DOC COYLE: The Flawed Band Model, The Death of Artist Development, Moving to LA

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Bala ga Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala ga guitar strives. To bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs, go to bala ga guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info.

Speaker 2 (00:00:31):

And now your host. Hey Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. I am Eyal Levi and with me is one of my favorite people in the music industry. Even if I haven't talked to you in a few years, you're still one of my favorites. Mr. Doc Coyle, welcome.

Speaker 3 (00:00:48):

Thank you for having me, brother.

Speaker 2 (00:00:50):

Yeah, dude, it's really fascinating watching you because you're one of those people who just keeps going and just keeps doing more and more cool shit. Well, the thing is, I can relate to it because transitioned in my life many times, and so I look at people who have the tenacity to do that. I'm like, yeah, awesome. That's great. Don't let one time period in your life define you always make the future better than the past. I just think it's fucking cool to just see you keep going and keeping on developing yourself creatively and finding new things to do for yourself and new opportunities and new avenues for expression, and actually going to the West Coast and just doing so many things that so many people say they're going to do but don't actually do so.

Speaker 3 (00:01:41):

Well. I think it is the result of a being, I think ambition and kind of selfishness kind of go hand in hand. And I mean selfishness, not necessarily in a bad way, but to be

Speaker 4 (00:01:53):

Truthful a healthy amount.

Speaker 3 (00:01:54):

Well, I just think there's certain decisions. I've made a decision not to pursue a family life, for example, because for me to do what I would want to do, it wouldn't be fair to burden other people and not be able to give that something like that. Its type of attention. So there's definitely an element of being kind of, alright, I have all these things I want to do, and even now I'm doing a bunch of different things and all I'm thinking about is, damn, I can't work on this other thing I want to, or I have this other idea. It's almost like I have too many ideas and not enough time to execute all of them, and it's making me kind of reexamine myself like, damn, I need to figure out either how to make the time you do have more efficient, or I also have those points as well where I need to probably start saying no to some things or bowing out of certain projects because it gets time consuming.

(00:02:57):

And right now I'm actually, I can't say it publicly that, but I'm filling in for a pretty well-known metal band on a European tourist. So I'm learning that material. And then I have my own band that we're doing a video or we're planning a tour. Vagus nerve, vagus nerve. And then I joined another band where it's not really my band, I'm kind of joining someone else's band, but then it's like they want to rehearse. But I have all that. So I'm doing work for three bands. I am working on my podcast. I have a job at home that I do. I bartend on the weekends. I'm doing guest guitar solos for people, like Hired gun type stuff. I'll do stuff like that. There's always,

Speaker 2 (00:03:46):

Didn't you just write a track for Body Count?

Speaker 3 (00:03:49):

Well, yeah, I mean, I wrote the track maybe six months ago, but the song, the album is just coming out now.

(00:03:55):

Yeah, I wrote a track for that. I've written three songs for Jamie Jostas solo band. One of those is on his new EP that just actually came out the same day, came out yesterday, a song called Chasing Demons and Howard Jones from Kill Switches on it. But there's always stuff like that where I just, I'm kind of slow when it comes to I think stuff like that. If I'm going to write a song, I need a whole day, I can't really do anything else. I have to just focus on that. And then a lot of people become aware of me through my writing about music and stuff, and I have 50 articles I want to write and I don't have time to do that. So it's like a lot of times when you look at your time and your life as kind of real estate, there's only so much you can do unfortunately. And that doesn't even come into the effect with your personal life and trying to make time for my girlfriend and family

Speaker 2 (00:04:54):

Personal life.

Speaker 3 (00:04:55):

Yeah. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:04:56):

I was about to say, I remember having a personal life once upon a time,

Speaker 3 (00:05:01):

Really. I'm trying to imagine you with a personal life.

Speaker 2 (00:05:04):

That's what I think I had one, it's come and gone. Definitely don't really have one right now, but it's interesting what you're talking about. I talk about this with my friend Finn who works with us, how the number one struggle or maybe failure point for most successful entrepreneurs is that they try to do too many things and end up spreading themselves thin. So I find myself struggling with that a lot. There's always like, God, I want to do this, I want to do that. I could easily do this and that and this and that, but in reality, I know that I should be focusing on my number one, which is making me the majority of my money and has the most potential, but the demon that wants me to keep on trying new companies and new ideas doesn't ever shut the fuck up. But I have found that I do better when I start saying no to things and focus that energy that I could have been focusing on five projects, I try to put into one or two, and then I find that those one or two these days get bigger than the sum of all five put together would've been, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (00:06:28):

Yeah, no, there's definitely that point. I think we all reach, like me, I don't think, obviously I'm friends with Finn as well and props to him shout out, brought me on. Yes. And he's definitely an inspirational guy in a lot of ways for a lot of people don't know him. He had the sight, what was it, stuff you'll Hate?

Speaker 2 (00:06:52):

Yep, stuff, fuel Hate. He was Sergeant D on Stuff You Will Hate.

Speaker 3 (00:06:56):

And then now he has a new website called Punk Rock, NBA, where he filters a lot of just business minded and inspirational type of articles, but from the perspective of the independent music world and that ethos that we all came from. And then there's also a really great Facebook, private Facebook forum with like-minded people and I think that's really incredible. But he's brought me, he also, he works at Creative Live at Night, I blogged for them and actually did some on-air stuff playing, doing some guitar demos and stuff. So yeah, he's amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:07:35):

Yeah, our listeners know him through Creative Live because I've done eight of them and also he works with now the Mix URM Academy on our marketing. So he's been on the podcast actually a few times too. So some of our listeners are aware of him, and if you're not, you should be. And definitely punk rock MBA is actually a great resource I think for people who aren't just looking to be in the business world. For instance, the article he put out about DIY Facebook ads is phenomenal for anybody that wants to learn how to get better reach on Facebook, for instance, not just business people. Whenever I see musicians complaining about Facebook, I link that article,

Speaker 3 (00:08:27):

I read it to try and get some insight because still kind of a bit of a mystery box for me, especially with my newer band Vagus Nerve, because we're not in the position to really do a lot of touring right now because we're kind of a long distance band and we all do a bunch of different things. So in some respects, I was even thinking about it. I was like, alright, so let's say you're a brand new band and more like when you're brand new and you go on tour, you're going to lose money, right?

Speaker 2 (00:08:57):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (00:08:57):

And the goal is to either when you know, hey, listen, we're going out or maybe we're making 50 bucks a night or whatever, it's small. So the idea is to either not lose money, break even, or lose as little money as possible. And I know some of these bands, they'll go out there and they'll buy onto a tour or they'll just do a crappy tour, they have to rent a van or do something and five people in a band will have to spend a thousand dollars each maybe to do the tour. And I was like, what if you took that $5,000 and just spend it on Facebook ads? Would you make more fans doing that than having done the tour and the tour? Because think about it, even it's a good, say, a good opening slot on a tour and you played in front of three to 400 people a night, which would be a really good tour for a young band. So think about that. So you 400 people times 30 days, my math was at 12,000 people.

Speaker 2 (00:09:57):

But you're being generous because that's assuming that the three or 400 people are there at the beginning of the show. Exactly.

Speaker 3 (00:10:06):

I am being generous, but I'm just giving you just making some round numbers. But using that same money, wouldn't it be ideally, couldn't you make more fans because think about $5,000

Speaker 2 (00:10:17):

Possibly. No, I agree. I think that if, I guess your path to fandom, or I guess I hate to say sales funnel, but if you're marketing,

Speaker 1 (00:10:27):

Marketing

Speaker 2 (00:10:27):

Funnel one, I hate to say sales funnel for a band because it just sounds so bad, but if your funnel is set up to where you can capture people's information easily, if they click on that Facebook ad and say it's a music video or 30 seconds of a music video, and then they go to your page or to YouTube or whatever, and if your branding is straight and all that stuff, it's easy to find your band after that and you have all the appropriate stuff in place to capture people and you know how to pixel them and retarget them and all that stuff. Then I think that you can, as long as your music doesn't suck and you target the right people, you have a much greater chance of making some fans by putting that money into Facebook.

Speaker 3 (00:11:21):

I just think it's difficult to, if you were to tell that to a band who, let's say they just had that as a resource, they're like, Hey, we have $5,000 to promote our band, or you can take that money and hire a publicist or you could or do a radio campaign if you have have allocated resources, how do we use this money? I think it's just a tough sell to tell someone, Hey, put this into these ads because it is not sexy. You spend $5,000 to go on tour. It's very real and tangible. You go out and you load in and you play the show and you connect and you see the people. It's very easy to make that connection of where your money's going. But it's probably a bit scarier, and I'm saying this as someone who has not put 5,000 into Facebook ads, but like I said, it's just a thought experiment I've been having

Speaker 2 (00:12:15):

Lately. But you also know you have well over a decade of touring experience at all levels from filling in for Lamb of God to being in an opener band, to being in your own headlining band, to being in a direct support band. You've done it all, bus or van the deal. And that just because on a good tour doesn't mean that you're going to get many fans out of it. I'm sure you've experienced that. I know I've experienced it to where you think this tour, this is going to be it, but then you're playing five minutes after doors and only 25 people see you at night and it's like, it sounded so cool when we booked it, it looks so great on paper, but in reality it's not helping the band that much.

Speaker 3 (00:13:05):

Well, I have to say with respect to God forbid specifically, that was really how we made fans. We didn't really get serious fans until we hit the road, and it was very tangible for us for where we would do a certain tour or do a show, and back then it was the early two thousands when record sales were still something that meant something. You could literally see the sound scans jump up and you could see, I'll give an example. So when we did Oz Fest in 2004, God forbid, had one of the best, we were one of the best selling bands on the tour. So if you looked week to week to week, I think Launa Coyle was the biggest selling band. Obviously Slipknot was the biggest selling band to be truthful, but as far as the bands, the developing bands,

Speaker 2 (00:13:57):

As far as everybody else goes

Speaker 3 (00:14:01):

On Earth, devil Dryer, we were actually one of the top selling bands and it legitimately had to do what was happening on the day and going out and doing the work. It was the one thing, and I think it's just different for different bands, but for us, when we were really firing on all cylinders and we were lucky, we did get good tours with the right bands, I can't really think of too many times we went out with someone and been like, eh, this is just, it's not working for us, or we're sticking out like a sore of thumb. We are a hybrid band. So we tended if we were playing with more hardcore scene bands or we were doing torn at the Death metal band, we were always able to kind of carve our own niche. And my whole thing is if you're good, it shouldn't matter who you're playing with.

(00:14:48):

You got to bring it and go out. And the really empowering thing about the live show is it really isn't in your hands. It's like it's the one thing you can control is how well you perform, how seriously you take it, going to the merch booth, meeting people connecting because you do a show and even there's 200 people there and you only get five fans, but those are five fans for life. You've done your job that day as far as I'm concerned. So it's all how you look at it, I think, and it's all, I dunno with respect to that, that was definitely a bonus for us.

Speaker 2 (00:15:24):

But say, is five fans a night for 30 nights worth $5,000?

Speaker 3 (00:15:30):

No, but we never paid to go on tour. Now we had times when we were breaking even or making not very much money, but we didn't go out and we never did that more locally type band situation. We didn't really start touring until we had a record deal, until we had some tour support. We had a manager, an agent. So you did it right? Yeah, we kind of started doing things when there was an infrastructure and apparatus that allowed us to do it in somewhat of a responsible way. The thing we did, we just all just moved back home with our parents and just knew we're not going to make money for a year and a half and we're just going to be, and the idea was just go out and not lose money. But you'd have situations back then where we had a van and the van would break down and all of a sudden you missed two weeks on the tour and that kind of blew up your budget or there'd just be all these kind of things.

(00:16:25):

But then you come home and even though you didn't personally lose money, you just didn't have any money. So you're trying to get crappy jobs or figure it out. And it was a real kind of psychological thing of being out there and when you're on, especially when we started getting bigger tours, when we went out with Nevermore and Pec and Cradle, filthy, we started to feel like we were rock stars because the band started doing well and we come home and you have $8 in your pocket and you got to go work at Walmart. You're like, I'm not a rock star.

Speaker 2 (00:17:01):

And you're living with a parent.

Speaker 3 (00:17:03):

Yeah. Well, my grandparents at the time, I never really cared about that, but was I felt lucky to be truthful. I felt lucky I had a place to stay. So I mean, a lot of people don't have family to stay with, so

Speaker 2 (00:17:14):

I felt great about it until I was about 30 and then I started to feel like a loser.

Speaker 3 (00:17:20):

But by that point, things were kind of developing their own natural equilibrium around our band and things were starting to become more clear at that point anyway. But yeah, it's a tough battle I think for how bands want to figure out what you want to do. And I think the kind of cool thing now is it's a whole new game and there are, people think there are rules, but there are no rules. You have to get creative about how you want to launch your project because the thing is, like I said, you think like an entrepreneur and in many ways being an entrepreneur, you're like, yeah, this doesn't make sense. This business model doesn't, trying to make money starting a band is probably one of the dumbest things you can do

Speaker 2 (00:18:08):

Though I have seen it work out for lots of people. So within the realm of yes, it's one of the stupidest things you can do, there are certain conditions upon which it's not one of the stupidest things you can do. So I definitely feel like if you go about it the right way and you're at the right time in history for that kind of music you're making and are actually really good, then maybe it's not that dumb of a move. But in general it's kind of dumb. It's tough.

Speaker 3 (00:18:45):

Well, it's just a business model standpoint. So if you look at record sales, a record contract is constructed in a way that mitigates the risk for the label as much as possible. So that's most people, I don't know how much your listeners know about this, but generally a normal A band's royalty rate will be somewhere between 12 and 15% to start for a whole record. So just if the record is $10, you're making a buck 50, but obviously you don't see any of that money until you recoup. But it's really difficult to recoup your costs out of only 15%, which is why many bands end up. So you have that thing

Speaker 2 (00:19:30):

Recouping out of that percentage was one of the things that so many people don't understand that you're not recouping out of the a hundred percent.

Speaker 3 (00:19:39):

And the thing is, so you have that revenue stream, then when you go to the touring revenue stream, you have the idea of just, you have to split everything, however many ways of the people that are in your band. And that's after your manager gets paid, that's after your agent gets paid, you have crew, the cost for your vehicle, gas, you have all this, just the overhead is such to the point where a band probably has to make around $1,500 in the guarantees and maybe somewhere around a thousand dollars a night in merchandise to you get to the point where you could do that band where you can make a middle class income. And that's being very tight, being very frugal and not going overboard with tour buses and crazy stuff. And this as much as I do, getting to the point where you're making $1,500 a night in guarantees and selling a thousand dollars a night in merchandise, that's a pretty big band.

Speaker 1 (00:20:40):

Yeah, that's not easy. But the thing is, if you can get

Speaker 3 (00:20:42):

Over that, right, if you can get over that threshold of those kind of minimum numbers of making a living, then you can do really well. Then all of a sudden you are making six figures. And plus I think the bands you were referring to that can make money, that upper crust, the kind of 1% of musical acts do great. They do really well, they make a lot of money. Once you can break out into that notoriety, it can be very, very profitable. But just getting there is, it is very difficult and it's not guaranteed. So I'm just saying strictly as a business model, if I was a young person, and I've written about this, if would I be a rapper or a DJ or a comedian where you're just, you can just go out by yourself and you have a backing track, or if you're a dj, just go out and do your thing. It's just from a business model standpoint, you can go out there in your Toyota Camry and do a tour. I mean, not for nothing. It,

Speaker 2 (00:21:42):

I've thought about that too. It's so much more enticing to think about it that way because I mean, a thousand bucks a night for one person minus expenses is a whole different world than split by five people after expenses, whole different world.

Speaker 3 (00:22:04):

I was reading an article about Jason Newstead and he showed up a couple years ago with his own solo project called Newstead, and he was pumping it up. He was all over social media, they were doing tours. He had Mike Muk from stained playing second guitar in the band.

Speaker 2 (00:22:23):

I remember that.

Speaker 3 (00:22:25):

And it was actually, it had some heat, it was really cool. It was like, oh, Jason Steads out here. And he kind of just disappeared. And they had an interview lately and he said the reason why he stopped doing it is that it was so expensive that he was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to go all over the world. Now I'm not his account manager or anything like that, so I don't know how he was spending money or why it was that, but think about it, a guy like that who probably has millions of dollars in the bank, even it was the business model of running a band was too cost prohibitive. And I think about other people like Joey Georgeson who had to launch a new band and he's the money guy, so him doing his band was probably costing him money. I look at Jada Pinkett Smith, who she had that band, wicked Wisdom, I remember them and they were doing stuff, and I imagine they had two buses and she was paying everybody just for her to be on tour because you have someone with money in the band and they're incurring all the costs.

(00:23:32):

Probably she's spending hundreds of thousands dollars every month they're out when that's also time that she could be making a movie, making a million dollars being on a television show making. So it's not only that you're spending money, but you're also not doing other things that you could be making money.

Speaker 2 (00:23:48):

I completely agree. It's kind of funny to think about it like that. I mean, I think that in the particular case of Jason Ted, it's entirely possible that they thought that it was just going to be the early nineties all over again for him and just put it out and it'll do great Jason Stead. And it was a reality call because the reason I say that is because, and I don't know this for a fact, I could be totally wrong, but the reason I say that is because I've been involved in certain productions where say a band was reuniting after a long time and they were successful in their heyday, and by successful, I mean went gold, for instance. So actually moved some units back in the day where it mattered and getting back together. They're thinking that they're going to at least be in the billboard top 10, and they're making fun of bands that sell 5,000 copies the first week and talking shit. And guess how many copies they sold the first week? It was 5,600, which is

Speaker 3 (00:25:09):

Good. That's a good

Speaker 2 (00:25:10):

Wait. Guess that is good for now. But I'm just saying that these guys who come from a different era, they might, it's entirely possible that they're approaching it, that they were approaching touring and everything as though it was still 1995 or something. But however, that doesn't change the point that it's extremely difficult, and especially if you're not being creative and you're not going about this, I guess like a gorilla warrior, I think that it's a lot more like Gorilla warfare now. But for instance, I have seen people now who I know personally that develop their career for years online and never tour. And they build it up to a point that when they finally do tour after a few years, every show is sold out and they make Bank

Speaker 3 (00:25:59):

Angel Vivaldi. That's what he did.

Speaker 2 (00:26:01):

There you go. And I'm sure you can think of a few others too.

Speaker 3 (00:26:06):

Periphery is a band that really, and I don't know if it was totally on purpose, I think it is also just reflective of the online communities that they spent time in, but it wasn't that by the time they came out, they were selling out shows, but they did have fans out even before they were signed

Speaker 2 (00:26:23):

Through. Yes, the internet already loved them

Speaker 3 (00:26:26):

And they were able to parlay that buzz into record deals and into doing, we toured with them 2010, just did this tour with Kitty. I can't remember if they were signed by that point. I think it might've been before they were signed, but you would see in every city, they weren't big, but in every city there'd be that handful of people that already was familiar with the band, already liked the band. Actually, I've had this article in my head and I've been doing research on it to basically rewrite the strategy of how bands start. And it really was inspired by Vegas nerve when we were shopping our EP around. And a lot of the lines from the labels were like, alright, so are you guys planning on touring? This would be a very similar question is, well, are you a band or are you a project? And the insinuation there was that, it was just kind of a recording, but we weren't a real band. It was just something we made. And it's a couple guys, but it is a band. We recorded the album live in the room and the chemistry and all that stuff is really important, but I understand what they mean by that.

Speaker 2 (00:27:44):

That's a fair question. Totally a question. In 2000 15, 16, 17, whenever it was that you were talking to them, that's a totally fair question.

Speaker 3 (00:27:53):

Yeah, so totally fair question. And it really actually made me look to the band and kind of be like, alright, we have to ask ourselves how seriously we're taking this because I wouldn't want to sign a record deal. And they had certain expectations that we weren't able to follow through with because I think I'm very much into the ethics of business and this community, the heavy music community is very small. Everyone knows everyone, and if you do bad business, it gets around and people want to work with people that they feel care about fulfilling their obligations. It's really, really important to me. So what I was thinking about was, alright, so labels and managers and agents, they want to sign a band and they want that band then go out and tour constantly for that first record, but the band is new, so out the gate, they're not going to be making very much money or they be spending, it's going to be very difficult. So that group of individuals has to make a decision to essentially risk their wellbeing for X amount of time for hopefully some payoff down the road. And my thoughts about this, and as someone who's been in that position but also has studied stuff, I've noticed a lot of bands get defeated mentally and emotionally during that time, right? Oh yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:29:23):

Absolutely.

Speaker 3 (00:29:23):

And I think they kill the Golden Goose early because they want results early. And it made me think about all the European bands, bands like OPEC bands like dmu Borg gear that they didn't even show up in America for years later to their fifth album, right?

Speaker 2 (00:29:43):

Yeah. Oh, RA, perfect example.

Speaker 3 (00:29:46):

Yeah. So what they were doing was they were dealing with their circle of control. So you look at a band like OPEC who did one tour with Cradle of Filth in the nineties and didn't really start touring until their fifth album. And the thing I was thinking about that was what did they do in that time of those four albums? They made fans by just being a great band

Speaker 2 (00:30:10):

And they developed themselves artistically, which even if you look at rock and roll history, classic rock bands in the older days when record contracts were far more ridiculous, they also gave you far more chances. It wasn't uncommon for a huge star to have four albums out before they hit four flops. Yeah, Floyd's a great

Speaker 3 (00:30:36):

Example. Floyd Aerosmith really grinded it out. And so this is, to me, I guess the concept is the new artist development is that we need to, as an industry, we need to, even though I understood where those labels were coming from, they weren't understanding that we kind of have to start looking at this sports. So if I'm an NBA fan, so I'll use NBA as an example, if I'm looking at the player with the most talent in the draft to make my team better, and I'm saying, well, if he's not going to be good, if he's not going to be an All-Star the first year, I'm not going to draft him. But if I take him and then I develop him by the third or fourth year, he is going to be a great player. What makes more sense to get the guy who's going to be good on day one or the one who's going to be great if I just work with him for three or four years?

(00:31:28):

We want to be thinking long term. So I think even though I think those labels are right, I also think they're looking too much in the short term and need to be aligning themselves with the best talent, the kind of talent, but also obviously you need sane people, you need responsible people. That's important. But it just got me, but also made me think about bands like Lamb of God, bands like Kil Switch, engage, this is from being friends with them. I don't think Kills Switch would've became a full-time band unless they signed with a Roadrunner and they could get tour support and they could get big opportunities. They weren't desperate to be rock stars.

(00:32:15):

Everyone had other careers. I look at the Lamb of God guys, they were in their thirties by the time things actually started happening for them, and they were really smart. They weren't like, alright guys, we're going to quit our jobs and go get in the van. That van did one van tour and they did only buses after that. They would share, but they valued themselves and they said, no, I'm not going to go chase something. We're going to let it come to us. And they were patient. And even though those two bands in particular had huge success in their kind of first label releases and they did well, but it's this thing of not getting too ahead of ourselves. And I think it's as an industry, unless like I said, just killing the golden goose because we want the eggs now is like we have to develop more patience. I think as an industry,

Speaker 2 (00:33:04):

One of the best ideas I ever heard came from Blasco, one of our conversations where he said that he thinks that the industry, the label should undergo a mandatory signing freeze of one year because I mean, it'll never happen, but just think about if somehow that happened where for one year you can't sign anything. So for that one year you can't get distracted with shiny young bands that suck and aren't going to do anything, and you're going to have to really work your roster to try to get the most out of it. You will then realize who is worth keeping around and developing, who's not worth keeping around and developing. It'll give you really interesting perspective for the future.

Speaker 3 (00:33:55):

It's one of those things that like I said, would never happen, but yeah, it would probably be healthy. And the thing is, I think in the world we come from the heavy metal world. There's not that many labels that really have resources and there's a handful and not for nothing. Those labels are the success stories, the metal blades and the central medias nuclear blasts. They've survived and I think they really do know what they're doing, but they're also, I think there's an element of being conservative because the losses when you're going out and investing in a band can be, it's in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And I know on the outside looking in that looks like, oh, well, they're a big label. They can afford it. Those are people's jobs and salaries. If they lose that money, then that means they got to fire someone. So it's tough, man. I don't envy the a r people of today because I think the risk is definitely prohibitively higher.

Speaker 2 (00:35:03):

Well, there's this Catch 22 because you want to find the talent to develop it and invest that into it. But then again, it's so tough to move records that if you don't get results right away, you're firing people. So that's why the signing freeze is a great idea. You won't be spending those resources on dumb bands. And I'm saying this because of my years producing bands and dealing with these labels, I thought they were signing too many shitty bands. And that was one of the problem was too many bands were getting five to $10,000 budgets, which that's not that great for a record, but you can make a record with that. But they were just throwing that money at bands that should have still been local bands. And I think that that right there didn't help the situation at all to flood the metal market with all these local bands basically.

Speaker 3 (00:36:06):

Well, Steve Joe, who used to be at Central Media and I was at Prosthetic, that

Speaker 2 (00:36:10):

Dude's an angel. Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:36:11):

So Steve, so God forbid, our deal with Century Media ended 2010, so it was kind of the end of our tenure, and he was our guy over there, and he was explaining to me around that time, 2009, 2010, that instead of signing one band for, let's say you gave two bands two $50,000 deals, instead of doing that, they would just give 10 bands, $10,000 deals because the math just worked out that out of that 10, two of them will hit just kind of by virtue of the law of averages. And it just, so basically what you're having at these labels, and I think the strategy makes sense from the dollars and cents, is we sign Dependable Veteran X that we know well. It's a simple equation of we put X in and based on their previous sales, this is the result we're going to get.

(00:37:13):

Right? So if we're nuclear glass, we're going to sign machine Head, we're going to sign Fear Factory. We know that those fans are out there. And then when it comes to new bands, unless that band already has it, is killing it in social media, or they've seen their polestar numbers and they know we know there's this fan base there, we just have to plug in. If it's literally a baby band that doesn't really, hasn't made an impact, it just doesn't behoove them to take the risks. There's a new band, really great, I'm not going to name who they are, who signed with a bigger metal label, and they kind of got hyped up, really talented man, amazing. And they kind of got a really good deal in the tens of thousands. And the band didn't do much because the one guy in the band has a business, he's making money. And so that label probably got screwed because they gave them a more traditional deal and then the band didn't really do the work. And listen, they still might do it eventually, but it made me very aware of that you have to be is just, bands are not dependable. You give 'em this deal, you spend $10,000 to make a record, do all stuff, then they go on tour and they break up and then you're out of your money.

Speaker 2 (00:38:33):

I completely see that. And I remember when I got my first manager, one of the first things he said to me was, in the industry, all the managers and labels have a bad reputation for being the bad guys. But some of these bands or some of the worst guys I've ever met as far as being willing to screw people over or not even realizing that they're screwing people over for money. So I totally get it from the money perspective because also I've done spec deals with bands or I've invested in bands records back in the day just to have them fuck off or break up or whatever. And so this goes back to what we were talking about earlier about what is that $5,000 good to put into Facebook ads or to buy on a tour? I think that the more you can do to establish your success independent of the industry, the better your chances are of making it in the industry because of all those risk factors. It will be a lot easier for people to invest in your project if your project is already a machine basically.

Speaker 3 (00:39:43):

And it's one of those things, it's like a tough love scenario where if you do it, it's in many ways, I think this hurt, God forbid, was even though we were building an audience in the northeast and had somewhat of a name, really things didn't happen for us until we got a label and a manager. And you fast forward 10 years later when all of a sudden we don't have a record deal and we don't have a manager, you realize that you become dependent on a lot of these tools and we weren't as could have been. And in a lot of ways, when you have the manager to be to do all the work, then you have to do it yourself and you don't know how to do it. You're probably going to make a lot of mistakes and the self-sufficient bands and the people that can wear all the hats and know how to put out their own records and promote their own records and book their own tours, they're always going to survive. So it's very much like that parent that spoiled their kid. And when the parent's not around, the kid is helpless.

(00:40:53):

It's amazing how much I've learned essentially starting from scratch with a new band and doing everything independently. We did a Kickstarter to help finish the record and booking our own shows and kind of going back to the basics because it is, even though I did it years and years ago, it's a whole new world the way you do these things, even though there's some things that are similar, there's a whole lot that is brand new. I didn't know, I never put out a record on my own. We go to CD Baby and figuring we're doing the paperwork and trying to figure out all this stuff, even though I've been in the industry for a while, it's amazing because it keeps changing how much you don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:41:39):

Absolutely. Well, it's funny that you say that about managers and labels kind of spoiling bands by the way, because in some of my production experience, I find that some of the bands that have had more of that have the hardest time with little things like how to book a plane ticket, how to get to the airport on time.

Speaker 3 (00:42:10):

I remember 2001, first time we went to the uk, and I remember we went with our manager, the Rev, who was at the syndicate, and he went with us. And I remember just, I hadn't been to an airport since I was 10 years old, and I was scared of the airport and as not knowing where anything was and where I was supposed to be. And it was, yeah, it's kind of amazing. But I'm learning that now when Vegas nerve, we didn't get a label to pig up the record in a way it kind of emboldened you to say, all right, we're going to do things our own. We're going to make our own music videos, we're going to book our own shows, we're going to do our own promotions. And the thing is, I think you can only do that stuff if you have that personal self-confidence to go out and say, Hey, I think we are good. And it's not that whole like, oh, I'm going to spite the label. They'll know, they'll learn. They'll be begging me to sign their label in the year. It's like, I don't care about any of that stuff. I just really think you're just doing it for the right reasons. Do it. You want to do it not because you think there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Speaker 2 (00:43:25):

Well, hopefully there is one.

Speaker 3 (00:43:28):

We'll see. But I really don't care. I don't, I just want to do cool things with people I like.

Speaker 2 (00:43:33):

So are you enjoying doing stuff yourself?

Speaker 3 (00:43:37):

Yeah, I really like it. For me, it's just, like I said, kind of going back to the beginning of the podcast, I just do so many things. I have to, like I said, I have to clear out that real estate where I basically will have points where it's like, all right, I'm pretty much just doing Vegas nerve stuff right now and that's my top, it's kind of just moving things to the priority list. Currently I have to book some shows on the east coast and I have to record some acoustic tracks before I, because I'm working Coachella and then I go on tour with that band. So I have these things where I'm alright, I have to get these things done because if I don't do it, no one else will do it. And I'm also the most experienced person in the band and kind have the only one with a real name in the industry. So if I don't do a lot of these things, they just won't happen. And not because other people are lazy, they just don't have experience.

Speaker 2 (00:44:30):

It's just you're the dude.

Speaker 3 (00:44:31):

Yeah. So to me it's always about that kind of is the juice worth the squeeze kind of question. Yeah, sometimes you ask yourself, is it worth all this? And to me it's always about, the human connection is very fortunate to be in a band, God forbid, where it was the same group of guys for a long period of time. And that element supersedes the business aspect of it. And with this band, I didn't try to recreate that, but having a group of special individuals that perform a certain way together and have a personal connection I think is really important because then it becomes about something else other than the not for nothing. I mean a lot of people don't know this but me and you weren't involved in a band situation that ended up not working out and this was the project that kind of developed after that.

(00:45:34):

And that situation, which I felt was very much more kind of calculated around the business side and the kind of marketability and something being sellable and being really into the weeds on that, it made me want to do the opposite, not worry about any of that stuff and just make something you like. Because I truly believe if you're a little, like I said, I think there's one thing if you're like, alright, we're making this music as a product. I think as long as you're honest with that, there's nothing wrong with it. But I also get off on doing the opposite of just not worrying about that and getting down to the purity of what it's about. I think there's something, it's kind of reclaiming your innocence in a certain way.

Speaker 2 (00:46:26):

Since you brought that up, there's something I wanted to ask you about. So after we did that, ill faded project. You moved to LA

Speaker 3 (00:46:35):

Not for years, probably not for

Speaker 2 (00:46:37):

Years, four years. But it was technically after.

Speaker 3 (00:46:40):

Yes. True, true.

Speaker 2 (00:46:41):

No, I don't mean two weeks. But I mean you moved to LA a few years later and I know that you had mentioned it to me a few times that you wanted to do that and then you actually went and did it. And reason I want to talk about this is because we have lots of listeners from all over the world and lots of them do want actual production careers and live in places, some in the us, some outside of the us, but they live in places where it's just not going to happen unless they move. And sometimes you can be in a situation like mine where you could live in a great place like Atlanta and an opportunity comes up in Orlando and Orlando isn't as cool as Atlanta, but the opportunities there and got to go. So I want to talk about your move to la, what it took for you to actually bite the bullet and go how you made it happen and just your thoughts about uprooting yourself for real or imagined or perceived opportunities.

Speaker 3 (00:47:52):

So it was always in the back of my head essentially because I had the opportunity to spend some time out here. I was working for a manager that actually managed God forbidden. She hired me. So I spent some time out here and just every time I was out in la, and I know it's kind of a very common line to talk about how cheesy LA it is and everyone's fake and all that stuff, but me, I just felt like everything was always a little more electrified. Just everything always seemed like anytime you played a show there, it just seemed to mean more, there were more important people there. And I know that sounds shallow, but the truth is sometimes when you do something in a place certain places, it reverberates more. It has more impact because it important people there can make things happen for you.

(00:48:42):

You can get a record deal, you can get a tour, you can get in a magazine or on a TV show because you were just in the right place. So I always felt that electric feeling every time I was there. And essentially I had just quit, God forbid, this is summer of 2013, I was touring with on earth playing bass, and I had a moment with my singer. I was like, man, you know what? I was single. I didn't have a girlfriend, didn't have kids, didn't have any job per se. And things just in New York, I kind of settled down to a certain degree. Things were kind of easy for me. I had a job. I wasn't making a lot of money, but I was surviving. But I was like, you know what? I'm too comfortable.

(00:49:30):

Things are just too easy. I'm like, you know what? I may never get a chance to do something like this. I was 30 something years old, I lived in New Jersey my whole life. I'm like, if I don't do this now, I'll never leave. I'll just be one of those people that never did it. There's nothing wrong with staying in one place, but it's not really my personality. I think I'm a much more adventurous and kind of risk taking person. So I just made a decision, big decision. I'm usually not that guy, but I was like, all right, I'm going to do this. And I was lucky. I worked for the NBA for a little bit, so I saved up some money. It is tough, man. They talk about roots when you've been in place for 30 years, those roots are deep and there's a gravity pulling you trying to keep you there. It's all your friends, it's your family, it's your stuff. Physically having a lot of stuff is a gravity that keeps you and it's,

Speaker 2 (00:50:31):

It's this weird knowledge of your hometown. It literally feels like home.

Speaker 3 (00:50:38):

Yeah. But I'd say I was very torn on that because my hometown is really New Brunswick, New Jersey, and I left that a few years earlier around that time that I was jammed with you. And I pretty much lived by New York City and that's where I worked. And that's really most so I feel like I was kind of a Jersey guy, but I was really was more of a New York person at that point.

Speaker 2 (00:51:02):

Fair enough. I guess I just feel like Atlanta just keeps pulling me back

Speaker 3 (00:51:06):

No

Speaker 2 (00:51:06):

Matter what I do.

Speaker 3 (00:51:08):

And the thing is, like I said, Atlanta is a cool place. New York is a cool place. It's great. I love New York. So it was more, half of it was almost not even about LA specifically, it was just about doing something dramatic and doing something, changing your life and going in the face of the fear of change. And so that was really important to me. So I decided to go and it was pretty devastating. I bought a car, took a personal loan, and the transmission broke twice. Driving cross country. Oh my God. And I was stuck in Denver. Well, first I had to borrow money from everyone I knew to get the transmission. I didn't have enough money. And then it broke again. And then, so I was stuck in Denver and I ended up jumping on devil driver's tour bus to get to la. So I got to LA and I was defeated already. It was like, why did I do this? This was so stupid. What a way to start. Well, to me it was like the universe is telling me this was a mistake,

Speaker 2 (00:52:16):

Or maybe the universe is saying, this will work out if you just had the balls to put up with this shit.

Speaker 3 (00:52:24):

But it's just saying, but it's a way of life telling you, I was kind of feeling myself at that point because I had left, God forbid immediately Cause started playing with on Earth, immediately got this awesome gig working for the NBA. I was like, I can do anything I want. I was really that thing of the humility of, yes, you can accomplish great things and confident people can do great things, but guess what? The world does not give a shit about your confidence.

Speaker 2 (00:52:57):

No, I could care less.

Speaker 3 (00:52:59):

And your self-assuredness it really, I got humbled. I came to la no job broke his, all hell. I had spent all my money on that, most of my money in the three because I was stuck out there for three weeks. I didn't have a big buffer. And I was the brokest I'd ever been in my life. No joke. And just questioning everything and figuring everything out. But I was lucky. I had some good friends out here, Lorenzo from Sworn Enemy and John Berkland from Devil Driver, a lot of good friends out here that reconnected with. And over time, I just saw you start to just kind of learn new things about the world and you're just like the thing, I didn't realize it until I went back home six months later that on the East Coast people are a little more downtrodden by their circumstances.

(00:53:54):

I think there's that kind of working class doldrums, it just physically beats on. Yeah, I just think the weather, the public transportation, the tolls, it all kind of beats on people. Whereas I feel in Los Angeles there's a bit more optimism. And because it's true there, there's opportunity kind of around every corner if you're willing to look for it. And I think that the one really important thing about being out here is even if you, A lot of people I know they came out here for one thing, but then ended up doing something else. And that's just kind of being open to, like I said, being open to those opportunities. You might be a musician, then you end up being an actor. You might be an actor, but then you end up being a comedian. You know what I'm saying? You might do one thing, end up becoming an artist manager or working at it. You know what I'm saying? There's just so much going on.

(00:54:55):

Things will just kind of trickle down to you. I wouldn't have ended up writing that song for the body count record if I wasn't out here and seeing Mike getter all the time and just being on people's minds. Certain opportunities just open up and then one thing leads one other thing, which leads to another thing. You kind of just get wrapped up. And another thing about Los Angeles, there's just a lot of wealth here and there's tons of industries that exist just to kind of cater to that wealth. You can kind of just be caught up in that and just little things that, and I just think there's also a quality of life thing. It's just it is sunnier. It is nicer. It is.

Speaker 2 (00:55:39):

It's gorgeous.

Speaker 3 (00:55:40):

Yeah. I mean, you might pay the same amount of money as you pay for a place in New York, but it's bigger. And you can go on a hike, you can go just, there's kind of just more, you kind of get more bang for your buck. But listen, it's not perfect. It has its issues, but I enjoy it now. I definitely, I'm not looking to go anytime soon. And if I did move, I don't know if I would move back to New York. I'd probably go somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (00:56:07):

Now. Do you think that you already having had a decade plus in the industry made your transition to LA much more of a, I guess, smart move or I guess just a little easier. I mean, not to say it was easy. It's obviously not easy if you're broke as fuck and lost your car in the process. But do you think that as opposed to someone just moving from just say Jordan with no connections, one of our listeners did that. He moved from Jordan to la but he's already making connections and already he's very dedicated. But that to me seems like, wow, that seems really tough. Well,

Speaker 3 (00:56:57):

I think it's, I definitely a and a disadvantage. So yes, my advantage is not only do I know a lot of people, but I also have a resume. I could walk into certain doors and if you come from a certain community, you're going to look at what I've done. It's going to have a certain value. So that definitely matters. But not for nothing. I was 33 years old by the time I moved here. If I'd have moved here when I was 26, I could be playing in Nickelback or something. Who knows? What if I would've come a little bit earlier when I was a little younger? And the truth is, looks and youth and all that stuff is an asset in the entertainment industry and capitalizing on that at the right times because these things, listen, I'm doing all right, but certain opportunities will not be available to you when you price out in terms of age, which is fine because to be truthful, in many ways, I came out here to really give professional music another go. And I think I was almost looking at it more in that hired gun type of vein and kind of doing a lot of that stuff. I kind of realize that's not totally what I want to do, even though I will do it from time to time. But I preferably, if I'm going to do it, I'm going to play with people I know and bands I like. I'm going to be really selective. I'm not just going to be the guy just in the background playing D chords for dollars,

Speaker 2 (00:58:36):

Chords for dollars,

Speaker 3 (00:58:37):

Dcos for dollars.com. Call me up.

Speaker 2 (00:58:40):

That's probably a great website.

Speaker 3 (00:58:44):

No, but like I said, you could come out to and listen, I think you can make the same case moving to Austin, Texas for Nashville, Tennessee, a vibrant place like Seattle or Portland, Oregon, these hubs of creative activity. There's these big startup communities. But it really is about, and I think this, not to really bring politics into it, but I think not only from musician's standpoint, I think as a human being standpoint if you're in a dead end place, if you're somewhere in the middle of Michigan where there's no jobs and there's no opportunities, why do you stay there, go where the stuff is happening and listen, it's hard. It's not easy to make it in these places, but you have to go where the opportunities are. I feel.

Speaker 2 (00:59:38):

I completely agree, and to that point right now, I'm doing something that is the most successful thing I've ever done in my life, which I would've never, ever imagined doing, which is nail the mix in the URM Academy or far bigger than anything. I've done way bigger. And I never imagined myself running an educational website. In fact, I would've probably laughed at someone if they had come back in time and told me that I was going to do that. But I'm doing it. I love it, and it's gone way better than I could have ever imagined. And it's because I was open to letting nature take its course and I was open to the idea of trying new things that were outside my comfort zone. I remember the first time that Finn invited me on Creative Live. I was like, sure, why not? I'll try it. But it definitely seemed like a one-time thing and not something that I took all that seriously. Lo and behold, it turned into a whole career. But I think that the reason I'm saying this is because you said about how people go to la, they think they want to do one thing, they come out doing another, and that's okay. I can say that in my personal life I've done that, and I think that the people who actually stay in the same exact field that they say they're going in for music and entertainment, that's a very, very, very tiny percentage of people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:24):

I mean, in some ways I have this respect for people who they're just on it as a guitar player. They're just like years later, they're still working on their craft and they're in it, but it really isn't me. That's cool. I've kind of realized it isn't me. Listen, I'm a good guitar player. I'm not the greatest guitar player in the world, but I'm sure if all I did was play guitar, I'd probably be a lot better. But I'd rather spend time writing and spend time getting, I'd love to get into the world of comedy and acting and chart. In many ways. I'm almost, if music was all I did, I feel like I would be bored. I'm just too turned on by too many different subject matters and mediums. I just feel like in that respect, life is short. You only get so many thing is, like I said, I'm not getting any younger, but I still don't think that should affect you wanting to explore and try different things because I just think the diversity of experience is probably one of the most valuable things to me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):

Well also if you think about, I mean, I know some of those dudes who when I met them 20 years ago, all they did was play guitar six hours to eight hours a day. And now all they do is play guitar six to eight hours a day. And those are the guys that are the very, very best I've ever met at playing guitar. And they're also some of the guys who people who listen to guitar music look up to and that's great, but the thing is that those guys don't have to try to be obsessed about guitar. They just are.

(01:03:15):

It is who they are. It's not me. And it's not you, it's them though. And I couldn't keep that up for that many years for those decades because I'm just not that interested in guitar, but more power to them for being that into it because it's because of their obsession that the craft of being a badass guitar player moved forward. But I do think it's incredibly important to be honest with oneself about what you are and what you aren't. Because if you're not that dude, if you're not that dude who's at a party and starts to stress out because you're not holding a guitar, if you're that dude that doesn't feel like healthy in the brain unless they played guitar for a few hours that day, or if you're not that guy, when you go on YouTube, you're looking up guitar all the time, all you do is guitar. You live, breathe, think guitar. If you're not that guy, that's okay, but better not pretend like you're that guy because there are guys who actually do that and they're probably going to be a lot better.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):

Yeah, I mean I think I definitely felt that pressure a lot more in the last few years of doing, God forbid, because heavy metal guitar is very much like a sport. Yes, it is. And there's this need I think, to keep up with the Joneses as far as technical prowess and just generally being impressive and also that the fans their threshold for what is technically valid. The bar constantly keeps getting raised and stuff that sounded crazy like me, I'd point out death sound of perseverance at the time when that came out. I think 1998 where you're like, this is the craziest thing I've ever heard. And it's so next level, I feel like if you played that for some kid who's like the faceless and macrophages are their favorite bands and they never heard it, they'd probably think it was very simplistic and boring. I mean, maybe not.

Speaker 2 (01:05:28):

Yes, no. Hopefully they would like it know, or they more than likely they'd be like, I guess you had to be there.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):

And I think there's this trajectory with all art. It's like listening to Lenny Bruce do comedy and compare it to Dave Chappelle's new standup or something. It goes on this forward

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):

Or Bill Burr or something,

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):

Just any, the art forms move. If they become more complex and they build, they're standing on the shoulders of giants. And that became tough for me for guitar because I didn't view the instrument to be a competitive sport. I like it as a form of expression and as a tool to let the world know who I am. And also I use it to connect with other musicians. That to me is the great, there's nothing interesting to me about sitting there playing guitar by myself to impress people. It's the most boring thing to me in the world. What's interesting to me is connecting with other musicians in a room and creating something or vibing on something or getting to a place where you're not thinking and you're just being, and that's interesting to me. And that became difficult I think in the last few years of doing God forbidden, kind of made me a little more disillusioned with writing Heavy metal, is that it becomes this clinical, technical, antiseptic, rigid form of me against you and I'm the best. And if you're not as good as this guy, then you don't factor in. And it's just like I kind of not interested. And it's gotten even more extreme the other way, especially being able to play in something like Vagus Nerve where there's some technical stuff going on and some interesting guitar work, but I don't write stuff for that. I want it to be interesting to my ear not to, or make me feel something not to impress someone or be this, I don't know. It doesn't move me anymore like that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):

Fair enough. But I just got to say though, not blowing smoke up your ass. You're a pretty damn good guitar player and what you have going for you, the lot of dudes don't have in my opinion, is that you just sound good. And that doesn't sound like much, but that to me is almost everything. I know lots of guys who are fucking fast as shit that sound like shit, but you've got this tone in your hands that's just like badass. It just sounds, you just sound great. And obviously if other Lamb of God shit is not easy, so obviously if you can hang with them, you can pretty much hang. So give yourself a little credit, but I totally know what you mean about it just not being on your mind to get obsessed with the minutia of the most modern guitar techniques because that kind of becomes your thing.

Speaker 3 (01:08:34):

But in spite of that, there's also kind of a base level of proficiency that I expect out of band. Yes, I can be very critical. A lot of times I'll be at a show, for example, with someone and I'll start talking about the band and then if you didn't know me or if you might think I'm talking shit about them, but I'm not, I just want them to excel. And when I hear bands, this is kind of like the thing you did on the metal sex show when you were critiquing the demos and you have that same kind of ear where it's not, you're not hating on the band or the musicians. You want them to not make these mistakes and that these little simple fixes or paying attention to certain details, maybe they don't understand that they can just

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):

Totally, it's not hate at all. I just want it to be better

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):

And and it's things they can control, but they have to be aware of it. And it's like I've almost even thought, and the thing is I'll see a band and I'll see that what works, but what doesn't work will just bother me and it won't allow me to really fully enjoy what's going on because I'm like this one glaring thing is just like I said, it might be, even though like I said, I'm, I think I'm a pretty good guitar player, but I don't think I'm the greatest. But there's also certain basic technique things that I think a lot of bands lack that will bother me while we're like to me. But that's just hitting a certain basic proficiency that needs to be there for me to kind of consider a band to be at a respectable or quasi professional level. So on both angles, like I said, I'm not overly concerned with the crazy super virtuous technicality, but at the same time, I don't want bands to fall below a certain threshold of just being generally competent.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):

I completely agree with you. The funny thing is about those crits Man, is that the ones I did on Metal sucks. Those were songwriting crits. But on this podcast, we do mixed crits every single month. And also part of what we do with some of our subscribers to our upper level is that we will crit them one-on-one on Skype a few times a month. And man, sometimes we go really hard on our critiques down to telling people to just start all over trash, whatever they did, you got to start all over. But man, the thing is when you're working on something, it is kind of like when you're dating somebody, you might choose to overlook something because for whatever reason, maybe you don't know how to fix it, maybe you're not aware it's there. Maybe you like something else about that person so much that you're going to overlook the fact that they're a horrible alcoholic or something. But when we're working on our own music, we just have these blind spots that sometimes it takes somebody else to be like, Hey buddy, these guitars are completely out of tune. What the fuck are you doing? Tune your goddamn instrument. Or the verse and the chorus are almost the exact same riff and the vocal pattern doesn't change. Come on.

Speaker 3 (01:12:04):

Here's what I wonder though. And I think it can kind of go both ways. Do you ever been involved with things like that where you're just like, nah man, you're doing everything right? Yes. Does it ever, it goes that way sometimes. Okay. Yes, a hundred percent I think you have, because like I said, I would listen to your critiques and I'm like, and it's amazing. I feel like there's certain things you pick up that I just don't even have an ear for, but it becomes, once you say it, then I'm like, oh yeah, I see what he's going there. But you definitely have this angle of looking at things. But it's funny, I think you can go the opposite way too. You can have a Chinese democracy situation where the band and the people involved are so critical of themselves that it never ends.

Speaker 2 (01:12:51):

That's bad too, but that's really, really bad. But the thing is, I will submit that I feel like in Chinese democracy, they probably should have had someone, not me, but someone like me come in and be like, guys, fucking record's done.

Speaker 3 (01:13:07):

Is it guys? Or is it really just an Axel Rose situation,

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):

One guy,

Speaker 3 (01:13:11):

One perfectionist?

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):

Well, either way, whether it's one guy who's slowing everything down or it's just the culture of the band slowing everything down. I think that in those situations it is important to have a producer, for instance, be like, guys, this stuff isn't important anymore. The songs are great, we're done. The end, my job's done here. Go home. I feel like that knowing when to stop, it's just as important as knowing when to keep going. And for instance, with Mixed crits, we deal with this all the time. Right now we have Country Month going on and now the mix, it's the first time we've ever done country. It's just an experiment. We did Masu last month, but this month, well, we've got four hits that this dude Billy Decker mixed and he's one of the top mixers in the genre. And we just feel like people want to get good at mixing. They need to get good at mixing, not just mix Ms Sugar. And these country tracks are so well produced and arranged and it's just so perfect that I feel like the big challenge for people is going to be to not overmix them. And I'm hearing people's mixes already and it's like they're way overcooking these things. They don't know when to chill out and stop because it already sounds too good, it already sounds good, it's already great, it's ready to go. So I feel like, yeah, you're absolutely right. The bands or mixers or whoever can nitpick things straight into the ground. They fly that plane right into a mountain if they're not careful. So part of critiquing people is when it is awesome already to tell people to just fucking chill, submit it, it's done

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):

Well. It's definitely that. I think that scenario of the garbage in, garbage out kind of thing that, listen, if you give a mixer great basic tracks, it's just going to make their job easier. Same thing with a live engineer. If the band, it's kind of hard to make a band like Kill Switch, engage sound, bad, live because they play great, their tones are incredible, they're consistent. That thing is always going to be there. So as just a producer and mixer now, do you get a lot of work outside of the metal realm?

Speaker 2 (01:15:54):

No. And just to clarify, I am doing Nail the Mix full time now. I'll only do studio stuff once or twice a year now.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):

Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):

This thing kind of took off and it's been incredible. But towards the tail end of when I was to where I was I guess mixing full-time, no, I wasn't getting much work outside of Metal, but I think that that's because I worked at a big studio that was known for Metal towards the tail end of that whole thing. However, before my band was signed, I did my own studio for years before I got known as a metal dude. And at that point in time, yeah, I would have country artists come in, I'd have folk artists, I'd have all the genres. Pretty much it wasn't until I got known in a genre and made friends in a genre that only that genre would pop up. So I feel like my experience pre getting the record deal is probably a lot more like our audience's experience because most of them aren't known in the industry. And so if they want to make money at recording, they have to record who will pay them, and you can't always choose your clients, or at least not at the beginning. So I do think that it's a good idea for them to learn multiple genres, if that makes sense. Well

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):

The thing that's interesting to me because with Vagus Nerve being more of a rock band and being more, you start analyzing production in a different way and looking at different just standards, you start checking out different, alright, no, I'll listen to a Queens of Stone Age record or I don't know. It's just interesting to me how that kind of changes and just because the metal world, it becomes so I guess everyone starts going from the same playbook. I think in a lot of ways, at least it has I'd say in the last 10 to 15 years. And just because the budgets aren't there and everyone's using the same plugins and using the same software and using an X effects, and I've noticed how it's, in a way it's great because it's kind of equalized where overall even hardcore records sound great now for sign bands. The work like Kurt Blue has done with bands like Code Orange and stuff like that, and you're like, damn man, even these records sound great and unsigned bands that because of resources like Nail the Mix, people without a ton of money can actually get stuff that has a really high quality. So I think there's good sides and bad sides to I guess the sameness of some of the tools.

Speaker 2 (01:19:03):

I will tell you though that the best mixers that we've had on All Draw from multiple genres,

(01:19:10):

Without a doubt, none of the mixers that we've had on Nail the mix that are really fucking awesome at mixing, none of them are those dudes who only listen to metal and only copy metal mixes. And if it's not metal, fuck it. None of them are like that. They all listen to mixes from a wide spectrum of genres. And the thing is, a lot of 'em try to record or mix stuff in different genres. You just don't hear about it as much because in the metal world, lots of people just focus on metal and so you don't hear about a lot of this other work that these people do, but the best guys aren't typically just, I guess their brain isn't just stuck in this one mode, if that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (01:20:07):

Yeah. Metal has to be the hardest music to mix though because you're just dealing with speed. It's fucking hard speed, low tuning. You're essentially, you have a kick drum, but the way we make Kick drums sound in metal is the opposite of the way a kick drum actually sounds in real life and it's just trying to organize chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):

Yeah, everything has distortion on it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:32):

Yeah, it's nuts. It's funny, I don't know if you've read this article, actually, I wrote it for Creative Lives, so you probably did see it. The one it was titled Did Pantera Ruin Metal Modern Metal Production? Yes.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):

That's a great article by the way.

Speaker 3 (01:20:51):

And like I said, and even though the title kind of insinuated, I was kind of shitting on Pantera, I really wasn't. It was more an examination of how we kind of got to the modern metal sound, which is very pervasive, but know what's crazy was Pantera's Sound guy hit me up on Facebook to tell me I hit the nail on the head with that and I was like, whoa, I think you did. Like I said, I do my own little home demos and I've recorded a bunch of records with some really great producers, but I'm still kind of a novice when it comes to recording. I don't have much technical skill or know-how, but I do listen with a keen ear and I care about production in it if there's a good record, but the production doesn't do it for me, it makes it difficult for me. I do care about production, so it's something I pay attention to. So it's a good thing there are people like you out there actually know what they're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):

I just don't want production to suck. The thing is, okay, so you know how we've talked about a lot how the bar has gone up for technical musicianship. There's also been an opposite thing that's been happening, which is just as much as there's this, I guess surge in proficiency, there's also a surge in suckiness from a lot of bands who rely on technology and producers who try to rely on technology who

Speaker 3 (01:22:22):

Cut corners,

Speaker 2 (01:22:22):

Yeah, cut corners or only write in Guitar Pro edit everything together because people can't play. Not because it's an artistic choice, but because people can't play. And I feel like it's hurt music to a degree. I feel like if you want to go back to what we were talking about with labels earlier, with a lot of these bands that got signed and thrown in with producers shouldn't have been signed in the first place. They weren't good enough. They didn't have that basic level of proficiency that you were talking about that you want. I know what you're talking about. Just a basic level of competency is not there with a lot of these newer bands and the budgets are so low that they'll record with their buddy who doesn't know how to record and it'll sound okay just because technology is so good that the bottom has risen a bit, it's a lot easier to get a mediocre recording than it's ever been. It's just as hard as ever to get an amazing one, but it's a lot easier to get a mediocre one. My challenge with Nail the Mix is to try to combat that and to help people who don't have budgets or who don't have access to an internship or whatever, help them get better. So that, I guess that downward trend and skill starts to disappear a little bit. I hope just a little bit.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):

Yeah, I know what you're saying. It's the idea that the technology is there, so in a way it actually can make a band lie a little bit about how good they really are. And so can't really, they're not as good as the recording, but the technology gives them a way to fudge the numbers, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (01:24:09):

Yeah, but I'm talking about extreme versions of that. I feel like maybe that's always been the case that bands fudge it a little in the studio. Even back in the seventies, they would have session musicians come in when a guy was too much of a drug addict to play on his own records or I think that the studio has always presented an idealized version of what the band is, and that's okay because a record is forever and a band is comprised of human beings and some days might not be their best day in the studio and the record shouldn't suffer because someone's having a bad day. However, what I'm talking about I think takes it too far to where it fakes it to a degree that they will never be able to accomplish. It presents this image, well, the sonic image of this band, that's just not true. And so they go out and play live and they have to use backing tracks on everything because the band can't actually play anything.

Speaker 3 (01:25:16):

Yeah, I definitely understand that. And I think that's something that in many ways I think that falls on the fans. And the reason why I say that is that if you have these bands where they're really the half of what they're hearing or more is on a track and fans don't really care, bands are going to keep doing it, there's really no punishment. And I think there's also a thing too where you see a band that runs tracks and they sound really great and you see a band that doesn't use tracks and they sound good, but it doesn't quite sound as perfect and it doesn't have that sheen. And then you get kind of judged for that in a certain way. So then in many ways then other bands start using tracks to try to keep up so that they don't feel like they're not holding it down.

(01:26:16):

But I'm kind of going in the other direction, man, I kind of miss the nineties. And even with the recordings, you listen to a lot of those sound garden recordings where it was, there's one vocal track on the verse and there's a looseness and more of a vibe where now I appreciate a recording where they don't tune the vocal and it's a little out maybe, but it's a little more human. I know there's been a lot of hullabaloo in the metal community over the suicide silence record and some people just saying that, oh, the vocals are kind of slightly out of tune some spots, but in some ways I'm like, I kind of appreciate it. Just the balls to just go out there and be what it is. I pine for that. Or even just like a guy like Dave Grohl going and buying the board from Sound City. Was it Sound City?

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):

Yeah, I believe it is.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):

And doing records on tape and not doing to a click. And maybe that's just a little bit of that. I dunno if that's nostalgia, but I definitely listened to a lot of those older, those records from that time period where they sound great, but they're definitely not. It's going for something different. And that whole, well, we got to sound like listen, turn on Octane and listen to the radio rock bands. And there's a very similar stuff from band to band because they're trying to appeal to this standard, but it just kind of homogenizes everything in a lot of ways, in my view.

Speaker 2 (01:28:04):

I agree. I think that there's a fine line with tracks, and you're right, it's kind of the audience's fault. They accept it, but the audience is speaking with their pocketbook in that ticket Sales are down and album sales are down,

Speaker 3 (01:28:19):

Are ticket sales. I don't think that ticket sales are down. I just think there's more shows. The big shows are having trouble selling any tickets, guns, roses goes on tour, sold, sold out. Well, yeah, of course Lady Gaga goes on tour, sold out. I think ticket sales are actually, if you look, since the record sales started really going down, we sell way more tickets. It's just more acts on the road. So it's really, it's difficult to look at those things in kind of a macro sense. You have to kind of understand that. Well, who are ticket sales down for? Are you sure? Should we look at the numbers? I get these, I'm on this, a couple newsletters that kind of give you numbers for what bands and a lot of bands are doing just fine. It really depends on who you're talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:29:15):

No, I think we're on the same newsletters actually.

Speaker 3 (01:29:19):

Yeah, probably

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):

There's some good ones. It always kind of blows my mind, but I just thought that the overall pot for live ticket revenue was down. That's what I thought. But I could be wrong. If

Speaker 3 (01:29:36):

It's down, it might be down from maybe a certain peak, and I think that stuff goes up and down. But overall, here's the thing. Look at, for example, in America, what's happened with the festival culture, it started with Bonnaroo and Coachella and stuff like that, but now it's filtered since Mayhem has ended, we now have these destination festivals, rock on the Range and Rock Oklahoma and stuff like that, that do much bigger numbers than Mayhem and Oz Fest did. And you have things where it's starting where rock on the range sells out before they know who's playing. And same thing with Coachella, much like some of the European festivals. So I think the experience of going to a place and seeing a band or seeing music or an event, it's something the internet hasn't been able to replace yet. So there's still a very high value people put on that and they're willing to spend a lot of money to go to these things.

(01:30:40):

So it's just a matter of, I think in many ways, sometimes we get skewed because of our little pocket of the world. We kind of see the ebbs and flows of, well, this band was doing these kind of numbers, now they're doing these kind of numbers. But is that reflective of just that little piece of the pie or concerts as a whole? But I think overall, the live music realm is healthy, man, I live in California, there'll be within one day it was like Shuga was playing baby metal Caval, not the Cavalier dudes were doing their show with black Doy murder and all three shows were sold out. So I mean, that issue isn't being hurt here as far as I know, but it's hard to say. We will have to look into that. We'll get back to you with the numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:31:33):

Yeah. I'm actually curious now because you're bringing up really good points. I'm actually curious and I want to go look, I think you might be right, but I actually want to go look and see, and I'm going to hit you up when the podcast is over once I find out,

Speaker 3 (01:31:51):

Actually I'm looking at something right now. You're looking right now. Yeah, so I'm on. So the top 100 tours of North America grossed a record 3.34 billion in 2016, 7% up from 2015.

Speaker 2 (01:32:09):

Damn.

Speaker 3 (01:32:11):

So my instincts were correct, but I'm not going to break my arm, pat myself on the back. I try and stay up on these things. And that's the thing about pessimistic or optimistic views into trends is we got to look at the data can't just, a lot of times people say, wait, it feels like ticket sales are down. Well, let's look it up. Let's see what's going on. But that was the keep in mind, that was the top 100 tours right of that year. And this is the music industry, much like the real world.

Speaker 2 (01:32:43):

No dude, I'm wrong. I'm straight up wrong. I'm looking on somewhere else. And it went down in 2010. I'm looking at the overall revenue

Speaker 3 (01:32:55):

In

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):

North America from 1990 to 2016, and in 1990 it was 1.1 billion and 2016 is 7.3 billion, and it's gone up every single year besides 2009 to 2010. And then around 1994 to 1995, it also went down.

Speaker 3 (01:33:20):

And I think that's a reflection of a, I think there is, people do have a little more excess income to spend and the people who do well or going out. And I think when you look at, and I think people don't really look at things like this, is that people aren't buying records, but that money is going to other things. It's not like that just disappears. So maybe you might sell more concerts, you might sell more t-shirts. We can't really look at these trends. And the thing is, the thing about data, certain data only tells you part of the story. So if I look at well, record sales are going down and this trend, well, yeah, but there's other factors that happen outside of that we have to take into account. Like I said, if you want to look at things through the prism of here's why everything's negative, it's very easy to do that. But I think you have to step back in many of these cases to find out what's going on, because a lot of times there's a thousand different threads and you have to figuring out the entire narrative of what actually is going on can become a lot more complex and can't be encapsulated in one tight headline often.

Speaker 2 (01:34:39):

No, I'm looking at a quote right here where Michael Rapino, president of Live Nation is talking about their record years and saying that in 2016, we have had three days selling over 900,000 tickets, placing them among the top 15 days of all time and setting us up to deliver robust growth in ticket sales for the year.

Speaker 3 (01:35:07):

Yeah, it's great.

Speaker 2 (01:35:10):

That is great.

Speaker 3 (01:35:10):

But here's the rub on that. Who's making the money? It's the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney and Guns N Roses and the Who and the Eagles and Bruce Springsteen, it's the Rich are getting richer. And it's how that filters down to the independent music world and the underground communities. I think it is hard to say, but keep in mind, the underground world has always fought for scraps. That's just how it's always been. I remember going to hardcore shows when I was younger and there'd be 200 people at the show. And to you that was a huge, wow, everyone's here. This is a big show.

(01:35:55):

It's all about the perspective on I people don't even realize no one played stadiums before The Beatles. That wasn't even a thing. Now this year there's 20 people going out playing stadiums. That's crazy. The Beatles were the biggest band of all time, and they were the first band to be in stadiums. And now it's like, oh, foo Fighters are playing a stadium, and Taylor Swift is playing a stadium and Metallica is going on a stadium tour. So it's kind of crazy how these economies have shifted in that our perception of how big a band was or how big things. I think a lot of times we just look at the eighties or even the seventies for this era of arena rock and well, that doesn't exist well, but it manifests itself in a lot of different ways. There wasn't a hip hop industry before the mid eighties. Now you have Drake is going out doing multiple nights in arenas. Connie is going out and doing multiple in arenas. These are genres that didn't even exist before a certain time. And with that, just new economies grow up and it's important. I think it's great. It shows that people really still do care about music. They still care about entertainment going out, getting out of the house, not just sitting in front of a computer. It still matters to people. And that's important. What's

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):

Amazing is when you actually look at the numbers, you can't be negative. Well, you could be if you were

Speaker 3 (01:37:31):

Say, I'm not in Coldplay, I'm not in Muse. So my band, I think there is that. The negative angle of it is that it's no different than the regular economy. The people at the top are doing it very well and figure out how to square that circle is to develop just like you can say the us, but I think you just say the western world is how do we develop the robust middle class of the music world or entertainment industry? That's the difficult area.

Speaker 2 (01:38:12):

And kind of full circle, that goes back to artists nowadays knowing what to do with that $5,000.

(01:38:21):

It's a lot more on them now. I think that's kind of the big thing is that now it's a lot more on the individual to know how to invest their time and their money in order to get the results that they want. Whereas before, one thing that we can't deny is that record sales are down and that the label apparatus is not what it used to be. And so instead of that, you got to figure out your own way. And the beauty though is that as we have seen, it's not like the money's not out there. So you just do have to figure it out though. And you can't rely on methods from even 10 years ago to work for you now.

Speaker 3 (01:39:07):

No, the creative person, the entrepreneur, however you want to put it, the self-starter to be creative and about finding new ways because here's the thing, this thing, it's like a jump to conclusions met. No, like moving target and listen, the techniques from three years ago that were successful won't work the same because people catch up on a certain thing and then it gets flooded and then people move on. And it's something you constantly have to work on. I don't have it figured out. I'm kind of just, now, I did this thing, I don't know if you saw this on Facebook where I put a post saying I was going to cut out a bunch of people on Facebook, not in a spiteful way just to say, Hey, I've had this Facebook page for eight years. Probably a bunch of it is people who added me. They were a god forbid fan in 2009. I did see that. And they probably have kids and they've moved on and they're not like music and the stuff I'm doing is not on their radar. And that's no, to them, it's just like, so if I post something, the people that are actually seeing what do they care? Are they even seeing it? So I'm like for someone like me who writes articles and makes podcasts and who needs listeners, I have thousands of pending friend requests and followers, people that care about what I'm doing right now.

Speaker 2 (01:40:44):

Dude, you're a smart motherfucker because having an engaged audience is much more important than having a bigger audience. And what you're talking about isn't even getting a smaller audience, it's just replacing the inactive part with a more active and engaged audience.

Speaker 3 (01:41:05):

Yeah. Well the thing is, it's just that I was thinking about this that a lot of times we look at these number samples, they don't matter. The fact that I can put out a podcast and 5,000 people can listen to it, God forbid never played a show and 5,000 people showed up. Do you know what I'm saying? Where it was our show? Like a headline show?

Speaker 4 (01:41:25):

Yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:41:26):

It just because on a computer, you just see a number, it says 5,000. It kind of doesn't mean anything, but if you picture what 5,000 people looks like and what that really think of a venue that could fill and you're like, wow, if you could. And I think sometimes it feels a little dehumanizing to think of people as like, oh, here's this consumption unit, I can sell this person. It's not about that. It's about just these mediums have power, and if I can write something or create something and have a thousand people or 2000 people connect to it in a way that means something that's incredible. It's just amazing to be able to have that reach and have to do something that people care about. So I was like, I need to, I'm even thinking about creating a second Facebook page with nothing but with people, I don't know, just people that are just fans of what I do and almost as an experiment.

(01:42:27):

So if I have two Facebook pages, one of them is half the people I actually know, friends, family, acquaintances, stuff like that. And then the other half is fans, but most of 'em fans from years ago. And then I have a new page with maybe two or 3000 friends and they're all people I just added. And then post the same thing on both pages and see what happens, things like that. Doing these little marketing experiments or AB testing of a certain thing. Alright, well that's getting this kind of feedback over here. I think about half my Facebook page, just people I know from high school, they don't care about the new song. I put out the article I just wrote about Pantera production. They're just there, whatever. It's just whatever. We're on Facebook, it's not really a thing. But what about you compare that with someone who actually, the only reason they're following me on there is because they like my work. It's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):

I think there's a lot of merit to that actually because of how the Facebook algorithms work and how long story short is the more people are interested in your content, the more your content will get shown at the top of people's feeds. So to replace the weeds with people who give a shit could be very, very productive for you.

Speaker 3 (01:43:55):

Well, the thing is, with all my stuff, for example, on my website, it tells me where all the traffic comes from and it's 80, 90% Facebook, my podcast, it tells me how it's spreading around. I guess it's difficult for probably some people to understand who don't use these mediums in a business respect. But for someone like me, I do use it for personal stuff, but it's very aware of what I put out there. I do not get too personal.

Speaker 2 (01:44:31):

Who are you using for your podcast stats, by the way?

Speaker 3 (01:44:36):

I use Libsyn, and that's just who I host it. And they have their own stats just on the interface. Cool. So it is definitely cool. And then I also upload to SoundCloud, but it's mostly, I think most of my stuff goes through iTunes and all that.

Speaker 2 (01:44:55):

So does Lipson factor in SoundCloud and iTunes? No,

Speaker 3 (01:45:00):

No, no. SoundCloud is separate. I just do that myself. But yeah, it has the numbers and it fluctuates and it depending on the episode, but all that stuff is helpful to kind of understand, all right, well what works? This episode did really well and this episode didn't, or what days am I getting the most downloads? Or maybe I should release on that day, things like that. But just understanding that, for example, if I have 5,000 Facebook friends and 4,000 followers, I put out a post, but I have no idea how many people see that. I don't, there's no way to know. But I can know from putting out an article on my website where the traffic is coming from. I can see it's mostly Facebook. So if I can increase that pool and double or triple that, all of a sudden I have an article that has a thousand views now that's 3000 views.

(01:45:59):

And I was actually, and I was getting even deeper with it, and I was like, so it's more valuable to have a younger person. So let's say you have someone who's 26 and who's 26, but then they also have 3000 friends. So let's say that's worth infinitely more than someone who's in their forties who has kids who's not really in tune with what's going on. And then they only have 300 friends. Because think about if they share, if someone, a younger person who's engaged in what's going on shares something, now you have more reach. Do you know what I'm saying? It's almost like this exponential view of the way, and like I said, I never thought about this stuff before, but now I'm thinking about it and I'm like,

Speaker 2 (01:46:45):

You got to think about it now.

Speaker 3 (01:46:47):

Yeah, because the thing is, like I said, Twitter, I have 6,000 something people on Twitter, but Twitter, it's like throwing a picket sign in the ocean. It kind of gets seen if someone's on there at the moment, half of the pages on there are band pages that add me or some fake, who knows how many people are really connected. Instagram is a little more, it's just this voyeuristic thing. It kind of exists. It's difficult to really reach people directly. I don't really all that, but Facebook, we know what it can do. It's very definitive. So it's like, all right, I have to maximize these things. When you're someone like me who is involved in all these different ventures. So

Speaker 2 (01:47:28):

I follow Facebook stats as religiously as possible. We spend a lot of our time on stats and analytics because you're kind of just pissing in the wind if you don't know what's going on. So many different ways to do things online, so many different just within one format, one social network. There's so many different ways to go about it that you need to get data, you have to, or you're just throwing money away. So I think that you're very, very smart to keep an eye on that stuff. We put a lot of time into it and it's still tough even with we've just now got in our data game a lot better than it used to be. But even so it's still tough and we have multiple people on it, but it just helps, man, it helps to know when people care where they're coming from, what they care about, what kinds of posts they care about, what matters to them so that

Speaker 3 (01:48:43):

You

Speaker 2 (01:48:43):

Can make better decisions.

Speaker 3 (01:48:44):

And it's amazing what you can do when you actually just ask people those questions

Speaker 4 (01:48:49):

Like,

Speaker 3 (01:48:50):

Hey, what do you guys, is it annoying when I do this? Is it just little things like that asking little poll questions because you'll post one thing, maybe it's promotional and no one to really pay attention to it. But then you'll ask, Hey, what do you guys think about this? And then all of a sudden, 400 comments or it's amazing how you can actually engage people the right way. And there's also something that's really important. A lot of people would comment and say, Hey man, I don't necessarily comment on something or something, but I do like what you do and keep doing it, keep it coming. And that's encouraging that just because someone is silent or necessarily engaged in a way that's visible to you doesn't mean they aren't paying attention. So that's something that's helpful as well.

Speaker 2 (01:49:40):

Absolutely. We actually ask our audience and our private group all the time what they want more of and we pay close attention. Sometimes we have to make executive decisions though, because we realize that what they think they want and what they actually need are two different things, but we're always paying attention. And I think that it's part of our success is that we do pay attention and we do alter course based on what people want. And you are absolutely right. A lot of people who are not visibly active are still paying attention, and lots of times they will respond when asked directly. Sometimes they end up having the most thoughtful feedback too. So it is important to reach out to your fans or customers or clients, whatever you want to call it, that might not be as active. The lurkers, they usually actually make up the majority of the people.

Speaker 4 (01:50:40):

It's

Speaker 2 (01:50:41):

Actually usually a minority that are vocal. So if you have 500 people that are regularly commenting, there's probably about 4,500 people who read the stuff and don't say anything.

Speaker 3 (01:50:54):

Yeah, it is cool. It's interesting, man. One thing, so with Vagus Nerve, and we did our Kickstarter, one of the things I started doing was just literally messaging people directly and say, Hey, I'm working, you probably, I don't know if you give a shit about what I'm doing, but I have a new band, first, new band since God forbid we're doing this thing, check it out. And that was by far the most effective tactic. It was just literally reaching out to people saying what's up and connecting with them. And in many ways, it's actually kind of like it tickles this kind of thing in your stomach about like, oh man, you can connect to people even though you have, it's difficult to actually connect to that many people, but if you're willing to put in the time, you can get out there, and it's the new version of going out there and handing out flyers and saying Hi and kissing babies, and you can do that stuff virtually, just most of us just don't have the time.

(01:51:55):

That's the thing is even people, it's not even about wanting to work hard. It's just that shit takes hours and hours and hours out of your day. And the older you get and the more responsibilities you have, you just don't even have the option to do a lot of that stuff. So I think a lot of people, the stuff they do, it's not even because they don't want to do it or they're not willing to do it, it's, it's very time consuming to be that connected, but you can make stuff happen if you're willing to really go door to door, so to speak, digitally.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):

Man, I got to say part of the reason my band got signed back in the day was because I handed out 24,000 demos.

Speaker 3 (01:52:36):

24,000.

Speaker 2 (01:52:38):

Yeah, man, it's over the period of a couple years, and I printed most of them myself in over. Yeah, it was a huge effort. It paid off. But if, okay, so if I felt like 10 years or 12 years later I was above that, maybe what I'm doing now wouldn't be as successful as it is because when we first started, we started as a podcast first before we morphed into what we are doing now. The podcast was our original thing, and it was a subscription podcast, and I reached out to over a thousand people through Facebook Messenger who had been following my ventures, and it took time. It took me a month to get through the list. It was, well,

Speaker 3 (01:53:26):

What was your pitch? Just like, Hey, check out my new podcast. Or

Speaker 2 (01:53:29):

It's like, Hey, you like my stuff on Creative Live? I know you do. And it was to the people who have bought my Creative Live stuff and who have followed my educational ventures. My pitch was, Hey, I know you like this. If you like that, you'll like my podcast because we talk about the same stuff and it's every single week, and we're talking with lots of great producers. So it's just more of what I know you like. So check it out.

Speaker 3 (01:53:56):

Do you have a mailing list and you just do newsletters and stuff like that, or just kind of blast on what's going on? Because that's the thing I really, I should have had three years ago, and I just haven't

Speaker 2 (01:54:12):

Just start now.

Speaker 3 (01:54:13):

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was thinking about kind of that same thing, just going and reach, Hey, if you want to stay, because the thing is, like I said, with these mediums, we know we physically can't reach everyone, but if you have people who want to know and just miss it because they're not in your feet at that particular time or doesn't show up, they're going to miss it. So it's something that I want to incorporate and need to,

Speaker 2 (01:54:40):

It just takes time. But on the subject email, yeah, we do that and we hit our list very regularly, and we work very hard on building the list. We have a lot of programs out there that are specifically, well campaigns that are out there that are specifically just for building the list. And we hit the list quite a bit, but it's not always everybody on the list. For instance, if something new came out for only subscribers of one thing, we're only going to send it to the subscribers of that one thing. Or we're not going to send certain sales letters to people who have already bought something. We try not to annoy people, but whenever we have something cool that just came out, like podcast or a blog or something like that, we let them know because they've got busy lives. And also we also try to offer a little more than just, Hey, this is up. When we send the emails, we tried to elaborate on why it's cool and what it is that you're going to actually pick up from checking out this podcast and why it's important. And I'd say we email three or four times a week, but I don't suggest doing that unless you have a really big list and can segment it accordingly.

Speaker 3 (01:56:10):

Yeah, I wouldn't do it more than once a week, even if that, I would probably rather not do more than twice a week. I think when people feel like they're getting spammed, then they just start, because I do that same thing. I have certain things that it's all the time, and some of 'em I check, and a lot of times I just ignore them altogether.

Speaker 2 (01:56:29):

We don't get spam complaints, but that's because we're very careful about it. And like I said, even though we're going three or four times a week, it's not three or four times a week to everybody. It's three or four times a week as appropriate. But yes, I highly suggest that you and everybody listening start building an email list and interact with those people because your email list will, if you keep it warm, meaning warm, as in you don't let it go cold and dead like a dead lead, it will always be a source of traffic and income for you. Whereas we've, all those of us who have been in the game long enough know that these online platforms, they change their rules. And for those of us who make money on them, sometimes it's disastrous. Back in the day, there was mp3.com who handed out a million dollars a month to independent artists, and there were artists who were making 30 or 40 grand a month just off of downloads on mp3.com, and it was called Payback for Playback. And then one day they stopped and suddenly all these artists that were doing great suddenly were not doing great anymore. And then there was MySpace, which you didn't make money off MySpace, but we personally know lots of bands whose careers were launched because of MySpace. And then that stopped being a thing

Speaker 3 (01:57:59):

That we still haven't found. The next thing that does

Speaker 2 (01:58:02):

That. Exactly, Facebook does its own thing, but even Facebook has changed their reach to where now you have to jump through rings of fire

Speaker 3 (01:58:14):

And well, it's never been a platform that has broken bands. And you can use it, but it's not, like I said, if you're spending X amount, like I said, go back to the $5,000 thing. If you're spending $5,000 to get 5,000 fans say, or probably wouldn't even be that much, but 5,000 to get a thousand fans. Are you really breaking the band? Or that's just street investment

Speaker 2 (01:58:43):

And they could change their rules on you and not let you do that anymore. For instance, just say that there are lots of businesses who have figured out Facebook and who use it for ads and who use their groups and all that, and who but what? Have they changed their rules?

Speaker 3 (01:59:00):

No. No, but I think it's great for products in my feed, it'll be like, oh, here's this new thing that do, dad, that does something, and you'll click on it. We like things that are helpful, but I don't think music, but I don't think music is that way. Music is not, people don't view music in the same way as they,

Speaker 2 (01:59:18):

No, they

Speaker 3 (01:59:18):

Look at a new blender. It's just you can't, for example, you'll see these, I like these Kickstarter campaigns for some new cool product, and it'll have made $8 million because it's a cool product. They don't have to, but music's no way. You're going to hear new music like, oh, that'll change my life in this functional way. It's always going to be entertainment in its own way. And we listen. We have to figure out a, how music matters in our day-to-day life. I think if we're still looking at it by the old metric of, oh, do you sell it? And it has this value, the value is what it is. If people don't value your music, your shaming them is not going to make it more valuable. That's this whole thing of no, of course. That's a big point of frustration. Anyone who used the word, well, when people started stealing music, I'm almost like, what are you talking about? People really don't know what the word steal means. If you're eating a hot dog and I come up to you and take your hot dog, guess what? You a hungry motherfucker. But if I take a picture of your hot dog and then press some buttons on my phone, and then I 3D print a new hot dog. Did I steal your hot dog?

Speaker 2 (02:00:42):

No, you made your own.

Speaker 3 (02:00:43):

Exactly. But people don't get that. They're stealing. No, they're copying music. That's what they're doing. They're copying music, intellectual property. Guess what? You know what? Also they're copying eBooks, pornos, video games, movies. You're not the only one. So don't sit out there. And guess what? The film industry didn't collapse. Look how hard hit the porn. Industry got hurt. They got crushed, right? People don't even realize, look at magazines, remember magazines, physical magazines? That was a thing.

Speaker 2 (02:01:18):

Vaguely,

Speaker 3 (02:01:19):

But guess what? But guess what happened was it wasn't that people were downloading those magazines. You could find versions of stuff that people scan, but that's not what killed them. What killed them was lifestyle changed. The world changed the way people look at information changed and the people forget. That's the one thing people want to blame. People were stealing music. That's part of it. But what happened was the world changed and music became something that happened in the background. It became something you listened to while you're at the gym, while you're in your car, and so much more media showed up. And the way, like I said, using the real estate analogy, the real estate of our time, music went further in the background where, guess what? People can go on their phone and play on games, or they can listen

Speaker 2 (02:02:16):

To podcasts.

Speaker 3 (02:02:17):

Yeah, there's just a million more pieces of entertainment that music has to compete for. But guess what? As we just saw, people are still willing to go to concerts even more so we care about music is still really important, but in a way, it's become this thing that is invisible. It's always there, right? Everywhere you go. If you're watching a movie, there's a song playing, but you kind of don't a thing. People don't value it because it's so pervasive. But guess what? If it wasn't there, people would notice and they would want more of it. So we're still learning what place it has in the kind of marketplace of content and ideas and entertainment, and you're only valuable as to what people are willing to pay for it. So stop sitting there and bitching about people stealing my music. There's millions of people. Were downloading your shit for free. You'd be huge. But guess what? The real problem is if no one is stealing your

Speaker 2 (02:03:17):

Music, that means no one cares. I totally agree. Well, one of the best ways to, not to side swipe what you're saying, but one of the best ways I find, and I've read a lot about this, to sell stuff to your crowd regardless of what's going on in the marketplace or online or whatnot, is through email.

Speaker 3 (02:03:40):

Yeah. Well, that's why I need to do it, man. Yeah, but the thing is, I think when it comes to the whole selling music, we just have to remember that we used to think of music as the CD or the tape or the record, but it's really just the sounds it is and whatever format that comes in and how we look at that. And the truth is, if we don't, even if people aren't going to buy the music, if they're just streaming and they love your band or they love what you represent, they're going to want to support you in some way. Whether it might not be this music you're selling them, but whether it's the concert ticket or a poster or a t-shirt or a guitar lesson or whatever, there's always going to be something. If people are connected to your thing, your brand, your whatever, there's always going to be something to sell them, to monetize it and take advantage of that market. You're building a market. And I don't think, like me, I never think about money. I only think about spreading the word. I just want people, I just want people to check out the stuff I work on. And I know as long as I do that and I build an audience, the money will come.

(02:05:00):

I didn't start out getting paid to write articles. I wrote articles because I wanted to write them. And I got good enough at it that someone thought I was good enough to get paid for it. I didn't start doing a podcast to get ad revenue, but I started doing it and people started asking if they could sponsor the show. You know what I'm saying? So I never think about that stuff. I always think about get the audience first, and money will manifest itself in many different ways, but focus on making something great as the main thing.

Speaker 2 (02:05:31):

I totally agree. And with that, I think this is a good place to end this monster episode. I think it's been awesome having you on. Thank you for talking to me for this long.

Speaker 3 (02:05:44):

No problem, man. I got a pee, got a headache. I'm at a beverages. It's just terrible. I'm falling apart over here, but off of the art of the podcast for the podcast life.

Speaker 2 (02:05:55):

Do me a favor just for everyone listening. Where do you want people to find you?

Speaker 3 (02:06:00):

Yeah, Twitter and Instagram. It's at dot Coyle, D-O-C-C-O-Y-L-E. Facebook, just my name. Like I said, I have a professional site. And then also my regular one, which like I said, as we've discussed here, I'll be adding some people. My website is www.coil.net, and I have all my podcasts. My podcast is called The X Man with dot Coil, and you can find that pretty much

Speaker 2 (02:06:24):

Anywhere. That's EXEX?

Speaker 3 (02:06:26):

Yes. EX, man, that's right. No dash, just ex spaceman. Or you just put, literally, you can go into your podcast app, put in my name and it'll show up. But yeah, I'm pretty easy to find. I don't think there's any other famous do coils in the world, so pretty much anywhere you put that in,

Speaker 2 (02:06:46):

You're my favorite dot coil,

Speaker 3 (02:06:47):

The one do Coyle. I'm hopefully in the top 10.

Speaker 2 (02:06:50):

Yeah, absolutely. Out of all the dot coils, I know. You're definitely my favorite one,

Speaker 3 (02:06:55):

And I hope to get you on the X Man, because I think your story with doth and the whole post career is super fascinating for people listening to my show as well. So hopefully we can do that at some point.

Speaker 2 (02:07:08):

I'd be happy to Anytime you just let me know. And dudes listening doc's, articles and podcasts and everything he's done is just fascinating. And you cover everything from talking about how Pantera ruined modern production to Bill Mayer and Milo Yoli going on there, and the art of trolling, which and everything in between sports movies. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (02:07:35):

I talk about everything.

Speaker 2 (02:07:36):

Weren't you just on an ESPN podcast?

Speaker 3 (02:07:39):

Yeah, for the Minnesota Timberwolves. One of the Beat Writers was a God forbid fan, and I was literally just on Twitter commenting on another ESPN writer thing, and he is like, God forbid, what's up, do my show. I was like, hell yeah, there. And I did an BA podcast, or NBA art column for Metal sucks for a long time and I still write about that. So I'm interested in a lot of things. I don't like to do one thing. I like to stay have a finger in every pot, as it were.

Speaker 2 (02:08:14):

Well dude, thank you for coming on and you could put your fingers in my pot anytime.

Speaker 3 (02:08:18):

Anytime, baby.

Speaker 2 (02:08:19):

Alright,

Speaker 1 (02:08:20):

Take it easy. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is brought to you by Ball Guitars. Founded in 2014, ball Guitars strives to bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs. Go to baller guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit nail the podcast and.