs]

ERIC: Here’s a tank of gas.

MIKE: [laughs] Maybe, yeah.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: Now, speaking of dunk!, let’s talk a little bit about touring overseas. What makes Europe such an appealing venture?

ERIC: It’s a new market, uh, of just new experiences and culturally it’s awesome.

MIKE: This is a big difference, is you booked your own European tour.

ERIC: Yes.

MIKE: Hat’s off to you.

ERIC: [laugh]

MIKE: But you still got all the hospitality.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah, so we still got all the hospitality, nothing was different there. I was, just this past tour that we were on, heard from some like, you know, old heads that are still kind of doing stuff over there. And they were like you know, the old days of bands coming over here and having super successful tours are over. So, what I feel like what I’m experiencing, and maybe what you guys experienced over there was like it can be an expensive trip-

MIKE: For sure.

ERIC: -but it is definitely still worth it. But, you can’t go into it thinking like, yo it’s Europe, fuckin’ everybody loves American bands and music and shit like that, because it’s still a DIY tour and you’re still gonna get basically the same experience.

MIKE: That is literally what I heard. It’s like, oh people just eat shit up, you can go over there with a demo and you’ll be good. And, you know, we did have like a really good experience, I think you know it’s the normal thing when we tour the US, if we spent like 30 days on the road and we had 25 shows, like five would be really, really great and then the rest would be like middling to bad. And then when we go over there, it’s like 20 are amazing, and then five are okay. And, yeah, and just the level of care. Did you guys do the UK at all when you were there or just mainland Europe?

ERIC: Just mainland. Because we heard UK wasn’t that great.

MIKE: It’s kind of like being home, in the sense that like everyone speaks English and you’re on your own.

ERIC: And no one gives a shit.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah.

ERIC: [laughs]

MIKE: It’s a cool country, but it’s, I don’t know that I would wanna tour there again.

ERIC: Sure.

MIKE: But speaking of going there again, like, you know maybe our circumstances were a lot less certain, but the idea of going back in such short order is like cuckoo bananas to me.

ERIC: [laughs]

MIKE: Like did you, did you have a long term plan of following up on that first run? You know, the way that you would domestically try to cultivate an audience in different markets or whatever.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: Or was it just a matter of getting the right offer and going for it?

ERIC: When we were in talks with dunk! About playing dunk!USA one of the owners of dunk! Records kind of backhandedly was, he said like well if this year doesn’t work out then there’s always Europe next year.

MIKE: Hah.

ERIC: So...

MIKE: And you were like hmm, okay, see you there.

ERIC: [laughs] It was, it was more like that plant, anytime something like that is like, it plants a seed in my head and it grows and grows and sprouts and it’s like, like a virus or something, ‘cause I’m like oh we’re gonna fuckin do it.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: We’re gonna do it. Cause we already started booking for our European tour before we were even in the running for dunk!USA, and we already bought plane tickets. So it was like this first European trip was a go ahead no matter what. And then we played dunk!USA and they were into it, and then shortly after they were like it might be cool to have you guys over, but we’ll, we’ll talk about it. While we were on tour in Europe we were doing a session at their headquarters.

MIKE: Oh!

ERIC: A live session. So I was like yo guys, uh, there is a very real possibility we could go back very soon. Uh, and they were like it kind of sucks, like financially, but let’s see how it goes. Let’s see how this trip goes and let’s see how the meeting with like, the live session goes, whatever. And then we kinda ended our trip on a high.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: Where the last four shows were in France and they were all like pretty phenomenal. Even though at one of them we ended up having the van get broken into.

MIKE: Oh, that’s right. Fuck, I forgot about that.

ERIC: Yeah, but none of the gear was stolen, we weren’t like, responsible for anything that wasn’t ours getting stolen.

MIKE: Yeah, that’s huge.

ERIC: It was all our own personal shit. So, even though that happened we still ended the trip and we were like, feeling pretty good. And then we did the session and the guys were awesome, and it went really well. And by the end of that they were like, well you could leave your merch here for, with us if you guys are coming back.

MIKE: [laughs] That’s how, that’s how they got you.

ERIC: [laughs] Yeah, and then, and then we were like, alright so, here’s the merch. [laughs] And like slowly we were just like trying to figure out how we could do another European run so soon.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: I will say that our, our solution was to do American shows before that to hopefully help with any costs we run into with like rentals over there.

MIKE: Let me piggyback off that, because-

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: -aside from obviously lost working hours, right that we could have been home making money-

ERIC: Yeah, correct.

MIKE: -and you know, personal cost and food and whatever, we basically, aside from the plane tickets broke even. Like, the rental,-

ERIC: Okay.

MIKE: -the van rental was paid for, the gear rental was paid for, the merch was all paid for, and it probably would have, we probably would  have been covered on the plane tickets honestly if we hadn’t run out of vinyl like, less than 1/3 of the way into the tour with no ability to restock.

ERIC: Right.

MIKE: So, did you guys take a really huge loss?

ERIC: Uh-

MIKE: I mean you don’t have to go into the numbers obviously, but-

ERIC: -uh, I can, I can, because it, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter.

MIKE: Fuck yeah, juicy.

ERIC: [laughs] We, at the, the last day of the trip going to drop off the van that had the, uh, we dropped off the van and the gear, um, we had to out-of-pocket pay, I think, €1800.

MIKE: Okay.

ERIC: So we all had to run to, uh, an ATM and take out equal parts, like, 1800 divided by five.

MIKE: Sure.

ERIC: Um, to pay for...

MIKE: The balance on it.

ERIC: Yeah, the balance, yeah, correct. So, our total losses were the plane tickets and that amount of money.

MIKE: And when you booked this stuff, like how was the process of kind of negotiating a guarantee?

ERIC: Okay, yeah, yeah. So, the difference would be when they’re not dealing with a booking agent, is they’re more likely to be, in typical DIY fashion, uh we can do a door deal.

MIKE: Okay, yeah.

ERIC: So it’s less like, I know that you’re saying you need €200 to cover your rentals, but I can maybe guarantee €100, but mostly I can just guarantee a door deal. And that’s, that’s how that goes.

MIKE: Right, yeah, yeah. That’s...

ERIC: But, you know, obviously, sleeping accommodation and uh, meals are never an issue.

MIKE: Yeah, at least like one meal a day is covered, if not two.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah. And we kind of looked at it like, that amount of money that we paid at the end of the tour was probably what we would have spent in food anyway.

MIKE: Yeah, or like, if you were just on a regular old vacation.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So like, it was like €360 each, I think, and then, which came out to a little over $400, maybe $500 American.

MIKE: Yeah, something like that, yep.

ERIC: So it’s like, you know, we paid for, we got the flights pretty sleep, and then that, so, you know, to play music for three weeks for probably a little over $1000?

MIKE: Oh my God, yeah.

ERIC: Wasn’t so bad.

[music]

MIKE: I’m still like so, and not to be like condescending, I’m like very impressed that you fuckin’, you booked a Euro tour, like a totally foreign continent, literally foreign-

ERIC: Yeah

MIKE: -by yourself. And like, for a band that operates in such a, I guess, decentralized way, you guys have been grinding it out for so long, on such an impressive level by really anyone’s standards. And...

ERIC: Well, I appreciate that.

MIKE: Yeah, well, and you, you deserve all of it too.

ERIC: I, honestly, uh, appreciate those comments so much, it is really nice to know that like, not only we know what we’re doing, you know, and every so often I’ll like get a text from a friend saying like, keep up whatever you’re doing! Like it, a couple people have been like yeah, it’s an inspiration. And like, and it means a lot. It really does mean a lot. Like it, it is awesome to know that the work that all five of us are putting in is like, going somewhere. You know?

MIKE: Yeah. Literally, I mean, it’s taken you all over, and that’s, that’s super cool.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: And like, I know what you mean, like I’ve, we’ve gotten the same thing, and I always felt like we were doing as much as we could, but it didn’t, I don’t, just enough to make it look like we were really busy and active all the time and kind of space it out in a way that worked for us but also projected a sense of like, uh we’re on the grind! We’re really like self-starters, you know?

ERIC: Yeah, yeah.

MIKE: But how, you know, I’m sure we have a similar story, but how has all of this taken a toll on your quote-on-quote normal life? Like, so give me a bird’s-eye view of your work situation, your living situation, et cetera.

ERIC: When I started touring, in 2012, I was living with an ex-girlfriend. Uh, and then, the touring really didn’t sit well with her. It just like, it wasn’t something that we started the relationship on, like, I wasn’t touring before we started dating, so for something like that to happen was like a bit, uh, confusing, and I was, you know I was young at the time and I didn’t really understand or I was more selfish. And I was like well I’m just gonna do it anyway! You know, that led us to split.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: And then I moved home. Uh, so I’ve always held a job with a catering company.

MIKE: Okay.

ERIC: Uh, and my boss and I are really, really close. At this point I’ve been at the company for ten years.

MIKE: Wow. So like catering, you can kind of make your own schedule almost, right?

ERIC: Kind of, yeah, yeah. Well, it’s also event catering, like concert catering.

MIKE: Oh, okay.

ERIC: So, in some sort of way, my boss would understand what was happening.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: Not necessarily on the level of playing, like, basements and like, DIY venues, but understood like the travelling musician lifestyle. So when, in 2013 we did a summer, a full US tour. And that was the last full US that I would ever want to do in the summer.

MIKE: Oh God, yeah.

ERIC: You know, one because it’s the summer, two because every band is on tour during the summer.

MIKE: Oh yeah.

ERIC: And three because that was the time where I would make the most money with my job.

MIKE: Yup.

ERIC: Like literally, for like the rest of the year, to be able to go on tour. So, I was like why am I so fucking poor, [laughs] and then the solution was to not go on tour during the summer and work. So that’s kind of like how that panned out. Uh, so in like 2014, well late 2013, I was like ok I’m gonna try and rethink the way that we do things as a band or whatever. So I put more emphasis on trying to tour during, you know, the semesters, because none of us were in school anymore, and work more. Uh, and then it ended up helping, a lot, I would say, you know? And what ended up happening is I would put so much financial shit off, and health stuff off-

MIKE: Oh yeah.

ERIC: -just to like, you know. And everyone knows this, everyone in the band understands because they, they are probably doing the same thing.

MIKE: Right.

ERIC: We recorded in 2015, I was still living at home with my mom. 2016 came, we put out the, we put out Veles, we did the full US, uh, and then a couple other tours. And then I moved in with my girlfriend Carly, uh, to Jersey City. And at that point I picked up a second job.

MIKE: Okay.

ERIC: And then 2017, working the second job and, it just kind of like naturally happened where we were all like kind of burnt out at the same time, and needed like a bit of a break. So we didn’t play any shows aside from the European tour in 2017. And, not taking that time off to tour, I was able to save up a bit of money and some personal stuff, I filed for bankruptcy because when I was younger I spent a lot of money on credit cards, and...

MIKE: Oh, wow.

ERIC: So just like you know, whatever debt I was like eh, like, I finally had the opportunity to take care of it. And then I had like, because I haven't had insurance, like health insurance, uh I was going to the dentist a ton because I, like finally all of the, even though, I spend like I don’t know probably 20 minutes a day brushing my teeth and I still have, uh, issues.

MIKE: Oh, man.

ERIC: [laughs] It’s like, anyone, you can ask anyone that has seen me brush my teeth, they were probably like you definitely do that for too long.

MIKE: [laughs] Yeah. The bankruptcy thing is crazy to me, so it’s just, it’s just kind of from like credit card debt?

ERIC: Well, okay. On a, on a very personal level what happened was I was young and my father took out a ton of uh, credit cards in my name to help me build... Ok. So [laughs] when he was younger, and my parents were younger, they put all their money into this restaurant down the Jersey Shore, and it went uh south very quickly, so they went bankrupt. And then my, I was born at the time so my dad put a bunch of credit cards in my name, so that he could have some money, but also build my credit. And then by the time I was a little older I had credit cards. And then I was like ahh I want clothes and stuff, and I-

MIKE: Oh, shit.

ERIC: -I spent, I spent like too much money on those credit cards. And then, uh, my father passed away in 2011..? 2011.

MIKE: Wow.

ERIC: And so I was like, fuck. What do I do with all this, this like debt. Because I wasn’t sure what might have been his and what was mine at that point. So it was like, just like all mixed up.

MIKE: Wow, that’s craz- that's a tangled web.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah. So, and it took six years, but finally I was like, the only solution really is to file for bankruptcy, ‘cause I'm never gonna pay this off and it’s best to just start back at zero.

MIKE: Did you ever have like trouble related to doing band shit because of your credit? Like, like I know that when we bought our, when we bought our second van, the first one we bought was just cash that we had all saved up for two grand, and we see how well that went. And then we bought like a nice one, and because I had the best credit rating I put it on my, you know, I put it on my line of credit. Um, did you have any kind of like, stumbling blocks with all that? Or...

ERIC: Well the stumbling blocks are that we needed to save up money. But-

MIKE: Well.

ERIC: So [laughs] real, cold, hard cash.

MIKE: [laughs]

ERIC: What it was, was, in 2012, before we met, and I was-

MIKE: The Dark Ages.

ERIC: The Dark Ages, and I was looking for a new car. And it was right around the time I was like I wanna start touring. So I ended up looking for a conversion van.

MIKE: Yep.

ERIC: Um, so the, the one that I found was on like a fuckin’ Long Island gear exchange page on Facebook, this kid posted it up. This crazy, like, six degrees of separation story, um, I ended up buying this kid’s van, his name is Jeff Ramirez. Jeff was in, is in a band called Sleep Bellum Sonno. Uh, he also played bass in The Saddest Landscape for a little bit of time.

MIKE: Who hasn’t.

ERIC: Yeah, right. [laughs] That’s hard, so now I’m in a band with Eric Mauro, who was in The Saddest Landscape, and I pretty sure he may have toured in that van.

MIKE: I love stuff like that.

ERIC: So that van I bought, uh, for $1500, and immediately had to put $3000 worth of work into it, but that went on to one of the credit cards that would eventually get filed for bankruptcy.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: Since then, though, I have not had a credit card. So, the current van that we tour in is Gregg’s van, and Gregg, Gregg has pretty good credit and he financed that van. So, at uh, the point we were about to do the full US for Veles, I was like if we’re gonna do a full US, like we probably can’t do it in my van.

MIKE: Right.

ERIC: So we can, we should get like a band van, and everyone should chip in. Uh, and everyone was cool, but Gregg was like, actually I’m gonna buy a van for Shy, Low so I can’t afford to like, chip in on a band for us. Uh, and that van became Gregg’s daily driver, and uh on tours we kinda treated it with him as if we were renting it.

MIKE: Yeah, okay.

ERIC: Which is not something that we did with my van, but it was like, you know, as a collective group moving forward, we were like working these things out together. Um, so we were like you know when we use the van for a tour, we’ll cover the insurance, and we’ll cover the, whatever the payment is that you have for the month.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah.

ERIC: Yeah, so.

MIKE: And your van, your conversion van was your daily driver for a bit, wasn’t it?

ERIC: It was, yeah, it was my daily driver until February of 2017, where I got the piece of shit that I’m driving now.

MIKE & ERIC: [laugh]

MIKE: From one piece of shit to another.

ERIC: But yeah, it was my daily driver and now I have uh, like an SUV, I guess.

MIKE: I think having one van before the one we ended up with taught us how to like really take, ‘cause it just failed in such a catastrophic spectacular way.

ERIC: Did you guys break down with it?

MIKE: We had three or four days left of a tour, but we were leaking transmission fluid.

ERIC: Okay.

MIKE: And we brought it to a transmission specialist and he was like yeah this thing is not safe to drive. And so we drove it, we drove it home. And like every time we stopped for gas, like transmission fluid would just come pouring out of it. So we ended up having to refill the thing like twice.

ERIC: [laughs] Okay.

MIKE: Uh, went through like several quarts of it on like the 14 hours from Ft. Wayne back to Boston. And then we-

ERIC: I do think I remember that.

MIKE: I think we probably had to cancel a show with you guys or something like that. And like, I think we were supposed to go Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Montclair, home. And then, um-

ERIC: Yeah!

MIKE: And then um, yeah something like that. And then, the van we got after that we were like very, I babied it, partially because it was registered, insured, in my name, parked at my house and all that. But we just like treated it so much better, and I’m so glad I never ended up using it as my daily driver just because it was like a, it wasn’t like a conversion van where I could you know, maybe justify it because you see people doing that but like-

ERIC: Yeah, yeah.

MIKE: A big ass passenger thing, holy shit.

ERIC: That guy owns a airport transport company.

MIKE: [laughs] Yeah. I thought about like driving for like, Uber XL but like XXXL.

ERIC: [laughs] Triple XL.

[music]

MIKE: As you mentioned, you’re 30, I’m coming right up on it. I went digging back for a Facebook post that you made, uh, in which you said “does DIY touring have a lifespan? I feel like I’ve gotten pretty jaded and I’m wondering if that’s just age or the general vibe of friends in touring bands right now. I have internalized where's the payoff, is this the natural way of what can be considered a DIY career to just be in multiple bands and play locally into your 40s.” Now are you any closer to any answers to that, almost a year after you posted it?

ERIC: I, I guess, yeah? And that, that post was a lot of just like, trying to get things, talk things out publicly, even though I feel like I may have already known some of the answers and I think at, at some point when your band, something that you love, uh, and you love to do, you’ve put so much time and effort into, doesn't go the way of like, uh, like Radiohead, you know like, like having a successful career. ‘Cause I, I think a lot of us are fairly realistic in, in where we would end up. But, being able to not have a job at home, aside from writing and playing music, I think is the general goal.

MIKE: Yeah, I think so.

ERIC: For most people.

MIKE: I think it’s also a circumstance of what age we are and when we grew up. Like you know, kind of when we were in our formative years, it was still kind of possible to play music and sell enough records and make a living off of it.

ERIC: Right.

MIKE: And that has gone away.

ERIC: Yeah. But, for me, it comes down to like, forgetting everything we’ve learned. Like, the societal pressures that are put on it, like what we’re taught, like what happiness is. And just being like, this is what I want out of life, and if I can do all of these things then I don’t need more than that.

MIKE: Is this a conversation that has taken place within your own band about like, how willing you are to kinda put yourself on the ropes for it for so long? Like I’ve seen Mandich kind of post to the same effect, like, if I ever stop doing this I’m gonna be committed to a fuckin mental ward, you know.

ERIC: Right, yeah. I mean Mandich is extremely vocal about this is the only thing he wants to do. I think the other guys are general- I think we’re all generally in the same boat of like, this is what we want to do, as long as we can do it and continue to do it, that we’re not going to die.

MIKE & ERIC: [laugh]

ERIC: In a way that won’t kill us.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah.

ERIC: It’s never been something that we’ve like, how do we all feel about this certain thing. And like let’s put a time frame on it. You know, if something hasn’t happened by this point then whatever, then we might as well just quit. It’s, I think at this point, we’re all just like you know, whatever happens, happens. And if opportunities present themselves, like, like dunk!fest, you know, if something like that presents itself then let’s do it.

MIKE: Oh, yeah.

ERIC: And there hasn’t been, granted I am, Mandich is the second oldest, in the band. Uh, I think he’s 28? And the other guys are like 25 and 26, maybe about to be 27, I forget.

MIKE: Well either way, either way it doesn’t sound like much, but there is a lot of daylight between...

ERIC: Absolutely. I am a completely different person than I was at 26.

MIKE: yeah.

ERIC: So a lot of things that I find important now are, are probably different than what I found important then. And we haven’t had a conversation, and it, I’ve never gotten a vibe where like, I need to have the conversation. Of like, what are we doing or where are we going, and this and that. Because as much as I want to do, it suffices for the rest of the guys, you know?  

MIKE: Yeah, yeah. Are there people who are younger than you that kind of have this view of like oh, it’s changed just in the few years that I've been doing it. Like it’s not the same as it was when I was 26 versus when I was 22. Like, or is it, has that been reflected in a way? I mean, I, the people that I’ve spoken to about it have all been kind of like, in the vicinity of my age.

ERIC: Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly what I was gonna say.

MIKE: And like, the, the people who are, the people who display any amount of optimism, I’m like, you’re a little younger than me around you.

ERIC: [laughs] Yeah, yeah. No, I think that is literally exactly it. Where, most of the people I would talk to about it, they’re my age, they’re more serious about what they’re doing, their time means more to them, where they, the things that they're doing, if they’re touring, it has to make sense for them at the moment. And this is also just the people that I know. You know? I’m sure that there are 35-year-olds out there recklessly, uh, or just like, that give less of a shit, and they’re like this is what I’m doing and I’m doing it, and I’m gonna keep doing this and go as much as I possibly can.

MIKE: Sure.

ERIC: And aren’t jaded at all, you know?

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: I do remember specifically, at a show probably a year or two ago, um, this person said something, and I was like, you’re young aren’t you, how old are you. And then they told me they were like 22, and I was like just wait a cople years.

MIKE: [laughs]

ERIC: And in that moment I felt like that shitty old person.

MIKE: Yeah, well you were. You were that shitty old person.

ERIC: But like, you know, I’d like to follow up with them and see how they’re feeling.

MIKE: Yeah. No, I mean the tour that Aviator did last summer with like all fill-ins. The drummer that we had was like 22, and it was his first tour.

ERIC: The other band, What Of Us, we just did a tour of mostly Germany, we like, we dipped into Poland and Austria. The band we were with, there was a member that was 27, a member was 21, another person was 19.

MIKE: Oh my God.

ERIC: But like, the, the one dude in the band who was 27, he was like always the first one to go to sleep every night. And I was like dude, we fuckin’ love you. Because-

MIKE & ERIC: [laughs]

ERIC: -like we’re so ready for bed right now. And he was so unapologetically like, ok I’m going to sleep.

MIKE: Yeah, yeah, no partying... One thing you mentioned was that you got burnt out on the thought of booking another US tour, at least compared to like booking Europe. Like, if there was one thing you could kind of wave a magic wand and have it be more favorable to touring here, what would it be? Would it be like the hospitality, that there's a meal provided? Would it be like something other than a door deal? Would it be just like interest and attendance and like, how would you..?

ERIC: The magic wand wouldn’t cover the hospitality. Like, I can, I can, like, I’ll sleep on a floor, sleep in the van, have to get a hotel, whatever. But I think moreso-

MIKE: Bootstraps.

ERIC: I’m pullin’ myself up by them. I don’t have boots, but I’m pullin’ myself up by then.

MIKE: My Doc Marten bootstraps.

ERIC: [laughs] I think it does come down to, like, just, a general interest in bands and music and shows and having more successful shows on a 40-day string of shows where you’re playing a total of five “wow this was amazing!” and like 20 “ok, why are we doing this” and then like ten “I kind of want to be home right now.”

MIKE: Definitely.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: Like so one example that I’ve brought up, I don’t know if I’ve brought it up on the podcast before but, I remember, I got an invite to a show that wasn’t like a, it was a livestream of a show. It was like people playing in somebody's basement, and there were mics on it, but it was a Facebook live stream and like no one was actually in the room. And I was like if this is the future, then I’m out, like that’s it. You know what I mean?

ERIC: [laughs] I’ve seen multiple bands do that, and I-

MIKE: It’s crazy to me.

ERIC: Like, I die a lot inside.

MIKE: But I bet somebody who’s like 18 and listening to this, is saying like I was at something, at, I was at something like that last night.

ERIC: At. [laughs] I was a part of something.

MIKE: Yeah, but I don’t know, I want to, I want heads through the door and I want to play to a big packed room.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: I think a lot about like, um, bold and daring innovative classical music, like the Rites of Spring for example, right? Shit that would like cause riots on its premiere. And now like we can stand in a room and listen to someone literally screaming their heads off and like bashing drums like, just as loud as beyond the threshold of comfort and we’re just kind of standing there like thumbing through Twitter, you know?

ERIC: Right, yeah, yes.

MIKE: I don’t, I don’t know who to describe it. I sound like a million years old saying that, too, that’s the worst part of it.

ERIC: But I think, so one of the hardest parts of booking a European tour by yourself is, um-

MIKE: Is how many yellow shirts you have to order?

ERIC: Yeah, exactly.

MIKE: Do you have this in neon green?

ERIC: [laughs]

MIKE: Sorry.

ERIC: Um, it’s, or, what about safety yellow?

MIKE & ERIC: [laughs]

ERIC: One thing that you’ll find is amazing in Europe is you’ll look around and you’re the only piece of shit staring at your phone.

MIKE: Yep.

ERIC: [laughs] Uh, but, here, yeah, there’s totally that, maybe it’s that we’re spoiled, stubborn, whatever, I think there’s a number of factors that culturally we just give less of a shit. And not that I’m not guilty of it-

MIKE: Oh, we all are.

ERIC: Totally, and I also don’t want to sound like a whiny baby, about, oh I want more people at our shows, uh-

MIKE: Well, who doesn’t though.

ERIC: You know, yeah, who doesn’t, but it is again subjective to what is popular at the moment, and what type of music you’re playing, and if your band actually sucks, or if it is decent, whatever, you know, so like you can whine and cry all day, whatever.

MIKE: Well there’s, that’s, I mean that’s another thing too though, is that like, there’s, compared to even when you and I maybe started touring, there are a lot more bands trying to do it, kind of going through the meat grinder, and-

ERIC: Sure.

MIKE: -and I feel like a broken record saying this, but I don’t like framing it as competition but, there are limited ears and eyes, you know? And if people have just gone to a show every night of the week, and if they’ve seen their friends’ band, and you’re kind of this non-entity, then like, what can you expect, but kind of, uh, indifference? And I don’t know how to compete with that, either. Especially when like, doing what you do as best as you can, isn’t always enough.

ERIC: Yeah. I, I don’t know.

MIKE: Now that’s being a whiny baby.

ERIC: Right, okay! [laughs] Um, and continuing with being a whiny baby, I, maybe you have the same experience, but I remember when I was growing up, between the ages of 13 and like 18 or 19, in my town there was a VFW hall that would hold shows.

MIKE: Yep.

ERIC: And throughout middle school and high school it didn’t matter like who was playing, whoever from school would just go. Ok, I’ll see you on Saturday at the show.

MIKE: Yeah.

ERIC: And that’s just kind of how it was. And I’ll talk to a lot of people, and that same experience is not what people are having now.

MIKE: It’s another rosy glasses thing, ‘cause I’m sure they weren’t all, like they weren’t all bangers but, that’s kind of how I remember it too. Like, there’s a show at the Knights of Columbus hall, it’s like, everyone’s there, the ceiling tiles are all getting ripped down, we’ll do it again next week. Basically, things used to be sick and now they’re fuckin’ awful.

MIKE & ERIC: [laughs]

ERIC: Um, no, I kind of blame it on like an oversaturation, you know?

MIKE: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Like, the democratization of all of this stuff, like the ability to tour, and the resources, and the attention, and the ways to get music out, it’s a blessing and a curse, and it’s proven that many times over by now.

ERIC: Yeah.

MIKE: But I don’t know how I would, you know, you can’t really put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak, but I don’t know how I would change that without, you know, fundamentally undermining that. Because, you know, I want people to be able to express themselves and try and do it, ‘cause I think it’s a really amazing learning experience that I would credit a lot of who I am to.

ERIC: Honestly, the touring thing has shaped who I am today.

MIKE: oh, yeah.

ERIC: Where you connect with people, you learn shit and I, I-

MIKE: And maybe it’s a matter of like, uh, expectations changing over time, too.

ERIC: Sure.

MIKE: So like, maybe when you go out on tour now, like, you go out expecting five people, and you’re like, oh sick! This is awesome!

ERIC: [laughs] Oh, there’s 20 people here, this is fucking great!

[music]

[music]

EVAN MURPHY: Friends of mine who will say, you know, you guys look like you’re doing so good, you’re like touring all over the place. It would be really bad if it didn’t look like we were doing good because none of us are doing anything else with our lives. All of us are giving up doing anything else to do this.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: Take it from me, Mile Twelve is doing good, their band is their job. I’m Mike Moschetto, this is Sellin’ Out.

[music: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / Please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hi! Thanks for listening again to Sellin’ Out, the podcast about music and money and the tangled web that is woven from the two. And today I’m doing something a little different from my usual fare. If you’ve been listening to the first few episodes, first of all thank you, secondly, you know where I’m personally coming from, you know plenty of conversations with folks involved in some aspect of subculture, aggressive guitar music, the nebulous nature of DIY whatever. I’ve made enough friends and contacts in that milieu that I could have nothing but these kinds of navel-gazing conversations about that stuff if I wanted to, but I’m excited to shift gears a little bit and get out of that wheelhouse because this episode I’m joined by Evan Murphy and BB Bowness, the guitarist and banjo player, respectively, of the Boston-based bluegrass group Mile Twelve.

I’ve known Evan for a number of years and can actually claim to be sort of the provenance or his inspiration to play the banjo and go deep on Americana but that’s a story for another time. And I was also introduced to BB earlier this year when Mile Twelve invited my fiancée and I to open for them which was very gracious, and I’ll once again express my gratitude here. But not only did they give an amazing performance at the show, they sold the place out before Amory and I had a chance to even really promote the show ourselves. So that made me want to speak to them about making ends meet in a music scene that’s totally alien to me but also similarly niche in a way if that makes sense. Like, not quite to the same degree as you know, loud rock, as hardcore punk with somebody screaming his or her head off, or you know, ten minutes of deafening instrumental post-rock, but still I’d say that bluegrass and American traditional music have sort of a self-contained and insular audience. And I’m hoping I can explore more genres that are a little more outside of my wheelhouse in the future but we’ll start here. So without further ado, here are Evan and BB from Mile Twelve.

[music: “so ring out for the empty lives you made whole / and sing out to the wandering ones / for whom you toll / some day when my time has come / you’ll ring to call my soul, call my soul”]

MIKE: Most of the people I’ve spoken to for this show are involved in some degree with hardcore, punk, emo, and generally speaking these are communities that operate on a DIY ethic, and we presume like out of necessity, right, because it’s kind of, it’s all nichey, there’s a ceiling on how many people are interested. And so everyone has to kind of fend for themselves, there aren’t generally many like, interlocutors trying to make a buck off of it, or at least not make a living. So I’m gonna frame a lot of my questions to you in that way, because that’s who I’ve spoken to so far and that’s probably who’s listening by dint of my involvement in it. So I don’t normally like to do it this way, but I think it would be most helpful if we start at the beginning of Mile Twelve, so like tell me how it came together, what were the initial aspirations at the outset?

EVAN: I guess, well, BB, who’s here-

MIKE: She’s here.

EVAN: - yeah, and Bronwyn who plays fiddle in the group, I feel like you were the two, it was your brainchild three or four years ago, that you wanted to form a full-time group.

BB: I think yeah we both had a bit of a taste for it by just playing kinda casually around with some other young people. We had this band called Blue Hat Yeah. It just gave us the bug for it. Like unfortunately that band, the guitarist lived in New York, so he couldn’t really make it more of a thing than it was gonna be, which was very casual, and the mandolin player was already in another band. So yeah we played some shows, maybe like six shows or something, not very many, but we just loved it. And so both of us were like how can we make something like this happen but with people who are ready to commit to like trying to be a full-time band.

EVAN: And I was living in New York at the time.

MIKE: You did move for a little bit, didn’t you.

EVAN: Yeah for a couple years I was there, and I remember seeing Blue Hat Yeah coming up on Facebook, and being like, seeing them post videos and stuff. And I was so frustrated because I had just left Boston and I knew all those guys. And that was like the band I wanted to be in, basically, like, and I was like “oh man, I missed my shot.” Like I just moved to New York right before these guys got together. So when that band didn’t end up working out and I was moving back from New York to Boston, it was like, we were seeking the same thing.

MIKE: Kismet.

EVAN: Yeah. And I was like it seems like there’s fertile ground in Boston for like a new band.

MIKE: It’s so funny, I know so many people who have moved to New York thinking like, “Oh I can really jumpstart my music career there.” It’s like “well, maybe I’ll get out of New York and that’ll kind spice things up a little bit.” And you’re originally from New Zealand.

BB: Yeah.

MIKE: So, why Boston?

BB: There’s good scenes for bluegrass all around the country, but Boston has an especially like hot bed of young people. So that was really attractive to me. It was also, I kind of wanted to move somewhere to me because it was more similar culturally to New Zealand.

MIKE: Ok, that makes sense.

BB: So yeah, kind of a combination of those two.

MIKE: And I think when Evan told me that Boston was kind of a hot bed of, or it had like a really active bluegrass scene, I think I was surprised. Is that like, should I be surprised?

EVAN: Most people are surprised.

MIKE: I mean I know there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of really talented folks, but like, I don’t know I wouldn’t think of it as a bluegrass town.

EVAN: Yeah I mean the reason for it is Berklee, uh, and the New England Conservatory I guess. But Berklee in particular has um like a roots music program, I can't remember the official name of it. But Bronwyn again, our fiddle player, went through it, Nate, our bass player, went through it. And um it’s become so magnetic that like some of the best teenage folk and bluegrass musicians will end up moving to Boston to study at Berklee because its got this great roots program now. So so many people in their like early twenties end up here, when they’re starting out as bluegrass musicians.

MIKE: Obviously you do well here, but where else, do you have like other markets, other regions that are favorable to you?

EVAN: Yeah, I mean we do a lot of touring in the places that you might expect, like the Carolinas.

BB: Virginia.

EVAN: Virginia, I don’t think we’ve ever played in Kentucky, which is the Bluegrass State, but -

BB: That’s true.

EVAN: - a lot of the southeastern U.S. we’ve toured in. I wouldn’t say that like Boston has a huge bluegrass audience as compared to other places. Like, I guess it is more of like a musician’s town, but I do think that, and you probably are pretty aware of this as a fellow young musician that like, there’s actually like a connection between sort of like urban hipster life and acoustic roots music. Like a lot of people who like craft beer and really good coffee and like, they also like roots music. So it’s like we’re not a hipster bluegrass band, we try to like appeal to real folks in the southeastern U.S. who have grown up on this music. But I guess what I’m saying is that like areas like Boston do have their share of like young, hip folks who wanna come see some bluegrass music.

BB: Yeah, what’s that venue that the Punch Brothers played? House of Blues.

EVAN: House of Blues.

BB: Yeah, the Punch Brothers like sold that out almost I think.

MIKE: That’s a huge room.

BB: That’s a huge room! And they’re a bluegrass band. I mean you know, they’re obviously their own case but it’s still like, I know the Stringdusters have also played in Boston with like a massive crowd -

EVAN: Or like the Davis Square Theater has folks, and like Passim like you mentioned.

MIKE: Of course, of course.

EVAN: Even like Lizard Lounge, like, Boston’s pretty friendly to the acoustic music.

MIKE: Acoustic music, totally.

EVAN: ‘Cause I think young people are friendly to it.

MIKE: Do you, when you tour to these places where you might more commonly associate something like bluegrass and folk, like Appalachia for example, are you received any differently do you think because you’re like based in Boston? Am I projecting onto them a sort of traditionalism that maybe isn’t there? Have you experienced that at all? Or like, “you guys are pretty good for being from Boston.”

EVAN: [laughs]

BB: Yeah, I do feel like when audiences in the South listen to us they kind of hear us as a more progressive band, and I think when audiences in New England hear us, they hear us as a more traditional band. But that just might be my own head, you know, playing games on me.

MIKE: Interesting.

EVAN: I remember we played at this place called, um, Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor. And it’s a really like traditional-looking place. I mean, it’s like all wood inside, and there’s photos all over the wall of like bluegrass legends who’ve played there, and we were up on stage and I remember, like, we do a mostly, I mean you saw our set at Passim, like it’s pretty bluegrassy, you know, there’s a lot of traditional-sounding stuff in there. But then we were doing like, Rocket Man-

MIKE: Rocket Man, I was just gonna say.

EVAN: -and Nate wrote this song that’s like really dark, and in like it’s in five, and it’s kind of metal sounding. I remember cringing and thinking like-

MIKE: Are they gonna eat us alive?

EVAN: -are these people gonna hate this? But they didn’t really, they like, I have really not encountered many people who have come up to us and been like you guys are subverting, you know, the tradition.

MIKE: You guys are appropriating bluegrass culture-

EVAN: Yeah!

BB: [laughs]

EVAN: We haven’t gotten a lot of that.

MIKE: -for your own twisted progressive views.

EVAN: And I think that we try as a band to like shed, so that, like bluegrass is pretty transparent I think. Like if you can’t play it, people will notice, like there’s not a lot of covering it up.

MIKE: There’s like a high bar of entry.

EVAN: Yeah.

MIKE: In terms of like chops, I guess.

EVAN: Totally. And so we’ve really tried to practice so that when we go to Bill’s Pickin’ Parlor or any venue we want people to, yeah, come up and be like, you know, that sounded legitimate to me. And I think we’ve mostly gotten that.

MIKE: That’s like my fear, is to go to someplace like where the music originated and be like, “I don’t know, I think you’re just faking it.

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

[music: “Traveling onwards through the night / Gazing upwards to the light”]

MIKE: At what point did you make the leap to being a full-time band? Like how was that transition for each of you?

BB: Some of us, like Nate, when the band first started Nate was actually still in Berklee, still in school. So, he could only so much, but.

MIKE: Is he a baby?

BB: Yeah, he’s the youngest. Bronwyn and I were just both teaching private lessons, which we’re still doing, so in that sense nothing’s changed for us. Just a whole lot more busy. For Evan, you had a part-time music teaching gig?

EVAN: Yeah. Yeah I was doing a couple different things that were a little more structured, like some really early childhood music classes and some private lessons. But both through companies, so, with a lot less flexibility to just like move and cancel things at will. And it was when we decided to tour Australia and New Zealand, ‘cause we were gonna be over there for like a month, and I’d had these jobs for like two years, and the strain of trying to balance the band schedule with the teaching schedule was just getting to be way too stressful. And it was at that point when we were gonna be gone for a month that I was like, alright I guess I’m done doing these jobs. You know, cause like the band is just getting too busy, and that’s when I contacted them and said like, I can’t do this anymore.

MIKE: You just said like, I gotta leave I’m out of here? Or did you try to put in for a month off of work?

EVAN: No, I just said I’m out of here ‘cause I had had-

MIKE: You weren’t like loving it anyway?

EVAN: Well, I enjoyed doing it. Like if the band suddenly collapsed tomorrow I’d probably go back and do those jobs again, you know like they were fine. But they were like serious, like they weren’t all that comfortable with me taking off long periods of time, which was part of what made it stressful. Because like I’d be, you know the band would be talking about like going on a two-week tour or something which for a full-time band is not like that long of a thing. And I’d be sitting there like sweating, like thinking like “oh man I have to email both of my bosses and get-” So there was, by that point I was like I’m done with this. This is just not sustainable to do this, with...

MIKE: When I was, I was a postman before this. And I remember the first time we had booked a month-long tour and I went in to, I was just like well I’m gonna ask for the time off, if I get it, great, and if I don’t, then I’m out of here. And I was like “I’m gonna be away for the entire month of October,” and they were like “alright we’ll see you in November.”

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

MIKE: I mean I was kind of shocked, I didn’t get paid for any of it but it was like I guess the Postal Service needs people that bad around Christmas time so they weren’t, they might have, but then I did it again the next summer which is kind of the slow season and they could afford to tell me to piss off and they didn’t. And they just would have hired like three new people to replace me or something I don’t know.

EVAN: Well that’s like one of the things about being a full-time musician that’s so strange is that, if you’re a full-time musician it doesn’t actually mean you’re gigging like, eight hours a day five days a week. Right like anyone who plays music knows that, that’s not really how it works. Like you might have weekends, you might have a like run here and there. But even though the schedule is so jumpy it totally negates like the possibility of having any kind of consistent part-time job. I mean, unless you have the coolest boss in the world, then like, I mean, BB, she can talk about this, but she even worked at a coffee shop which you’d think of as one of the most laid back type of part-time, you know like maybe they’re expecting you to have kind of flexible hours, you might have other artists working there. And even that like didn’t last that long before-

BB: Yeah, it gets tricky. It just like there's a point where it’s like, what, there’s not much point to this anymore. I’m so busy and when we get back from tour it’s like I wanna you know, vacuum and like do my washing, and practice, like there’s so many things that get neglected.

MIKE: You miss like trashing hotel rooms so you gotta get back and like penitently clean your own place.

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

MIKE: I guess that’s a good way to define what a full-time band is, ‘cause I would, I’ve spoken with a lot of people who I would think would say that they’re in full-time bands in that they arrange the rest of their lives around what they’re doing with the band, whether or not it’s at the expense of the rest of their lives. Right like maybe you tour four months of the year, but you come back and you like drive for Uber to pay the bills. But, basically, you’re planning your whole year out in advance, eighteen months even just to get everything done. But I guess the distinction with you guys is that it’s, it negates your ability to work on the side, aside from like side hustle freelance, like private lessons like you said. And maybe because we’re recording this at tax season, how did all that kind of play out for you? Loke writing everything off?

BB: Yeah.

MIKE: Are you guys doing all that yourselves or do you have like something keeping the books for you like a manager?

BB: We just do it ourselves, yeah. We have this email chain [laughs] it’s a bit of a nightmare.

EVAN: Yeah, everyone just types in...

BB: So you know there’s the January email chain of finances, where it’s like “Bronwyn’s Uber”, and then like “Nate’s cup of coffee” and, everything from tiny expenses, parking, or whatever, to like large expenses.

MIKE: There’s like a company card?

BB: We do, we all have debit cards.

EVAN: We do have an accountant actually prepare our, like, what we receive is called a K-1, which I would have never known about until we started doing this, but um, basically the band tallies up everything that we made for the year, and everything that we spent, and then sends that to the accountant. And he might look at it and say like you know, “you made $100” obviously, hopefully it’s more than that, “and you spent $50, and then $50 divided by five is $10, so everyone owes taxes on that $10.” And then you get your K-1 or whatever, and that’s like how.

BB: Yeah.

EVAN: So we all get this document that’s like, this is what Mile Twelve is paying you as one of the partners, and you owe taxes on that amount of money. And you can’t really deduct any expenses from it because they’re already deduced from it.

BB: Except for meals I think.

EVAN: Oh yeah, you can do, yeah you’re right.

BB: Because there’s a meal deduction for when you’re on tour like the per diem. Which is great for like New York City, and like those more expensive cities, ‘cause we’re all very, well, we try to cheap, we’re not like that cheap, but we try to be pretty cheap on the road.

MIKE: That’s part of it.

BB: But it doesn’t matter if you spend that much or not, you can claim 50% of whatever that city’s per diem is.

MIKE: Wow.

BB: Yeah.

MIKE: And how many days of the year are you on the road typically? Or, I mean, it probably varies from year to year but like on average?

EVAN: I jut counted because of taxes and I think I got something over 100.

BB: Yeah it was like 120 or something like that, yeah.

EVAN: And it varies everything from a gig in New Hampshire and a gig in Connecticut to like, Japan. Or Australia. And like the whole international touring thing is like, that’s particularly not very lucrative, and we all know that going into to it. Like, ‘cause they‘re so, the expenses are crazy, for the flights and stuff like that. So we’ve done Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and now Japan, and they’re all like, I wouldn’t say for fun, because that diminishes how much work goes into them, but they’re kind of just to do, and for street cred, and like...

BB: Pretty cool experiences. And New Zealand especially for me was like amazing.

MIKE: Little homecoming.

BB: Yeah, five days in New Zealand, but like each gig was like, you know, oh my gosh! This is what I’ve been doing with my life and now you can all see it! So, pretty special.

MIKE: Was there a lot of people? Did a lot of people turn out?

BB: Yeah, oh wow, yeah the hometown gig especially had 180 people. Which is, it’s a small town, Whanganui is, I don’t know what the population of Whanganui is, it’s pretty small.

EVAN: People were like bursting out of that building, that was crazy.

BB: Yeah, it was really special.

MIKE: I did a tour of Europe, and our overhead was like, our flights, we had to rent a vehicle, pay the booking agent, pay the driver, who weren’t always the same person, and pay for merch up front. You know, whatever meals, we got provided a lot of meals, like the Europe hospitality is like, tchk tchk.

EVAN: Yeah.

MIKE: And the way it kind of worked out with guarantee sand everything, we came up even, except for the flights. What are some of the things that you guys have to consider when you’re touring overseas? Like, you’re bringing your own instruments I presume.

BB: Mmhmm. Even Nate brings his own bass, most of the time, he didn’t to Japan, but every other tour.

EVAN: So that’s an expense, like we all just share the expense for things like that, like Mile Twelve covers the expense of him flying with his bass, so the flights are huge.

MIKE: Yeah.

BB: Yeah. Visas are usually...

EVAN: Oh yeah, visas.

BB: Somewhat expensive.

EVAN: Rental cars are brutal, and um, there’s even sort of, this is more abstract but even factoring in lost income for so much time on the road of like, you know, like I don’t teach nearly as much as like BB or Bronwyn or David, our mandolin player, who we haven’t talked that much about so far.

MIKE: Well, he’s the new guy right?

EVAN: He’s the new guy, yeah. He’s been in the band a year now.

MIKE: He’s gotta earn it.

EVAN: Yeah, totally.

MIKE: He’s like the Jason Newsted, if that makes sense.

EVAN: Like we’ll, wait who’s that?

MIKE: He was the bassist of Metallica after the original bassist died.

EVAN: Oh [laughs]

MIKE: And they were just super shitty to him when he joined the band, so like the first album that he played on, when they mixed it, they just turned the bass way down so he’s barely on it.

EVAN: Oh man, oh geez.

BB: [laughs]

MIKE: So I presume you’re not that.

EVAN: No, no. David’s like, David took the reins as soon as he joined the band, he’s probably one of the most organized, productive members of the group, but um... Yeah, we might, look at like a longer international tour and think like, alright the band’s probably gonna make very little money, is it worth like all these people missing students for like three or four weeks, or is it worth, you know, just like the psychological kind of, you know, toll of like being on the road that long. But usually we decide yes, it is worth doing that.

BB: Yeah, I think as we go on, we’re getting more and more fussy, like, I think we’re all pretty glad that the Japan tour was so short.

EVAN: Yeah.

BB: And I think, we’re talking about going back to Ireland and we’re probably gonna make it much shorter this time.

EVAN: Yeah.

BB: And even if that means like less money, it’s also less stress, you know, less time in a different time zone, less time away from your loved ones.

EVAN: Yeah I think the way we’re starting to look at the international thing is like, if you’re not really doing it- ‘cause like the rationale has been like it’s gonna cost so much money to get over there, it’s gonna cost so much money to be over there. We have to stay over there for a really long time to make up for it. But now it’s like, kinda like, we’re not gonna make any money anyway, so like, let’s just go over for like a week or something.

BB: And have fun.

MIKE: Yeah, totally. When Aviator went to Europe we went for like four weeks just because we were like well, A) it’ll probably be the last big hurrah that we ever do, then it was just like well, the longer we stay the closer of a chance we stand to recouping. Because, kind of a weird subcultural difference is that like lost income is not even a factor, it’s just an assumption. Unless you have a job that you can telecommute somehow, even overseas, like, I don’t know if you guys could do Skype lessons, or something?

BB: Mmm, it’s a little crazy.

MIKE: Which is hard, especially someplace like Japan.

BB: We have done it, but.

MIKE: But like, that doesn’t even come into the conversation, it’s just assumed, unless you get paid vacation time or you can work remotely, then it’s just like, oh, tough.

EVAN: But like BB said, I think those kinds of evaluations are changing over time. I mean when we went on our first tour of Canada we didn’t make anything, and we were just like hooray! Like this was so much fun!

BB: Yeah, so excited.

EVAN: And now it’s like we’ve been at this for like a little over three years, which isn’t that long, but all of us are giving up doing anything else to do this, so then those considerations start to get more real. Like if we’re not making money, if it’s not lucrative, if it's not sustainable, if it’s too psychologically challenging, it’s not gonna last. You know like if we burn hot and fast that’s not really good for anybody, like we wanna be at this for ten, fifteen years maybe, just in this band.

MIKE: Til you die.

EVAN: Or, yeah, til we die.

[music: “one night as we lay sleeping / a storm had found our course / the [unintelligible 23:30] took water o’er the sides / the waves they came in force / we woke and tied our lifelines / I prayed the seas would tame / I'd never seen or smiled so wide as in the wind and rain”]

MIKE: As things have kind of progressed and grown for you guys, we should talk about like overhead costs here, like, I see friends whose rock bands are successful and they might have to spend more on like have someone mixing front of house for them, or bringing their own tour manager, rentals for like bigger sound system or lighting or whatever. All these production costs. So their guarantee might be going up, but their take may be staying the same, or less even. Has there been an analogue for that, with your experience?

EVAN: I mean, bluegrass music doesn’t tend to have a lot of equipment overhead, and least for us, like we’ve talked about a few different things. Like we’ve talked about hiring a full-time sound guy, which we would consider to be more like, they would become like the sixth band member sort of. Like it might be that, well I mean you could structure it different ways, you might structure it like when we make 50 bucks they make 50 bucks, and when we make 500 bucks they make 500 bucks.

MIKE: They also make 50 bucks.

BB: [laughs]

EVAN: Like we’ve thought about doing it that way, but we don’t have like, lights and amps and stuff are not part of the deal for us, like it’s pretty acoustic. And then...

MIKE: Even as you play bigger and bigger venues, it’s all...

EVAN: Yeah, the thing that some bluegrass musicians do end up doing is in-ear monitors, which a lot of bluegrass musicians to get that like natural feel use these large-diaphragm condensers where you’re all signing around one mic, or there’s only a few mics on stage.

MIKE: You do that, right?

EVAN: Yeah we do that, but they’re super sensitive, and like you can’t use monitors basically, or like you can barely use monitors. So you know we’ve talked about that, those are super expensive. Um, and then like recording. You know like we did a Kickstarter for our first album, which went great, we raised the money quickly. But all of us were like, I don’t think we can do the Kickstarter thing again, like we can’t, you know some people do it twice or whatever, and that’s fine, but we didn’t want to do that. So now just like every cent we make from our merchandise is going into this savings account to do another album which is like, we’re in a better position than some people to be able to do that, but, that’s like, that’s a huge expense. It’s just like, alright we spent $20,000 to make an album and now everything we make on it is just gonna get saved up to make another album in like a year or whatever.

MIKE: And how long does it take you guys to cut a record?

BB: We did like ten days last time in the studio for 12 songs. And that was like a bunch of mixing too, not all the mixing though.

MIKE: Okay. But did you guys all play together, at least instrumentally?

EVAN: We were isolated, instruments simultaneously, and then record vocals over them. And some of the songs, we used a metronome for all of us, some of the songs just the bass player would have a metronome in his ears, but it makes it a lot easier for like editing purposes to do that so we went with the metronome.

MIKE: And I guess you can’t really, you kind of have to aim high in terms of the facility that you’re looking at to record, like you can’t, there isn’t really a lot of lo-fi bluegrass, there isn’t a lot of... I mean, am I wrong about that?

BB: I don’t know, honestly I don’t know what most people do. I guess a lot of people do their recording in Nashville. But, I mean the recording studio we used was pretty... the studio itself wasn’t that glamorous by any means, but yeah. I feel like, for me at least, the most helpful thing is having a producer, so we’d probably want to do that again. Just having someone outside of the band who can like you know tell us when it’s good or if it’s bad.

MIKE: Another set of ears never hurt.

BB: Yeah.

EVAN: Yeah, a good producer is great, and we had a good producer on our last project which really helped. He was also the engineer, so he was working quite hard on that album.

MIKE: A lot of that stuff gets folded into being one person anyway.

EVAN: Yeah.

MIKE: So what’s like the pipe dream for Mile Twelve like? This will date me, but like maybe it’s a certain type of person wants to see themselves on MTV, which isn’t a thing that people know anymore so I should probably cut that out.

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

MIKE: But like for me I always wanted to play at 924 Gilman out in Berkeley, California which I never got to, but like um, what’s like your-

EVAN: It’s not too late, Mike.

MIKE: Thank you. What’s like your, uh I’ll do alive podcast from there, how’s that. What’s like your Madison Square Garden? Or is it like Madison Square Garden, what’s like the ceiling?

BB: Probably not. [laughs]

EVAN: No, I mean, for me it’s the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, that’s the one I’ve always wanted to play.

BB: That’d be cool. I mean, any like, we’re playing Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival this year, I think we’re playing the main stage, and that’s, like, big festivals like that, like big bluegrass festivals are kind of, I think for all of us, a bit of the dream. So yeah like for me, Rocky Grass, or Telluride, in Colorado.

EVAN: Yeah.

BB: MerleFest, any of those, like kind of bigger ones.

EVAN: Yeah, the bigger ones. We got a festival called ROMP this year, which was one of the ones we’ve-

MIKE: Yeah I’ve heard of that one!

EVAN: Yeah you know that one?

MIKE: I think so.

EVAN: We’ve been dying to play that one.

MIKE: Where is that? That’s out in, um...

EVAN: That one is actually-

BB: In Kentucky.

EVAN: -in Kentucky, yeah. Sometimes people like nice folks who usually are like in their 60s or above will come up to us after shows and say things like, “oh remember us when you’re famous.” And like, I always kind of laugh and think like, that word doesn’t really like happen in bluegrass all that often, you know. It’s like if you’re a bluegrass musician, there’s like very rare cases, like Alison Krauss & Union Station, or like Ricky Skaggs, or like Del McCoury, where bluegrass artists have achieved at least some-

MIKE: You had me with the first two but I don’t know...

EVAN: So even Del McCoury we’ve dropped off, but yeah, who’ve achieved like real kind of mainstream fame, and I, at least for me and I think BB would agree, none of us have any delusions of mainstream fame. Like that’s just not really a thing in like roots music. But we’d like to get to like bluegrass fame, that would be fun.

MIKE: I think there’s people who kind of like, like a Mumford & Sons, like, you could find like a real idiot who would be like “oh that’s bluegrass.”

EVAN: Right, right.

MIKE: I feel like that’s only a few steps removed from a larger pool of-

BB: Audience.

MIKE: Yeah, a larger audience. Don’t you think?

BB: Yeah, I think so and I think some people accidentally fall into it, you know, and that’s cool. Yeah, whenever I see bands that like, you know the Stringdusters, or some bands like that who have clearly a huge following they’re super successful.

MIKE: Punch Brothers even.

EVAN: Totally.

BB: Yeah, just always like wow. I’m always amazed. Actually at that Punch Brothers show a couple years ago at the House of Blues I was like “this many people? Are coming to see a show that there’s a banjo player, and not just a banjo player who’s like strumming it but like one of the best banjo players in the world?” And ugh, like yeah it gives us hope.

EVAN: I always think of like, could this band play a Tiny Desk concert for NPR?

MIKE: Oh, yeah.

EVAN: And like, there’s a lot of bluegrass bands who I see and I like, I respect the chops that they have and I respect their vocals and I might personally be a huge fan of them, but I would look at them and think like “this band will never play a Tiny Desk concert.” And that’s fine, but like I want this group to be the kind of group that could do a Tiny Desk concert at some point.

MIKE: I think that Rocket Man cover is gonna take you there.

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

MIKE: I might be biased because that’s like one of my favorite songs.

EVAN: Totally.

MIKE: But, uh...

EVAN: That was accidentally the most popular thing we ever did. And I was like-

MIKE: It’s so good.

EVAN: -I was really resistant at first and, because there’s this cover of ‘Rocket Man’ on Youtube that has like-

MIKE: William Shatner?

EVAN: -millions, no that one’s even better.

MIKE: [laughs]

EVAN: But it has like millions of views, like it totally went viral. And it’s a bluegrass cover of Rocket Man from years and years ago, like it predates ours, and um, they really bluegrassify it, like they give it the like [snapping fingers on a quick beat] “and I think it’s gonna be a long, long” you know with the mandolin chopping and the banjo and everything. As opposed to like, you know we do it with the kind of the same rhythm and structure, more or less.

MIKE: Yeah like the feel of the original, but like, your instrumentation and-

EVAN: But it’s funny because like people, you know like it was inadvertently the most popular thing we’ve done so far I think like to the point I was like “maybe we should stop doing ‘Rocket Man’?” and it’s like “no we have to keep doing that because people like it.” But in the back of my head I’m like “man there’s this other bluegrass band that already like did this really famous cover of this song.”

MIKE: It’s like my favorite move, is to stop doing what everyone loves.

EVAN: Yeah. [laughs]

BB: [laughs]

MIKE: I think that’s why I haven’t made it.

EVAN: [laughs]

MIKE: I saw Feist, and she didn’t play that song “1234” and I was like “fuck, yeah.” It’s super ballsy. And we were walking out, I heard people complaining about it and I was like “shut up.”

EVAN: Yeah, yeah I know. Springsteen won’t do “Thunder Road” very often, you know, it’s like he kind of pulled back a little bit.

MIKE: I respect it. We kind of alluded to this I think before we started taping was, a big part of what enables you guys to be as successful as you are is that your main audience are, uh, older, more likely to spend their money, more likely to value art and music, and maybe they’re like, I don’t know if they’re a little more educated, at least around here, I guess. I feel like the case for Boston is that like “oh, it’s this cultural thing,” it’s like this folk music so that gets a lot of academia play. Yeah, I don't’ have a question, just saying like, what’s that like, that’s pretty cool.

EVAN: Yeah.

BB: Yeah, it’s really helpful. Like we do some shows where it’s like we happen upon a young audience, and it’s all like, every time it’s a little strange for us, ‘cause we’re not used to it. But also a noticeable lack of CD sales on those gigs. Yeah the older audiences-

MIKE: They all just pirate it later.

EVAN: [laughs]

BB: Yeah exactly they’re just Spotifying, which is cool, it’s just that that’s the new thing. I think that bluegrass right now is still a little bit backward in that we are still selling some amount of CDs and people are buying. You know, some of our ticket sales re a little more expensive now and people are coming out, mainly ‘cause they can afford to.

EVAN & MIKE: Yeah.

MIKE: Yeah I mean that’s huge.

EVAN: There’s kind of like a built-in structure to bluegrass and I’ve never really played in any other genre so I don’t know exactly what it’s like. But bluegrass just has this like setup where it’s like its either gonna be, it’s most likely gonna be at a festival, or kind of like quiet listening room like Club Passim or Café Luna, and usually the band is gonna do two sets and there’s gonna be a break and people are gonna talk to you in the middle, and like they’re like older working professionals who have disposable income or they’re retired and they’re expecting to come and buy a CD from you, or a t-shirt, and they’d like to come and shake hands with you in the break. And it’s just like kind of set up in this folksy way that like facilitates merchandise sales.

MIKE: Do you find that your bluegrass audiences typically very discerning? Like, do you think there’s a lot of built in audience like “oh, a band that I think I might like is playing I’m gonna go check it out.” Do you think that’s...

BB: That’s huge, yeah. We have such a big leg up on, I’m not sure again, like I haven’t really played in any other genres of music, but we’ll go to a town for the first time, never been there as a band, and it’s a full room, you know there’s like 80, 100 people there. And like they’re all, they all clap for the mandolin solo, and they’re clearly like, they know bluegrass, they think they’ll like us, they come to the show, they like us.

MIKE: So there’s like tropes that you’re operating on, that kind of, they know to respond to every little solo section, every trading fours, you know.

BB: Yeah. Not all the time, but like, yeah the fact that it’s somewhat common-

MIKE: There’s like a cultural literacy to it-

BB: Yeah, exactly.

MIKE: -that’s built into it.

EVAN: That’s one of the biggest advantages of bluegrass, it really... I feel like you could be one of the greatest songwriters who ever lived, and you could be toiling in obscurity and going on tour and playing to like three or four people in some like smoky bar and like no one might-

MIKE: You can just say my name. [laughs]

EVAN: [laughs] -and like no one, if unless you got like really, really lucky no one might ever know that you were like the greatest songwriter who ever lived ‘cause it’s like so competitive. But if you’re like the greatest bluegrass band who ever lived, people will find out about you. Like it is a pretty small world and like BB said, there’s a kind of hunger, like, “I heard this like, you gotta see this person play banjo,” or “you’ve gotta, like, this band, you gotta hear the harmonies in this band,” and like, the word will just spread. And that’s the, one of the trade-offs.

MIKE: I’ve said both of those things about your band since I’ve seen you.

EVAN: Oh, well that’s good man, but like, it’s the trade-off, the lack of like, mega fame in bluegrass, where you’re not gonna be Lady Gaga, and you’re not gonna be like Beyoncé, like the highest you’ll get is like Del McCoury, who you didn’t recognize his name, right? Like that’s like that’s kinda like, that’s what they, like you couldn’t hope for more than like getting to Del McCoury’s level in bluegrass. But, you know it’s a small world and the good side of it is that if like you’re a good new band, people will just show up to see you.

BB: Oh yeah, and people are just so supportive. I mean I think it’s because there’s not like so many young bands that are really like “ok we’re all just giving up our day jobs and we’re gonna try to do this as a full-time gig.” So, there’s just so many people who have helped us out, like “come play this gig,” or “come play at our festival.” Yeah, it’s like it has been really exciting to see how supportive people are and how excited people are about us.

EVAN: We look back with horror now at like early videos of us playing at some of these festivals, and like, we sound like garbage and it’s like, people must have just been like, “we’re just gonna give these kids a shot ‘cause they’re like a new bluegrass band.”

BB: “Cause there’s not many other people that are-

EVAN: Yeah, totally, I don’t know, it’s like- [laughs]

BB: “We’re desperate for music someone help them out, maybe one day they’ll be ok.” [laughs]

MIKE: If I were like a bluegrass aficionado, I would be very excited at like, “oh people are still doing this now actively, starting new bands and writing original music with these same signifiers that everyone can appreciate but taking it to new, bold places.” So, that’s really great.

EVAN: Yeah, we get that a lot with people saying, “oh, I’m glad to know, you know, young people are playing bluegrass, and there are like-

MIKE: And they’re playing it in five!

EVAN: Yeah, and they’re playing it in five.

BB: [laughs]

MIKE: And I’m like, counting on my fingers, “wait a minute! There’s an extra-”

BB: Actually one comment that we get at gigs is like, they’ll just come up and say, “wow you’re so young!”

EVAN: [laughs] Yeah, yeah.

MIKE: Like pat you on the head.

EVAN: Yeah, totally, totally.

[music]

MIKE: As always, if you like what you’ve heard here, I urge you to support Mile Twelve however you see fit. I’ll have the necessary links in the description of this episode. If you want to get in touch with me, I’m at [email protected], on Twitter @SellinOutAD. Find out how you can support the show at patreon.com/sellinout there’s exclusive bonus content available there. Leave a nice rating on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts from, please. It helps other people find the show.

Our theme song is “No Cab Fare” by Such Gold, photography is by Nick DiNatale. I’m Mike Moschetto, catch ya next time, this is Sellin’ Out.

[music]

MIKE: Do you ever feel kind of, I don’t wanna say trapped, I don’t wanna make it sound more grim than it is, but, do you know what I’m getting at here?

BB: I know exactly what you’re getting at.

MIKE: If I could fucking speak, then I would be a real-

BB & EVAN: [laughs]

[music]

MIKE MOSCHETTO: If you’re listening to this you probably play in a band or at least did at one point. Probably not an unfair generalization to make. So, where do you practice? If you’re lucky you rehearse in your basement or your garage, some room in your home, or possibly your parents’ home. I had that luxury for many years, but now I live in a one-bedroom apartment that I share in one of the most expensive cities in North America so even if I didn’t have neighbors on either side of and underneath me, say I could make all the noise I wanted without a landlord, superintendent, or cops knocking on my door, I realistically couldn’t fit two amps and a drum set in this shoebox if my life depended on it. So what I and others like me do depend on instead is commercial rehearsal facilities. These are often converted storage lockers or rehabilitated industrial buildings. But, they can also be their own little cultural hub, places of expression for not only snotty punk bands but also performance artists, craftspeople, all types of outsiders that maybe can’t get heads through the door at your bog-standard rock club or even your DIY venue at the same neighborhood but whose creative output is no less important.

And such is the reputation of the EMF building, just across the river from me here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Or at least it was a complex filled with local and touring artists and storied recording studios until it was purchased and shut down recently. The circumstances of its closure may seem unique on the surface but to me, deep down this is just another shining example of the way that economic realities like the luxury condofication of urban centers and predatory real estate speculation can make their way into our lives as creative types. Every once in a while the invisible hand of the free market will reach out and sucker punch you.

So joining me to talk about all of this is Ben Simon, a former EMF tenant himself and a board member of the Cambridge Artist Coalition, an activist group trying, perhaps in vain at this point, to save their space. It’s a story that I think needs to be head, one that contains many valuable lessons for you, the paying patron of a program like this one, from respecting the autonomy of other performers, to just the transient nature of institutions with artistic missions and simply valuing what you have while you have it.

Anyway, here’s the conversation I had with Ben, stick around to the end if you’re so moved to find out how you can help his cause. Enjoy!

[music: “I can’t afford to live in the town where I was born / but hey at least they’re developing this place for somebody”]

MIKE: You were obviously a tenant. How long were you there?

BEN SIMON: I’ve never calculated the exact number of years -

MIKE: That long.

BEN: - but something like five, six -

MIKE: Five or six years.

BEN: - years, something like that yeah.

MIKE: Would you say that there was a sense of community there prior to the eviction? Because like I have a space in Charlestown, I tried to get a space in EMF when I first moved to the city, and it was, like I was waitlisted. But you know, when I’m walking around my practice rooms no-one says “what’s up” in the hallway really, I haven’t met any friends or collaborators. So was that there prior to this or was it the impending eviction that galvanized people around the space?

BEN: I think it depends on who you ask. There were certainly people who had more of a sort of like knit community, probably somewhat insulated within the whole building. It wasn’t as though everyone knew everyone and said hi in the hall but...

MIKE: Well, there was obviously some turnover, right?

BEN: That as well, yeah, but WEMF Radio kind of had a crew of people around it, they eventually got pushed out before we were all evicted. Um, but yeah.

MIKE: It was, you know, New Alliance was kind of a fixture there too.

BEN: Right, right. There’s definitely been like communities within the EMF community that perhaps didn’t like include the entire building, but I wasn’t like really viewing it as a community space, more just like something I needed for my band. But yeah my experience was like this was a catalyst to becoming part of a community and pushing back. A bit of my own personal history, I grew up in a rent-controlled building in Porter Square in Cambridge and after rent control was abolished, you know, it was just a matter of time before our building was sold to a developer, and that indeed happened in the late ‘90s, and we were all evicted. We settled in the Midwest.

MIKE: Whoa.

BEN: And I came back as an adult and I’m just sort of more or less waiting to be priced out or have the same thing happen to me again. So this happening and seeing people starting to organize and fight back really meant a lot to me and it allowed me to feel like I was doing something to fight something that’s already, I’ve already dealt with.

MIKE: So, does the Cambridge Artists Coalition, does that rise out of this or was that preexisting?

BEN: It was not preexisting, um, yeah. The...

MIKE: So that’s like part of the organizing effort.

BEN: Right, yeah. The group was formed to sort of organize the tenants and see what we could do to preserve it as an art space and we decided to give ourselves the name Cambridge Artist Coalition.

MIKE: How many members is that, and compared to how many tenants were there at the time of the eviction notice going up?

BEN: Um, there were over 200 people, um, artists musicians in the building. As far as our group membership it’s difficult to say precisely, the first few meetings we had were, you know, around I don’t know 30 to 50 people, but you know as time went on it’s sort of been a core group of people that have like stayed committed. We have a Board that I’m on which is right now six people. We encourage more people to get involved and join the group, you don’t have to necessarily come to meetings to be part of the group.

MIKE: Sure. So this building is purchased in 2016 by this guy, John DiGiovanni, who is operating as some kind of, you know, property management developing company but he’s also president of Harvard Square Business Association. We’ll get to that later.

BEN: Yes.

MIKE: When these eviction notices go up, are there any grounds cited or is it just like “this is what I’m doing, see ya.”

BEN: When I first heard we were getting evicted I wasn’t given any reason. It seemed like the person who had received that notice hadn’t been given any reason but I’m also told that some people initially got safety as being the concern. That, you know, the building wasn’t up to code, et cetera, and we were all, you know, in danger so we had to leave the building. However, you know, people that formed the group went to the fire department and asked if the building was up to code and they said it had always passed inspection, there was nothing wrong with it.

MIKE: When this news starts going around do people start to jump ship immediately? Like, because the story here is obviously the steely resolve of the people who stuck around and fighting to the bitter end, including possibly at the time of this recording, people who are still occupying the space. Is that still happening?

BEN: That is still happening, yeah.

MIKE: Fuck yes. That is so awesome.

BEN: Yeah, it’s very cool.

MIKE: So do a lot of people just try to jump the gun...

BEN: I got the impression that there were some bands that yeah, moved pretty soon after they knew that we were going to have to leave. Yeah probably some of them thought that they would beat the rush.

MIKE: I mean it’s a tough thing to tie your fate to if you just need to keep being a band and keep rehearsing.

BEN: Yeah, for sure. We had our initial eviction date and then we got a one-month extension after going to City Hall and seemed to have the city, you know, concerned about our plight and wanted to do something. And they were able to negotiate with the landlord to give us an extra month, but I think that last month we were probably something like around, for most of the month around half capacity and then even less towards the end of the month.

MIKE: Dwindling, yeah. And somebody posted something about going into Public Records and finding John DiGiovanni’s donations to various members of Cambridge City Council.

BEN: Yes.

MIKE: Does this kind of explain maybe the city’s resistance to really pushing, like putting pressure on to buy it from him?

BEN: Um...

MIKE: Because that was a tactic, that was kind of the initial tactic of...

BEN: Yeah, I mean obviously you can draw conclusions from seeing the list of donations, um, and who received what. We’re not sure, we are concerned for sure that like the city’s initial interest and then eventual backing away might have had something to do with John DiGiovanni’s influence, financial and otherwise.

MIKE: President of Harvard’s Business Association.

BEN: He’s a very powerful man. And it seems very suspicious to us that, you know, the building had passed code and then suddenly was retroactively determined to be a death trap as soon as he wants everyone out.

MIKE: And is that the language used, “death trap” too?

BEN: I don’t know if he ever exactly used that phrase, but he said it’s unsafe for anyone to be in it in its current condition, which makes us very confused why he had us in there and was collecting rent.

MIKE: And the city also justified their resistance by saying like, “oh this would be a huge investment on our part,” right?

BEN: Right, they were saying, I guess their thing was like, “it’s up to code, but if were to buy it, it has to be even better than up to code” or it has to be really, really top notch. But we were concerned that it might have been you know a diplomatic way for them to backpedal out of coming to our rescue. Yeah, more or less.

MIKE: So, tell me about the genesis of the idea of protesting the Make Music event. So I should maybe, the background is that Harvard Square Business Association puts on a festival, kind of just like an outdoor music and arts festival every year called Make Music, or Fete de la Musique.

BEN: Yeah [laughs]

MIKE: Very pretentious.

BEN: Yeah. Well it was started in France, it’s actually an international event. Harvard Square Business Association just manages the local one.

MIKE: Oh, maybe I’ll be a little more charitable. So where does the idea come from to protest this Make Music event in Harvard Square?

BEN: So the structure of the thing independent of the Harvard Square Business Association’s running of it is that I guess musicians are not compensated. Maybe in other cities they are, but in Cambridge they never have been. And we just thought it was especially egregious and you know insulting for John DiGiovanni to evict all these musicians in what was, as far as I know, like the only affordable practice space in Cambridge. Claimed to be a patron of the arts, claimed to be concerned about community and art and then a couple weeks later ask those same people to play for free so that his businesses, the businesses in his Business Association can make a bunch of money from the people coming in.

MIKE: “Patron of the arts” in that capacity certainly seems to mean like art that you can kind of line your pockets with a little bit. And so leading up to this protest DiGiovanni agrees to a meeting. Were you at this meeting?

BEN: So there were two meetings, one was with the mayor, Mike Connolly who is also the State Rep. Mike Connolly who has been really a great ally. And then a couple people that were running businesses from, in EMF, recording studios and had kind of different concerns, had spent a lot more money or invested a lot more money in their spaces than the musician tenants. And yeah, apparently that meeting got a little heated at points. Um, so I wasn’t in the first meeting at City Hall so I can’t, um, one thing I can describe about the first meeting is that we initially came with somebody who’s been giving us free legal counsel. And at the beginning of the meeting as soon as he identified himself as a lawyer, John DiGiovanni said, “This meeting is not going to continue if he’s still here.” So he had to leave before we could proceed. But during that meeting John Glancy who is more or less the guy who got this whole thing started, the CAC group, asked John DiGiovanni if he’d be willing to meet again, the next day, with some people from the Board of CAC and he agreed.

MIKE: Okay.

BEN: Sort of surprisingly. But um yeah. So we had a meeting at Charlie’s Kitchen in Harvard Square. And he offered us beers, I think only one of us accepted that beer, oh, and then another guy got a like a Sprite or something. But yeah that was a, it was a strange meeting.

MIKE: Basically though, the Charlie’s Kitchen meeting sounds like a bit of an olive branch.

BEN: Yeah, yeah perhaps. It, it was not an accident that he refused to meet us until after we were already evicted. You know, like, we really have...

MIKE: The silence was deafening.

BEN: Yes. He completely refused to meet with us, and now, and then after we were evicted he’s finally willing to come to the table when we really have very little to gain, that he would be willing to give us. I think he was probably hoping to see what he could do to convince us maybe, or persuade us not to have the protest. He actually said during the meeting at Charlie’s Kitchen, “Oh no I believe in democracy, you guys should do whatever you want. But you know, this is totally misguided and you’re conflating all these things and you don’t really understand the way the world works. And, you know, if you really want to know the truth, this protest is gonna make me even less likely for me to want to play ball with you guys, to do what you’re asking for.”

MIKE: Well, I mean what are you supposed to do, your hands are kind of tied.

BEN: I mean, in a perfect world it wouldn’t rely on, you know, private developers to keep our communities intact.

MIKE: At any point has he made his intention with the building clear or is it just kind of a foregone conclusion that it’s gonna be a luxury condo?

BEN: He at least is making it seem as though he has no definite plans right now for the building. He said he’s intending to lease it to somebody who has a plan for it, but that you know he’s hoping to any economically viable project that should come his way.

MIKE: So ransom basically.

BEN: Yeah, I mean...

MIKE: From reading from this Cambridge Day article about it, Mark Levy the author here says “DiGiovanni made clear he has investors and has ‘to do something financially viable.’” Is any kind of optimism that is gleaned, any kind of olive leaf that is extending by having this meeting, is that just totally invalidated by this ideal like well, the bottom line is the thing?

BEN: It’s tricky ‘cause he at least professed to be willing to have it continue to be something like EMF provided that you know that x, y, and z were such that it was good for him. Yeah, we said would you be willing if we could find a non-profit to be involved perhaps, or we would get money to get the building up to code so it could continue to have the function it’s had as a rehearsal space. Um yeah, he’s like “yeah as long as the numbers work.” But yeah I think it allows him, I mean he can obviously just say that you know it doesn’t have to, it can be completely insincere, but he had a lot of blame to put on pretty much every party concerned in the matter except for himself. He said, you know, the tenants are at fault here, the city is at fault, the previous landlord is at fault, the previous manager of the Sound Museum who operated in EMF before he bought it, all these parties are at fault, but he is entirely not at fault.

MIKE: But he had to buy the place, so.

BEN: Yeah, I mean, he didn’t say this precisely but it’s probably true, that if he didn’t buy it someone was gonna buy it, and that someone was going to want to do something more profitable than what it was currently being used as, with it.

MIKE: Yeah that’s one way to look at it.

BEN: Well, that’s true. The thing that I really want and I think yeah the group generally wants to kind of promote is the idea that it shouldn’t just be a handful of wealthy developers that completely control the shape of our cities and like get to make the call about what kind of buildings, what kind of businesses go into our cities.

MIKE: Yeah, why should they get to decide, like why, when the ultimate incentive is just to go for what enriches them personally.

BEN: Right.

MIKE: And I have a, you know it’s very cool to me that you have Mike Connolly on your side, a Representative, and I have a quote from him here, from the protest where he says, “What good is Central Square’s Cultural District designation if the 99% of us who want to enjoy it can’t afford to live or play in that community.”

So did a lot of the folks that attended either of the two meetings, were they put off in any way from participating in the protest?

BEN: The second one certainly not, the first one I can’t say. The people that own the studios who were there, they didn’t go to the protest, so it’s possible that the way the meeting went had that effect to them, but.

MIKE: It’s been a couple of days since that action, and DiGiovanni was conspicuously absent. Has anyone heard from him since then, has he put out any...

BEN: Not that I know of, no. After the main protest and rally was done, we marched past Trinity, the Trinity Building on Church Street and posted a list of demands on his door, and chanted a pretty humorous chant, I think, outside his door, and marched on to Cambridge Common.

MIKE: Were those demands composed by the Board, or by the members of CAC?

BEN: Yeah, I don’t know that we ever really officially agreed on them in any sort of official way but they were ones we were talking about and they were bouncing around for a while. Kind of things that, the core things that we’ve been fighting for the whole time you know that he’d sell the building to the city or some non-profit that can maintain it as a formal art space, or lease it possibly. I think the term we used was sell. That he preserve it as an art space in some manner and also I think on there was that he refund us a year’s worth of rent, all of the tenants, for having, collecting rent in what he termed “an unsafe building”.

MIKE: Yeah, that seems...

BEN: And, and I think lastly was if he does not do these things that he should step down from the Harvard Square Business Association because he’s not committed to its tenets, or its core values.

MIKE: And you had a big turnout it seems like, on your side?

BEN: Yeah, yeah it was a good turnout, somewhere between 150-250 people came out, and uh, yeah I mean I think it was the biggest stage area of the event. Previous years, you know, I think there were twice as many stages and twice as many bands but a lot of bands dropped out in solidarity with us.

MIKE: Excellent.

BEN: And that sort of, like the core stage area in front of, in Brattle Square, in front of Crema Café and stuff like that, all the bands of that stage area dropped out and the person running the stage offered it to us.

MIKE: Wow, that’s amazing.

BEN: So, yeah, we, from my perspective we had the biggest, best-attended event going on in that festival.

MIKE: And what I appreciated about, from what I read about it, was that there wasn’t any really vocal discouraging anyone to play, it was just like you know “I don’t wanna deprive you of your autonomy to gig,” it’s about the music ultimate at the end of the day, if you wanna sing protest songs, if you wanna turn the mic over to an EMF member, something like that.

BEN: Right, we definitely very deliberately tried to not be divisive, and make it seem like you know we were against any musicians who chose to play. There were some people on Facebook who like described musicians who refused to drop out as scabs, and a lot of people disingenuously tried to say, “oh that this is what this movement’s about” but no, we never endorsed that and we were, we tried to be very upfront about the fact that we were totally fine with anyone choosing not to be part of our protest, not to, you know, to just continue to play as they would. I mean it’s a very, yeah, it’s a tough world, the world that music occupies and I totally understand you know, not wanting to pass up the opportunity to have a gig.

MIKE: Absolutely. Now that that has happened, what’s next? Like, what do you do moving forward to continue the push? Is there another big action plan, how can people help?

BEN: We definitely want to have another big action, while momentum is still strong. We also have potentially a court date coming up for some of the people who are still occupying their space in EMF so we do have a GoFundMe. Anything you give to that we’d be using towards potentially legal fees, lawyer fees for that court date and planning future actions to elevate this and similar issues. Personally what I would really like to go forward or do going forward would be sort of to broaden our anti-displacement and anti-gentrification tactics or strategy, and I don’t want to be fighting about just like we shouldn’t have artists being displaced, we shouldn’t have anyone being displaced out of their communities and that’s the kind of really bold, progressive legislation that needs to be getting passed and is criminal, I think, that state and city governments aren’t on this. We have to be a huge pain in the ass to both private developers who are, you know sort of de facto city managers but also yeah definitely our city and state representatives who are sort of sitting on their hands and letting this, you know the evisceration of our communities nationwide go on.

MIKE: So have you personally found a new practice space? Of all the people who have stayed behind to occupy the space or who got out early, like how cataclysmic has the displacement been? Are people kind of floundering without a place to express themselves or..?

BEN: I think it’s really cataclysmic. A lot of the bands I talk to, you know, the last few days as I was moving out my stuff said not only did they not have a space, they didn’t know when they would get a space, they were gonna go on hiatus with their bands for a few months. Some people were talking about moving out of Boston. Like, this is a devastating blow to the city of Cambridge, greater Boston, we’re losing a ton of artists because we’re not recognizing that we need to give them the infrastructure they need to do what they do.

MIKE: Have the folks who’ve managed the spaces at EMF set their sights on kind of relocating or trying to take over another unused space that would maybe fill that gap?

BEN: When we first started getting organized and went to city hall to bring this to their attention, Quinton Zondervan, one of the Cambridge City councilors who hasn't taken money from John DiGiovanni and has been also you know in addition to State Rep. Mike Connolly, really awesome and helpful, he wrote a thing that’s called a policy order and some of the items on it were you know, negotiating for more time for us, which happened, but also one of them was looking in to find another space that could do the same thing that EMF did. Even that still hasn’t happened but it could happen, I hope it does.

MIKE: Sure, yeah. I mean in Cambridge, eh, I don’t know.

BEN: Yeah, I mean there are actually a fair number of just disused buildings that are kind of sitting around and empty lots here and there. But when you know the mayor and the Cambridge City Council were discussing potential future sites and they brought up this handful of buildings that are sort of lying vacant right now, something that kept coming up was that people are gonna be angry if this doesn’t become affordable housing when we have an affordable housing crisis.

MIKE: I mean people are gonna be angry if EMF doesn’t become affordable housing on the same token, so...

BEN: Right, right. And there, I don’t know, it’s been very frustrating to me because I think a number of people in city government have sort of made us seem out to be like we’re these little privilege musician folks that you know, and obviously a lot of us are not at all privileged but, um, but that we’re vying for a bigger piece of the pie but there are other people that we’re just ignoring and sort of more or less pitting us against other marginalized groups and saying that we’re being selfish and egotistical or whatnot. But, I mean it’s somewhat understandable...

MIKE: I mean yeah, you’re right, there’s an affordable housing crisis right now.

BEN: Sure, sure sure.

MIKE: But to me, it keeps coming back to the fact that it is designated as a cultural district, like, so other than bands that can you know, basically play at any two-drink minimum bar or like bring heads through the door at one of the places on Mass Ave., right like what about the people who don’t necessarily, what about people who are still artists whose work is valid and vital right?

BEN: Definitely. I guess the thing that I would want to throw back at city and state government is like, if you all would actually do your jobs and actually represent the masses, there wouldn’t need to be different groups pitted against each other, struggling for bits of these handouts because we would have policies enacted that would prevent displacement from happening at all. And that parallel organizations like our own need to emerge in order to put pressure on our representatives and hold them accountable. And, you know, or even run their own candidates for city councils and stuff like that. I mean the Richmond Progressive Alliance, the RPA, on the West Coast has been a great example to similar progressive groups all over the country and I think is a, yeah a great model to look to. But yeah, going forward we’re definitely hoping to endorse people for city council, who knows maybe even run some people from our own group.

MIKE: Yeah, a coalition of kind of concerned parties.

BEN: Yeah.

[music: “every new business that opens up is an overpriced bar or bougie restaurant / our venues are closing but we got a Whole Foods, everything a tech startup could want”]

MIKE: That’s Ben singing under the name Toby Tantrum. To contribute toward the EMF occupiers’ legal fees visit gofundme.com/saveEMF. You can get in touch with me at [email protected] or on Twitter @sellinoutAD. Thanks for supporting the show! I’m Mike Moschetto, you’re listening to Sellin’ Out. See you next time!

[music]

TIM WILLIAMS: If it would’ve been money I would’ve kept going. But all that stress and everything, like the years of really trying to make that work, it was never really up to me how good or bad it did.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: Just one of many lessons learned the hard way from today’s guest, Tim Williams of Our Lady and Ritual Apparel. I’m Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music post: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hey! Thank you so much for joining me – I’m Mike Moschetto you’re listening to Sellin’ Out: a spaghetti western about music and money that takes place in a town that just ain’t big enough for the two of ‘em.

No, it’s my podcast! It’s the first episode of the podcast and I do think because of that it will be helpful for me to spend a little bit of time setting it up, lest you think it’s just another “band dudes talkin’ about band stuff” show, and...you know it’s gonna be some of that from time to time I’m sure, but ideally the conversations that you’re gonna hear today and going forward are meant to discuss the economics of creative endeavors. And when I say “economics,” your eyes have probably glazed over by now but if you haven’t already hit +15, I don’t mean that I’m gonna restrict this to matters pecuniary because that would get old pretty fast. No, what I mean by “economics” is incentives; I’m talking about motivation, the sacrifices people make to pursue their art and sustainability – or I guess the lack thereof.

For my own part I tend to take sort of a fatalistic attitude toward my quote-unquote “music career” which I guess should be fairly obvious by my turn toward podcasting...but I often vacillate between this sad resignation that the scene I grew up in is in some state of decline, and a more optimistic tone and vicarious joy in the successes of my friends and just general admiration at the lengths people will go to follow their passions and hopefully you’ll hear that range. Maybe not every episode but over the arc of the entire show. So if you’re interested in art and music and you want to hear this frank and inglorious conversations about how pursuits are bought and sold, you’ll find those here...warts and all.

So now finally I’m pleased to introduce my guest for today: Tim Williams. Tim is a graphic designer and, pursuant to our conversation today, was the vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter of the Springfield, IL-based band Our Lady. Now Our Lady hasn’t been an active band in a few years but I still can’t recommend their music highly enough. You’ll hear some of it peppered throughout the show. They’re one of the best bands I’ve ever had the pleasure of touring with and Tim is one of the best friends I’ve made through this whole music thing, so I thought it only appropriate to have him as my first guest. Talking to Tim I was reminded of a lot of things that exemplify DIY touring, at least in my experience and the things that made me want to start this show and talk about these issues – not just the downs, and there are kind of a lot of downs with Tim’s story, but also the ups, like, you know, landing on your feet after your band ends. And since Our Lady disbanded band in 2016, Tim and his now-wife Molli started Ritual Apparel, which is a fitness and specifically powerlifting-oriented apparel company and lifestyle brand. So we chatted about that move from focusing on your band to focusing on your brand and whether that’s a distinction without a difference. We chatted about freelance life and DIY and stagnation and lots more, so without further preamble, here’s Tim.

[music]

MIKE: I wanna start with the first time that I kinda ran into you, not literally but by reputation at least, and this would’ve been when Aviator was on tour in 2013, beginning of 2013 – we played at a punk house in Huntington, WV and we ended up staying at a different punk house in town, and either you had just been through or you were coming through soon again or something. But the folks that put us up were saying, “Oh, have you guys seen Our Lady? They’re fuckin’ incredible,” yada yada yada...and then it would be another year or so before we ended up seeing that for ourselves, and another year before we did that ten-day run together. But it sounds like by that point in the beginning of 2013 you guys had already been making the rounds and leaving quite an impression on people. So what I’m wondering is, was Our Lady really active from the jump or did you kinda start slow and ramp up?

TIM: It was definitely a slow burn. We started off and it was just like me writing acoustic songs in my apartment…

MIKE: And how old were you? Where were you in your life at that point?

TIM: Maybe 19?

MIKE: Oh man.

TIM: Yeah, so I was just writing songs and we would get together with our friends and just kinda get drunk and learn these songs. And they were really bad songs...like, really bad songs. I’d never written songs before. I’d been a vocalist in metal and hardcore bands up until that point.

MIKE: Okay, so this wasn’t your first band, but was this the first band that you really pushed and went out on the road and tried?

TIM: It wasn’t the first band I’d been on the road with, actually. I’d been on the road with a band called Scavenger before that was like, a tech metal band and I just did vocals.

MIKE: Nasty. [laughs]

TIM: Yeah… [laughs] It was my first thing that I really, really cared about. Like I inevitably quit Scavenger just because it was too much of a...they lived in a different town, I always had to get rides, they expected a lot of out me. They were really going for it at the time. I’d just gotten out of military school not long ago and I was really concerned with girls and drinking and doing, you know, just dirtbag stuff. So I was coming out of that phase of wanting to do those things, and I started writing these songs and it just kind of fell into place. And then I got a really solid group of people and a version of Our Lady did its first tour, maybe 2 or so years before we actually started doing the version of Our Lady that you know.

MIKE: Okay, and what’s the difference between those versions? OBviously you said you were writing on acoustic, was that still the case at that point?

TIM: Yeah, it was definitely all acoustic. It was more of a folk-punk thing. A band hit us up on MySpace – this is how long this was ago – and they were like, “Hey, we’re doing this tour...do you guys wanna come?” And we were like, “Yeah!” It was a band called The Almanac Shouters.

MIKE: That sounds really folk-punk.

TIM: Like WAY more folk-punk than we were. We were kind of like...loud emo, loud acoustic emo.

MIKE: “Emo” as totally a blanket term, obviously...kind of an “E-word,” we’ll say.

TIM: Yeah.

MIKE: So Our Lady starts as just you and then kind of balloons up to being 4 pieces, 5 pieces...after a couple of years you hit the road, and so how are you running things internally? Are you handling all the financials, is everyone kind of putting in for expenses? Or because it’s your “baby,” are you shouldering most of that burden?

TIM: In the beginning it was definitely like I said, just me writing songs. And then Molli came into the picture as teh first solid person in the lineup, and this is even before her and I were together. She was just really into the idea of being a girl in a band, which at that time was not as common as it is now. I kind of drove us to make a lot of big decisions – to go on tour, to buy amps and stuff like that when we first started playing what is a semblance of what we are now. We went through a lot of members in the beginning before we toured or anyone knew who we were, just trying to figure it out. And as it came down to when we were really, really going, Molli was the logistics side. She did financials and handled all that. I was everything that involved the art, so I wrote all the songs, wrote all the lyrics, kept up on all the social media, did the merchandise, worked out the record stuff with labels and brokered all of that stuff. So while Molli handled a lot of the actual action of doing this I set forth the plans for doing these things.

MIKE: I’m glad you brought up doing the merch and all this other stuff. Now, relative to putting more and more effort into Our Lady, when did you start doing graphic design? Or have the two always gone hand-in-hand? What came first?

TIM: I’ve always been interested in art, but more so in music. At the time that Our Lady started touring I’d probably been playing guitar for a solid three years. Graphic design stuff really came super gradual. We started out paying artists to do stuff and as we started to do more and more we realized that we weren’t going to be able to feasibly afford it with the budget we were working with, so I started to do more and more and more, and I also always played around on Photoshop, so the two simultaneously grew.

MIKE: I’m glad you put it that way, because I was gonna say that I imagine there’s some artistic freedom in not only being able to take your musical vision a step further and translate it into a visual medium and define the aesthetic better than anyone else can, but also not having to pay to outsource for merch designs, tour admats and album layouts to other people. I know you’ve worked with other designers but it does free up some capital to put into the really costly things like recording maybe, or saving for a van.

TIM: Or buying your own merch. It was honestly less about the fiscal decision, it was more about your first point which is being able to recreate what I see as the vision. Although as this went on and the band got more and more and more and more serious, it ended up being a basis for arguments in the band. Like arguing over methodical differences between design A and design B, how it relates to the concept of whatever we were trying to accomplish. And when usually you’d be mad at a designer or you’d be unhappy with something the designer does, the band had to talk to me.

MIKE: Right – you can kind of compartmentalize it maybe and keep it professional, but when everything is in-house there’s more of a personality conflict. It comes back to you more directly and it’s easier to get frustrated.

TIM: Yeah, and I think that’s actually my biggest flaw in the band, is taking a lot of criticism from the bandmates. Because I did so much of the art stuff on my own, I think at some points it would hurt my wimpy little feelings that they didn’t like something.

MIKE: From doing the recording of my own bands, believe me. When I feel like nailed something...

TIM: Absolutely, like you’ll come in and you’re super excited about it and they’ve got 10 edits that they want. As it goes on, as with your recording you obviously got better at recording. Well, same with me and design. I started to be a good designer and when they would say they didn’t like stuff, I would be like, “How about you just trust the guy that knows what he’s doing?” MIKE: “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, pal.”

TIM: Yeah, but also that’s unfair.

MIKE: It is, because it comes down to how much agency you want to give your bandmates.

TIM: I always wanted everyone to be really involved because the people who weren’t involved with the band were always the people who ended up leaving.

MIKE: It’s like I said, the amount of agency they have to make decisions and to see themselves in the final product. And speaking of doing a number of things at once, I just recalled now that you were also running a DIY label for a little bit in this span of time? TIM: Yeah, I was. My friend Ada who’s from Kansas City and I had started a DIY label. I ended up backing out of it because Ada had some really big ideas for it and I was still very much doing the band stuff, and she wasn’t anymore. So I didn’t really have the financial backing to make a lot of these big ideas happen.

MIKE: A label especially, that’s tough. You didn’t put out any of your own Our Lady stuff on Guard, did you?

TIM: Yeah actually, the split 7” between Estates and Our Lady.

MIKE: That’s right! For some reason I thought you kept them separate, but I knew there was a reason I was bringing up, other than you just wear a lot of hats.

[music]

MIKE: I think about this a lot with jack-of-all-trades kind of DIY folks: obviously utilizing the skill sets within your own pool of bandmates has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is keeping expenses down, but do you suspect that approach might accelerate burnout and maybe shorten a band’s lifespan? Or is it all totally circumstantial? Obviously there’s no control group…

TIM: I don’t think there’s a right answer. I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally flop because of it, and then other times I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally get huge. So that one all-out push is really all they need. I think it really comes down to the idea and also what’s happening in music - how much you should push right now.

MIKE: Obviously this is just a little theory I’m developing in real-time but it seems to me that if one isn’t spreading oneself so thin, maybe it’s a little easier to roll with the punches, which I want to get to now if you don’t mind talking about those punches, because it seems like the universe took a big shit on you toward the very end. Would you be okay talking about that?

TIM: Yeah, of course.

MIKE: So the last record that you put out, ‘Lure’ – which is excellent by the way – things didn’t really shake out the way that I think you were hoping.

TIM: No. [laughs]

MIKE: So what exactly transpired?

TIM: I spent a year writing that record. I had a serial killer wall in my bedroom where I was weaving it all together. I had a concept that I really wanted to get across in an order that I saw it panning out. I had this whole grand plan, right? And I just spent a year driving myself insane over this record. Bob from Mayfly was really adamant about wanting us to do a 12”. I didn’t really want to do a 12” just yet, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, we were a band with an EP and a split 7” and to jump onto doing a 12” with Mayfly didn’t seem like, at the time, the best route to go. But I also realized that volume of music was something that we lacked, so I put my whole head into it, my everything into it. And the rest of the band did too. Kyle and I worked tirelessly at get rhythms – really interesting rhythms – onto the record. We spent a year really grinding for it in a really, particularly terrible recording situation because it was 110º degrees throughout the week of recording.

MIKE: Oh my god. [laughs]

TIM: And the place we were recording didn’t have air. Well it did have air, but we couldn’t run it because it showed up in the recording.

MIKE: But you spent all this time – was part of that fleshing out a release plan? Like, “gonna hit the road big time and tour on this record for a bit?”

TIM: That was the plan. Up until then it had been a few solid years of touring all the time.

MIKE: What is all the time? Some bands really do tour like 6 months out of the year...when we toured it felt like all the time but realistically it was like...2 months out of the year and it was every 3 months we’d go out. What was the frequency at the most?

TIM: At its highest point it was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.

MIKE: Holy moly.

TIM: That was in the very beginning, like when we first started touring. And then the lowest it ever got was probably while we were recording the record. I think we did one tour that whole year. You know what? Actually I think we did two still. We spent this whole year doing this. We did have really big plans...a big reason we decided to go with Mayfly was that they offered to pay for a lot of promo stuff and do all this press for it. Essentially ever since the record left our hands it was just plagued with problems. The test presses came back bad, there was like...a sound or something, and it was a big deal...I don’t know, I don’t even remember exactly what was the problem. And then the release date ended up getting pushed way back, which screwed up all of our tour plans. We had to cancel a tour; we had to cancel a release show. And this isn’t why we broke up necessarily…

MIKE: But it couldn’t have helped.

TIM: No [laughs] it really didn’t. And like at this point we are road-worn. All of us are living in damn near squalor to make this band happen, you know what I mean? Living on the end of the rope constantly, just no money for anything ever. It was all about doing the band, getting on tour, recording this record...there was nothing else. All that stress after all that happened just kind of imploded.

MIKE: I can only imagine. I’m familiar with the rhythm of basically working while you’re not touring, going out, blowing all of it and having to come back and recoup. So on that subject, what are you doing during Our Lady - I know you’re obviously doing graphic design on the side as part of your income, but what else are you doing to supplement that band capital?

TIM: Honestly, I was on the hustle the entire time. I sold and constantly promoted Our Lady merch. When we weren’t on tour I was working on booking the tours or writing the record and just constantly going through every avenue I can to get graphic design work because I didn’t have time to manage the band, manage booking tours, manage writing the songs and everything that I was doing while holding down a job.

MIKE: So you’re totally freelance.

TIM: Yeah, except I did work part time at a coffeehouse.

MIKE: Obviously anything freelance like that is feast or famine, and then any job that you hold down in the meantime, I assume the pay wasn’t...amazing.

TIM: Yeah, terrible.

MIKE: This is a huge thing in DIY, but the other side, the advantage of these low-paying fly-by-night jobs is that they’re pretty flexible with you being able to take time off generally. Obviously they could have other boots on the ground while you’re gone…

TIM: They are. You literally are looking for a job where you’re not special, so it’s like the exact opposite thing that everyone in the world’s looking for. Really though, the reward for it is getting to go on tour.

MIKE: Oh yeah. For the time that you’re doing it, it’s so worth it.

TIM: I only thought this towards the end, like maybe the last two years but I denied it for the better half of that...I think that it stopped being a reward for me. I think that I started dreading going on tour.

MIKE: In what sense?

TIM: I kind of unwantingly had obtained this odd...leader role, and I never wanted that role. I felt myself tasked constantly to keep everyone in the band happy with what was going on. And at this point I think I was a little traumatized from losing members, so knowing that Our Lady was a moving vessel, that I wanted to keep going, I would constantly stress myself about how everyone was feeling and if they were feeling included enough and if we were also spending an adequate amount of time doing fun things as a band, you know?

MIKE: Yeah, no I do.

TIM: I know, you play that role too!

MIKE: Yeah, I think I’ve gotten better at delegating...for what it’s worth now...but I’ve been that guy, and it’s funny that you should say that too because it sounded like you had Molli doing some of the grunt work and crunching numbers and things like that. Did she pick up the slack when you were feeling down in the dumps about it?

TIM: Molli being in the band is the only thing that really made it go so long. She kind of made all the stuff really happen as far as figuring out how we were gonna have enough money as a band to do this or that, and I and the rest of the band were more like, “We should do this!” And she’d be like, “Okay, well we need to figure out how we can actually accomplish that task instead of talking about it.” And she’s just a great bookkeeper and she’s really good with numbers and she’s really good at being really organized. And also it helped because we were in a relationship, but then again sometimes that was a flaw too. If she got into it with another band member it felt personal to me, and it shouldn’t have.

MIKE: It’s a tightrope there for sure.

TIM: and there’s no correct way to walk that.

MIKE: From seeing other bands in a similar situation of having two people in the band in a relationship, I have to say the way that you guys carried yourselves was far and away better than most of the other ones I’ve observed in working with bands in the studio and being on the road, so...you’ve got agood thing goin on there obviously.

TIM: We had kind of developed this thing that we weren’t in a relationship on tour, we were just business partners.

MIKE: Interesting...because then you go home and you live to gether and you have your normal life.

TIM: And I also think that was a big part of the tiredness of tour. I felt like especially toward the end Molli and I spent more time together as business partners than we did being in an actual long-term relationship.

MIKE: So all of this combined, is htat what kind of prompts the decision to end Our Lady?

TIM: You know, Our Lady was a hellride, all the way through. And I say that in a non-sarcastic way, it really really was. We did a really good job of making it not seem like that on the surface…

MIKE: I guess so.

TIM: ...but there were problems constantly. A lot of financial, a lot of member stuff...just shit happened to us. We were one of those bands, it was like always something was happening to us. A few of my personal friends would make jokes about how Our Lady was cursed, because so much stuff would just happen. I think we maybe had like...two or three tours in total where something didn’t go wrong with the van…

MIKE: Even the one that we did!

TIM: Yeah, that first day something major went wrong with our brand new van! But we got really used to dealing with that chaos, so in the end it happened at a practice. And Kyle kind of threw it on the table...I don’t remember what we came to in the conversation but he was just like, “it’s done.” I was like, “I agree, it’s done.” And I remember feeling really sad at first, then Molli went on a long drive out in the country after that and then I realized how much stress I’d put on myself...how much expectation I’d put into this thing, and how it was never really up to me how good or bad it did. All that stress and everything, the years of really trying to make it work, it never really was on me. People when I go to shows now will be like, wary about talking to me about Our Lady. And I’m like, “you don’t understand, I don’t care. I’m in such a better place now.” I’m not upset about it, I’m not mad, I don’t regret what I did. It was an experience I wouldn’t trade anything for, and I learned almost all of my skills from doing that.

[music]

MIKE: I agree with the sentiment that I wouldn’t trade it for anything but is there anything you think could be done, maybe not specific to your band but what would you say is the biggest impediment to the sustainability of it.

TIM: Oh, I’m wringing my hands right now because I have so much to say about this...DIY is a very, very fast-paced moving vessel. Things get phased out ultra-quick. In under a year, you’ll see genres of music and you’ll start thinking they sound corny because no one’s doing them anymore. Venues that really base themselves off a certain vibe or sound, they fail - that’s just how DIY is. If you don’t see it for that, maybe take a step back and look at it because it changes constantly. Another thing is, tons of people will go out of their way to support bands where their “like” on Facebook or their, you know, share on Facebook or their “like” on Instagram is a drop in a very large bucket, but they won’t go out of their way to do the same for a band who’s really trying. There used to be this joke - Kyle at the time had a lot of Instagram followers on his personal account.

MIKE: He did, didn’t he?

TIM: Yes, but now I have way more which is no big deal...just throwing that out there. [laughs] Anyway, the joke was that if he posted a selfie, over 100 likes every time. If he posted anything about Our Lady...25.

MIKE: Oh yeah, and it’s hard to know if that’s algorithmic, if that just isn’t getting out because something is looking at the raw data of the image and saying “oh, this isn’t a human face, this is a bunch of text on some clever flyer,” you know what I mean? Or if it’s localized, like “we’re playing a show in Champaign tonight!”

TIM: Sometimes it’s that factor, the localization factor, absolutely. Not everyone’s gonna see or give a shit about that, but they still should! There’s still a band from your town somewhere very fucking far away from you, trying to do shit that’s gonna bring shit back to your scene, it’s gonna bring better bands back to your scene. If you see a show flyer on Instagram and you’re involved in DIY culture, you should probably be liking that shit because you’re a supporter of DIY music. You’re a supporter of your friend’s band.

MIKE: Do you think it’s hard to overcome the signal to noise ratio? I feel like just from when we started to now there are so many more bands, and so many more bands that are able and trying to tour? So people’s attention can’t go as far as it maybe once did?

TIM: From the outside perspective of still having a foot in the door with DIY and keeping up with it through the internet, DIY music in general is kind of coming to a point where it’s not...needed anymore. The platform is shrinking. A lot of it has to do with the specific nature of people’s tastes in the age of Spotify, Apple Music...we’re able to be force-fed only the things we like all the time. Going out to a show and seeing five different bands instead of only seeing the one band that you like is becoming obsolete. Also it’s because mainstream media dipped their pinky into emo because they realized they could make some money off of it. But DIY has kind of reverted from that and it’s now made itself to where mainstream media is almost never going to do that again. I think that the “band” thing is kind of dying.

MIKE: Oh yeah, I think about that. I don’t know if there’s any way to really quantify that, but it seems harder to start one and it seems harder to get off the ground and make it what you want to be.

TIM: I think that the success ratio is just far less.

MIKE: It was never that high.

TIM: No, but always there’s been a band or a musician who’s playing a guitar or has a backing band that has been big. Like, really big. Really, really big. And we don’t really have that right now, aside from maybe Ed Sheeran. The new way to become a successful band is not through DIY.

MIKE: Define “successful” for me though. I hate to put it on the nose like that, but is it a self-sustaining thing or do you go home and work a job but you don’t have to worry about the next run?

TIM: I’m defining success on a high level-

MIKE: Like a professional musician type thing.

TIM: Exactly, where your job is to be in the band and do the band solely. That is it, that is your 100% job, 365 days a year. Like how Slipknot is. Ed Sheeran, another good example - any pop star, anything like that because all of those people used to be bands, and now they’re pop stars. Do you see what I’m saying by that? It’s a little bit of a muddy way to express what I’m saying.

MIKE: Right, they used to be “bands” as in they used to be performing on some circuit where they’re making the same rounds until they got some big break.

TIM: Absolutely. We used to have your Green Days and stuff - we still have a lot of bands from that generation when things were happening, when bands were getting signed to major labels and it was getting pumped out like that…

MIKE: Maybe on my fingers and toes I can count bands that operate in something analogous to our world that can call themselves “professional musicians,” and it’s not even everyone in the band either. Maybe the singer doesn’t have a full time job, like his full time job is the band. His or her full time job is doing things to advance their own career, but that is such a small percentage.

TIM: Yeah, and it’s also still nowhere near the level of success that we’re talking about.

MIKE: No, you’re living - probably like you alluded to - “in squalor” in a lot of ways. We did a tour with Lume, who you obviously know well and toured with them as well - they do a lot of things to really keep costs down, like they don’t stay in hotels - they sleep in their own van. They have a stove in their van and do meal prep on the road, which is crazy because I think a lot of guys look at touring as being reprieve from their normal lives and the thing through which they realize their own humanity, right? So maybe they treat every two-week tour up to a certain point like a vacation...they spend, they have a little fun with it, but those guys (Lume) really go all-in and try to make it happen in a way.

TIM: They put themselves in a position where they can keep doing it because they still love to do it. Talking to Lume, it’s...so refreshing. Because they haven’t been doing it long enough to be really jaded, and I will full-out admit that touring jaded me and the way that I felt about it. Lume is coming into a really hard world though, and they will get there. But as of right now talking to them and the way they put themselves in that position, they’re handling it as smart as they possibly can. They’re gonna be more successful than the band standing next to them just on the tact with which they approach the situation.

MIKE: They do love it, and that’s huge because it’s one of those things where if you don’t - if you have any reservations - it’s a house of cards, man. The slightest perturbation, or really a series of them all in a row, domino effect, can just grind things to a halt for everyone.

TIM: I’ve been on tour with a lot of bands and seen a lot of bands play. You start talking to people in bands...they don’t actually like doing this anymore. They’re just doing this because it’s what they know how  to do.

MIKE: Yeah, I mean there’s a certain thought process to it, it’s so pervasive. It’s the only thing that seems natural, but I’ve always felt like for me, it’s in the act of creation - writing songs and the negotiation process of putting a tune together and having a finished song and being like, “oh fuck yeah, that’s awesome” - vs. having to go out and perform night after night after night and try to put yourself...because the music that you and I make, and I would say is at least ideally emblematic of DIY, is very personal. It’s from the heart. You want to put yourself in that same frame of mind to perform it but it’s exhausting physically and emotionally, and a strain on the wallet of all things.

TIM: Like you said, it’s just taxing all around. I would hate to sit around and blame my failings on my financial situation because that’s not what it was. If it would’ve been money, I would’ve kept going.

MIKE: So looking to the future of DIY as it pertains to emotional hardcore bands or “emo” or “indie” or whatever, who takes up the task of continuing to make that music for the people who still...you know, if it becomes an even more unprofitable venture, does it continue to shrink? Or will there always be some kind of hangers-on?

TIM: I think there will always be hangers-on, but I also think DIY shoots itself in its foot with its involvement in political discourse.

MIKE: Everything is right now though.

TIM: Yes, and DIY music has always been more or less a political thing. The problem is that people with very little difference in political views are fighting each other. I think that kills the DIY scene in general. DIY will always exist, but I definitely think as of now it will continue to climb, but I’m also not an authority and shit happens.

MIKE: Oh neither am I, I just think for all the ways that it does shoot itself in the foot and make things difficult for both artists and for fans, it also is very adaptive. So at the beginning there probably weren’t as many house venues. When one closes another might open up, even if it’s six months or a year later, if enough people want it. It’s cyclical.

TIM: Yes, it is, but it’s so different now. The age of Facebook, Instagram and all this stuff...it changes things so much. DIY is not a dictation of fashion anymore, and that’s a really weird thing to accept as a person who’s running a clothing line. Fashion exists as its own entity and people adopt things from fashion into DIY when it used to be kind of the opposite.

MIKE: So you’re saying it’s importing more cultural or subcultural influence than it’s exporting? It’s not creating the culture, it’s synergizing it into something else?

TIM: Exactly. DIY has always been really cyclical, and for the longest time now we’ve been in a repeat phase. I’m sure something new and great will pop up in the next five years…

MIKE: Until that gets chewed up and spit out. That seems to be culture as a whole; the thing that’s new is the approach or the aesthetic, and we’re just wrapping all of our old cultural hallmarks in it. There’s probably a lot of throughlines between emo when it came out in  the late ‘90s and the emo they’re making now, the “emo revival.” But there’s so much character in a something like Cap’n Jazz vs. something that’s meant to be derivative of that purposefully.

TIM: And we see the same themes in movies and stuff that we see in music as well. That’s kind of what culture in general does, as we’ve discussed.

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MIKE: So at this point I’ll give you a chance to plug Ritual, which is your newest venture that seems to have been the silver lining that comes out of all of the unpleasantness surrounding Our Lady. Do you think that on a subconscious level you’ve been able to apply any of what you’ve learned from that experience, whether it’s design or ordering merch and knowin what people want - even the promotional side of it, like marketing - to what you and Molli are doing with Ritual.

TIM: Yeah, a ton of shit, especially in the beginning. It was kind of like repainting the same picture with less colors.

MIKE: Like, rather than having merchandise be an ancillary product to help support the music, that is THE main output.

TIM: Exactly. When I first start doing it, I was like, “Oh this is gonna be a piece of cake...it’s like one aspect of the thing I did for six years.” And it’s totally not. It’s a super hard thing to keep up with because I would say I ran out of the stuff I learned from the band in the first month.

MIKE: Wow.

TIM: That’s when I reached the topping point of “okay, that’s what I know...what do I do now?” But also I think that has to do with the fact that Ritual started off more successful than any other band thing that I’d ever tried to do.

MIKE: If you applied everything that you could in that first month, it seems like what you were talking about earlier, that initial “push” to get to the next level and make things perpetual motion, self-sustaining situation - kind of panned out better than you expected?

TIM: Absolutely. Definitely going into it knowing the stuff with the band helped to get people stoked for something. I think like, two weeks or so before we actually had any clothes I had started an Instagram and a Facebook, and I was posting little snippets of imagery being like, “Yo, this is coming.” This has also been an idea in the back of my mind for a long time because for about the last two years of Our Lady I got really into lifting and progressively more into powerlifting. It had become a bigger part of my mind. Actually, one of the more hilarious things that was said at the end of Our Lady was being like, “Hey, well at least I can focus on [lifting] now.” It was funny to me and Molli because it was such an unconscious shift in what we wanted to focus on. We didn’t expect to feel that way when Our Lady ended but...definitely not trying to seem in any type of arrogance or hyping up what I’m doing with Ritual, but the reason I say it was more successful than anything the band ever did is not because of some sort of financial goal that I had, because that didn’t exist. It’s more of what I expected to take to run something like that, vs. what it actually ended up taking. When we launched a bunch of people actually ordered...you know when you put new merch up for the band like “hey we got new merch!” and nothing happens? Maybe a few orders, like 2-3 over three days? Unless you’re a gigantic band, then of course your stuff probably sells a little better.

MIKE: I’m sure it’s actually still, just scaled up, the same effect.

TIM: Looking back, we sold our merch for a ridiculously cheap price. We were making like $2-3 maybe off of those shirts, when we paid $10 to get them. That was just bad business, we didn’t know any better. When Ritual started it was really odd because Molli and I planned it out really well. We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to do, how much money we expected to earn back from it, which is a conversation we were never able to have in Our Lady. It just kind of started, and now it’s something...it’s something, you know? I find myself stressed out all the time that I can’t keep up with it. The biggest problem for Ritual is that I can’t keep shit on my shelves, I can’t keep product on my shelves.

MIKE: It’s a good problem to have. It’s no less stressful, but it’s a good sign I guess.

TIM: You know, people say that, but that’s because they don’t have that problem. No, it is a good problem, but it is pretty much a constant stress.

MIKE: A good problem is still a problem.

TIM: Exactly, and it is growing. There are tons of people who have married themselves to this idea that we put out, and that was purposeful to a certain extent, but this reaction...we never expected that. People who I don’t even know, who aren’t directly involved with the company, have quotes on their Instagram profiles and will tag us and I have no idea who they are. They’re not athletes or reps of ours.

MIKE: That’s another thing too, is that you have athletes you endorse or who are repping your brand. Is there a parallel here? Whether you’re sponsoring a meet or you have an athlete on your roster, is that like how some bands have a hookup through Ernie Ball or some other weird brand that maybe even isn’t musical?

TIM: Yeah, definitely comparable to that because really what a sponsorship is for us right now is you get free shit or heavily, heavily-discounted shit from us, and you know that in the future we will be paying for your competition fees.

MIKE: So that’s significant.

TIM: Yeah, but these are not big expenses. In the future that’s something I really want to do because I believe in the sport and I believe in the people that I’ve endorsed.

MIKE: And it seems like it’s growing.

TIM: Honestly it’s Crossfit. Thanks Crossfit, because you made all strength sports really popular.

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