Ep. 09: Amassing 50 Million Plays with a DIY Ethos with Christian Grey of Villain of the Story

[00:00:00] Welcome to Secrets from the Scene. On today's episode, we've got Christian Gray from the band Villain of the Story. They were formed in 2014, right here in Minneapolis, and can be described as a modern spin on 2010's Metalcore, fused with... 2000s radio rock. The band has released four studio albums and an EP amassing over 50 million plays across platforms. They've got over 75, 000 subscribers on YouTube, over 400, 000 monthly listeners on Spotify, and their strong fan base shows support on YouTube memberships, Patreon, Discord, and pretty much anywhere they go. Villain of the Story has been signed, then gone fully independent, and then decided to sign again with a label recently, a journey I know we'll dig into later. They have an extremely strong and impressive DIY ethic. They do most of their own recording, releasing an album every one to two years. They direct and shoot their own videos, design their own merch, and have built a dedicated and large following through hard work. They've played with Hugh Jacks, I [00:01:00] Prevail, The Word Alive, The Devil Wears Prada, and played local Warped Tour here in Minneapolis. They've toured DIY all over the country and up into Canada. I'm so excited to chat with Christian today and learn all about his band's growing success. Please welcome Christian Hello, Thanks for having me. Thanks for being here, man. I Absolutely. We met through max who has been working for me the last three years and super cool, dude. I love him He's been playing any of your guys's music videos. . yeah, He's been in every music video since like 2020 or something. yeah, how many music videos have you guys put out? Quite a Quite a few yeah, I've seen at least half a dozen Yeah, I think we do like three, maybe four. Every record. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I want to, I want to dive into your guys process on that. But first, why don't you take the listeners through, you know, the band's story, how you guys got formed, where you're at now. Just give us some background. Yeah. So I do the screaming [00:02:00] vocals and I do some singing. I write the music primarily and then my brother technically step brothers, but since we were 2 years old, so it's like we've always known each other as brothers. so he sings and then he writes the lyrics and the melodies for the most part. So we've grown up. Doing music together pretty much forever. Yeah, so our band was falling apart right at the end of high school. We were looking for something new. And um, a bigger band in the scene at the time, they were called We Are The Blog. And I went to all their shows and thought they were just like the coolest band ever. Because it was also right before Facebook was like really the primary. Cool thing to do for like online. So the music scene was still very much alive. At least it felt like it to me. I was going to local shows They were always packed. The energy was awesome. So Sam Fassler, the bassist for We Are The blog and then the original drummer, for Out Came the Wolves, Andrew Bart. they were like, hey, we've been doing this for a little while. They're a [00:03:00] couple of years older than we were. And, they wanted To work together to form a band to not be in it, but just to be like, Hey, based on what we know and you know how to get things going, like, why don't we, like, get a group of people together and see if we can, like, make something happen. and since we are the blog already recorded their stuff with Johnny Frank, who used to be the singer for Attack Attack, Out in Ohio, he reached out to me He's like, hey, we're trying to form a band. we want you to do screams, and then you know anybody that can sing? And at the time, like in the previous span, like, I was a guitar player, kind of screamer. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I was a guitar player and then Logan, My brother, he was the drummer, and then he kind of did screams and kind of did singing, like, just bare bones stuff. So Sam and Andrew kind of reached out to the other people, we got, like, Cody, our guitar player, came in, and stuff like that, and they kind of formed the whole thing. So Logan played bass and [00:04:00] sang, and then we played two shows like that, and Logan could not sing and play bass at the same time. So we're just like, no, we got to get a bass player, like, Logan's just going to sing. Cause that, that was kind of an interesting thing at the beginning was, I was going to be the screams. Logan wanted to just sing, but what Sam and Andrew were saying we're like, ah, but like the duo vocalist at the time for like metal core music was really outdated. It was like, ah, so many bands do that. It's like such a cliche. So like, we don't want to do that. Which, I totally understand where they were coming from. I'm glad that. It wasn't like, no, this is our band. You guys do what we say. It was just like a very collaborative effort, but it originally came from them. They were the ones that wanted this to happen. and they were probably involved for a year, the first year or So, So Sam came with us to Johnny to introduce us And when we recorded our first couple of songs. And, I think Sam managed our Twitter and our Facebook for a while. Like, we would do the posting, but he'd kind of help us out with stuff [00:05:00] because we didn't really know anything. Yeah. I remember one big thing at the time was the specific app, I forget what it's called now, but it was like, you could plug in Bring Me The Horizons Instagram. And it would pull up all of their followers, so then you could go through and follow a bunch of Bring Me the Horizons fans. and then if they followed you back, it would ping them a DM Hey, thanks for following. you know, you can customize it to whatever you want. And we did that, and that was already a strategy, I guess, for a couple years. I feel like we were on the tail end of that, because a year later, Every freaking band was doing that, that it just, it became so spammy and annoying that the trend died. but at least at the time, it really worked. So that's how we got like our first like, thousand or two followers was... band was doing that. and this is all kind of had like a song or two out. Yeah, we had two songs out. Well, this is already pretty interesting and different for, you know, a [00:06:00] lot of bands that Yeah. The fact that you guys sort of had, in a sense, a manager Yeah, Yeah, we pretty much called him our manager, but it wasn't like there was a contract or anything. We're just friends and he knew a little bit more than we did and Well, I think the first question is, why did he do this? What have no idea. I think it was just something he was like, this could be fun. Yeah, he was like, we're the blogs kind of getting to the part where we don't really know what we're doing. We're kind of deciding that we might be done doing our thing, but he still wanted to be involved in music. I think, think, that's probably where it was coming from. He's like, and I've been doing the band thing for years. And so don't want to be lugging my gear to shows and doing all that stuff. So if could be more of a background player. So right now there's four members in your band, right? Were those four members the original four? just me, Logan, and then Cody guitar player. Okay, so our current bassist was not our original bassist. three of the four were the current. Yeah. But it's kind of funny. our [00:07:00] current bassist is the reason we found our original drummer. there's like a Facebook group that was Minnesota Music and just any musician could go in there. So I was going through when we're trying to find a drummer and anybody that had drummer at some local band or whatever, even if I had never heard of them. If I have heard of them, I was just Sending them personalized messages, just being like, hey, we're trying to find a drummer. We sound kind of like this. Here's a clip of a song. And, Paige, our current bassist, he was a drummer at some local band that I didn't know. And, he replied back saying like, I'm actually already comfortable with the band that I'm in, so I'm not interested, but I have a friend who doesn't have Facebook that's a drummer and looking for a band, so he drove him out to our audition, and that's where we met him, and we just became friends, got a drummer, and then all the years later, he's just been a really good friend and supporter. He was there from day one, literally. , and when we needed a bassist, at the time he had switched from playing [00:08:00] drums to playing bass in his band. So when they broke up, we needed a bassist. We're like, you're a perfect fit. We're already like best friends That's awesome at bass. So like, let's do it. and so you guys were just out of high school at this time when this Yeah. I think we're. 19. Okay. Yep. And so first year you got this manager helping, you're using that Instagram tactic to find people. , that are following similar sounding bands, hit them up, follow them, send them messages, and that tactic work got you started. Obviously, there's a lot between then and now, right? And a lot of changes, and I, kind of want to dive into different categories along the way, but, maybe just the highlights of big steps from then up to where you are now. So I guess it, after we started getting like our first thousand followers or whatever, 'cause we hadn't really played a show or anything, it was all gonna be online. Um, Yeah, Andrew, who was the other guy that was involved, at the time, he was the original drummer for a band, Out Came the [00:09:00] Wolves, and... They were a Minnesota local band, but they were very, like, primarily an online band where they were like, , if we all get like an image down and just go online and try to form relationships with people around the world, we could grow our, Without even playing a show, kind of thing. And at that time, in the local scene, It was like, that was very frowned upon. Cause it was like, no, you gotta like, Play a show to two people in like, a dingy bar. You know, you have to, you have to. like earn. Yeah, honestly, I mean, I know there were bands everywhere doing that, but at least for the Minnesota scene, They were really the first ones to kind of be like, No, we should do online instead of really dive into social media. So, think that's where , Those ideas were coming from. were through Andrew And, so we were like, okay, well let's do that. . we were doing all this online, just Trying to message people, whatever. and then we did play a couple shows, which I guess still is cool because we were in the side [00:10:00] stage for touring bands like Alessana and stuff at the time. and that was because of Sam and Andrew knowing the booking agent or the promoter for those shows. So he was like, yeah, you guys can play but you're going to be on like the tiny side stage or whatever. but at least it's an opportunity to play some shows at least it's an and then we did a lot of local shows and stuff after that, but Yeah, so we were just grinding away Playing local shows and working on music and at the time with like our jobs and stuff, we couldn't take a month off to go to Ohio and record so what we would do was Four or five days, we'd write two songs at home, and then we'd take time off work to drive out to Ohio, spend like almost a week out there, come back, and then months later, go back for two more songs until we had an EP. and then I think the, the next stepping stone was our first music video. because we had like lyric videos and stuff that we did. but, I was looking around for, directors and whatnot, and can't remember his name off the top of my head. But some guy supposedly [00:11:00] was working at outer loop Records at the time was saying, Hey, I just came across your songs. Like, they're pretty good. We might be interested in signing or something, so we're like, Oh, already? Like, that's really cool. It never went past that. But what came out of that was me asking, Well, we're actually looking to shoot a music video, so like, Who should we go to? And he connected me with Jeremy Trempe, who, when I looked into him, He did, I think, like, the World Alive music videos, Plus the fall music videos, bands I listened to, He had done a couple videos, for. So I'm like, ooh, okay, so this is, , An actual video director guy. so, it was, yeah, it was a 4, 000 music video, which we were like, what? Which is cheap, because he was like, if you're a label, you know, you have a budget for it. But like, you guys are like, starting out DIY band, like, I'll cut you a deal. So, Jeremy, we worked with him multiple times. He was awesome dude. But yeah, that was our first big thing was like, oh, we really need to spend money. , at the time, local bands, like, had music [00:12:00] videos, but it was very, very DIY. I don't even know how to set exposure right on a camera, type of stuff or a friend that kind of new stuff. But, like, this was an actual, like, he had a cinema, like, RED camera or something, and, like, actual lighting. and It was a whole experience. It was just him. It wasn't, like, a team or anything. We haven't done a music video with like a whole production crew. But that was, like, our first experience of like a real music video shoot. So we already learned a lot just by how he was directing us and stuff. And, so when he got it all put together and we watched it, we're like, the quality was so much, I don't want to come off the wrong way, but like, It was just better than anything I had seen locally. I'm like, no local band has a music video that looks this good. But it's because we invested the money. And I feel like the local scene at the time was still in that state of, well, why would you spend all this money on a music video when it's like you should spend money on gear and just get better at your craft? Which is like, there's validity to that for sure. But We're [00:13:00] trying this new approach of like, well, if we just instead invest money instead of DIY touring, it's like, well, let's take that money and actually like, put it in our online content, . so that music video, I remember we got 4, 000 views in the first week and our previous band In a year, could get a thousand views So we were like, four thousand views in a week? Like, let's go, we're gonna be so big Um, so we were really hyped. , yeah, that's kind of where I noticed a shift in things. Because people were looking at us like, Oh, you guys are an actual band. , the Twitter fans and, or Instagram fans and stuff that we had gathered. When we had that release, since we already had a couple, , thousand, I guess. , they were initially the people that would come and check it out because we had already kind of connected with them before. So we had people to check it out immediately, which kind of, I guess, to help boost it a little bit in the algorithm and whatnot. But yeah. Yeah, that music video is I feel like it was a defining moment for us. I mean it was [00:14:00] my life savings at that time from like working at 16 and all through high school saving money that was like my entire savings account went into that music video but I feel like But to see that it worked and that, well, yeah, so, you know, you guys have this concept of , we want to be an online band. Well, essentially what that means is we need to make content , we can't just use the older traditional way of thinking of we're going to play shows and build up a fan base that comes to our shows. You know, I feel like that's how. Bands that we knew growing up and probably earlier , when we first started playing instruments, it was still kind of the thing. , but it's changed now, right? Where, yeah, by today it's an entirely different scenario and You know, people have started to do the calculation that, okay, well, all of this time that we've put into rehearsing for and playing at our local bar where we had 10 people show up, if we put in that many hours into promoting our online socials and interacting, we can hit [00:15:00] way more people. And just in terms of return on investment for your time. It's a no brainer that you should be focusing a lot more of your energy. Not to say being playing live is still an important thing. You got to be able to do it. You got to be able to do it, but there's a lot of local bands that spend most of their energy playing for small little crowds, where if they put that kind of energy into playing for, or into at least connecting with an online audience and putting out content, then they can grow quicker. And that's sort of the strategy you guys were looking at. And when you. Put your first big investment into this music video and saw, Oh, this can work. That's like, okay, keep going. Yeah. you get that motivation. Yeah, one thing we really learned too, from Sam and Andrew during the beginning phase was to not oversaturate, so I guess that was part of the strategy as well. is like, instead of doing a show every weekend or every month just [00:16:00] Around the same area, to the same and like, dude, you guys got like, we'll play one show. and then like, you gotta wait like, six months. to play a show again or something like that. Cause if you Really want people to come see you you have to create that demand. that If you're always available, and it's always like free or like I there's there is validity to doing that, Especially if it's something you're just doing for fun because At the end of the day it's music like we're doing it because we love it. Absolutely. And there's seasons, right? I think, especially with a newer, younger band and you're still learning your instrument and you're writing songs and there can be a lot of value in just playing every show that's thrown your way because you're getting, experience. You have to. you Now, So this is part of this comes down to figuring out where you are at Yes. what your goals are at that moment. Yeah. Like if anyone's like starting a band or like wanting to do it, it's like you gotta be real with yourself and think what am I doing? Why am I doing it? ? What is my goal? Because if it is just I'm just having fun, [00:17:00] there's a totally different approach than I want this to be a career because then you really need to focus on the business, but you can't lose sight of the music because we've gone Through that, you know, we've gone back and forth of like, well, we're getting way too focused on business stuff that it's like, I wouldn't say the passion's dying, but like, just the love of, ah, this is so much work, but then it's like forgetting why I'm doing it because we're not playing often and it's like, because the live show is the best part, so it's like, you're doing all this business stuff, but you're not playing live all the time that it's kind of like, well, this is just a job, rather than like, the passion. project that it is. , where we are right now, I really miss playing shows, because we haven't in a long time. But, I guess that's jumping way ahead in the conversation. where we're at right now, but. Sure actually, why don't we go to that right now because then we can, well, we'll go back Okay. and talk about the journey a little bit more, but what is the current state [00:18:00] of the band? So. Currently, it's been two years, but the band has been my personal full time job, where I pay all my bills just doing the band? which, thank you, it, uh, , like, my entire life basically trying to get to this, so it's like, I'm technically living my teenage dream. which I have to remind myself of it's still scary being almost 30 and like just making enough to pay bills because that's where I was at when I had a full time job. So, then it was like, well, I basically replaced my full time job with this, But now it's like, I still feel like, oh, I'm I'm a struggling artist because like, I'm not really getting ahead, but it's, it's all perspective. It's just like, but I am doing something that I love to do as my job. So that's, that's pretty much where we're at. It's my full time thing, so I'm always on our socials. I'm always making our content and editing videos and just everything that goes into the band, I'm doing on a [00:19:00] daily basis. And then,Yeah, we just... Work on music and I have like I have Cody set up as like our accountant in a way. So like I pay him a rate for going into our Excel spreadsheet and doing receipts and account like every transaction. and just Documenting everything, for taxes and whatnot. And then Paige is like a merchandising manager where any physical merch we have. It feels weird because it's it's all set up under me. So I'm like the LLC owner. so it's like, I'm like CEO a villain of the story. so it's weird to say like, oh well I bought him this when it's like it's the business. But like, so the band bought him like a thermal printer and like packing materials and so he's all set up at his house. to Where he can pack and fulfill merch orders and go to the post office, ship them out and stuff like that. So then I pay him to be a merchandising manager. and Logan, since he doesn't have like a specific role, but Because he writes Cause he does the vocals. he gets like a royalty rate every single [00:20:00] month. And then, pretty much I have like my flat rate just to pay for my bills and stuff to keep things afloat. Yeah, so we just, over the years, we've really just structured it like a business. Like, we all actually have roles. Like, it's not necessarily they're hired employees, Cause we're not like set up. like the boring stuff. Oh, it's an S corp or an LLC, but. Yeah, that's pretty much where we're at. We want to get to a point, though, where the band's growing enough that even, like, Cody and page, like, the accounting and the merchandising that they do, the income percentage that we get on a monthly basis would be enough for them to live solely off that. But,we also want to get to the point where we can play shows more because kind of tying this back to what we were saying before when. You put all your resources and time and energy into the online content instead of going around and doing all the tours and stuff, we did try to go back and forth, because it's like well, we're doing all this [00:21:00] online content, but like, we do want to play shows though. We want a tour, so we do some DIY stuff, but then we just lose our ass. Like financially, because even though the shows were awesome, you meet amazing people. You drive all the way to Memphis, Tennessee, and there's two people that show up, but they know every single word. It's awesome. You just get to jam out with them, basically. But, on a financial side, you're like, We took time off work, and we already used our PTO from the last tour, so we're not getting paid to be away. We're not making money, because only two people showed up. So we're not getting our guarantee and we have to pay gas to get to the next one. And we have all this bulk inventory of merch that we haven't sold. So you just get home and you're like, we lost thousands of dollars. It was fun. But when you do that time and time again, it's like, okay, we really need to focus online so we can get enough of a following. So when we do try again, the percentage of people that will come out to shows [00:22:00] increases, so we've. Dabbled. We'll like go online for a while. Alright, let's test the waters. Okay. It's a little bit better now. There's 10 people or 20 people, and then we go away for a bit. We'll come back. And then it's like, okay, well now there's like 30. So it's kind of, you can do both. but I definitely feel like anyone starting out, it's just from a business standpoint, if you can just build an online following There's 10 Yeah, so you can always do just , sparing local shows where it's, you know, not oversaturating like you mentioned earlier, but that way you do get some playing and then hit the areas where you think you've got the biggest fan base at the time. Well, that's cool. So you guys have clearly, , had the, more difficult discussions about what everybody's role in the band needs to be and made that clearly defined and it's not. It's not equal from that standpoint. It sounds like you do a bulk of the work, right? So how you split up revenues different how you pay each other and all that it sounds is very customized to your [00:23:00] needs to your situation yep. And i'm sure that evolved over time and figured it out. Did that just sort of naturally fall into place or was that like a you Some people were like no I want to be more involved or like how did how did that get sorted out? Because So many bands just go we'll split it up evenly Yeah, because that's what we were doing. I'm glad you asked that because actually the reason why we even shifted into this model. I basically, I reached out to David pocket from he drums for we came as Romans. I reached out to him. I'm like, Hey, man, like, can I hire you for like a consulting call or something? Because I had done that in the past with him, like just business talk and whatnot. But then he was like, Hey, man. No, you don't gotta worry about it. I'm kind of busy right now. So he just sent me a couple of voice memos. And I was asking like, what do we do, like, for the business? , what's your guys setup? And that's, he was the one that like, had the insight of like, well, we actually have roles. So like I do this so I get this but then on the touring side of thing we split it evenly because we're all actively together Working for tour so that's tour revenue, but at home I mean, I [00:24:00] don't remember the specific details of their situation But I from what he was telling me, I took that, and, brought it to the guys like hey, do you guys want to, like, structure this to where you're actually, like, earning and getting paid appropriately for, like, what you're doing? Because if we all just split it evenly, like, well, shouldn't, the goal should be, well, if I can take this full time, I need to make enough so I can do it full time. Otherwise, I need to go get a job, again. Because I had the same job since high school, all the way up until I quit to do this. so like 8 years or whatever. Yeah. if I can be full time, we get everything done quicker. When it came to recording, I can record an entire album on the guitars and program the drums and do all the symphony stuff. Like I can write the album Significantly quicker than it would be if I work eight hours, I'm tired, I come home, and then I just work on the band for four hours or something, you know, that was the grind. for eight you know, that to do both. Cause it's, if it's something you [00:25:00] really want to do, you have to make sacrifices. I like talking about this because this structuring and this sort of, behind the scenes details of how the band works is a huge reason of why it's successful, in my opinion, I would, . , a lot of bands break up, right? They can't stay together for, you guys have been what, nine years now or whatever. Um,because at some point, well, I mean, sometimes things just happen, families and moving and jobs and lots of different things. Normal life scenarios, but a lot of what happens is one person is doing all the work and everyone else is not. And that person gets resentful and leaves. I hear that time and time again, right? It's not fair because everybody's splitting the revenue maybe equally, but they're not splitting the work equally. And it's really hard to split the work equally because not all the talents are split up split equally. So I love that you guys had that conversation of, . What, how can we pay each other for the roles that we're doing and what role should we take on in the first place? Now, I think that it's important to [00:26:00] note that again, if you're a new band, you probably can't do that right away. And because you're not, there's probably no income. You're just going to be in debt. You're just spending money. You're in the investing phase. Yeah, you're in the grind. We're in that's going to last for a few years where you're just putting money in. But if you're putting money into the right things and you're growing a fan base, , and taking the type of job that allows you to maybe be able to do both things where you're not completely drained from the job, you're able to do both. Then you can, potentially get to the place where you can have that kind of conversation. That being said, I still think that clearly defining roles, even if they're not paid roles in the beginning, it's still awesome. And. we would've thought like that before. 'cause I feel like it's just productive. And you could still incentivize the roles, you know, , I think it's totally fine to be splitting revenue equally, and if you're in a band and that's how you do it, that's all great. But then try to split up the work equally, too.[00:27:00] But if you can't, it's okay, you know, if there's a tough job that no one wants to do to incentivize that person to take it on and put in more time if you know it's important to give that person some more pay for it, incentivize it. Yeah, That's something that I really love. about the group of people that I'm with. Obviously my brother, but Paige and Cody, it's just, you just hear horror stories of bands, just not liking each other and all this stuff all the time. And I'm like, I am so thankful. for these other three people and like for them to be in the band. they're the perfect people for me specifically as Christian. I could not ask for a better group of people to be in a band with because when we had those conversations, the way you were saying that, I'm like, Oh, wow, like, , I wasn't even thinking about it like that, like, oh, the tough conversations because like, that is a tough conversation, but with these guys, it was just like, hey, like, we're just all trying to do the same thing, and we've been on the same page, we're always just vibing and matching each other's energy and like where we want this thing to go. So, so [00:28:00] yeah, when we had those tough conversations, it was a little easier, but no, you're right. Those are tougher conversations because thinking back to the beginning, if we were talking like that, like, Oh, well I'm, I do this, So like I need to get paid more, And it's like. but we're, a team, man, you know, we should all, yeah, no, very tough, but I honestly think like me working a day job and then coming home. and Grinding it out and everything. I feel like it wasn't until late 2016, maybe 2017, few years into the band were the shift of like, well I would come home from work, hang out, maybe do a little bit for the band and then just live a life because I'm tired. But then it just, I got like that shift where all of a sudden I'm like, man we aren't like really growing or going where I want us to. So it was like, I had like kind of epiphany moments or whatever that I'm like, Oh, because I need to really actually continuously focus on the end goal, reverse engineer that and take steps every single day to get there. [00:29:00] like going into self help stuff and psychology of how to build a business and whatnot. And I just all of a sudden got interested in it. But for the first handful of years, especially like having a music video and have someone like from outer loop Records is like kind of interested in thinking I'm Not like in an entitled way, like oh, yeah, we're just gonna get signed and everything's gonna be fine I knew that signing doesn't just mean your problems are solved, but I had a this Kind of like false sense of feeling like, oh people are already interested. we're doing enough work then. So I can keep that pace up. But then when nothing really happens, it's like, well, the pace that I'm going at is really a snail's pace. So if I don't want to rely on anyone else, if I want that, then it's like, well, even though it's exhausting, I have to get home from work and I have to just grind for a few years. I don't want to I want that, Taking the initiative to, to reach out to other people that were further ahead of you, you know, that, that, other guy, the drummer, in the and asking for, you know, [00:30:00] to pay for his time and, get his advice and it sounds like, you know, he, he gave you an insight that made a huge difference, you know, like, reaching out, because if someone's, like, further along than you, it's like, well, I want to learn from you, because if there's someone that's ahead of you, and you reach out, I was always coming from the standpoint of, well, let me pay for your time, because you're successful already, doing your thing. I want to learn from you, which means I want something from you. So I want to show my respect, that I value your time, and all the years you've put into getting to where you're at. It's not like, oh, it's only 10 minutes, man, can't you just, like, talk to me for free? I feel like... That's disregarding all the work that this other person has gone through to get where they're at. And I think because I did that a few times, I mean, I guess just to be real too, it was like 75 bucks for a half hour call, which is pretty expensive, but like, the insight I got off that was kind of worth more than [00:31:00] that. in a way. But then you do that a couple times because I'm genuinely just trying to learn. We kind of get to know each other a bit to where we get to the point where then he's like, nah, man, like, we're cool. Like, yeah, no, here's like a couple voice memos of like, valuable information that's just Like, whoa. Because you were yeah, because it's like, you're literally living the dream, I feel like, it's a weird thing when people want... In this specific case, where it's like people want to just get ahead. They just want what you have. But they don't see all the work, and all the the failures, really. and all the hard struggles, and like, mentally depressing episodes of trying to get through a roadblock or something, to get where you're at, but Basically, yeah, it was just reaching out to other people, but looking at it as a business investment. Like, I'm just looking at it like a course or something, but instead of like a course, it's a call, like an in person call. It's like, well, let me just. Pay for this service because it's [00:32:00] valuable and I I've done that with a few other people. So I'm always just been trying to learn Everything that I can about online marketing and you know doing business and there was a while was nerding out over Facebook ads and I like learned As much as I could, I took like a whole like 300 course on Facebook ads when those were kind of new ish. but like it really helped like those two guys in memphis that I was talking about earlier one of them, I think his name was blake and he was just like, yeah, I've seen Powerless come on a Facebook ad once and I've just been hooked ever since. I'm like, but that Facebook ad got you to come out to the show. Facebook Facebook There's So. much For sure, yeah, Okay. did it come ad got you to the Yeah. So did you learn Yeah, learned a lot. so it was 2016 Warp Tour Stay Sick Records [00:33:00] was kind of like a new thing and there were like, Oh, for our first signing or whatever, like comment your band's thing or whatever, like a link to a song and whoever gets the most likes on their comment. You know, we will get in conversation with and so we were trying to promote it and get it on there. There were a couple bands that were bigger than we were at the time, so they were getting a lot more likes than we were. I'm like, Dang, I really wanted to do this, but it seems like we're not, we don't really have a chance here. So I went to Franz, who was the label owner. Well, face of the label owner, And he had a business email and I'm like I don't know if this is too cringe or whatnot, but I just saw his business email. I'm like, I have a business inquiry. So instead of doing the Facebook contest thing, I emailed him, like, as professionally, like, as I could. I'm like. I'd love to be on your label. Like here's our stuff. Here's all of our info and send it to him. And he was like, yeah, man, all this is great, you guys have a good sound going. And I honestly saw you guys on the Facebook thing. We are interested, but, I'd like to see you guys do a little bit more. he had a couple of pointers, like, specifically, like, Oh, could you do this or that? not ready, but like, thanks for reaching out kind of thing. So I'm like, [00:34:00] okay, so we already had that initial, , interaction. but to where at Warped Tour 2016, I think it was, I saw that Attila was doing a signing. Or no, Franz was doing his own signing, to do a free signing, you had to like, buy merch from his Stay Sick tent or whatever. So I went over there, and I had already that day at Warped Tour. I had, like, shirts from all these bands, I'm like, man, I don't really have the money to afford this right now. But I saw on Instagram, he said something. And so I commented on his Instagram post while at Warped Tour. I'm like, hey, man. And he was like, yo. And he replied, he was like, come back to the gate or whatever. So then I went back and got to meet him and talk about the band and everything. And he was like, yeah, so how about you guys finish doing your album, send it to me, So we did that and then eventually we signed a deal through that. But it kind of, I feel like it stemmed back to that initial interaction of like, instead of just doing like the public thing and everyone's, you know, trying to get more likes on this. I'm like, I want to try and get a little bit closer to you than that. Because I really [00:35:00] wanted to sign. so it was a cool way that it all kind of came about, so the experience was really good. people definitely have their opinions now because they've rebranded And the label's gone through so much. but at the time, Stay Sick, I felt like they had our best interests at heart. towards the end though, I was really kind of realizing. Maybe you specifically as people that were working with CARE. but as a whole, It was like, well, they're their label, but they get their financing through another label, so it's like, to approve any purchases, you know, they need their consent, so then they give them the money to give to us kind of thing. So it was like, well, we want to do this, we want to do that, but it's like, okay, let's ask. No. Sorry guys, no. And It was kind of like one of those things So I'm like, so the, the financing was just not there, so I'm like, we can't do anything. Man, We're like kind of getting shelves. so I was realizing... Okay, so you only signed us the back end companies hope that like, well, we're just going to pop off and be the next Axiom Alexandria or something. No, because then All of a sudden, they're signing band after band after band after band that like, they're cool [00:36:00] bands, but they're all like where we were, we're all kind of really tiny. So I'm like, why are they signing so many bands when they can't even afford to take care of us? So I'm like, are they doing that with all these bands? They're not dumping money into it? Just hoping one of you is going to pop off so we can make all the money there and then we can, you know, raise the rest of you. But I'm like, I didn't want that. I wanted, like, a partnership. that we're working together. So, Did not like that. And then the fact that, Just for the rest of eternity, they get half of that record. so luckily the person that we our A& R or whatever, technically they could have signed us for another record. It was like an option. But he's like, I just, you guys are getting shelves so hard right now, so I can terminate your contract. So I will always be appreciative of that, that they let us leave. and then after that, the, the label was going way downhill. So we got out at like the perfect time. That was like a really sketchy time for us because, well, we had spent thousands of dollars on this album and music videos, And we signed it away, didn't get [00:37:00] reimbursed for it. That was a mistake that we didn't think of. Like, there was no reimbursement in the contract deal. And since we had already paid for it, It was supposed to go to marketing. Well, What does that even mean? You know, I've learned that that's just kind of like uh, Oh yeah, we'll just put it in marketing. And then like, it doesn't mean anything. so we were just out, thousands and now they take half. So then I was like, when I was learning Facebook, I was like, well, if I spend X amount of dollars, To get a CD sale from someone on an ad, well when they buy it, half of it goes to the label, half of it goes for us. We're still losing money Cause it didn't even cover the cost of the ad. So I'm like, we can't even promote this record anymore. It's done. us. We're still But like, we're not signed anymore. So they have no reason to push it. They're just like, we'll just casually passively make income off your record forever. So I was like, wow, we kind of got screwed. Like, dang. So now we have a, we're in debt, we're making no money back off of that, and we can't promote it anymore. Because it's pointless to push it. So we have to do a new record that we have to go even further in [00:38:00] debt. So we were all just Like from our day jobs, just pouring our money into this. And we got to the point where I literally had 8. Like I was saying earlier, I had 8 in my checking account and a 20 bill in my pocket. To my name. all for the love of breakdowns and screamo dude. guess long So I just really learned that the DIY thing is what we wanted to do. Because I'd love not having to wait on a response or be told no. I like the idea of having another mind involved so then I know I can bounce back and forth to know I'm making proper decisions, because I know I don't know everything, but the fact that, uh, we were DIY ing and I'm like, okay, well, I can just make all the shots, I guess. When we went to record that next record, we had a really important conversation with Johnny, who sat us down he's like, Look, after that whole label thing, like, you guys need to make money. Like, you're at the point, you've put out an EP, a record, you're about to do another record. Like You guys need to really start thinking about this more as a business. So how can you do that? And we're like, I don't know. We just [00:39:00] start listing everything. He's like, well, you guys could stop recording here and save money there. And then we're just like, you're better than we are, we'd have to learn how to do that, and he's like, okay. And then we were just going through that music videos is where we decided we are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on multiple videos for an album cycle. What if I learned how to do it myself? Cause I've always kind of been interested in cinematography. So then we made an investment. I got like a 4, of one music video. But, now I can film multiple videos. with it. So We looked at that as a business expense and investment. And then so I just started doing our videos and saving a lot of money. And that album ended up profiting because we owned the masters and because we distributed ourselves. Like we got monthly payments instead of like on a label where They do payouts. So every six months, here's 50% of what you earned. When we're like, we can get every month a hundred percent, [00:40:00] and it just, over time, pushing that, pushing that, pushing that, it got to a point where we actually decided we're going to make , a band business bank account. Because we actually have money now, so we've paid all of ourselves back, all the debt for the years that we've been in. Personally, everybody got their money back. And now we actually have like, Ooh, we have 10 bucks. but like it's the band's But, right. money. That's awesome. Alright, let's, let's recap some of that journey because I, I want listeners to, to, understand some of all of this like DIY stuff that you guys are doing because that's some of the most impressive to me. You get signed, you go out of your way, you send a personal email, you make a relationship, you get signed to a cool new record label. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out like a lot of stories in terms of getting signed. There's not enough money there to actually support you. So unless you just pop off on your own accord, this record becomes sort of an anchor to you. And it's not worth promoting because you're only making [00:41:00] half of the money that you're putting into it. You get out of the deal and you realize we have to do more things ourselves at that point. And that realization I think is what I want the whole episode to be about for people is that you have to learn how to do a lot of things on your own. And you guys have built up so much skill set from that over the years and you're not going to learn it all right away, right? You have to pick little bits and you started with saying, all right, you know what? We're going to figure out how to do some video stuff on our own. At least then we DIY. And I think that's, it's smart. You, if you try to do everything on your own right away, yeah, it's not gonna be great and you probably need to work with some professionals first to some extent, because in the recording process, there's so much to learn from working with a producer in the. And you had already mentioned in the, in the video process, when you hired your first, like, we're going to do a real music video, it was just eyes wide open of, well, this is how it's done. [00:42:00] This is how you do it. And just going through those steps can really point you in the right direction of, okay, either it's an approach thing. You see a workflow. There you go. Okay. Yes. Or it can be. We need at least, uh, this level of gear, whatever, you know, you maybe don't need the best stuff, but you start to see how much of a difference that, the workflow, the knowledge, the software and the hardware can all make, and that's on the video side and the, and the audio side too, so you start making videos, you still were working with your then producer, Johnny, out in Ohio. And he was the one who also helped to give you this advice of like, Focus on the business more, which was awesome that he did that. but so that next record you still made with him then? Wrapped in Vines was the one on the label. Yep. Ashes, our second record, is the one when we had that conversation. But that was With Johnny too. With Johnny, Yep. Okay. you finally start making some money, you pay your debts back, you're starting to see the business, you set up a band bank [00:43:00] account. You're keeping track of things. You're tracking the numbers. That's when we formed an L L C, and actually we're like, okay. Yeah, we actually, it's a business now. Yeah, starting to see all of this. All the different pieces that have to come together. So, it sounds like the video stuff was some of the first DIY stuff? Yeah. When did you start DIYing your own merch, for Well, I mean, I guess Along the way, I was always kind of doing that just like throwing our logo and adding our name on there or something. But, I just, I was never really super stoked on the designs that I was capable of, so... for the most part, I was hiring other designers and whatnot. I'd say over the last year, especially, I've learned a lot more with Photoshop, and what you can do with it. Always just kind of known basic editing and whatnot. But yeah, I've learned so many techniques that I feel like I can actually make some cool looking things. but... I also know where my limits are, so like, if I want a design that kind [00:44:00] of has this style, or this style, I don't know how to do that, so that is something I would need to learn, but I kind of take it on a case by case basis where it's like, , right now, I don't want to learn that, , I have to edit this music video this month, so like, I don't really have the time to learn an entire new designing Art style, so I have my design style that I really like, but I'm actually going to just go on Fiverr. I just do research and I find the ones that are the best price for the best art has the best, uh, reviews, you know, I find people that I've worked with and then they're really good at their style. So I feel like that's kind of in general, outside of just merch. that's a key thing that I've learned, just through like self help stuff and whatnot, business videos that I've watched is knowing your strengths, but knowing your weaknesses and then really trying. to align yourself with the people that are strong where you are weak. and then as you grow, like, you still want to do as much as you can. But, yeah, if you can expand on that, then it's like, well now our merch is going to be [00:45:00] better, Because I actually have someone who literally knows how to do it. But, it's not every single design, so we're spending money on money on money to get designs There are designs that I can do myself. spending money on to get designs that I can do myself. no, we don't do the printing ourselves. So we use something it's Printify and Shopify. Yeah, so it's like, here's the design, pick the shirt, so much goes into it. I won't get into the boring details, but like that is part of my daily thing is there's so much that goes into getting it ready and like weights and shipping profiles and all this stuff. But we basically send in the design and then when someone orders it, then this facility, the manufacturer prints and ships it direct. So we don't see that. we did do like the physical merge where we have a company print, ship it to us. So then we would do it. And then when we play shows or whatever, but just since the pandemic and us not really touring or we played one show since 2019, there's no need to invest in physical [00:46:00] merchandise right now. So let's just do the online, print on demand method. so that's pretty much what we do, And so so that was your other member that was taking care of the Yeah. so we still have merch from like forever ago that. That he still has like in stock. Yeah, so if someone orders one of those, he'll, he'll ship that. But if someone orders. something that's like an online, you're using the print on demand services for Yeah, which I feel like that's honestly a crucial thing for anyone starting is learning Shopify and researching out what print provider would be good for you. There's so many print providers out there, but we use Printify and just learning the ins and outs of that because you don't have to invest in upfront merch. So if you're not selling a lot like us, then that's way cheaper. Cause even though the profit margins are extremely slim. It's still profit Yeah. well, you need to spend a thousand dollars to get all this inventory and then you have to try and sell it all. And if you don't, now you're in debt. It's great place to start because you can, you can [00:47:00] test out what designs are Exactly. It's not what kind of orders you're getting in, you know, what your fan base is looking for. And then if you find that it's worth your money to then take on the risk and buy the physical product That's where you can actually then yeah, yeah. doing it yourself. But in the earlier phases using a print on demand you're saying, where it's just like, well, when you kind of start now, you got to learn from Yep. or do that. Hire out something else and then learn from it until you can do it yourself. Yeah. Absolutely, then, the other DIY thing would be is Eventually you stopped working with Johnny, right? Yeah. cause he stopped. we started this I'm not recording bands anymore. I'm sick of this. so you, I'm his studio out of his,parent's basement And the bands would always stay. like, in his parent's basement. And I feel like we're nice, Yeah, respectable people, but like. Typically you kind of, you know, a ban, you know, you're kind of rambunctious or whatever. And they had problems with people doing drugs in the basement and [00:48:00] stuff like that. So they're like, all right, like Johnny's like, I can't have people staying at my parents basement. They're just so disrespectful. So like, I'm, I'm done with that. I don't even want to do it anymore. Yeah. So you guys are in a position of, all right, do we find another producer or start doing this ourselves? Yes. how did that go? How did that morph into you deciding, you know what, I'm going to pick up this skill next. Yeah. So. because our guitar player Cody, he knows audio, So, like, he has like his own little home. studio and stuff, But he actually knows more technical stuff with like recording and everything. I know minimal, because I have my own home studio stuff, but only for like writing stuff, not like mixing stuff, or recording stuff, but when Johnny said he was not going to be doing it anymore, we're like, oh man, we've had a working relationship with you since the band started, so like this is a whole new... Era for us to be in, because the process is not going to be the same anymore. but then he told us that, for his own music, Bill Murray, he had a guy, [00:49:00] Will, who is mixing his stuff. So he got us in contact with him. He's out in Ohio too, but we were just kind of thinking, man, we have to take time off. work to drive out to Ohio. And if We're going to have to also get a hotel now, instead of having a place free to stay. And working with someone new, it was just kind of this thing where like, eh, we don't really want to spend the money and the time away from home and all this stuff, so. We actually already have the gear here, why don't we just kind of learn how to use it a little better? so that's where Cody was like, yeah, so he actually, in his closet, he actually made more of a vocal booth in his closet. To where we just go over to Cody's house and record vocals there, and then, I'm like, well, I know how to play guitar and what I've learned when I would go with Johnny for like, oh, do that take more, put your palm right here for the chug more, like, placements and all this stuff, or what's a good take, even though it sounded good. Like this take will be better, so like, and I know I'm not perfect at it, because I don't have a professional over my shoulder, [00:50:00] like picking out all the wrong moves, but I feel I've learned so much from being with Johnny that, for the most part, I have an ear for that kind of thing, so that I would just start tracking. the guitars at my house. Cause I'm, I'm already here, I already know the songs. It just, all of a sudden, it just made way more sense that we literally have the gear, so why don't we actually just use it? And then we'll send stems out to someone to mix and master, so then we used Will for a while. And uh, now we're working with someone, Sebastian, he's in Barcelona, Spain. Yeah. He just reached out on an email like, Hey, I like your stuff. all of a sudden it worked out and we love his mixing and it just, Yeah. Yeah. I think again this, this journey of like you invest, you put money into working with somebody that knows what they're doing so that your very first album sounds great. You know that you're already doing stuff at a professional level, and you can get up and running fast, and you can be building that fan base with good content, but eventually, In order to keep the wheel spinning, you have to [00:51:00] offload some of those investment places until you can at least, you know, get enough money coming back in. Now, you might get to a point where there is enough income coming in where you might say, Let's go work with another producer because you want to. And because maybe it goes faster or for whatever reason, work for you now, but now you can actually afford it because you're Yeah. Right. It's like we actually have profit to spend on that. Yeah. we're comfortable with taking the workload off of us because we've done it for so long to get us to that Yeah. Yeah. And so, you took all the things that you'd learned from working. In a studio with a producer that was doing well and knew what he was doing. You take those skills, you take them back home. You start learning, you get better at the skill on your own. And then you still said, well, we're not going to mix, we're not going to master. It's another skill that's going to take even longer to get. And maybe someday, you never know. And I also feel like sometimes you're too close Yes. own art that it's just like you need that other ear. when I work with clients that have done both, you know, they've recorded with me [00:52:00] and they are looking at doing some of their own recording. It's usually the number one thing I say, all right, just when you get to the mixing stage, take a swing at it, but don't be afraid to send it to me because that's where you're going to get the most frustrated. You're going to be staying, you know, up all night working on it on version number 50 and not finishing it. still not good. That's when you just need. And not necessarily me, but you know, you got to use somebody else, somebody that is, hasn't listened to it all day, every day and a professional. And part of mixing especially is that you just need to have a good enough setup that you can actually hear what's going on. And a lot of people's home studios aren't acoustically treated at all. So it's just not, you're just going to be fighting an perfect on your speakers, but it's not going to translate anywhere else. Yeah. Yeah. it's smart. It's again, Taking the things, it's like, what's the next logical step that we can do on our own with the least amount of investment? that's going to save us a lot of money over the long run to keep this thing moving. I love it. And then the other DIY thing that I know you guys have been doing is the [00:53:00] touring. And some of that, you said, has been not as optimal, but but it's a a lot of fun. And I'm sure there's a lot to be learned from that, too, in terms of when you gear up to do it again, you know, you gotta start somewhere. And now you know how to approach it better, if you are to go back out. and there's a lot more data at this Yeah. Yeah. We've put out multiple records since then, and those records have done better. And the previous ones at that time, so it's like, well, hopefully if we do it again, it'll be pretty decent, but Yeah. no, we had one DIY tour right before a show We're all sitting on the bus and Logan was like, I can't keep doing this, Man, this is my last tour. I'm done so I was like, Oh, but like, let's keep going, man. it's, it's, it's just part of the journey. I was kind of still hanging on to the traditional. because I love playing shows so much. But, that's where like, the dynamic of, you have to be able to work with each other. because if you're all on the same team, and you want the same things you have to hear each other. And if someone's like, that serious, where they're like, dude, I'm gonna have to quit. because like, I'm miserable. I can't be this broke in my [00:54:00] mid twenties, man So having like a really serious conversation and then going out and playing a show, but then that shows awesome. And so then it kind of re inspires like, that motivation of like, well maybe we should do this, but then the high of the show wears off and you're like 2 in the morning. pulling up to another Walmart parking lot it's like, okay no, actually this does kind of suck of suck. But yeah, so we've just decided that, yeah, no, we're not going to tour until it actually makes sense. because then you can actually do it for fun. I do agree, like, that is part of the process, You just get that experience under your belt, go out knowing you're going to be broke, but like, having as much fun as you can to just get an idea of what it actually means to do the process of waking up, and doing a show, and traveling and all that stuff. So it is great, but, yeah, when you look at it financially, especially now, like, Logan has a 2 year old, I have a 1, almost a 1 year old, page as a 1 year old, Like, we have daughters now, and families, and like, approaching 30, so it's like, like, that's what's so cool about the modern age, is we can decide what we want to do. We don't, we're not [00:55:00] forced to be on the road to make money doing music, like, in the old days. It's like, no. Just take Everything we've learned, if we just focus on the online, stay at home, we can have both. We can have a successful band and we can have a great home life because sacrificing home life to be on the road, to play for 10 people, like we're like, we could justify that torment for, you know, cause we were like 22, 23, But at this point in our lives, it was like, we just don't even want to do that. but yeah, so that's where we're at right now is just trying to. Keep doing our online thing until we get to a point where we have this sense like, well hey, Let's let's do another one and see how that goes. And if it is a little bit more successful, then maybe we'll do another one and another one. Right on. know, it's just You got to test the waters. because we want a tour again, Yeah, of course. Okay. So I would just hate if we didn't get to this topic, which let's talk about the online marketing stuff. I know you guys do Patreon YouTube memberships. Walk me through I mean outside of we post on social [00:56:00] media. We make content. Obviously, that's a part of it, right? You're making music videos. You're putting out music and you're posting specifically about the like the paid communities where there's extra access Where you really get a more deeper connection with the people that are really wanting to be there Walk me through that stuff what platforms work for you. What hasn't worked. I mean anything you want to cover is fine Yeah, so we, we'd recently just made the switch over to YouTube. 'cause we were using Patreon for years. But we're really bad. at promoting it because, I feel like that's probably my worst quality as For the position of like, c e o a villain of the Story. Businessman. is like, when it comes to actually, trying to get people to buy stuff. I'm probably not the best person. I'm not a good salesman, I guess. That's just me being self aware. So I was never really good at promoting the Patreon. But, we just got to the point where, I'm just so sick of the user interface for Patreon, like, it works for some people, but for people to go to another platform to then see, and make an [00:57:00] account on there, a lot of people don't even know what Patreon is, what is this, I got to give them my email, you know, all that stuff. And then get the content through there where YouTube, we already have a following on YouTube. So it's like you already have an account, you're probably more secure. with YouTube. so Yeah, we just made the switch to YouTube because it just makes a lot more sense for us specifically. But, the idea of, well, we can do a lot more, but since this is a business at the end of the day, it's like, well, how about any of this extra stuff, if we just make it a cheap little thing, but it adds up, because we had this thought like, out of all of our Spotify listeners, if 1% Of our Spotify listeners did a dollar a month everyone in this band could live on this band full time. That would be wild. I mean, it's not reasonable, but like, well, like, it's possible though. So we're like, yeah, you know, a couple bucks and, you know, you can hear the new songs like a week early. Because I, like, if you're like a dedicated fan, to any band or whatever, and you could like, hear the new song like a week early. Like, that's a cool thing to yeah, yeah. [00:58:00] I know that I looked at your Patreon too, and you guys give out demos, like old demos before the song's Yeah, they're super rough. you could get contact information and chat with Mhm. I mean, just making people feel special, like they're in your inner circle. Yeah. like literally, you already are like our biggest fans. So, if we can just... Build a even stronger relationship with the people that are supporting us the most like that's just cool because it's like now I actually Know your name and stuff like that to where that's cool because obviously, you know, you have A net of fans, but then, you know, you scale that down to your, like, Superfans, I guess, whatever. But it's way more personable, because now you can actually... Discuss and, I don't know, just share things more, and it becomes that community aspect of, yeah, you guys get the inside scoop, basically. You know what's going on well before anybody else knows what's going on, and you get these extra tidbits that we'll never share with the public, because, like, why would we want to, hey, public, here's our demo that sounds like, dirt, you know, it [00:59:00] sounds horrible, but as a super fan, you listen to it And you're like, oh, that's how that was supposed to go, but they changed it for the actual song. Like, that's cool. Like, I, yeah. me, I nerd out about that stuff, so. I'm like, I have to offer this to anyone that wants it, cuz like that'd be cool anyone that wants it, because so, yeah, it's, it's kind of the same thing, but it is free, because there's not like a paid thing I mean you can make private channels or whatever, but It's basically just like a villain of the story, like community hub. Where it's like, you know, we have all of our different channels, where, you know, if you just want to talk about your favorite bot songs or like anything about the band, you can go to here, or if you just want to talk new music in general, all these... to here, or if you just want And then we have like alerts and stuff, so like if we do a merch drop or a new song, we can post in there, then they all get personally notified merch drop or a new song, I'll post in there, but they all get personally... yeah, it's just... Well, could be into it and investing in one of the more premier Yeah, so I guess, [01:00:00] Yeah there's kind of like, if you want to think about like levels, because then it's like, so this is the casual fan, right? that'll only listen to like one or two songs, which is awesome. Yeah but then if there is someone that Is more interested, but they don't want to pay because I don't want to be like a paywall. Like if you want any remote access to like a band, you like, you have to pay, like, I don't want that. So it's like, we, discord is like that place where, Hey, I like this band a lot. I want to be part of the community. Well, That's the place to be. because to chilling hanging out having a good time And then there's like that next level where it's like if you want like the super secret sauce or something like that Like yeah Yeah, you want to feel like you're in the top tier of fans, like show that this is, I want to know everything about this band I'm committed, then, then you would go to Patreon at, or at this point YouTube memberships or Cool. Anything else that you guys are doing and, and relating to that sort of community building, fan building? are you still doing ads? No, I haven't done ads in a very long time, and I know the landscape has changed dramatically, So, I have to relearn everything when it [01:01:00] comes time to that. essentially you guys are making content. Putting it out to the community that exists and then letting that build Yeah, grow. pretty much just being like, kind of natural. D i y at this point, I mean, we are signed, so like their marketing team I'm sure are running ads and doing stuff. As far as like what we're doing, like, we're not specifically doing that. like, we're just really focused on writing 'cause we're working on another album. I mean it's written, but I just gotta record this month still. So, just really focused on it. Okay. You Mm-hmm. Um, it's going good. it's going good. yeah, we were just approached, When we were independent, and we got like approved for like a Spotify playlisting, like the biggest metal playlist, at the time the head. Director or whatever of rock and Metal that divisions like shut down. Basically, no one really runs it anymore. But at the time, his name is renowned. He reached out to [01:02:00] us personally and was like, I love you guys. And he's like, so I, I placed you in, in this playlist where we're like, Whoa. Okay. That's awesome. And then, he was like, do you have a label, are you looking? We're like, not really, but like, if the right offer comes. along And then, so he had Out of Line reach out, cause they know each other. and we had multiple calls with them, because we're like, we're really sketchy with labels, you know. it's Like, we're doing our own thing, and it's fine. but then it kind of came down to just the way the deal is structured. It felt very fair. Because they can't really screw us and we can't really screw them. It feels as fair as you can get with a label. Because you're going to have to give up some stuff for leverage. but then we kind of push back on other things. it's tricky because they're in Germany. so they are an entire time zone like difference than we are. but yeah, just through conversations. it was, It felt very fair. it felt like they were actually interested you could almost say we sold out. mean, it's not like crazy money, but like, they actually had an offer. Whereas before, [01:03:00] we had already paid for everything and there was no reimbursement, they just took everything. You know, they paid for a couple things, but it wasn't anything crazy. So they actually like, had an offer that we could take that money to spend on recording. And everything so then the band didn't have to. And we're just like, you know, it's not a long deal. So let's just see how it goes. we like them. They seem really nice after, you know, multiple conversations. and the deal just felt fine. So then it's like, so we don't need to personally invest. I mean, The band didn't need to invest in an album. They invested in it. So it felt kind of validating. in a way. and the album That we did with them has been our most successful album so far. So That's awesome. it is 50 50, so it's just like taking half again. yeah, we're just kind of seeing how this next one goes. because it was a two album thing. and then if it's still going great. Awesome. if we're ready to go back DIY, we're ready to go back DIY. because That was one thing we wanted to make clear, It's like, we are very DIY. So like, even though I know you have in house resources, it's like, [01:04:00] we kind of want to just do it our way. so that's kind of where we're at. cause the, the ideas that we have for like music videos or something are so grand scale, like just massive. I'm like, we would need like a hundred thousand dollars to do this. That's not going to happen. and we were sick of playing in the middle, Cause that's kind of where everyone is. is like, well everyone can make their, like, our first music video, the 4, 001 at the time. That was kind of rare because no one would invest the budget into that. But now, every band has a really nice looking music video with a cinema camera that's like four or five grand. But then it's like. Well, now it's not special anymore because everyone can make their video look good. So that's kind of tying it back to the previous part, like what we need to do videos ourselves is like, does the Quality really matter anymore? Because you kind of have to shift with the landscape because if quality was something that was missing. That's an opportunity. Like If we invest in quality, we're going to stand out. But now if everyone has quality, what can we do that's going to stand out? that's so our quality may not be as good because I have my camera. But [01:05:00] like, the storyboarding, like, the stuff that we storyboarding, add to the story or the music video itself. Because all of our biggest videos have been ones that we've done ourselves. So I'm like, I think that's interesting. All of the ones that we spent six grand on or anything have like Not profited at all. And I'm just like maybe we should just like, keep just it's cheaper and they do better because I think I don't know. Maybe something just translates more. I don't know. I don't know what Because it's cheaper and they do better Because I I don't know, Maybe something just translates more. And if you can do that, then quality becomes less important. And we're at a spot now where quality is a little subjective too, like. People love stuff that sounds lo fi or, you know, you know, because we just have all those options. Everything's available. Yeah. Dude, thank you so much for doing This podcast is great. [01:06:00] The conversation keep going for like I know. I, I, I, I do too. we'll have to have you back on maybe after the next record or something and, and see how things are at that point. But, we'll wrap things up. One thing that I've been trying to do a little bit with guests is, is kind of, if you had to. Summarize or, you know, if you want to leave a lasting bit of advice or something, but like what have been your biggest secrets that have made the band successful, you know, whether that's a lesson that you've learned or just, an approach to something that you're like, Hmm, there's certain secrets that I think you gave out today that I would pick, but I'm kind of curious, what do you think has been your secret to the success that you've had so far? Yeah. you've had so far? Hmm. I don't know if it's the best answer, but just, it's coming off the top of my head is just, I know. in my soul, my heart, whatever, that this is just, this is me. This is what I want to do. It's what I've always wanted to do. And I know not everyone has that, but like, if music is like the ultimate passion, it's, it's what really brings you, I'm alive that like, just [01:07:00] that I don't know how else to describe it, but for me. I just, I know this is what I want to do, so it's I think it comes down to just the work ethic of just I will literally do anything to make this work. Within standards, you know, I'm not going to like Stab someone in the back just to get ahead because that's how the music industry is. And I've learned that too. people of I do not like the music industry as far as people go But, I will just work my tail off to make it happen, and even when it was eight hour days at a job, I could not stand and was exhausted and coming home and putting more hours and staying up really late just working on band stuff and making the little graphics for a Facebook post at the time we get five likes, you know what I mean? It's just, yeah, that took me 20 minutes to make this little image promoting something. but No one saw it, but it's just it's part of the branding, it's part of the process, and just over time, and knowing that, especially if you're just getting started out, like this could [01:08:00] probably take 10 years before Clicking and I feel like you just got to be honest with yourself, like if this is really what you want, then I feel like you know that because it's like, it's an investment, mentally, physically, financially, you're going to have to put everything into it, so it's just, always falling back on, yeah, this is my passion. So it's like, even through the hardest, and like, the million times we thought about breaking up, like, oh, I'm just, gonna quit, like, it was so stressful, but just, feeling out those emotions, and then coming back the next day like, I'm showing up again, because this is my this is the reason I'm here, it's what I want to do with my life, and, yeah, I just can't, can't quit. Even though, there's no shame in, I'll add that, there's no shame in quitting, because sometimes things change, and circumstances change, passions change. So, I don't want to leave that impression, like, anybody that's quit music is like a loser, like, not at all, not at all. That's just for me. This is the reason I'm here. This is what don't want [01:09:00] to learn more about the band? Are you most active Facebook, which Isn't really the most relevant for online social media content for a band these days, but I feel like that's where our biggest following is is on Facebook. but I mean, we post pretty much the same thing on Twitter. X now. Sorry. or Instagram. Yeah, I guess YouTube. Just all the socials really. I think they're actually vs. Band Mn. For Minnesota or botsbandofficial. Yeah. Or vs. Band official. 'cause either villain story at the time was taken, or it was too long for Twitter I think. So we had to switch it. But yeah. Mm-hmm. I appreciate And Absolutely. This was awesome. Meet you man. Loved hanging out. This was cool.