SETH MUNSON: Switching from Metal to Pop, the truth about free work, and producing Christina Grimmie

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Golden Age Premier high quality vintage style products at an affordable price point. To find out more, go to golden age premiere.com. This episode is also brought to you by Fuse Audio Labs, uncompromising of classic and rare studio processors in revolutionary plugin form. For more info, go to Fuse Audio Rams. And now your host, Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:31):

Welcome to the URM podcast. I am Eyal Levi and I just want to tell you that this show is brought to you by URM Academy, the world's best education for rock and metal producers. Every month on Nail the Mix, we bring you one of the world's best producers to mix a song from scratch, from artists like Th Mac, God Shuga, periphery the Day to Remember. Bring me the horizon, eth many, many more, and we give you the raw multitrack so you can mix along. You also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of bite-sized mixing tutorials and Portfolio Builder, which are pro quality multi-tracks that are cleared for use in your portfolio. You can find out [email protected]. Today's guest is an old friend of URM and someone who is a lot more inspiring than I even knew. His story is one of insane adversity and those of you who think you've got it hard and the world is stacked against you, and there's a mountain to climb to get to where you want to get in your career. This episode's for you, hopefully it'll give you a little inspiration on today, is Mr. Seth Munson, who is a highly regarded producer, instrumentalist, mixer, and mastering engineer out of Colorado Springs. Formerly La Seth has worked with numerous acts such as Drake Bell, Seon Alters, which is a band that he plays the guitar in leaders, and of course, the late Christina Grimmy. I now give you Seth Munson.

(00:02:00):

Seth Munson. Welcome to the URM Podcast. Jesus Craig. Oh yes, this is so good. What's this music called? Intro. Intro Music Intro. Yeah. Perfect. It's called Intro Outro. Fuck yeah. Everything.

Speaker 3 (00:02:22):

I hope this is actually in the Zen fucking castor thing.

Speaker 2 (00:02:26):

It is. It records,

Speaker 3 (00:02:27):

Yes. Perfect.

Speaker 2 (00:02:28):

I really, really hope that as you go on through life, you can only get an intro as cool as that one.

Speaker 3 (00:02:37):

That's probably the most epic control ever get

Speaker 2 (00:02:40):

Ever. That was really great. God damn. I feel like I've been shortchanging the podcast all these years by not using

Speaker 3 (00:02:48):

That. I would agree. That's dope. Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:02:58):

Yeah, and when the drumbeat comes in, it's just like just Right. It's perfect. Yeah, I know. Well, you know what else is perfect? You're perfect. Welcome to the podcast, Seth Munson. Welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:03:10):

Awesome. Thanks. Stoked.

Speaker 2 (00:03:11):

I've kind of known you and not known you and known you and not known you for a long time, ever since we were both admins of this group. That doesn't exist. I always thought you were cool, and I remember talking to you back way back in 2012 and 13, and you were admining this group and you recorded rock and metal and you were telling me that you were done with rock and metal and you were going to work your way into pop. Whatever it took you were going to make it happen and you did. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:03:43):

Congratulations.

Speaker 2 (00:03:44):

Pretty much.

Speaker 3 (00:03:45):

Thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:03:46):

Well, I mean, it's been a while, right? So it's not like a new thing anymore, but I just want to remind you that I remember talking to you really, really late at night when you were telling me how

Speaker 3 (00:03:57):

Much I hated

Speaker 2 (00:03:58):

It. Yeah, how much you hated it, and how you felt like your life was going nowhere recording rocket metal, and you had to worry about your family. You had to figure out a way to make it happen in pop or you would know what to do with yourself.

Speaker 3 (00:04:12):

It wasn't only that though. I was like, even when I wasn't working or touring, I was only listening to pop and dance records, so it was like at that point I wasn't even, sorry, sorry, sorry. No,

Speaker 2 (00:04:28):

That's perfect. I don't even remember what

Speaker 3 (00:04:30):

I was saying.

Speaker 2 (00:04:31):

You were talking about how even when you were touring you

Speaker 3 (00:04:35):

Oh yeah. On my drive shifts, I only listened to Pop and Dan stuff. I was just getting burned out on.

Speaker 2 (00:04:41):

What is it about Metal that burned you out?

Speaker 3 (00:04:43):

I'm not sure. I think it was touring it for however many months out of the year, hearing that every day for four hours a night and then coming home to work on the same exact stuff. This is going to be

Speaker 2 (00:04:57):

Epic the whole time. It's just going to be dramatic. Okay, sorry. Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry. So that actually used to happen to me as well. You'd go on tour playing metal, get home and record metal, and then hang out with people who listen to Metal is just

Speaker 3 (00:05:16):

Too

Speaker 2 (00:05:17):

Much for me,

Speaker 3 (00:05:18):

And I started hating the songs. Well, it's weird. Then I went to pop, which is overly formulated, but I feel like Metal and Rock even was just at that point, it was more just who can write the most breakdowns and fit 'em into a song type shit. And I was like, man, this is so boring. I've heard it. I get it.

Speaker 2 (00:05:36):

Okay. But I know lots of people who say they want to go into other genres and they never really do. They stay in the genre that they know the best be it metal and then they dip their toe in pop. They never get that good at it, so their pop offerings are real crappy and then they never really get clients in it, and I've just seen that whole, I'm going to try another genre thing, fail a lot. So I'm wondering why did it not fail for you? First of all, how long did it take, but if you had to simplify it to a couple ideas, let's talk about why it didn't fail for you. Why did it work out? Because actually it's not that common.

Speaker 3 (00:06:18):

I guess it was aligning myself with people that were already doing it. That and how long it took was probably the full transition was three or four years

Speaker 2 (00:06:26):

Actually. So it's not like you just went to LA and showed up and they were like, play ball.

Speaker 3 (00:06:38):

Nope. Nope. That's definitely definitely not how it went. No, actually it took me a while even to get out to la what it was was just doing a lot of free shit for people lot.

Speaker 2 (00:06:47):

And you were living in Denver, right?

Speaker 3 (00:06:48):

Colorado Springs, so about, yeah, like an hour south of Denver.

Speaker 2 (00:06:51):

You're saying that you did free shit for people even when you were already making a living at the heavier stuff. Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:06:59):

Oh, I, it didn't matter if I was making a living doing heavier stuff, they didn't care. They wanted to know if I could do pop, so they're like, why are we going to pay you when we have Manny or SE on speed dial? I'm like, well, send me something over and I'll show you what I could do. Pretty much. That's pretty much

Speaker 2 (00:07:14):

How I see. That's why it really, really bugs me. I don't know. Sometimes you see these recording sites that try to give people business advice and they talk about always charge and you know what? I agree that you shouldn't let yourself be taken advantage of ever, but that's giving people really bad advice. Hundred percent to always charge. There's plenty of times in your life in music where you're going to have to do freebies. I remember once in 2013 I got asked to do a freebie for Zach Wilde for some TV thing, and I had already been making really decent money at this for years. At that point, I didn't have to do free work. I did, I did it for free for him with a Smile. It was for some ESPN thing because I know that Zach Wilde has money first of all, but that wasn't the point. The point was you're getting tested.

Speaker 3 (00:08:05):

Exactly,

Speaker 2 (00:08:06):

And you're not worth paying for if you have to be tested and you can either go with it or not.

Speaker 3 (00:08:11):

Exactly. I see those too all the time, and I'm like the websites that are always charge and I'm like, dude, that would never work. In the songwriting world specifically, there's for songwriters, there's no upfront fee, almost never, and it's always backend, but it's like how are they going to charge when that's uncommon when a label or a publisher can go to 15,000 different writers that are just going to write the song and then take backend.

Speaker 2 (00:08:35):

Not going to happen. They're not going to go to them.

Speaker 3 (00:08:38):

It's not going to happen. That's exactly right.

Speaker 2 (00:08:40):

Okay, so you did a bunch of free work. How did you get yourself in the space to even get the opportunity to do the free work? I mean, I know from my example, just getting asked to do something for Zach Wilde, it's not like just anybody's going to get that opportunity. That came to me through contacts that I was working very, very closely with. Who knew? I had just done the creative live programming class for the Creative Live Easy Drummer programming class, and so these people knew that I could program drums that needed drum programming, and that's why they asked. They didn't just find some engineer. They didn't know exactly. So just to get to the point where the opportunity comes your way, you've got to be in the right place in time, but how did you get to the right place in time with the pop stuff?

Speaker 3 (00:09:28):

I was on tour and I was in San Francisco and this person came out to one of my shows and they asked me just how things going and I probably was just like, dude, I'm bummed and I'm burned out on metal music and I'm trying to get into pop stuff. And he was like, whoa, I'm doing pop stuff. And I was like, dude, let me mix something for you. I'll do it. I don't care. I just wanted to experience and to get my hands on something that's different than metal. That's actually what happened. I was on tour and then yeah, I mixed it. He went on to show someone, and that person didn't really care for the song, but he was like, who mixed this? This is awesome. Get me in contact with them. And that's basically where it all started.

Speaker 2 (00:10:04):

Can you share who that person was? That

Speaker 3 (00:10:06):

Was Steven Reza and at the time he was working with, he was doing a lot of stuff with this production company called the Stereotypes Shit, dude, they just won however many Grammys they did. That whole new Bruno Mars record, the most recent one that just came out, they're killing it. And so he was involved in that group. He was doing a lot of stuff for Interscope and he was like, I only focus on production and songwriting. I'm terrible at mixing and I need someone to come on and mix everything for me. And so that was a lot of free stuff right there. Me just going, sure, send it to me. So I'm doing all this free work while at the same time I'm still working on metal to pay my bills because that was the only way that I was paying my bills was working on metal. So I just started working double in overtime on everything and I was doing all this free stuff. I wanted to get into what I actually wanted to be doing.

Speaker 2 (00:10:51):

At what point did you transition into getting paid for it?

Speaker 3 (00:10:55):

So when Steven would land a production and then he would write stuff for free for pitch and then he would pitch it.

Speaker 2 (00:11:05):

Okay, so he needed you to mix

Speaker 3 (00:11:08):

These

Speaker 2 (00:11:09):

Pitches? Yes. So okay, this all makes sense now. For a second there I was like, we just got done saying you should mix for free, but this guy who is up there in the industry and writing hits is already likes your stuff and isn't paying you, Seth, what's going on? It's because we need to talk about not getting taken advantage of. It's really important. Dramatic. So I get it. So he was doing the pitches for free,

Speaker 3 (00:11:37):

So

Speaker 2 (00:11:38):

He needed someone who would mix them for free as well, and then hopefully you would both get a backend. Got it.

Speaker 3 (00:11:44):

Exactly. So he would cut me in on a production budget when a song would cut and land.

Speaker 2 (00:11:49):

Okay, awesome. And how often would that happen?

Speaker 3 (00:11:51):

I have no idea. Sometimes it was

Speaker 2 (00:11:53):

Never just,

Speaker 3 (00:11:54):

I mean, yeah, no, sometimes it is so weird. There would be sometimes maybe five 10 in a month and then maybe three to 4, 5, 6 months where there was nothing that's just had the name of the game. That's how it goes.

Speaker 2 (00:12:06):

Okay. Did you know that that's how it would go?

Speaker 3 (00:12:08):

Hell no. I had no idea. I had no clue, but I mean, who would've told me is how I feel. I didn't really have a mentor in that sense other than Steven. That's why it also took so many years for me to fully transition from rock and metal to pop was just because I had to keep paying bills, so I had to keep taking on metal and rock projects until the pop stuff was sustainable.

Speaker 2 (00:12:31):

Okay, I understand. At what point did you end up in la?

Speaker 3 (00:12:35):

It was when Steven was signing with Warner Chapel. He was basically like, Hey, this is the guy that I do everything with. You should look into him getting him a deal too. And the first thing they said is, is he in la? And Steven's like, no. And they said, then we don't care. And I was like, shit. Literally that day when he told me that, I made some phone calls and tried to figure it out how I could get out there and how to make it work. I just had to do what I needed to do and I did make it work. I went out there probably within the month I was out in la.

Speaker 2 (00:13:04):

Okay, so you're married and have one or two kids?

Speaker 3 (00:13:08):

Two kids, yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:13:09):

Okay, so they stayed behind, right?

Speaker 3 (00:13:12):

Yeah, and that was hard. I was coming home every other weekend or so. It varied depending on what projects I had going on.

Speaker 2 (00:13:18):

I guess since you had already toured, maybe you were used to the separation already? Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:13:22):

A bit and they were as well. Okay,

Speaker 2 (00:13:24):

Cool. So man, it must be great to have a supportive family unit.

Speaker 3 (00:13:29):

Oh, definitely. Yeah. There is no way I could do it without my wife. Oh, here, it's here. It's,

Speaker 2 (00:13:38):

Sorry, I had to walk you into that one. That's perfect. That was perfect timing. Yeah, I mean, I didn't have a choice. I had to walk you into that one. So you go to LA and is it suddenly like a bunch of work or was it slow going?

Speaker 3 (00:13:53):

Actually it was suddenly a bunch of work, but it was all, it was all pitch work, all of it, which sucked and it was really bad. We were actually working on probably 20 to 30 records a month. All for free, all for pitch in hopes that they landed.

Speaker 2 (00:14:07):

How did you pay for it?

Speaker 3 (00:14:09):

Still doing metal, still doing rock mixes. I was just working remotely at that point, and I'd also schedule stuff to fly back to Colorado and if someone wanted a full production, I would take two weeks off of la, fly to Colorado, work on it and fly back. It was

Speaker 2 (00:14:23):

Rough. Yeah, I remember, man, I remember talking to you through all this time, you did this kind of parallel to when I quit production to start URM and went from making a lot of money to zero very quickly. I remember one of the first months after launching the podcast, my income was like $1,300.

Speaker 3 (00:14:47):

Yeah, I mean you're starting over completely brutal.

Speaker 2 (00:14:50):

I remember feeling a kinship with you over that. How long did it take until you got that first sign of light, I guess, or that first light at the end of the tunnel or hit or situational change where you knew it was going to be okay? Has it even happened yet? I

Speaker 3 (00:15:06):

Don't know. That's a tough one for me. I mean definitely, but there's always doubts. I mean, there's still even months where I'm three months of people not paying invoices more so labels, they're the worst. There's times where it's just like, oh my God is, I mean, I always know that it's going to come back around and it always does because I've been doing this forever. So I have faith that it's all working out, but man, I don't think there's ever a time where it's just straight, oh yeah, everything's perfect, everything's fine. Even back then, I don't think there was ever moments of that. I just kept pushing and just kept going regardless of how I was feeling.

Speaker 2 (00:15:39):

Okay. So you're doing a bunch of pitch work out in la going back and forth between two cities, booking rock and metal stuff to pay the bills. That sounds pretty intense. A lot of travel.

Speaker 3 (00:15:52):

Too much travel. It feels like I was probably doing five to 10,000 miles a month, which for some people isn't crazy, but for a producer that just is trying to transition into pop, yeah, it's kind of nuts.

Speaker 2 (00:16:03):

Were you driving or flying?

Speaker 3 (00:16:06):

Hell no, I won't do that drive.

Speaker 2 (00:16:07):

So did you get status? You must have?

Speaker 3 (00:16:09):

Yeah, I definitely did.

Speaker 2 (00:16:11):

That helps a little bit. So as far as the pop work goes, did you have to develop a whole new set of skills in order to really be able to pull that off? Maybe

Speaker 3 (00:16:20):

Not skills. I think it was a mindset and it was more of reprioritizing what should be prioritized in a mix. Like rock,

Speaker 2 (00:16:28):

Like vocals.

Speaker 3 (00:16:29):

Exactly. Rock guys love snare or kick or guitars. In pop world, you should be able to mute everything, but the vocal and everyone will still be happy. Pretty much that's how it feels. So yeah, it was relearning what people are wanting and what they're expecting. I knew what rock and metal guys were wanting, but I needed to learn what pop people were expecting and what they want.

Speaker 2 (00:16:50):

Did you have to retrain your instincts

Speaker 3 (00:16:53):

Maybe? I feel like since I, for so long I wanted to transition into pop. I do feel like my rock and metal mixes were already starting to go in a pop direction, starting to, my rock and metal mixes were influenced by pop mixes, and so I would mix vocals a bit louder. I would do things that were probably unorthodox in the rock and metal world. I don't feel like there was any point where I straight was like, okay, now I'm going to do everything differently. It was all fluid in a way.

Speaker 2 (00:17:20):

Got it. Well, all right. Since we're talking about vocal production and in a pop context and we both agree that it's generally the most important element of the mix, what are you doing differently in a pop context to bring the vocals to life?

Speaker 3 (00:17:34):

Everything is performance, but if I'm only mixing and I don't have control over performance, it's,

Speaker 2 (00:17:39):

Hold on, go back to everything is performance. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 3 (00:17:43):

I mean, if you're going to sing a lifeless record, it doesn't matter how well I'm going to mix it, it's going to be lifeless regardless. I can make it sound incredible, but if there's no emotion and nothing pulling the audience into listening to it, it doesn't matter how good it sounds in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:17:58):

But how is that different than a rock record? I mean a rock record?

Speaker 3 (00:18:02):

It's not. It's, I'm saying it all starts with a performance for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:18:05):

Isn't it funny that people think that pop vocals are all glued together programmed?

Speaker 3 (00:18:11):

Oh yeah. It's hilarious. It's super funny. I don't get it.

Speaker 2 (00:18:15):

Talk about a typical vocal production in a pop context. What goes into it? How much time are you guys spending on it? Are you guys going for full takes or are you going word by word? What do you mean?

Speaker 3 (00:18:29):

Well, a lot of it starts with writing because usually vocals are tracked in the writing session, at least in my experience. I'm sure there's cases where it's not, or say if an artist is picking up a song for pitch, obviously that's going to be a bit different, but typically it starts with writing. We all get the right flow and the right everything from the writing, and then from there we start demoing it out and then they're practicing and changing things up throughout the demo stage, and then we track a final vocal, and then when it comes to the final vocal, we're doing line by line, verse by verse type stuff, and we probably have the vocalist track 20, 30 times and then we comp through it. Personally, I do it all live. I want them to be right there with me making the decisions with me, even tuning and stuff right there before we move on. That way later on when they're listening to the record at home, they're like, oh, wait, this vocal doesn't sound right. I never get that anymore because we did it all together. We picked everything together. There's no surprises down the road

Speaker 2 (00:19:24):

20 or 30 times. That makes sense. How do you keep them from expiring?

Speaker 3 (00:19:29):

Just ask them, talk to 'em and see how's your throat feeling? I'm starting to hear that you're a little hoarse and they go, oh yeah, I'm starting to feel it. Or they say, oh, I'm trying to do that. I'm just trying something a little bit different. It's just communicating with them and seeing where they're at, how they're feeling. I mean, there's plenty of times I'll call a session early. I mean, they could only be there for an hour and I'll call it early just because I could tell they're not feeling it or their voice is going out already. It's not worth it to push 'em the extra little bit and then potentially put 'em out for however many weeks. I'd rather them go home, rest up, come back in two days and let's nail it out.

Speaker 2 (00:20:02):

And I think it should be mentioned that you mainly are doing singles with these people, right?

Speaker 3 (00:20:07):

Yeah, I would say so for the most part. I mean, usually they come back though and they want more.

Speaker 2 (00:20:12):

I guess what I'm getting at is that when you're doing 20 or 30 times or more, you're not like you're doing 13 songs like that.

Speaker 3 (00:20:19):

Yeah. This is all for a single song. We're focusing on one song at a time if there's multiple, but it's usually a single.

Speaker 2 (00:20:25):

Okay. But basically you're getting that vocal performance wise to be just the ever loving shit basically. Oh

Speaker 3 (00:20:33):

Yeah. I'll comp the hell out of vocals just to get it. So as close as we can to being the final.

Speaker 2 (00:20:39):

At what point does fixing it up come in?

Speaker 3 (00:20:42):

I do it mid comp, and I'll ask, since the vocalist is typically right there beside me, I'll ask them, Hey, I really love the performance. Is it cool if I tune this part and clean it up? 99% of the time, they're like, please tune everything. So I usually comp, so we don't need to tune. If I need to tune something, they're almost always perfectly fine with it.

Speaker 2 (00:21:01):

I have never met a pro who wasn't okay with it. The only people I ever meet who are not okay with it are amateurs who have pride issues. It's the same with the drum editing thing. All the super pro drummers that happen to also be fucking amazing are generally cool with whatever you got to do.

Speaker 3 (00:21:19):

I mean, even guitarists are down to do the note by note stuff. Top dudes, they don't give a shit. They know they can play it. It's about getting the right capturing of a recording so they can release it. They know they can play it live. I know they can play it live, but let's make sure it's the cleanest it can be.

Speaker 2 (00:21:34):

If that's the goal, if the goal is cleanest, if we're talking to Kurt Ballou production, it might have a different goal, but

Speaker 3 (00:21:40):

They're not going to Kurt Ballou for a clean ass, fucking super pristine everything perfect record. They're going for him to be this really raw emotional album that's pure and whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 2 (00:21:52):

Exactly. I think that the best times I've ever had in the studio, regardless of what I've working on, has been when me and the musicians are on the same page about what the job is, what our goal is, and that we'll do anything it takes to get there. So there's no like, oh, you going to try that? Fuck that. It's not real.

Speaker 3 (00:22:14):

Well, dude, I've vet out any artist that hits me up. I vet them out. I take several meetings, phone conferences, whatever I need to because I want to decide is this something that I want to work on? It goes both ways. It's them feeling me out. Hey, is this the right guy for my project? And me going, Hey, is this going to be worth my time? Is this something I'm going to be excited about?

Speaker 2 (00:22:33):

That's a very fortunate position to be in. Congratulations for getting to that point in your career. One of the terms I hate most that people use is Must be nice. I fucking hate it when I hear people say that because it's passive aggressive and lined with envy and makes me hate somebody when they say that. So I want to make sure that you understand that I'm giving you sincere congratulations and I want to discuss this a little bit, but I don't want it at all for you to think that I must be nice in you at all, but it really must be nice to finally be at a point in your career where you can interview who's going to come in and make sure that it's good for you.

Speaker 3 (00:23:19):

No, definitely. And it's taken a lot of time to get to this point. It's not something that you can just start off doing. That's for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:23:26):

That's another thing that those business gurus tell you to do that is asking people to commit suicide basically, because they'll tell you, you should choose your clients fire the wrong kind of clients because you'll do better work working with the right kind of clients. And that's true. That's absolutely true. But you had to get to the point where you're able to, you can't do that if you do that at the wrong point in your career, the only person you're firing is your future.

Speaker 3 (00:23:53):

I mean, you still have bills to pay, so if you're firing everyone off left and right, your bills aren't getting paid. If you're turning every project down just because you don't like it, you're not paying your bills. You still have to be reasonable with it. I mean, there's probably a handful of projects I'll still take on if I don't like it, but it's more so their rate or what their budget is is good enough for me to take it on and put effort into it.

Speaker 2 (00:24:15):

Well, you're still vetting it, right? And the vetting process, definitely. I'm sure there's multiple criteria in there to where there's in a video game where a character has different stats and you max certain out at the expense of others, but so maybe the music stat goes down a bunch, but the budget stat is real high. It can balance out.

Speaker 3 (00:24:40):

Exactly. I mean, I much more want to work with cool people than the most absolute talented person ever in the world, and it's because I've done that. I've worked with insane singers, but they're like assholes, it's not fun. I say this every now and then. It's like, if I want to be miserable working, I'll go get a fucking desk job. Why am I producing? I don't want to be miserable while I work. So I vet everyone out and I go, yeah, this seems like it's going to be a good fun experience. I'm interested into this. Not, well, this seems like it's going to be shit, but oh, well, I'll do it anyway. I would rather work with someone cool than the best singer ever.

Speaker 2 (00:25:16):

One of my old partners used to call it the stress to money ratio.

Speaker 3 (00:25:21):

Bingo.

Speaker 2 (00:25:22):

Sometimes there's not enough money in the project to warrant the stress that that person is going to cause, and that's where you ask for a ton of money. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:25:31):

The fuck off rate

Speaker 2 (00:25:33):

You have ask for enough. Yeah. You have to ask for enough money to make the stress to money ratio work out for you.

Speaker 3 (00:25:40):

Exactly right. I agree.

Speaker 2 (00:25:41):

But you also have to be at a point in your career where you can do that.

Speaker 3 (00:25:44):

I've done it. I'll admit it. I've done it. Definitely.

Speaker 2 (00:25:46):

It's worked out.

Speaker 3 (00:25:47):

Oh, for sure. And usually throughout the process I can kind of coach them in a way, and all the things that were red flags to me, I can usually get through them with the artists and explain why they're red flags, why I was hesitant on taking on the project in the first place, why I didn't want to. And usually they're repeat artists and they want to come back and those next times they're getting the normal rate. They think they're getting a hookup and it's all good, and I don't have those problems with them because they're cool and we've worked together and I've explained how not to be a shitty person.

Speaker 2 (00:26:18):

What's really funny, I feel comfortable repeating this because Machine and Chris Adler talked about this openly on the podcast machine was saying that he didn't want to go back to work with Lama God on, I believe the record Sacrament was their second record together, which is the one that we did a song off of on Nail the Mix, which went gold. They have two gold records together. He didn't want to do that one because they were so hard to work with. We talked about it at length. Actually, a really funny enlightening episode. It is just super entertaining too because they were just so open about the fights and the brutality and how much they didn't get along, and Lama God didn't want him back, but at some point they realized that something about that guy and them, something about their chemistry sets the world on fire, and so they convinced him to come back, but he really didn't want to. They figured out a way to make it work. I think it's interesting you say that some of these are repeat clients that you don't want to go back to because of all the red flags. Somehow you figure it out.

Speaker 3 (00:27:21):

Yeah, I mean, not always, and I didn't say clients by the way. I don't ever say clients. They're artists.

Speaker 2 (00:27:26):

No, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 (00:27:28):

No, it's a pet peeve of mine.

Speaker 2 (00:27:30):

You don't like the word clients?

Speaker 3 (00:27:32):

Yeah, it irks me. So I mean,

Speaker 2 (00:27:35):

Here we go. Not a serious question. Okay. We'll call them artists for you.

Speaker 3 (00:27:42):

No, I mean I don't mind explaining. Yeah, perfect. I'll explain over the music. No, it's more clients feels very like we're transferring funds from your pocket to mine, and it doesn't sound like it's not as invested. I don't see it as much of a creative investment. More so just a financial one.

Speaker 2 (00:28:06):

Okay, fair enough. I mean, hey, if that's what you associate it with, then you shouldn't call them clients. It

Speaker 3 (00:28:12):

All comes back to me vetting 'em out. The people that take on fuck off rates, those are clients. I don't really want to be on the project, but I'm going to because it is smart for me to take it on financially for my family. My kids can eat that kind of shit. That's a client. That's the whole point of me vetting 'em out is going, do I want to work with this artist or not? And so it's more so the creative side. I view myself more of a creative than a business person, which is terrible when it comes to business in the business mindset, but I don't know. It's working out.

Speaker 2 (00:28:41):

Business and art don't live well together, and I can tell you as someone who's done both that I used to think that that was bullshit that the business people just said. I will also used to think that artists who hated business or just there's something wrong with them. No, I'm now convinced business and art, they can't exist in the same space.

Speaker 3 (00:29:01):

Don't, I mean, that's partly why we get managers and shit, right?

Speaker 2 (00:29:05):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:29:05):

I mean, they take on that shit. They handle the icky money stuff. I just be creative and do my thing

Speaker 2 (00:29:11):

Also because there's the priorities of if you're going pure art are going to be different than the business bottom line priorities. And you've always got to find a balance. You have to find a balance because you do need to eat and you do need to sell a number of records enough to where you can be in business. But

Speaker 3 (00:29:31):

Yeah, the overhead's covered and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (00:29:33):

If you were to go pure in either direction, you might have conflicts of interest. You might just have conflicts of interest. Interest definitely. But you don't want an artist to be any less than themselves, and you don't want a business person to get involved in something that he or she doesn't know. The first thing about, nothing's worse than a business person who thinks they're a writer when they're not. Boom,

Speaker 3 (00:29:58):

There it

Speaker 2 (00:29:59):

Is.

Speaker 3 (00:30:00):

First thing that came to mind right there, you're speaking about every publisher and every label I've worked with, they're thinking directly of the business side of things and telling you to make changes based on what they think business wise would be the best thing. And as a creative, you're like, yeah, but that's not what we're doing here. That's not what we're going for. And it's just like this conflict that's all label revisions are just conflict of interest between business and creative,

Speaker 2 (00:30:27):

But there's typically a good balance that's hard fought often, but there is balance in the end that I think that in order to have a successful offering for the world, I don't know how to say it because I don't mean that every situation has to be a compromise.

Speaker 3 (00:30:43):

No, there's compromises from both sides though.

Speaker 2 (00:30:45):

Exactly. There have to be compromises from both sides and Jude sometimes there are cases where you can go pure art and commerce will follow.

Speaker 3 (00:30:54):

Well, the trendsetters.

Speaker 2 (00:30:56):

Yeah, and that's a beautiful thing. You remember the band tool?

Speaker 3 (00:30:59):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:31:00):

I'm not really a fan, never have been, but I've always had a lot of respect for the fact that they could do what they did on a major label and get that big. It's kind of amazing or

Speaker 3 (00:31:12):

Oh yeah. It was always left to field type stuff. It was always way out there and it fucking worked.

Speaker 2 (00:31:18):

Yeah, pure art. Even a band like Muse who have singles still, they fall much closer to that pure art level or pure art category, but somehow commerce worked out and there's a strong business side. I admire the shit out of that. I love it when that happens,

Speaker 3 (00:31:35):

Man. That's probably mainly the type of stuff I listen to. It's just the stuff that isn't, at least today in 2018, I'm probably listening to more stuff that's just purely art and they don't really care about the numbers and all that stuff, and it works out in that way because they are the only people doing this weird thing. Like Bjork for example, man, her stuff's so far out there and she's been doing it for a billion years and it's amazing. She's found her thing and people love her for that, which is awesome. She's not always chasing the next trend or whatnot. She's just like, no, I'm doing my thing over here.

Speaker 2 (00:32:07):

It's beautiful though because commerce did follow. She's rich as fuck.

Speaker 3 (00:32:11):

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (00:32:14):

So it's a beautiful thing. The problem is that you can't manufacture that.

Speaker 3 (00:32:19):

Oh no. It's high risk, high

Speaker 2 (00:32:20):

Reward. Yeah, very high risk. The artist can't manufacture the commercial success in those situations and the business people can't manufacture the art. That is one of those types of cases where it's just that artist happened to come around at the right time in the evolution of society, music technology and music distribution and whatever else, and wrote the right type of music for the public to explode off of. It's nothing that anybody can ever predict or will ever be able to predict, and it's a beautiful thing when it happens, but there's a whole other side to creating music, which is everybody else who didn't hit the magic universe equation. I'm just saying that you don't have to hit Magic Universe equation.

Speaker 3 (00:33:09):

Hell no.

Speaker 2 (00:33:09):

In order to do great, there is a marriage between art and commerce that can be found and you can still do very, very well.

Speaker 3 (00:33:17):

A hundred percent. Like I was talking about label revisions or publisher revisions. I mean, it's smart to look at 'em because there is some legitimacy behind the things that they're talking about. You're willing to take the different approach or straying away maybe a little bit from the overall vision that we had so we can make it commercially viable so they know how to market it so they know who are they putting this in front of, all those things. I get it and I respect it. I definitely take everything into consideration. There's just sometimes you have to put your foot down and be like, no, we're not trying to make the next chainsmoker song. We're trying to do this next thing over here. We're trying to be the next chain smokers with this particular record. So I do agree that there is art and commerce do go hand in hand. It's just knowing when to take those notes and those things into consideration and actually give 'em the time of day. Don't just blow everything off just because your egos hurt because they didn't like the first pass of whatever we were doing.

Speaker 2 (00:34:11):

Those business people are not out to get you. They're your team. They just are looking at it from a different angle.

Speaker 3 (00:34:19):

Most of the time,

Speaker 2 (00:34:20):

There are bad situations out there, but there's bad situations in any field.

Speaker 3 (00:34:25):

Well, sometimes ars are trying to meet a quota and that kind of stuff. I'm really jaded when it comes to the major music industry, so I'm like, I get it. I feel like I see both sides of it.

Speaker 2 (00:34:36):

I just don't think that every situation is predatory or screwing. That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 3 (00:34:42):

Odds are they're, it's always in the best interest of the record and they're trying to make the best for everyone involved.

Speaker 2 (00:34:50):

I get it, but there are some fucked up situations out there. But I guess the reason I'm saying is I don't want people listening to this to go into it thinking automatically that they're going to get screwed. You should be on the lookout. Of course, compromised does not mean that you lost anything, and it doesn't mean that you got screwed or anything like that. It takes a team to put a record out.

Speaker 3 (00:35:14):

Yeah, I was going to say it's a collaborative effort, and that even comes to the people that aren't doing anything creatively. They're still involved. They still have to put their neck out on the line and promote it and push it out and do everything on their side of things, and you want them to be comfortable enough to want to actually do that. Put the effort behind it. You don't want someone who's not interested in the record promoting it. That's not going to get promoted.

Speaker 2 (00:35:36):

This is the kiss of death. That's a quick way to kill the chances of a record going anywhere is to have the business team

Speaker 3 (00:35:44):

Them shelve it after the fact

Speaker 2 (00:35:48):

That actually happened in my band. I know what that's like to have same, so the business team at the label have got to be into it. You have to play ball to a certain degree, unless if you're slipped knot or something

Speaker 3 (00:36:04):

Maybe,

Speaker 2 (00:36:05):

But I'm sure they had to play ball at the beginning too.

Speaker 3 (00:36:07):

Definitely. For sure.

Speaker 2 (00:36:09):

I guess everything should be done level appropriate. Same way that you are talking about how you mostly can pick who you work with. There's a point where if you pull, like we said, wherever you pull that card, you're going to starve.

Speaker 3 (00:36:23):

Yeah, definitely. It's all stepping stones to get to the points that you want to be at. And so you do have to make compromises, especially in the beginning. Shit, you should probably be going overly compromised in the beginning so you can really win these people over. That's how I view

Speaker 2 (00:36:36):

It. I agree completely. I still do that, man. I mean, not in going for production, but I still take that attitude with what I do now. One of the ways that I translate that is at URM, we try to make our product offerings no-brainers for people. Whether or not it's the $20 subscription or it's a $300 course, or it's a thousand dollars ticket for the summit, no matter what level it's at, we try to add so much value that we could charge for, but we don't.

Speaker 3 (00:37:07):

Exactly. Dude, it's so cheap.

Speaker 2 (00:37:10):

I know it is.

Speaker 3 (00:37:11):

It's so cheap. Where is this shit? 15 years ago when I needed it?

Speaker 2 (00:37:16):

Well, the cheapness is by design.

Speaker 3 (00:37:18):

It is a no-brainer.

Speaker 2 (00:37:19):

Yeah, exactly. For sure. And I think that that's kind what you need to do as a producer too, when you need to make working with you a no-brainer. And part of how you do that is by giving them enough free work to where they love you and they love you and they're familiar with you,

Speaker 3 (00:37:36):

But it's also wise to mention that these are people that are way above your level. You're not going to be necessarily doing this with your peers and for sure not with people below you.

Speaker 2 (00:37:47):

Oh, well, yeah. Of

Speaker 3 (00:37:47):

There is this three tiered thing. No, you're trying to build yourself and push your career up. So you're doing those things for the people that are way above where you're currently at in your career, so you can get to the point where you almost even out with those new people and then you're charging them your normal rates and you keep moving your way up.

Speaker 2 (00:38:04):

Yeah, well, yeah, absolutely. Just haphazardly doing free work blindly. Blindly, a quote, good person or something that's not going to work either. It definitely needs to be strategic and in a direction,

Speaker 3 (00:38:18):

And that's something I noticed way early on with my career. I did a whole album for free for this band that I thought was amazing. They're from Chicago. I had 'em fly out, drive out, I don't even remember. And while they were in the studio, we were sending demos to ars and they had offers from Century Media and Metal Blade while in the studio, and this is a whole fully a hundred percent free album, but I knew that they were way better than where I currently was, or at least the type of projects I was currently working on. I got this artist to come out and trust me to take on their next project. I paid off decently well considering they signed and put out this huge album. I've been doing this from the start.

Speaker 2 (00:38:59):

So you actually did get the next record though.

Speaker 3 (00:39:01):

They broke up, of course, which might've been part of my hatred, not hatred, but distaste for metal and stuff was just things like that constantly happening throughout my career.

Speaker 2 (00:39:13):

That's one of the reasons that I urge people that when they do free work for bands or if they try to do spec deals or whatever, first of all, don't do too many spec deals and second of all, keep it short and sweet, keep it to a song or two.

Speaker 3 (00:39:29):

I agree. That album too was when I was, I was super young. I don't even know that probably might've been 2009 or I was young in my career. I mean, it was originally supposed to be a five song ep. They come out and I let them sweet talk me into doing a full length album, and that was a big regret. I learned from that though. I learned not to do that shit again. Don't let people talk me into shit that I'm not comfortable doing.

Speaker 2 (00:39:49):

Hey, everybody, if you're enjoying this podcast and you should know that it's brought to you by URM Academy, URM Academy's mission is to create the next generation of audio professionals by giving them the inspiration information to hone their craft and build a career doing what they love. You've probably heard me talk about Nail the Mix before, and if you're a member, you already know how amazing it is at the beginning of the month. Now the mix members get the raw multitracks to a new song by artists like Lama, God eth Shuga, bring Me the Horizon Gaira asking Alexandria Machine Head and Papa Roach among many, many others. Then at the end of the month, the producer who mixed it comes on and does a live streaming walkthrough of exactly how they mix the song of the album and takes your questions live on the air.

(00:40:34):

You'll also get access to Mix Lab, our collection of dozens of bite-sized mixing tutorials that cover all the basics and Portfolio Builder, which is a library of pro quality multi-tracks cleared for use of your portfolio. So your career will never again be held back by the quality of your source material. And for those who really, really want to step up their game, we have another membership tier called URM Enhanced, which includes everything I already told you about, and access to our massive library of fast tracks, which are deep, super detailed courses on intermediate and advanced topics like gain staging, mastering loan, and so forth. It's over 50 hours of content in, man, let me tell you. This stuff is just insanely detailed. Enhanced members also get access to one-on-one office hours sessions with us and mixed rescue, which is where we open up one of your mixes on a live video stream, fix it up and talk you through exactly what we're doing at every step.

(00:41:30):

So if any of that sounds interesting to you, if you're ready to level up your mixing skills and your audio career, head over to URM academy slash enhanced. To find out more comfortable doing is key phrase here. You need to be comfortable with it the whole time. If you're not comfortable with it, there's probably something there's a red flag somewhere that you're not paying attention to or that you're not listening to, and it generally will come back to bite you in the ass. You'll do a whole record for free and then the band will break up. They probably had given you signals that something about them was not stable or something, but you went with it, but you were blinded by the fact that the record deals were coming in

Speaker 3 (00:42:14):

And the size of the band and their project in comparison to where I was in my career, I felt like, all right, I'm willing to take the risk because this could be a really big thing for me. I mean, in the long run it was, but looking back, I still wouldn't have done it.

Speaker 2 (00:42:27):

I can't blame you though, man. We all get these situations sometimes where it's like, well, what would you have done? What would you expect? What could anyone have expected you to do if you were nowhere in your career and you want a career and all these deals are coming in? It's like, would anyone have expected you to do? And the reason I say that is because around 2013, I knew that I really wanted out. I really, really wanted out. I wanted to start a company. I wanted to leave Florida. I wanted out of that studio. I had wanted out for two years, and I was vocal about it. I wanted out, and I was very unhappy. This gig came along, and I can't mention who it is, but one of the biggest artists of all time have sold over a hundred million records. One of the biggest of all time, a member of the band was telling me that he doesn't know when there's going to be a next record, and it's kind of concerning him. Let's write one and present it to them. And

Speaker 3 (00:43:29):

Oh, sick.

Speaker 2 (00:43:29):

He was pretty confident that if it was good enough, we're going to be able to talk them into at least a song or two or something. And I had to learn how to play in a very distinct style. I hadn't played guitar in a year at that point, but I took lessons and practiced five hours a day, and within a month I was able to mimic this style note for note. And we wrote, over the course of four or five months, we wrote the best record. We wrote a record for this person that was on par with the good ones. One of the good ones hadn't come out in 20 years. It was like on par with the last good one. I'm confident that if you heard it, you would agree. For whatever reason it didn't happen. It's not that the person heard it and said no, he thought some of the songs were cool, but other things came up that he had to do for four years, and then it just never happened.

(00:44:24):

He had something else that was bringing in tens of millions of dollars that he couldn't not do it. And so then this record just never happened. So in those five or six months while I was also doing production work, I was giving a lot of these jobs to John Douglas, and I was like, my head wasn't in the game for the production stuff, and I screwed myself a bit with that. I had planned on getting out anyways, but in retrospect, smart to do that that way. Probably not. But at the same time, how can you blame me either? This is,

Speaker 3 (00:44:56):

It's a learning experience though.

Speaker 2 (00:44:57):

This is a huge, huge opportunity. It didn't work out, but if it had worked out,

Speaker 3 (00:45:02):

Oh yeah, exactly,

Speaker 2 (00:45:04):

Who the hell knows what would've happened? And so it's one of those things where I hear about your opportunity and it's like, yeah, okay, so the band broke up. Of course the band broke up, and of course you did a free album, and I know how that shit goes, but live and learn, but at the same time, can't blame the person for taking that risk.

Speaker 3 (00:45:22):

Yeah, exactly. And fortunately for me, the album leaked that helped a lot. The album leaked. It was on all these piring sites and whatnot. I was then able to be like, yo, I did that. And that helped a lot on people coming in because they heard that project. I definitely would do it again. I just questioned if I would do a full album or not. If I would stick to the ep, I wanted to,

Speaker 2 (00:45:44):

Nothing good really came out of this for me. I wasn't ever able to talk about it or show anything for it. I can't. But the one thing though that did come out of it was when I realized it wasn't happening, I was really pretty mad, but I did not take it out on my contact.

Speaker 3 (00:46:04):

Oh, for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:46:05):

You say, oh, for sure.

Speaker 3 (00:46:07):

I mean, it was a risk for both of you. And you got to recognize that it was a risk for both. It was a risk for

Speaker 2 (00:46:11):

Both of us. And he had a lot more to lose than me. But I was still mad.

Speaker 3 (00:46:14):

I mean, dude, I pissed stop all the time. When I lose out on test mixes or whatnot, I'm like, fuck this. I'm the best. I definitely should have got this. But it comes with the part of doing the free work. I know the risk that I'm not going to be happy if the outcome isn't how I want. Of course I'm not going to be happy with that. But I knew that going into it, I can't be upset that I didn't get

Speaker 2 (00:46:35):

Something. Well, you can be

Speaker 3 (00:46:36):

When I already knew.

Speaker 2 (00:46:38):

The thing is, I think you should be allowed to be upset. So here's the thing that I learned. I was not allowing myself to be upset, even though I was fucking not happy at all that because the payoff was huge, and the amount of time I put into it

(00:46:52):

Was huge. And so deep down inside I was crushed, but I didn't show it. And what I learned from it though was that I handled it right, because to this day, we're really good friends, and it's a friend that I cherish. It's a contact that I cherish. I'm really, really glad to still have him in my life, able to call him up for advice and work together if needed or whatnot is great. And I also learned that it is okay to admit to myself that I was fucking crushed and really upset about it, but you can admit it to yourself without showing your ass to the world. The thing I didn't understand back then was how to have both of those things exist. So I had to pretend like I wasn't upset or else I would show my ass. But now I think you can be upset and fully own the way you're feeling, but that doesn't mean that you have to then take it out on somebody. And both those things can exist, and it's probably a lot healthier to accept if you feel like the universe just fucking handed it to you, just fucked you.

(00:47:55):

Universe did not any particular person. So going forward with life since then, trying to take that attitude when things don't work out of admitting to myself that I am disappointed, actually really disappointed about something not working out. Not a little bit very, but it's okay. And I can still be an adult about it, and I don't have to pretend. I don't have to lie to myself and say, oh, no, I don't care. It would've been shitty anyways. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:48:23):

It's

Speaker 2 (00:48:24):

Bullshit.

Speaker 3 (00:48:24):

Dude, that was me a couple months ago. My favorite producer at the time in the whole world for the last couple of years did a mix for him. I offered a test mix for him. He was down, and at the time it would've been perfect, but he waited two or three weeks to send me something, and the day he sent me something, I came down with really bad ear infections. It was super bad, and I had to try to push through. It sent out a mix, and he never got back to me. Even to this day, I've not heard back from him ever. And that bummed me out. It sucked because I knew, okay, I can't work, so I had to take the time off and I just had to sit with that feeling of being sad that I didn't get this gig.

Speaker 2 (00:49:02):

And then you could also be really mad at him for taking the three weeks to send it because if he hadn't taken three weeks, who knows what would've happened.

Speaker 3 (00:49:11):

Exactly, exactly. Right.

Speaker 2 (00:49:12):

But I'm guessing that you didn't send him some hate mail or anything.

Speaker 3 (00:49:16):

Hell no. It

Speaker 2 (00:49:17):

Was exactly,

Speaker 3 (00:49:18):

I can't be up, dude. The mix was bad was I had ear infections. I couldn't hear anything, and so I can't be upset with him for not liking it,

Speaker 2 (00:49:26):

Shit. No, but you can be upset. You can be upset with him for not sending.

Speaker 3 (00:49:29):

Yeah, I mean, I know how it goes. I know how the creative process goes. He thinks the record's done, but the artist and the label and the publisher is going to know we need these things changed, and it takes three weeks to get those changes over. I get it. Yeah. At least I try to be. Maybe I'm just looking at it in a nice light.

Speaker 2 (00:49:44):

What I'm saying is it's legitimate to be mad at the fucking universe for not lining up, but it doesn't take anything away from you to admit that the universe can go fuck itself for not lining that up. I mean, as long as you don't actually go take it out on anybody, especially that producer.

Speaker 3 (00:50:00):

No, hell no. It's not productive, in my opinion. And I think I do so much pitch work that I'm used to blowing things off. I'm used to the 10 no's before the one. Yes.

Speaker 2 (00:50:10):

I

Speaker 3 (00:50:10):

Mean, I was more so bummed that it was my favorite producer and I just really wanted to work on his stuff more so than I just didn't get that gig. It's really easy for me to blow it off and beyond to the next one. My schedule's super booked up. I got plenty of other things to work on. I can't really sit in sulk over one. No. Maybe I'm just super used to it and blowing off those things. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:50:31):

I think people who are members of Nail the Mix who get upset when their mixes don't make it into the top 20 should be listening to this

Speaker 3 (00:50:40):

Dude. I see that a lot. It confuses me a bit, but I mean, I can't take that away from 'em, I guess.

Speaker 2 (00:50:45):

So here's what I think it's okay for them to be upset that they didn't make it, but the posts they make about it are not okay. It's not productive. It's not productive. It makes them look bad. There's a lot of people in the group who are potential employers like you, for instance, are a potential employer. Yeah, definitely. You see them post this stuff. Does that seem like someone you would want to employ?

Speaker 3 (00:51:06):

Hell no. No. I mean, for some people that could be blacklist stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:51:10):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:51:10):

You're like, wow, okay. This is how they talk about this project. If something goes bad in the project that I want to hire them for, what the hell are they going to say publicly about that? That could really hurt your career, actually.

Speaker 2 (00:51:21):

Yeah, exactly. But I mean, I understand if they're disappointed, but I also think they shouldn't be disappointed.

Speaker 3 (00:51:27):

Sure.

Speaker 2 (00:51:28):

But that's me telling them that disappointment is not a rational thing. I don't think they should be disappointed because odds are stacked against you no matter what. In a test mix situation. In the real world where you're testing for something, you're not up against 500 people and it's already hard in your world to land something when you're up against 10 people or 20 people,

Speaker 3 (00:51:49):

Especially when they're already the best. When you're up against CLA and Manny and Serb and shit, it's kind of hard to be upset, in my opinion. It's like these are the best in the world, and the fact that I'm even competing with them, if it get turned down, that's cool that these labels and artists consider me on that level. I'm stoked.

Speaker 2 (00:52:07):

That's a great way to look at it. So I mean, up against 500 is just,

Speaker 3 (00:52:11):

Yeah, that's insane.

Speaker 2 (00:52:12):

Odds are you're not going to get it just because of the odds anyways, the only reason we have that mixed competition is to impose a deadline so that people get it done before the class because the class is way better. If they've actually mixed the material ahead of time, it'll make more sense. They'll be able to relate to it way better than if it's just abstract. So yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:52:35):

That's a pretty lenient deadline as well, a whole month to mix a single song. Jesus. I would love that.

Speaker 2 (00:52:40):

It's like three weeks, but still. Yeah, it's very lenient. Three weeks.

Speaker 3 (00:52:44):

My deadlines are always, Hey, when do you need this? And they respond with yesterday,

Speaker 2 (00:52:47):

And

Speaker 3 (00:52:48):

I'm like, perfect. I'll give this to you in six hours.

Speaker 2 (00:52:50):

Yeah, I know. I do know. So that's what's funny about it is like you're complaining about not having enough time to do a good job. Like three weeks, buddy. Let me sit you down and talk about life a little. I do think though, that if people have ever gotten upset by not placing or winning, I feel you. I mean, if you haven't done anything big with your career yet and you're still very, very early, then this probably means a lot more to you than, I don't want to diminish it, but the way you comport yourself in the face of that is really, really important. People are watching

Speaker 3 (00:53:23):

Well, and also you guys offer one-on-ones, right? The people that are dissatisfied with their placement of this competition, why aren't they taking those in the one-on-ones and saying, all right, what can I improve? Okay, that's perfect. But I feel like if anyone's complaining, they should be doing that first before making a public post on a forum about it. Be hitting up the people that are listening to this and saying, what didn't you like? What should I improve? That's real world shit right there. I mean, you're going to send a mix out. They're going to say, I don't like it. You need to respond and figure out what they don't like and improve upon that. And then in future mixes, okay, these people tend to like this over this and this and that. Over that.

Speaker 2 (00:54:03):

We

Speaker 3 (00:54:04):

Apply

Speaker 2 (00:54:04):

Those kind of things. We have lot people who made that asshole idiot post a year or two ago and then got one-on-ones, and they'll post a year later and be like, I am so sorry I ever posted that. I listened back to that mix, and I've come so far, I can't believe that. I was so arrogant that I thought that was a good mix. So I think that a lot of the time it's that they actually, they're so new at this that they don't even know that their mix isn't good. That being at that stage where when you first start doing stuff that's not terrible and you instantly think you're the shit, I remember those days. So I think that's what's happening a lot.

(00:54:45):

Changing gears, I want to talk about something that you told me we could bring up, which I think is very, very interesting. It came up in the group the other day. What's up? You just said we could talk about it. So there was somebody who posted in the group, I think he's 17 or something. He was posting about how he wanted some advice on what to do because he's fucking hating high school and considering getting out, everyone was like, don't do it, don't do it. And some people were getting kind of positive, and you can use this stuff in school. And I got in there and was like, no, don't do it because you're going to potentially fuck up the entire rest of your life. And right now science shows that your brain is not developed enough to understand what long-term, you're not able to feel long-term consequences and because of your age. So you're going to have to trust us that this is something you can't really walk back from unless you're one of those really fortunate few. You are one of those fortunate few because you dropped out of high school.

Speaker 3 (00:55:49):

Got lucky also, when you're that young. I mean, what I wanted to be doing when I was that age is definitely not what I'm doing today. I mean, I would assume I wanted to tour in bands and that would be my life legacy. I tour with bands until I retire. Hell yeah, that's, that's not realistic, especially in today's climate. Hell, in high school, I probably wanted to be four or five different things and none of those now, I mean, I can't name 'em all, but I'm sure there was plenty of things going on in my head that I thought I wanted to do.

Speaker 2 (00:56:21):

So what point did you drop out? What grade?

Speaker 3 (00:56:24):

I guess I was a senior. I mean, by my age, that's not what I was on paper. On paper. I was probably still a sophomore or junior.

Speaker 2 (00:56:33):

No. So you were bad

Speaker 3 (00:56:34):

Actually, sick. I dropped out of high school and I was in calculus and shit, so it wasn't necessarily just because I was slacking or whatnot.

Speaker 2 (00:56:42):

Wait for a second when you were like, no, I was sick. I thought you meant you dropped off because of a medical problem. No. You weren't

Speaker 3 (00:56:48):

Sick. No, I was sick. I was deathly ill and I was missing so much school and missing so many assignments. No, I was actually ill.

Speaker 2 (00:56:58):

Okay, so you were both sick and sick, okay.

Speaker 3 (00:57:03):

No, I was good at school. I was good at math, I was good at English, I was good at all my shit. I just wasn't there to get homework, turn it in, take tests, which are pretty much your entire grade. It was actually the dean of my school recommended that I dropped out because it got to a certain point, shit, they probably don't want me to say that publicly, but fuck it. My dean of the school was like, Hey, you should probably consider dropping out getting your GED because you're so far behind and it doesn't look like you're getting any better anytime soon, essentially is what they said.

Speaker 2 (00:57:34):

So the universe fucked you basically. Basically with this one. So because in my case, when I almost dropped out, I was a terrible student. The adults in my life, my dad had a lot of cool musician friends, a musician, so I spoke to some of them. So these cool adults in my life were like, all this support you have from us right now for your career that you're going to have one day, we're not going to support you if you drop out, do it. Just stick out. Well, it's a lot more than just

Speaker 3 (00:58:03):

School too. It's like this shows that you can follow through with commitments which will carry over into your career. It's a lot more than just the here and now. I even had a teacher, I had to go around to all my teachers and have 'em sign me out agreeing to let me drop out, and majority of 'em were probably like, the music thing's not going to work out for you, yada, yada, yada. But they didn't realize, they thought I was just a bad student. And it was like, no, I can't really physically come. So yeah, it's interesting though because it's a lot more than just getting good grades and that kind of shit. It's showing up, it's doing work. I mean, that's all mixing is. There we go. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I have that shame. No, that's perfect. But really that's what most mixing is, is it's homework. It's taking what someone gives you, doing it on your spare time. That's how I view it. I mean most of the time it's unattended. Even mastering stuff, it's unattended work, but it's homework and they expect it back on a certain day.

Speaker 2 (00:59:02):

Yeah, absolutely. Right. So how were you able to overcome that stigma? Man,

Speaker 3 (00:59:08):

It's not give a shit. Alright.

Speaker 2 (00:59:09):

I don't

Speaker 3 (00:59:09):

Know. I mean for real though. If someone's going to hold that above me over things that I'm doing in my career and fuck 'em, I mean, I don't care. But how to get started, I don't know. I mean, this kind of also goes against, because I definitely think you should go through with it. I think you should continue with schooling. It definitely doesn't make anything easier.

Speaker 2 (00:59:28):

Well look here, let me give you an example of something. I don't judge you at all for it. You've done great with your life and to me, the fact that you dropped out is a non thing, whatever. It actually makes you more interesting and respectable to me because I know what you had to overcome. However, say that I'm trying out podcast editors and I have five podcast editors lined up and I find out one of them is a high school dropout, they better be fucking incredible. Or it's automatically next to the next one. And same with hiring an engineer or whatever. If they're not the coolest person I've ever met, the smartest person I've ever met, and god damn unbelievable at this engineering stuff I need to hire them for and display all this great stuff. The moment I find that out, I'm already passing

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):

Them by. Yeah. Well, it comes back to what I was saying about commitment. It instantly puts this thing in your head where you're like, well, if they couldn't do their homework and do whatever they needed to do to commit to finishing high school, are they going to be able to commit to this job that I'm trying to give them where I depend on them for my own income? It's instantly a red flag. At least that's how I view it. I've had interns the same way where it's like, or assistants even. Ultimately it comes down to how are you going to perform at the end of the day, but I can't help and shake that this red flag that they've already proven that they can't commit to things in the past.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):

So you would advise this guy to stick it out

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):

A hundred percent without a doubt and for multiple reasons. Like I said, even when I was in high school, I didn't know this is what I want to be doing. And for that guy, shit, man, he might 10 years down the road be like, who knows?

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):

That's the thing I'm talking about where the 17-year-old brain is not developed enough to understand long-term properly, and so you won't understand consequences. And you'll also think that a bunch of the stuff that you're doing now matters in a weird way.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):

Yeah, it really does. It really does. And I guess even talking about this, it comes back to that, what I've been talking about, I guess throughout through pitches or test mixes, high risk, high reward. I guess I was willing to take that high risk.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):

So healthwise, how long did it take for you to get better?

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):

Until I was like 24, 23, 24. Somewhere around there. I don't really remember too much.

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):

So you had years of overcoming an illness as well?

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):

Yeah, it was incredible. It was hard as fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):

I can only imagine. So were you touring at that time? Yeah. How could you tour

Speaker 3 (01:01:56):

Was? It was hard. It was really hard. It was people being open about it and communicating with my band and they knew if I was having an episode, they knew what to do, how to deal with it, all that kind of stuff. And to be honest, I have real bad seizures and stuff because of this. So I know the trigger points. I know when it's coming on, I know what I need to do to prevent it and whatnot. I was able to manage it while touring and stuff, but there definitely were times where I would have an episode or something and it was taken care of though I had awesome band mates and they understood and they were aware and knew what to do.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):

Okay, well that's good. So communication and the right support system,

Speaker 3 (01:02:32):

And they knew the risk. They knew the risk of taking me out and that the potentially screw up touring and whatnot. And there were plenty of tours that I actually had to miss out on half because I was producing an album or something. I mean, there were tours where I missed out on because I was literally in the hospital for weeks and they were completely cool with it, and we had plenty of subs that would come in and fill in. The owner of the studio that I rent a room out of now, he actually would sub for me on some tours and he would go out for a month at a time. Yeah, I just had a lot of good friends that were willing to help me out through that hard time.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):

What I find interesting is that you say that the teachers at your school didn't know you were sick, but it sounds like everybody else did. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:13):

Yeah. It was weird. It was just a few dickhead teachers really. But the thing is I don't think they actually cared about me. I mean, that sounds harsh and mean, but that's the only thing. I can sum it up.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):

Probably didn't.

Speaker 3 (01:03:23):

Yeah, let's be real. They have 30 students a class, six classes a day, however many years that they've been doing it. I'm just another fly on the wall for them. I'm just another kid in their eyes. They think I'm just slacking around because my grades and poor performance or whatnot.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):

I just think it's interesting that it's not like it was some secret.

Speaker 3 (01:03:42):

The problem was I was undiagnosed for so many years, probably from 15 to that 22, 23 area, and then it took a couple years to get better. I was undiagnosed completely. No one knew what was wrong. So maybe I don't remember high school that much.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):

They just thought you had AIDS

Speaker 3 (01:03:56):

Because of all this shit. Yeah, there. No, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:00):

That's happened to me before. So

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):

Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):

I don't have aids.

Speaker 3 (01:04:04):

Maybe they asked what's wrong with you? And I can tell 'em I don't know. Then instantly in their head they're like, he's just faking or fucking around or whatever. I dunno.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):

When I got swine flu,

Speaker 3 (01:04:15):

Did you actually have swine flu?

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):

Oh yes I did. I almost died

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):

For it. What the fuck?

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):

Let me tell you, swine flu was not a conspiracy. That shit's real. That shit is very real and is very terrible. I got it back in 2009 before it was very diagnosable. I don't know if you remember that summer, but a lot of people died from it that summer.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):

Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):

And a lot of people were saying that it was a media conspiracy or some shit. It definitely was not. But I was on tour and I got so sick that I couldn't continue. I couldn't continue and that never happens, but I couldn't do it. I was breaking fevers every 30 minutes and then I would sweat through all my clothes and then through a full sleeping bag and then through the van bench to all of it was dripping. I was sick as fuck. And so I left tour in Hartford, went to the er, they admitted me immediately and quarantined me. There was a whole huge emergency room full of people with their legs falling off and the emergency room from a comedy movie or

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):

Something.

Speaker 2 (01:05:25):

And I walked in and they immediately quarantined me, did the hazmat suit thing, told me that they think I have full-blown aids, but that they won't be able to tell me this was on a Friday. They won't be able to tell me till Monday if I do or don't because it's the weekend basically going to keep me alive till then. But I have to be quarantined, sat in this room in Hartford. The tour went on. I stayed in Hartford and I thought I might have AIDS for a full weekend. It so brutal. That's

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):

Fucked up, man. If you're not confident in something, don't

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):

Say it. Well, they said that I matched all the symptoms of a person with full-blown AIDS at that age. I had all the symptoms from not responding to certain medications to all of it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:13):

And I bet this whole time you're thinking, what the

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):

Fuck did I do? Who was it? Who was it? Who was it? Which band member was this? I think it was this one girl in Texas. It was a bad, bad weekend. But then on Monday the doctor came in and he was like, well, I've got good news in bad news. Good news is you don't have aids. Bad news is we don't know what the fuck you have. So you're staying here. So it took 10 days, 10 horrible days. So not years, but I know the feeling of being undiagnosed. It's garbage. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:06:44):

It's whack. I can't even tell you the amount of doctors that have diagnosed me. It's unreal. I can't even tell you how many doctors I've seen in my life. It's an insane number that I choose not to acknowledge. I don't even know it. Yeah, I get

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):

It. So you toured through this and then you got better like 24, 25.

Speaker 3 (01:07:02):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):

That's crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:07:03):

I mean, for the most part, I still have residual stuff. I'll never be cured of it. It doesn't go away, but it lays dormant. I know how to deal with it if it's annoying, all that kind of stuff. And the way I looked at it was I just accepted the fact that I was fucked up and I didn't know how to deal with it. And so I was like, I could either lay in bed and be miserable or I can just go out and start doing what I want to do and deal with it because I'm going to have to deal with it regardless if I'm in bed or if I'm on a bench in a bus or in a van touring, I'm going to be dealing with it regardless. So might as well be doing something exciting and that I want to be doing

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):

And

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):

Deal with it there

Speaker 2 (01:07:37):

Makes perfect sense,

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):

Mean. And of course there is times where I had to be in the hospital and that was not my choice, but that's how it goes. So it's just deal with it as it comes in.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):

So as you were dealing with that and touring and transitioning into production, did the high school thing ever get in your way? You never mentioned getting a job ever or anything?

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):

No. What got in the way was being sick. I got a job out of high school. I was working at a bank just doing their filing and paperwork.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):

Did you get a GED?

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):

I actually got my GED the day after I officially dropped out.

Speaker 2 (01:08:09):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):

It wasn't necessarily, I wasn't educated. I mean, I knew all the shit. I just couldn't be present, couldn't turn in the work, couldn't take the tests. So yeah, I got my GED immediately after, literally the day after I dropped out, got that, and then went and got a job. I even went to community college where I thought they would be a bit more lenient on not showing up and whatnot, but nope, they care. They kicked me out of that too. Ultimately. No, it hasn't really ever popped up. I mean, since the bank, I got lucky with the bank because I had a relative who was one of the bank managers and she was like, look, I can't give you a full blown job, but you can do this paperwork and we need someone to file it all because transitioning from going from paper to digital. So that's what I did for half a year. Still got to the point where the head head manager was like, you look like shit. You can't be working here. You're scaring away customers essentially is what happened. And so I stopped working at the bank and probably two or three months after that is when I started touring and then fully producing bands and whatnot. But

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):

So you are the one person that managed to make it work

Speaker 3 (01:09:12):

Somehow? Make it work. Work, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):

That's real impressive. That's actually also considering the illness, it's just all really impressive. It is.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):

I mean, it's my life. So to me it's just normal. That's just how it is. So I don't look at it as that way. But I mean, I appreciate the kind words, the tumbling.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):

I mean, it's not meant to be kind, not meant to be kind, bro. It is very impressive. But it seems like the success you've had is all despite of is not really at all because of you could have not gotten sick and graduated high school and probably had an easier time getting to where you are. For

Speaker 3 (01:09:46):

Sure. I also like to believe that because I was sick and because I dropped out of high school and had all these obstacles, it's helped my career in a sense where I can really push through with things that I don't like or whatnot because I've gone through much, much worse. At least that's how I try to spin it to be positive and not be upset about that makes sense about everything.

Speaker 2 (01:10:05):

But that's very different than if you just dropped out because you were lazy. It's very, very different.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):

Oh, for sure. I would've been setting myself up for a real fucked up time

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):

Because

Speaker 3 (01:10:15):

If it was that easy take care of something I didn't like is just drop out. I mean, I'm setting myself up for anything in my life that I don't like. I just abandon it. And I don't think that's really a good trait to have.

Speaker 2 (01:10:27):

Yeah, absolutely. So talking about pushing through things. So you went to LA as has been established, and lots of people believe that the place is very oversaturated and they believe that work doesn't exist there or Nashville or something, but you're thriving and you're in one of the most producer rich areas in the country. Is there anything that you could say about thriving in a place like that?

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):

So to be clear, I'm not in LA anymore. I actually moved back to Colorado recently simply because I'm in a place in my career where artists and labels trust me and they don't care.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):

Well, you did your time, so you did your time in la.

Speaker 3 (01:11:05):

Exactly. Honestly, it's lining yourself with people. I mean, I really vetted out if I should go. It took me a month to decide maybe two or three weeks to decide if it was the right thing to do. And I'm frantically hitting everyone up that I know that are way above my career level at the time, hitting everyone up and being like, look, I'm thinking about doing this. If I do it, do I have your support? Would you help me?

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):

I feel a montage coming.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):

Yeah, sucks. Oh my God, dude, I love these because they come out of nowhere. I'm like, oh shit. Oh yeah. But no, all it was, it was just hitting a people up and being like, yo, if I do this, do you got my back? And pretty much everyone did, don't really know anyone that was like, nah, don't do it. Don't come out here. And originally I was actually only going to come out for three months and it was to prove myself to the publisher that was like, well, if he's not in LA, we're not going to work with him. It was to prove myself to them and be like, look, I'm committed. I'm good. But then that three months turned into two and a half, three years or something.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):

Do you have any advice for anybody who is nowhere in their career who do have their sites set on LA or Nashville or

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):

Yeah, I mean, I would say reach out to people there and make sure you have a network before you even go. I know people literally go out there on a whim. What did you say LA was? LA was a place of no work. They

Speaker 2 (01:12:24):

Said that they kind of believe that it can't exist there for them because it's so oversaturated.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):

Yeah. I look at it like it's oversaturated. It is. I look at it as it's a place where dreams die

(01:12:38):

Because they do. People go out there without making sure things are lined up for them beforehand. I also feel like this is a portion of where people are like, fuck the music industry. It just fucks people over and all that stuff. They go out there and expect things to just happen. And that is far from anything that will ever happen. If things aren't just going to line up for you because you were at the right place at the right time, that doesn't mean anything. You're not going to go out to LA knowing nobody and start working on major label projects. I mean, it is possible to go to LA work on a really small level and work your way up for sure, but you're also competing with 10,000 other people that are doing the same exact thing. So for me, it was going out with a support system already in a network of people that knew I was coming out and were lining things up accordingly.

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):

Okay, so this next thing I want to talk about, if you don't want talk about it, that's fine. We won't, but I figured I'd ask anyways. So you mixed the majority of Christina Grey's Pasta, miss album, all Is Vanity. Can you talk a little bit about all

Speaker 3 (01:13:38):

But one song? Okay,

Speaker 2 (01:13:39):

So the majority of it. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges you faced on that record?

Speaker 3 (01:13:43):

Yeah, I mean, I'm down. Yeah, that was a tough one. Not only because of the deadlines, which were the most insane deadlines I've ever had, but just because of the project in general, and I guess for people who don't know, Christina was shot and killed on tour at one of her meet and greets after a show, and she was my producer partners at the time, girlfriend, Steven Reza, that was his girlfriend at the time. So we were very close. She actually was supposed to be flying out overnight that night to LA and we had a two month blockout to do her whole album. That was rough. That was hard. We were close and that didn't help mixing it, that's for sure. And a portion of me also feels like that's why they asked me to mix the whole thing.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):

That makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:14:23):

I mean, I was going to already, I had this other connection to the project, so the whole time I was actually talking directly to her parents and not even the label, because that was put out through Republic and Universal Music Group, and so they actually were completely hands off and the parents had pretty much zero revisions for me. They were like, we trust you, Christina trusted you, so if you think these are the moves and these are the mixes that are final, then we're going with that, which was really cool. I like that because Christina trusted me on what her mixes would've been and whatnot. Already

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):

You said that there were two months booked out to mix or to produce? To

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):

Produce. I was going to co-produce and co-write the album. So the current album that's released, I would say seven of the 10 songs were actually just demos.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):

Got it.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):

After she was killed, we took her laptop and went through all the demos. There were probably 30 to 40 on there and shit, dude. Some of 'em were literally recorded through a MacBook microphone and I made it work for a fucking major label release that was a pain, especially with the deadlines and whatnot. So the two months where it was, we were supposed to write full new records for this album. We have a room at Henson in Hollywood and we were going to do the whole two months there. I

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):

Was about to ask, you didn't get to work right away, did you?

Speaker 3 (01:15:44):

No. No, not at all. They asked me if I wanted to do it and I actually turned it down.

Speaker 2 (01:15:49):

That seems kind of fucked up to just jump into it right away.

Speaker 3 (01:15:53):

No, it was like nine months until they were like, okay, we're ready to put out some of these demos, and that's actually why I didn't mix one of the songs. It went to Neil Everett, is that right? I can't remember. He mixed the single or one of 'em because I turned it down. I was like, no, I'm not ready yet. I wasn't, wasn't in a place to be working on it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):

Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):

It came around. Eventually I warmed up to the idea. Honestly, I didn't like how it sounded. I didn't like how that mix came out and I was like, this isn't how she would've wanted it, and so I was like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:16:25):

So when working with basically a series of demos or song fragments, would you basically just come up with complete arrangements and produce them from scratch?

Speaker 3 (01:16:37):

I only mixed, so originally I was supposed to co-produce and I definitely was not in a place to do that. I stepped down from that position fully and I didn't do anything. I mean, I might've added little things. I don't know. I think there should be a shaker here. Let's maybe do the high hats like this. Everyone was completely fine with it, but I don't really consider that really the production side, even though it is. I don't view it that way right now.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):

Fair enough. I remember they did that with some John Lennon demos back when the Beatles anthology were released

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):

And Michael Jackson and other late great artists.

Speaker 2 (01:17:12):

Well, I haven't heard the Michael Jackson one. So The Beatles went in in 1991 and just tracked everything else, and then they kept John Lennon's voice from the demo. It sounds

Speaker 3 (01:17:22):

Interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):

Yeah, the song is called Real Love, and there's one other one. The name is Escaping Me, but Real Love. It's a great, great song and it doesn't sound like they redid a demo or anything weird. It sounds like The Beatles like the Good Beatles too, but that's what they did. He had a whole archive of shit. Well,

Speaker 3 (01:17:43):

Yeah. I mean, let's be real. No artist is sitting on zero music at a time, so when they pass, there's usually a catalog of stuff that could be pulled from, it's questionable. What are the motives behind putting out the music, which I get. I've heard it. I've had people even complain to me like, oh, you guys are just trying to profit off of her death and this kind of stuff. But personally knowing Christina, I'm like, she wanted this music to be out to her fans and to the world, so I don't know. It's interesting. It's like, what do you do in that situation?

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):

Well, I figured that the people closest would be the ones to know what should be done.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):

I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:18:17):

How can a stranger say that they don't know? I

Speaker 3 (01:18:20):

Can see the point of view, though. I could see from the outside how it could look. I can't discredit their claims of whatever. I mean, no, I could, for the Christina one specifically, I can be like, no, I personally knew Christina. She would want this to be out. She would want everything to be out.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):

But then if you say that, people should believe it. I

Speaker 3 (01:18:38):

Hope so. It's

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):

Not like they have any other source of info in my opinion. I don't know what you do in that situation, but 99% of the time, I trust what the people closest say, unless there's just something that's seriously red flaggy about it. There's no point in this release. Why are you doing this?

Speaker 3 (01:18:58):

I agree. I can see the outside opinions of people being like, you're just doing this to make profit off of the death. I don't think so, but there are cases where even I am like, Hmm, that's weird. This is literally just a money move.

Speaker 2 (01:19:10):

Yeah. Well

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):

Also shout out to Joel because he mastered all the grimmy stuff for me. Did

Speaker 2 (01:19:15):

He? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:16):

He mastered all of it. There was an EP and then the full length album, and honestly, if it wasn't for him, I don't think I would've made the deadlines because having Joel on and just someone that I trust completely, I knew I could send over the mixes to him and not have to worry about anything, and he would come through for me and do it immediately, which are what pop deadlines are. I wasn't joking earlier when I said, pop deadlines are yesterday. That is literally what they are. They're like, no, we needed this already, so I knew Joel would be good for coming through for me, and he fucking killed it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:47):

That's one of Joel's biggest strengths, actually, is being able to do things that are really good very fast.

Speaker 3 (01:19:54):

I mean, not to toot my own horn, I feel like I'm the same way. I don't think I would be in a position where I am today if I couldn't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:20:02):

Very important, and it's also kind of rare on this topic. This is something I wanted to ask you, you about. You and Joel are good friends. Yeah. How do you even know that guy?

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):

Oh, I don't know. How do I, Joel, if you're listening, let me know. How did we get to know each other? I don't know. It might've just been online. Could have just been,

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):

You're like, why are you guys friends?

Speaker 3 (01:20:21):

Why the fuck are you friends with Joel from a secret group?

Speaker 2 (01:20:24):

Just kidding.

Speaker 3 (01:20:25):

Joel's my friend. I bet it's from the group that doesn't exist. I bet it stemmed from there.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):

Is that where it's from?

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):

I feel like it could be. I don't know for sure ing, I mean, it's been so many years. I don't really know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:38):

Well, just because I remember you came to a URM meetup in Chicago just to hang out with Joel. You weren't a URM member, and this was in 2016?

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):

Yeah, I was crashing at his place, but that's because we were working on a project at the time. It was kind of getting stagnant, and I wanted to make a statement and let it be known that I was dead ass serious about this project, and I'll fly my ass out to Wisconsin and sleep on a couch if I needed to, and that's what I did, and so I just arranged it around the time that that meetup was happening. Anyway.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):

Okay. That makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:21:08):

But yeah, which that project, I think it's actually coming out here in the next month or two.

Speaker 2 (01:21:12):

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):

Just cool. Yep. You probably know about it, but I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it on podcast. I

Speaker 2 (01:21:17):

Probably know about it. Yep. I'm glad that it's finally coming out.

Speaker 3 (01:21:20):

Same, we've had to do a couple of workarounds, not do it exactly how we want it to right now, but compromises, we got to do what we need to do to get it out and get it put out.

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):

Sometimes I think something that people don't realize coming into this world or just I guess anything where you have to create things is that some things take years to get made, and I always find it interesting when you hear about a movie, when you hear the producers and the lead actor or something who's also a producer sometimes talk about making some movie that's sick. Oftentimes they'll be like, well, we've been talking about this for 10 years. We had funding. Then the funding went away, and there's this whole decade leading up to getting the movie even made.

Speaker 3 (01:22:04):

Yeah, 10 years behind a two hour thing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:07):

Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:22:08):

I think a lot of people don't understand the patience you have to have for some of these things. Oh,

Speaker 3 (01:22:14):

Definitely. I mean, even when it comes to music though, especially in the pitch world, I could write something today. Maybe it doesn't even get picked up for two years, and then it's still another year before it gets released. It's a very long process just to be creative. I mean, producers can relate too though. They have bands that have been working on this material for who knows how long they comes in, they come in for a month, they do an album, and then how many months until it's mixed, mastered and released? It could be three. It could be three years. Who knows? It's not up to the original creators involved. There's so many outside factors that the public wouldn't see or they wouldn't even know.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):

Yeah, I feel bad for software manufacturers get delayed and then people rail them. It's like, buddy, I know you want your product.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):

Well, it's like, do you think we don't want it released? Do you think we want to sit around? No. It's a product. This is how we make money. We want it out just as bad as everyone else, if not more

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):

Shit. Just takes time. It just does. Speaking of which, I feel like I've taken up enough of your time, so I think,

Speaker 3 (01:23:13):

Oh, I'm good.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):

This is a

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):

Good

Speaker 2 (01:23:14):

Place to end it. Mr. Seth Munson, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It's been excellent talking to you. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:23:20):

Thanks for having me, and let me rant about random shit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:24):

No problem. Anytime. Oh, oh guy. This is awesome. I love, this is so good. God, I really hope that this music somehow makes it into the final.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):

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