Becoming an Established Artist - Soundcheck
hi jack how's it going yeah good thank you how are you right yeah good thank you um we're just going to have a bit of a chat about um becoming an established artist hope that's not too flattering jack um just start us off by just telling us a bit about grade 2 as a band tell us a bit about kind of the background and the kind of basis of the journey that you guys have been on yeah okay so i'm in a band called grade two we are a punk band from the isle of wight uh we're all from ryde uh we all met in school we formed when we were very young around i was only 14 when we started the others were 15. and we kind of just started gigging around only around the island at first then we kind of quite quickly got noticed somehow in germany and we started playing a lot in europe and then it sort of things kind of snowballed from there and um next thing we know we've um we got we got a record label deal and ended up touring america and until covid hit which is so how did you that's quite uh quite a quick version of events so how did you first like get off the island start playing you know how did you get that jump to play in europe um yeah that was that was the weirdest time because um i think we had quite an advantage because we were quite young we were you know we were only so so young at the time our music was quite a niche sort of scene it was like um it wasn't just punk but we played like music like street punk which is more like the skinhead scene and uh our lead singer sid is very sort of he's got a bit you know he's got connections in that area so he um he did well to sort of like get us known in the scene you know via facebook and his his dads a skinhead as well so he kind of like has a lot of connections and um so i think yeah it's mainly just through facebook our facebook page we've got a lot of people from across in europe that noticed us and sid would get talking to people online and next thing you know we managed to get um a couple gigs over i think the first one was in france and uh it developed from there we recorded a little demo and uh this little record label in an independent record label in germany called contra records they they found it and they really liked it they thought it was like it's kind of like you know this old school punk sound which we kind of weren't even trying to do i mean we didn't even know what kind of sound we were trying to go for it was a very rough like we've never even written a song kind of demo like and uh so they just really took a liking to that because it was so sort of rough and like you know and amateurish you know i mean i think they kind of liked that right and um how so they kind of said they've heard your song online i'm guessing um and then did they so did they approach you and what did that process look like what did they kind of say to you yeah so they um they we put it on i think we just put it on soundcloud originally it wasn't even a proper release or anything and we posted it on facebook and yeah they reached out to us uh really liking it and said you want to join our label and we were you know we were like i think 16 at the time maybe even 15. and you know we were just like what the hell like we didn't i don't even know what to do here like we didn't expect this at all but obviously we took it um which was very it was pretty exciting for us at the time we were you know like little school kids like wow we got a label already check us like it's mad um but and then yeah we went on to release a an ep with those guys pretty soon afterwards you know while we were still only about 16 so that was our first release with them which which did alright actually managed to get us out in europe a bit more right so that's been a pretty big uh leapfrog suddenly playing in in europe um do you have any kind of advice around playing in front of new crowds that obviously quite a different scene to what you might play in front of on the isle of wight yeah so i mean the main audience we'd get away from the isle of wight in sort of mainland europe would be you know middle-aged skinheads i i would quite like i quite like playing to people my age usually that was my ideal audience but unfortunately we get um you know the our our scene is just you know it's a lot of old guys because they're all sort of reliving the eighties like oi oi like just trying to just relive their glory days um but nah there is there is a younger scene but yeah i think we found that playing away is sort of um you know big tattooed skinheads you know that kind of thing and uh there are you know so you can get some quite great gigs out of that because these guys love to you know mosh pit and will do all sorts so it can be quite quite lively gigs which is great yeah definitely did you find you kind of like picked up quite quickly kind of the touring the touring life and things like that or did it take a lot of kind of adjusting to um yeah i mean we got quite used to it um at first it wasn't so much touring but it was more like weekend shows so when we first started when we were still kind of young you know people would say are you going off on tour again we're like well actually we're only we're flying to berlin playing a show and then flying back hung over the next day like it was it didn't really feel like proper touring you know it was great like couldn't fault it but um it didn't really feel like a proper tour to us it wasn't until we started touring properly you know a couple years ago is when you really start you know have to get used to it but yeah i have got completely used to it now and you know i kind of miss it quite a lot since lockdown you know it's you know kind of like it's a good it's a nice life when you're out there you don't really want to come home and now after being after being home for like a whole year i just want to just want to leave again quite desperately like yeah definitely um so did that kind of develop into what you know what did that um first kind of record deal kind of turn into so aside from just an ep did you do anything else with them yeah yeah so we did that ep that was our first one broken youth and after that we did a second ep which i believe was more like almost an lp it was like a mini album it was eight tracks um and then we did a full album with them our first full album um which was like our stepping stone to get us to our next our next label now which is what they how we got noticed um so that was a really great release for us with those guys so this this contra records label they did a lot for us they were really good they were kind of like you know helping us grow and helping us get to that next step and yeah they're really really nice guys um so can you like share a bit about kind of what that first kind of deal was like and what new artists can expect maybe getting if you know if people are looking to get signed for the first time obviously everyone's experience is different and it's very different label to label but is there any general advice that you share and what yeah what you can kind of expect from your first record deal um yeah actually i think the main uh experience we took away from that was actually one of the biggest mistakes we made as a band and that was kind of assuming that everyone's your friend it's not to say that they're not our friends as well because they were we were kind of friendly with these guys and they were nice people but in turn when it came down to business they actually screwed us over a little bit um which ended up becoming quite quite dramatic in the end so like when we went into it you know we were so young and excited we kind of thought uh what could go wrong we've got this we've got this deal we've got records you know everything's great this is really nice like we don't need to worry about anything and then it became progressively clear as we went on with these guys that you know they weren't really paying us properly they probably they owed us a lot of money that we weren't getting from them and we didn't um we didn't really have anything to back it up because we didn't sign anything when we first when we first got with these guys it was all like word of mouth you know it's a handshake agreement and that kind of came back to bite us so i feel like we made quite a big mistake um because we didn't really we didn't really know our worth at the time we thought they were doing us a favour they were like you know they're the guys bringing us up but in reality we were also doing them a favour as a trade isn't it so like i feel like we um we kind of let them take advantage of us a little bit they didn't because we were young they kind of didn't really before they think they could get away with it and i don't know i think it's quite important to remember that you know it's a two-way thing and you you are very important as well to them it's not just you're they're not just doing you a favour you know you've got to remember your own worth and so in the in the end of this little drama we ended up having to get a lawyer to uh give us all the rights to our music back right so i'd definitely recommend uh signing contracts and agreements at the beginning of the beginning of a deal then yeah yeah that was the main thing we should have signed something but um i mean because we were underage at the time and um apparently if you sign something if you sign with a new label and you're under 18 you have to have a parent there present too if you're signing contracts and we didn't have that so we technically what they did was illegal they signed an underage band without parents blessing so that's how we got the lawyer involved and said give us all the rights to our songs back because you know you made a mistake doing that and then we managed to win all of our rights back which actually turned out alright for us but yeah that's yeah that's really that's a very unique situation is it i'm not that's not going to happen to many other people i think especially as we're all over 18 in this call probably so that's not relevant but um make sure you sign your contracts yeah i mean if you can't read them if you can't understand that legal mumbo jumbo just get you know just find someone who can help you out because it is important um because i'm terrible i don't know about you if you've read many legal contracts and just struggled to even take in the words like yeah do you think it would have been worth for you guys like having a lawyer on side from the beginning or do you think it's not really necessary if you have the right contracts and stuff yeah i think from the beginnings a bit over the top because let's face it lawyers are expensive and when you're just starting out as a band everything is just a drain just no profits you're just losing money um so like the last thing you need is actually spending a couple hundred quid on this lawyer like so obviously if you can afford it then it is obviously a great idea but um we we didn't wait until a bit later down the line when it was necessary and but you know now that we have got one it is very useful and i do recommend you have someone who can help you out with those things because as much as music seems like all fun and games there is a lot of like a lot of sleaziness in the industry i think where you have to look out for like those contracts yeah definitely um so when you guys started you said you kind of did uh like street punk or like oi music do you think it was worth kind of tapping into the niche for that um at the beginning of your kind of at the beginning of your career do you think that's kind of helped you get noticed rather than doing something maybe a lot more like of a broad genre yeah that no that's actually what i was i was going to bring up actually was that's 100 percent a really important thing i think that's how i think we got um quite lucky in a way where because we were so niche it was a very small scene it was a very tight community so when you know when our name came about uh people you know people were actually interested because i think we were this new young band from like an island nobody had heard of you know we're just like everyone's like who are these kids like and you know remember i said it's mainly old people like this kind of guys who really live in their past so when they see young people playing this music they got they got a kick out of that do you know what i mean so i think we did have a lot of things going in our favour so yeah that's the trouble i think if you're if you're in like an indie band you know an indie rock band or something like that's a very broad genre like it's very hard to nail down an audience i think with that because you're competing with so many people so i do think having a a smaller more niche genre does does give you advantage in a way yeah definitely one of the um we spoke with the pr company wall of sound pr um last week and one of the things they said was about having a really clear idea of who your audience is who your kind of ideal fan is you know even down to like what they what they wear like which where they shop like what books they read and things like that so i think that can really would you say that really helps like when you're is that something you kind of think about when you're writing the songs like do you think who's gonna be listening to this who's gonna like enjoy this music or do you just write the songs and then pick like what you think would work i must admit with when it comes to writing not so much actually i kind of maybe at the start we would be more prone to that like maybe at the start would think right we're appealing to these guys you know we we were definitely just straight-up oi when we started we kept it that way we did know that um but nowadays i must admit i'm a lot more free i think and i think the whole band is a lot more free with what we write about i think we kind of you know we don't want to necessarily just fit into this category like obviously that's our main audience and you have to consider that but at the same time we don't want to restrict our writing i think it's not necessarily the best choice to on purposely write a song based on a particular audience like not to say that it can't be done but i think it's best to creatively sort of have an open mind and just try do whatever comes to mind really and that works best for us i think yeah definitely so how would you kind of say like how did you kind of come how did that come about for you guys like kind of developing your sound because obviously you started with such like a niche genre you kind of you know broadened your horizons a bit you like it's it's still obviously like punk music like very specifically but it's less niche now so how would you say that kind of like how that came about and how did you develop that sound whilst also kind of staying true to you know staying true to your like audience you already you already had yeah definitely i think that's an interesting thing because we've had a lot of evolution in our sound with every record kind of feels like it's changed slightly and it's kind of just happened naturally like you know we never went into the studio thinking right this album we're gonna we're gonna develop our sound and we're gonna come out with something completely new and interesting it kind of just happens and i think that changes with like you know the time you're at in your life you just write slightly differently and the people you're working with you know we had different people recording the album um yeah at first we definitely it was yeah straight up just sort of oi and you know the style was quite hard but you know very simple and i think as we sort of developed as musicians i think we kind of developed our songwriting slightly and the songs became less just like and more you know a bit more like a bit more melody a bit more complex structures as we sort of learned how to become a real band i think because before when we first started we didn't really know what we were doing do you know what i mean so that helped quite a lot like develop our sound i think and the most recent album was the biggest jump i think in sound because we just started working with a new producer and you know he's an american producer so we kind of had a bit more of an american punk influence you know you could argue it's a bit more pop punky some of the songs which a lot more melodic a lot more sort of catchy so that's a massive change for us with working with a new producer has changed our sound massively i think okay so do you um do you co-write with this new producer as well do you kind of write the songs together with him yeah yeah so we came into the studio with you know a set of songs we had 20 songs or so most of them weren't really good enough we only had like 10 strong ones and so we had to pick pick the best ones out of those lot and then the remaining we just wrote with um with our producer at the studio we just did it then and there you know he's a really strong songwriter so he kind of would just give us these ideas and we'd would work with it and develop them just in the studio and those songs ended up being some of the best ones to be honest so that was quite nice yeah definitely um so do you want to tell us a bit about how that came about and how you started working with your new producer now um yeah so that that was quite a um a bit of a quite a big deal jack so you know you can say yeah we struck gold with that one so our new producers a guy called tim armstrong um and he he's the guitarist and singer of band called rancid which are quite a quite a big american punk band which we're you know huge fans of so this was a massive deal for us when we got you know spotted by this guy um but you know he didn't just find us randomly so it came about because we met um his partner or you know band mate is uh lars frederikson who's the guitarist of rancid as well and so we were on tour in germany with this other this very german oi band which for some reason this american guy lars decided to join this german oi band i i still don't really understand why he's done it but he's just you know he doesn't speak german all the guys in the band basically only speak german and we're on tour with these guys and like it's just it just seemed very out of place but it was it was a fun tour nonetheless so we got to meet this guy on this tour and he really got he really got to like us because i think what helped was that this band were german lars was american we were english we we were the us three and lars were the only native english speaking people so we managed to hit it off with lars we got to talk quite a lot and he grew to like us and we basically just and he ended up by the end of the tour he was like right guys i feel like i want to manage you and i want to show my music to tim show your music to tim and we were like oh right okay weren't expecting that at all but yeah sweet if that's if you're keen for that we are um so he sent he sent all of our music over to tim sent some music videos and tim just apparently loved it and he said he wanted to take us on board and do an album with us so next thing we know we're um we fly over to america about a year later to uh go record an album with him in l.a and that was that was when we did graveyard island our most recent album yeah i mean that's crazy um yeah i mean i love rancid so that yeah that's crazy are you a rancid fan as well yeah only i have to admit only because leo showed me and was like grade 2 are working with them but yeah no yeah really great music that must be a really like huge thing for you guys as as punk fans definitely it's very strange definitely yeah so do you think so from that um am i right in thinking you've been uh playing in america now as well from um being signed to their label yeah so since that started it was just before then we went to record the album actually we did a we started to tour in america as well it was all sort of within within that same movement you know it was because since we met lars he had a lot of contacts for us in america who he put us in touch with and then we managed to get over to america that same year and uh yeah then we toured america loads over the next like two years which was great that was another huge step for us to go into this new area where we'd never been to and try broaden our audience a bit yeah definitely do you think that was like an important step for you guys kind of like what was it like touring in front of you know new audiences all the time and do you think that helped you kind of develop as a band rather than kind of playing like hometown shows where it's like kind of local people and people you know your friends and people you know in the audience yeah yeah yeah it massively makes a huge difference because you know every night you don't know these people and you don't know if they're going to like you or not i mean but you it's so important to just try to put on your best show every night no matter what crowd you get because i mean i must admit our first american tour wasn't great you know we we played little pubs you know with like you know we were we were the headline band and we'd never been there before you know we played all these cities we've never been to before and we headlined every show so of course we didn't really pull an audience you know we were playing to pubs and bars with like seven to ten people a lot of the time you know we didn't really have much of an audience so i mean that i think that did build build us up in a way because it was kind of rough you know like we you know it wasn't like paradise we weren't going out like yeah we're on tour in america this is sweet you know it was it was a rough life like we didn't the gigs weren't great we were slumming it you know sleeping around people's sofas but obviously it was a great experience and uh yeah i think that really helped us perform as a band because we had to really sort of stay strong no matter what the audience was and i think that helped us you know we put on a great show every night or at least to the best of our ability and um and yeah that's huge i think playing playing you know your local town does get a bit stale after a while doesn't it you do need to try branch out as much as you can yeah definitely um so can you kind of share a bit about like any advice to people that haven't like toured um kind of like outside of maybe off of the isle of wight before and things like that like any advice if people may be looking at you know playing their first few like not local shows or maybe looking at booking um a few like tours and things um yeah i think it all does come down to networking doesn't it it's the main it's the most important thing and that's the the hardest thing to do i think at the first you know the first step where you don't know many people but it's just really i think it's a really important thing to um just be approachable and you know try be you know as respectful and good to people as you can because that's how you get remembered and that's how people remember your face and like remember your band if you if you show up to a gig venue you've never been to before the promoters put you on maybe done you a favour and you know if you you treat the bands and promoter the sound guy with a lot of respect you know you say you know you introduce yourself you say goodbye properly and just i know just sort of generally don't you know i think a lot of bands maybe think they're a bit cool and don't and maybe don't do those little things like i mean i feel like there can be a lot of egos in the scene so it's quite important to like you know try not to do that when you're working with people um and you know that's that's how people respect you remember you because they'll want to work with you again after that you know and i think that's quite an important thing that helps us is that we we kind of just we're always just there to have a bit of a good time we never wanted to be to people we were just kind of happy to be there and i think a lot of people noticed that i think they kind of noticed that we we were quite easy to get on with and i think that did help quite a lot you know a lot of promoters kind of befriended us and uh we you know we stayed in touch with a lot of people because of that um so yeah you know make make friends you know make as many friends as possible be be approachable be a nice guy it sounds very generic but yeah definitely um do you have any like advice as well about um kind of winning audiences over so a lot of the time you know when you're doing your first tours especially if they're support slots um not like you know or not necessarily at headline shows or something you know like you said a promoter has kind of taken a punt on you and they've put you on yeah this is kind of so the audience watching like they're not already fans of your music so do you have any advice about like what you would do at those shows to kind of like really encourage them to go and you know follow you on social media or you know listen to your music on spotify like what you know what you kind of do in those situations i guess you have to put on a better show than the headliner is the main trick if you can do that then people will remember you i mean that's all you can do there's not there's not anything you can say on stage to make people really like you like i i personally think sometimes less is more when you're talking in between songs i'm not a fan of sort of rambling on on stage i think you go on stage you put on a great show and you and then you're you know short and sweet and to the point and if you can if you can upstage the headliner then people will remember that but i mean easier said than done it's the headliner is usually the headliner for a good reason but um a lot sometimes they're not sometimes the headliners not that great and that's always a blessing i think i'm a big i'm a big fan of when you know the headliner is not going to put on a good show because you know that people will be like damn the band before maybe they should have gone on first i mean um so yeah you just have to put on the best show possible and i don't i don't think there's anything more you can do really like there's nothing you can say you just gotta perform at your best and be confident yeah definitely so as well like after that after you know after you've played your best show ever what do you kind of do do you often have a merch stand do you go and kind of hang out at the merch stand meet people do you think that's that's an important part of it as well yeah no that's very true um merch is very important i think to just mingle i i love being at the merch stand for the sake of socialising you know after the show i'll pack up as quickly as i can all sweaty like trying to wrap up my cables all the other bands like tell you to get off and i'm running over to the merch stand as quick as possible to try and just see if there's anyone there do you know what i mean because you've got to be there as quick as possible because people get bored quick if you're taking like 15 minutes to get off stage and there's someone who's just seen you they want to see if they can buy a t-shirt and you're you know you're messing about you might lose a customer and even if it's just a customer just someone to talk to and say thanks for coming to the show i mean and i i love that i think it's really nice to get to talk to people and i think people really appreciate that uh you know people coming to the gig will love to see you at your own merch table they don't they don't like to see someone doing it for you well i mean not to say there's anything wrong with that obviously that's a very common thing to get friends to come along and help but i think people yeah people like to talk to the band you know and so if you go over to the merch stand and just shake people's hands and say thanks for coming that again that would really people would appreciate that yeah i think that's really important as well um so going back to kind of what we were talking about earlier with the kind of so co-writing with with tim armstrong and is there anything you can like you found obviously before then you were just writing um with the other band members and kind of writing on your own and hadn't really done any like professional co-writing sessions before um is there anything you can like any advice about that anything that was really different kind of share a bit about that experience and yeah what advice because i think yeah there's definitely people listening that will want to you know co-write professionally and maybe haven't haven't done that before yeah that that was actually a really weird experience for me uh but i wasn't ready for it to be honest i must admit i wasn't prepared to to learn how to to write with a producer and to work with a producer because um a little fun fact about that experience was that me and tim our producer kind of had a little bit of a falling out on the first day or the second day i think it was um so we we were showing him one of our songs and we asked him like oh can we we're not really happy with this chorus can you think of another chorus maybe we try to mix it up he played us his chorus we we thought yeah okay that's all right we'll give that a go we retracked it all full band track this new song with the new chorus and listening back i just wasn't really happy with it i was like i'm not really sure this is working like maybe let's maybe let's just sleep on it and come back to it tomorrow and because because tim had asked me alright let's let's get you to track these guitars with this chorus and i responded with that like maybe let's sleep on it and he was like oh what are you the producer now and i was like no it's not what i mean man and he didn't really take that very well um uh so but we you know we talked it out and we quickly came came to the next it was that night ended a bit weird and the next day we talked about it we got over it and everything was fine but you know i i kind of forgot that you know we are working with a producer now and it's not all down to every decision is down to us like the final decision always is but you know he was suggesting that we at least try this chorus not not necessarily that we have to keep it you know and uh and i i got that i was like okay yeah we at least you should at least try every idea no no idea is a bad idea um because i think that's the thing is when you're working with other people it's quite easy to write off other people's ideas because it's not how you imagined it you know you think oh this is different to what i had in mind so i don't know if i'm feeling that but i think it's really important to just try everything because just because you try something doesn't mean it's going to make the last song you know you have to like you have to try everyone's perspective because everyone's got different views and sometimes you're wrong it's the it's reality but in that case i wasn't wrong we didn't even use that song so that was fine but uh it but the point is is that we you know we tried it and and it was it was alright but it wasn't good enough so i think um it's very important to remember to you know even if it might not seem like the best idea at the time don't don't just write off people's ideas because it doesn't feel like how it is in your head you know try try everything at least once yeah i think that's interesting though because like obviously you guys are the artists and you know it's your album but you know that you're working with someone who has like had a very very successful songwriting career and obviously actually like he's working as your producer so how do you kind of like how do you balance that with like what you guys what you guys want and what he says is best like obviously i understand you know you have ideas about stuff you you probably would try out what he says as well but yeah i don't know i feel like like how how do you get that kind of the right kind of balance there and the right kind of dynamic between you guys and the producer yeah i mean that's interesting is because um because you know you do have disagreements over what you think is best and but you know our we were lucky to have that tim as much as he's firm when he's producing when it comes down to making the final decisions of what songs you want to use you know he he said to us you know you guys are the band members you you decide what goes on this album not me he was just there to try to get us the best sound possible to try to bring the best out in us and you know give us a different perspective um but at the end of the day we knew that we had every final decision you know he wasn't going to make us put out a song that we didn't that we didn't fancy do you know what i mean um it was it was really it was actually a really nice sort of atmosphere in the studio we i think there was a lot of you know respect between each other we all knew each other's place while we were recording it was kind of like he was the fourth member of the band you know it was all democratic there wasn't like any overruling like us saying no tim you're not a member you can or like he was saying oh yeah i'm the producer you have to do this obviously that was it what i said about the chorus thing but that wasn't like him saying we're going to use this chorus that was him saying we should try this chorus i mean like so he his idea was like very open to trying everything and um but he was always happy to take our final decision which was you know we respected that quite a lot which is nice yeah um i don't know if you wanted to talk like share a bit about you don't have to but how the kind of like in terms of the money side of things like how that split would work between the artist and the producer like in a obviously like a very professional setting where you know he is like co-writing some of the songs as well how did you work how did you work that out yeah so um we we did it we thought the fairest way to do it the most democratic way it's just an equal split we didn't want to get into the funny business of saying like oh yeah well he wrote this lyric and then i wrote that chord sequence like we just thought whoever's whoever helped with this song gets an equal split so when there was four of us me sid jacob of the band and tim we would split it 25 each you know um if it was just me sid and jacob as the band we always split it equally although saying that it's not even about gets split between us personally it goes straight to our band account you know we don't we don't take personal money from the royalties we just put it into our band account um but yeah so it's always equally between us and then when tim helps us helps us with the song he gets 25 and in some cases there were some songs where jesse michael tim's friend he's of operation ivy i think leo probably knows him um i'm sure he knows him very well um he he actually has a couple as well he wasn't he was never there but he you know tim had a lot of lyrics that him and jesse had been writing so there were some songs where it was 20 each between five of us um i mean because yeah we talked to him on the phone about this we thought like what's the best way to do it and we both agreed i think that's just nice and fair like there's no confusion in that way and um we were happy to do it that way i think i think that's our preferred way to split yeah definitely um so as a whole like would you would you recommend co-writing then to kind of you know do you feel it helped develop you as musicians as musicians or as writers and would you kind of recommend it for other people massively it's quite literally changed us as a band i think working with tim for that for those couple weeks um for multiple reasons you know during that time not only did we learn a lot about songwriting but he also taught us a lot about our vocal performance and how our vocals have developed since because you know we're quite a quite a shouty band you know not a lot of melody so he kind of helped us become i don't know shouty in a good way i think it's i don't know we just you know we developed quite a lot because of that but yeah songwriting in general co-songwriting i think is really good um it's really really important to see how other people write because it's so easy to get stuck in your own little loop of just writing the same stuff every other day you know i do all the time i'm sitting at home during lockdown and i'll pick up the guitar and i'll just i kind of just write the same song a million times i mean i think it's quite an easy thing to do um so you know me and leo we've been doing a lot of co-writing you know we did a lot over lockdown and that i think that helped both of us quite a lot as well with um you know learning each other's preference and like how we work so it's i think it's a really important thing that a lot of people should try yeah definitely thanks for that um at the end of the last question though you kind of said a bit about the royalties to go straight into your uh like band bank account um how do you kind of like how did you learn about like the finance side of things and how did you work out what to do you know have you always kept the band money like within the band um yeah how did you kind of pick up like what to do with that because i think it can be quite confusing for people starting out um you know if they're like oh we just made 50 quid on t-shirts and then oh like we've just spent it at the bar or something like well yeah what did you do around that we ah we went through that phase very much so like there we made that mistake many a time our worst one was probably when we got um we got a really nice payout from isle of wight festival we played we played the hip shaker stage in like 2015 um and it was a pretty small gig um nothing really happened you know it wasn't it wasn't very eventful you know we had a decent crowd but you know we got a free ticket out of it and we didn't think about it since and then like two years later we somehow got a massive payout from prs they sent us two grand for this gig we played and we you know we weren't expecting that at all we didn't know that we were going to get that so we just were like two grand like we just split it equally just sent 700 quid into each of our banks and we were like sweet i'm gonna buy a new tele like um and that you know that was foolish because we needed that money really badly like and we used to do that all the time whenever we'd make any money we'd just be like sweet you can get this you get this and we'll go have a good time um but we've quickly learned well not quickly actually it took us a couple years to figure that out um that we have to start saving and now we don't we haven't taken money from the band personally in i think years to be honest because we've got so many debts you know we've got you know it's very expensive uh hobby there's so many people that we owe money to so we need to save every penny we have so any any gig money we gain any merch money it goes right into the account and that is just to help us invest in future tours and future merch orders and everything like it's important to have quite a big quite a big buffer in your bank so you have money to invest into these tours because we've had so many times where we've had no money and we've got a tour coming up and we're like right we've gotta buy flight tickets we've gotta hire a van we've gotta hire a driver we've gotta order a load of merch excuse my language sorry um and you know tours are expensive you have to invest so much money into that and you know so i think it's really important to build build up a bank first have maybe you know if an ideal amount would be at least a grand or if more just to invest because things like hiring a van really do break the bank you don't realise until afterwards how expensive these things are not to mention hiring backline i mean ideally you'd have your own but a lot of the time you don't so yeah we we learned how to not take the money that helped a lot helped a lot yeah definitely do you get any like um support from the label for that side of things or do they just purely manage the like distribution and like the recording yeah no they actually they helped us with tour support as well um on our for our record deal they also gave us uh five thousand dollars for tour support in america and that basically paid for our van uh it was okay the van roughly came to five thousand dollars over the entire tour i think so that perfectly paid for that um and we still barely broke even but um so yeah they do help and they for our most our tour that got cancelled because of covid our european tour we were supposed to do with social distortion that um they were supposed to pay us on the off days i think it was they were going to help us with um you know every time we had an off day on the tour because there was a lot of gaps in this tour if we couldn't find it we'd obviously try and fill those gaps where we could play gigs as much as we can but in the event we can't they'd give us a little bit of money to help pay for the van etc you know little things like that so they'll give us tour support money when we when we request it okay so just to like uh i guess kind of just clarify a bit for everyone so you're now on a subsidary of epitaph which is tim's label hellcat records um not on the original like small label anymore so what's that like obviously epitaph are still like still an independent label but a pretty big one so what's that like like comparing them to being now being on kind of more of a more of a proper like established label yeah also just what does that kind of like what does your deal involve with them if you see what i mean like what is the record deal yeah so yeah they're technically an independent label but it's hard to see them as one now really they're they've branched out quite massively um yeah that was a really weird step for us because yeah working with quite um quite an unprofessional label you could say before with our independent one in germany contra records going to epitaph was a huge step um and that yeah it's weird but it's been it's been an amazing experience because they've been they've been doing a lot to really help us out like they the main thing for us is probably just the promo you know they've been able to absolutely promote us everywhere with all their social media um they have got a lot of contacts obviously a lot of ways to promote us in like magazines and all kinds of websites um but yeah the deal itself was really good i mean we had it was a three album deal so we're still we've done one album we've got two more to go um and we have to record the albums with tim so we have to go out there to do them with him that's like part of the deal which is fine by us you know um i mean yeah i mean what else like the difference between contra records and like the major label yeah i guess just like for you guys like what does it mean for you being on being on such like an established label now and like how important is that is that record deal for you guys yeah no obviously it's hugely important it's been what's made us giving us this next step into making potentially this you know this fun project into an actual career you know they've actually um given us this opportunity to potentially be able to do this you know for a lot longer and you know they support us financially with this record you know they fund the record they they give us tour support which has been a massive help because all these years as well we have been struggling financially because of this band you know it's not it's never been a profitable thing and it still isn't um that helps massively and obviously yeah it's just a huge honour to be on this label because it's it's the biggest label we probably could get on playing the music that we play you know it's the biggest step for us to take so now it's kind of you know the pressure's kind of on us now i think is to is to deliver what about what people expect to see on hellcat you have to deliver that high quality quality content so you know the ball's in our court and it's a lot of pressure i must admit but it's a good kind of pressure you know yeah definitely so do you have any kind of like last thoughts anything we haven't covered any kind of like top tips or advice either that you would or wouldn't do and and then we'll go over and see if anyone has any any questions so guys if you have any questions now um whilst we're talking put them in the chat now and if you want to speak up then you can as well that's fine um yeah i guess um well i could go over the um i may another big mistake we made as a band is quite a quite a good one is that um similarly with uh how i talk about contracts was how we sort of let them take advantage of us being quite young and naive a similar thing happened when uh you know we would hire a driver and who who became quite a bit of a control freak and sort of um wanted to kind of take control of the band become the tour manager and do everything for us and again we made a similar mistake where we kind of let this guy walk all over us and we're like yeah you can do that you can do this there's less effort for us which quickly became a problem because he became a very strange guy that was like kind of manipulating us and i think that's another sort of learning lesson for us it's like to make sure you know make sure you know your worth coming back to that same thing like don't don't ever let anyone take control of you as a band like a lot of people try i think jump on the bandwagon and think oh yeah this young band that i want to be part of that or something like just remember you you guys whoever's in the band you are the most important people most important members of the band and you should have every decision and like remember that you're something that's worth you know worth writing home about you like you're important definitely so does anyone have any any last kind of thoughts or any questions they want to ask um you can either put them in the chat or just take yourself off of mute that's fine do you have another job alongside that supports you more financially in between tours uh yes yeah i do actually so when i'm at home back on the isle of wight that we are now i work at a bar just a local bar and that is my main income actually is my only income the band doesn't uh doesn't financially support me at all so that is what i do to make money when i'm home just by bar which is quite quite a nice job is that what um do the other uh members of the band do that as well do you all have like day jobs as well everyone but our drummer um i don't know what our drummer does jacob's a mysterious man um yeah no honestly i i couldn't tell you like the kid's mysterious so he's always just doing bits and bobs but god knows what uh but yeah sid our other member he works at tesco you know it's just little little day jobs that we do in the meantime to help us get by so we can actually maybe have enough money to go away on tour i was just going to add to that jack do you think that's like something that you see is that like a trend you're seeing at the moment with like maybe like people you know in bands do you think obviously people there's like less money in music now so do you think that's just kind of the way it's becoming you need to have a side hustle so to speak for when you're not on the road and when you're not um actively very actively either recording or touring with grade two yeah man 100 percent i think it's it's so hard to make a living from music if you're just a touring band you have to you know i think you have to hit like the 10 year mark of actively touring or maybe like 10 years as a band is probably when you're gonna start seeing success i think like we've been doing it for seven coming up to eight years now eight years next month actually um and you know we still don't make profit and i think that's i think a lot of bands are like that yeah like you do you do it's not a profitable thing until you start seeing real success which is quite a shame i think that's true even for somebody like tim who obviously you said like you know it's part of your deal that he wants to be involved with all three records that you do with epitaph i think you know obviously he's not working in you know walmart as a day job but you think it's even true to him you know he's trying to you know get work from from your deal you know um yeah i think for someone like him he's more doing it for the sake of he enjoys it and it's a fun challenge for him more of a creative challenge do you know what i mean i i think financially he doesn't really have much interest to be honest he he's you know kind of got his fingers in many pies where i think he doesn't have to ever worry about money again to be honest do you think uh we kind of hear this term being thrown around a lot nowadays like portfolio careers so having yeah like being able to have uh you know people wanting to get into you know working in the music industry especially we know as a you know as a music artist there's not a lot of money in it you know you don't get big record deals um anymore and things like that and like one of yeah one of the things we hear being thrown around a lot is portfolio careers and you know a lot of people go into kind of co-writing with other people producing with other people like maybe doing some production music like all these different things and do you think that's something that yeah like needs to be done and is is really beneficial i don't know if you guys like ever think about doing anything like besides the band um yeah i think that is quite a crucial thing a lot of people do um which we we haven't done ourselves actually because we we try to just focus purely on the band nothing else we haven't really considered branching out anything else because we can't for us personally we're kind of at a point where you know we're very close to breaking that point of maybe being able to make some money so we don't want to have our attention anywhere else i mean but whereas other people i think that could be very important part of um part of their careers is working with other people not necessarily being a touring band because that's an extremely sort of risky way i think to make a career um i think in the music industry there's lots of other ways you can benefit um you know make an actual career from it whether it's production sound engineer you know a session musician there are a lot more i think reliable uh professions yeah definitely yeah it's really interesting so does anyone have any any last questions before we before we wrap up at all i just want to ask um one more question like do you have any advice on how to kind of make that transition from it just being friends supporting your music you know if you release a single and you might have your friends like sharing it and kind of supporting do you have any advice on kind of growing your fan base of people that purely just found you through your music because i feel like if you're not touring or you know especially with covid you're not performing live it's quite hard to find a new audience so do you have like any other way of kind of branching out and finding new people um yeah obviously with covid at the moment it's going to be really hard it might be a case of sort of waiting for things to come back to normal but we we originally did ours literally by by facebook was kind of how we got um got the contacts originally we you know with our facebook page we reached out to a lot of people and message as many people as we knew you know promoters other bands in the scene that we had heard of other bands that we were just fans of we said you know we've got this band check us out um so i think social media is a really powerful tool at the time when we started facebook was a lot more popular than instagram instagram wasn't really so good bigger back then but um instagram's now all it's all about instagram now so i would probably you know making sure you've got a good social presence and try reach out to many people as you can online i think it's probably the best way to get started but it is difficult thank you great so unless anyone has any last questions um i think we're gonna leave that there and obviously you know it's it's been great to hear from you jack it's been really interesting um talking with you and sharing some some information around that and you know jack obviously said he's been doing this for like eight years now don't be disheartened by that you know he does really really enjoy it and like he said they're getting to the point now where um you know he's going to be you know they're on the verge of kind of breaking through and being able to maybe do this more as their main main source of income um so yeah thanks everyone for watching um if you have any last questions or whatever just put them in the chat now thank you very much megan for having me alright see you later thank you no worries cheers
2021-04-17 11:07
