Let them underestimate you.
The other day I sat down with four of the six members of the DC-based pop-rock group Sub-radio. As the composers of this podcast’s theme music I felt it was only right for them to be my first guests. We discussed everything from social media assignments to time-traveling. Take a listen!
You’re listening to Episode 13 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hey there! You’re listening to Episode 13 – Music-Preneur Spotlight: SubRadio.
I’m your host, Suz – a mindset coach to help freelancers and DIY musicians
become full-fledged music-preneurs by building sustainable careers in music and I’m SO happy you’re here with me because today is a very special episode.
Each month we’ll spotlight one artist or band who’s doing some really interesting things when it comes to how they approach the business side of their career.
This week we have our first official guests – DC-based pop/rock band SubRadio. You may already be familiar with them, as they provide the theme music for this podcast, and I couldn’t think of a better band to start us off with our interview series.
Our intro and outro contains music from their insanely catchy single – Up.
They also did a wonderfully-creative video for the song. Be sure to check it out on YouTube, the link is in the show notes of this episode.
Before I begin the interview, I want to give you little bit of a background on this incredible group of guys.
The band consists of six members: Adam on lead vocals; Matt on guitar & backing vocals; Michael P. on drums & backing vocals; Michael C. on guitar, keys, and backing vocals; John on on keys, guitar, and backing vocals;
and finally Barry on bass.
They’ve all known each other since their early days in high school and have been playing together for the better part of 9 years. If you like infectiously well-played pop-rock these guys are right up your ally. Think Maroon 5 meets Walk the Moon.
In 2016 they released their debut EP, Same Train//Different Station, followed by six singles released consecutively between April and September of last year.
Their upcoming EP, Headfirst, tackles the 21st century struggle to define relationships with the lead single, What Are We, out now.
No matter the project, you can expect high-energy and well-crafted hooks. You can read all about them on their website sub-radio.com, the link can also be found in our show notes.
Adam, Matt, and both Michaels joined me the other day for a sit-down to discuss how they navigate the business end of their music and how they balance it all between six members – each with their own day jobs and responsibilities.
As we discussed last week in Episode 12: Stop Hating Your Day Job, we discussed the fact that you don’t need to feel stifled or held back by your day job and other responsibilities and with some planning and communication with your team, you can make real progress in your music career.
And without any further delay, here’s my interview with four sixths of Sub-Radio:
Suz: I’m here with Sub-Radio, well most parts of Sub-Radio. I’ll let you guys introduce yourself and tell us who’s here with us. So, you guys let us know, who do we got?
Michael P: Yeah, I’m Michael I’m the drummer.
Matt: I’m Matt, I’m the guitarist.
Adam: This is Adam Bradley, I’m the lead singer.
Michael C: This is Michael, I also play guitar and keys.
Suz: Awesome welcome guys. So, I wanted to dig in. I gave everybody a little run down of your story and how you got started and all that and where you guys are now.
I think I met you guys about three or four years ago and you’ve really come a long way. You’ve been getting a lot of great press lately and your social media, your website, your videos… there’s so much creativity, there’s so much strong branding behind it. What’s your approach there?
Do you guys outsource that? Is that just a matter of you guys staying organized and having certain roles when it comes to what you put out on social media? How does that work?
Matt: As far as social media goes we actually have a lot of meetings about this. For a long time, it was not that way, but recently we kind of like upped our game and what we like to do is assign certain roles to certain people. Adam handles Twitter most the time and Mike handles a lot Instagram and then me and Mike Chinen will do a lot of Facebook posting, so that’s how we kind of keep all of our angles covered on social media.
For press, we were fortunate enough back maybe I don’t know how long ago was Launch? Maybe two years ago? So yeah, we met Chrissy Borsellino and she works for WMA which is Weller Media Agency. And then two years later we decided we wanted to give PR a shot for our latest release, which is What Are We. It came out in January and yeah, she’s been great. She works for WMA and she’s been really awesome for us so far.
Suz: There are six of you guys and you guys had just said that you have certain roles when it comes to social media what other jobs and how do you guys kind of make this all work in terms of who’s handling what so that things don’t get doubled up on or that things don’t fall through the cracks? What’s your approach?
Adam: We have a massive fucking iMessage that takes all of the storage on my phone through which we coordinate everything. We coordinate shows and practices and what we’re posting on Instagram and when people are going on vacation and what our next song is about.
Everything is in this iMessage thread. So that’s sort of like our primary organizational tool right now. We’ve got a Facebook group where we do things, and we’ve got a Google calendar that we all update together.
It’s like a huge logistical undertaking with this many guys who don’t live together. Some of us live together in pairs but not all six of us in the same house. We all have day jobs, so we don’t really see each other that often throughout the week and it’s a lot of texting back and forth and John, our keyboard player, will leave work at the end the day at five thirty and he’s got a hundred and seventy-five iMessage notifications.
It’s a lot of work, and it’s a lot of juggling things in our heads, but it’s exciting and kind of shocking to hear you say that we have a really strong brand and we’re putting stuff out on all the channels, and that’s great.
When we are doing it, it feels like we’re doing it so scattershot, we’re just feeding the beast. So, it’s nice that it’s coming out in a coherent way.
Suz: Yeah, absolutely. You know I saw Mike was spray painting some your equipment and I had messaged on Instagram saying I love the branding. Whether that was intentional or not, but what I think is great that you guys
do is that your website has a flow, you guys have professional pictures up, all your social media is coherent and the same, you can tell it’s all the same band.
I know when I’m on a Sub-Radio channel it’s not like wait, is this their Twitter or is this another band? It’s cohesive so I think you know that’s to your credit especially when you’re dividing up the roles among six of you.
Adam: I think some of that coherence probably comes from like we’ve been doing this now for years and years and years. Coming up on like nine years of the same six guys being together. Sub-Radio hasn’t existed for nine years, but we’ve been doing the music thing for that long. So, I think we are getting into the mind meld part of our relationships probably.
Suz: Yeah, I can definitely see that. When you guys are balancing all these different jobs, responsibilities other things, like you said you guys don’t all live in the same house together, is it a struggle when it comes to the business aspect of it? Or do you guys kind of all…How do you see it? Is it just like, man I wish I could just play music? Or do you see it as a larger kind of structure?
Matt: I think for a long time we’ve had to look at it from both sides, the business side and music side. I know I’m definitely like the first person to be thinking about what our next step is. I mean I do a lot of songwriting too, we all do. Yeah, definitely a balance. I don’t know what your guys take on that is…
Michael P: Yeah, the business side is frankly something we didn’t consider as a unit for a long time I think. We were making merchandise without any sort of end goal as to what our profit was going to be and what our margin is going to be. And we were kind of writing and recording songs without a ton of direction for years, and so now we’re, after going through all of that and discovering what a pitfall that is, we have learned from that, and we’re really trying to run the band as a sustainable small business with a size-able income that is large enough to support all the endeavors of the business and beyond.
So, like as it stands today we all have day jobs, but our day jobs fund us as human beings. Money from our day jobs does go a little bit into funding the band, but for the most part, the band is self-sustaining and is growing
in capital which is really cool.
Suz: That’s awesome.
Michael P: It’s taken a long time and it’s lot of work and we’re still learning.
Matt: It’s scaled up since day one. The amount we earn has gone up, so we’ve been able to spend more on the business too. So, we’ve been able to pay for things like I mentioned before PR and new merch, and new CDs
and all that stuff is coming out with the singles, and it’s all coordinated now. We actually have meetings to talk about it, so it has been good.
Adam: I think we were fortunate that we kind of backed into a good structure where, you know, we’ve got Matt who has sort of over time taken on the role of Sub-Radio business manager. And then it’s sort of like we’ve all slotted into our separate support roles for what we handle that’s not music.
We didn’t really have a focused discussion about that until very recently there is always stuff that we were all doing. So, I don’t know if it’s a good model for other people or not, but it was it was something that we sort of
discovered as it went, and it happened to work for us.
Matt: I think it all came pretty naturally to most of us. It wasn’t like anything that we set out immediately.
Adam: We started out so young and you’re not thinking about that when you’re seventeen.
Suz: And I think that’s to your credit, I mean each time I run into you guys or have seen you play at another conference you notice that. I think I said to you last time you guys were in New York playing, that you understand,
all six of you, understand the importance of the performance up on stage.
Where like if Mike is drumming or if Barry’s playing the bass you know it’s not just oh, I’m not singing, so I’m just going to play my instrument. You guys all interact with the crowd, and you all interact with each other. I feel that you all have a very good understanding of all the different components, even if it doesn’t always feel balanced or in sync or you know that it can feel kind of crazy at times.
I think you guys have all seemed to embrace the fact that it’s not just songwriting when it comes to building a career in music. It’s the way you interact with your fans; it’s the way you build your brand, it’s who you bring on your team.
I think everything you guys are saying here is really important for our listeners to get if they want to start really ramping up their press or you know want to start having a sustainable band as you guys do. I think that’s a really important point to hone in on.
Michael P: Yeah, absolutely if I could add one more thing to that? Yeah, that’s a great point and to that point, like for any listeners, one thing that I’ve kind of come to aim for is that all these things that aren’t just songwriting and music, all of the additional things like running the social media and all the logistics, it can be fun!
It doesn’t have to be painstaking work. You can do it in a way that is also fulfilling and is also enjoyable. And we have strived to do that with all of the band inner workings. We’ve tried to make it really fun for ourselves to do and then it’s motivating. Then you are always psyched to do it.
Matt: When you are motivated it is fun, you see progress and you see people like responding and interacting it’s nice, it’s fun to talk to actual fans over the internet.
Suz: Yeah. See people? That’s the type of energy you need. That’s what I’m talking about. Alright, great answers guys really.
So, my next question for you kind of flows into what we were just talking about. You said that you know didn’t start out with this outlook at sixteen, seventeen years old. Now that you guys, you know it’s been eight or nine years, and you’ve kind of found your flow, maybe you’re still perfecting it, or still working at it, but you’ve kind of found certain things that work for you.
I’m always from the standpoint of nothing’s wasted, no learning experience or failure or mistake is wasted, but if you could go back and from what you know now, what is something that maybe each of you can go down the line and share something that you kind of wish you knew or had figured out a little sooner to maybe moved things along. What would that be?
Michael P: That’s a good question. The first thing and a big thing that comes to mind for me is, I am a self-taught musician a totally self-taught musician. I’m the drummer, but I play guitar, I play piano, I play most of the general common instruments, but because I was self-taught and when I was young, I was so hell-bent on being self-taught, I didn’t want teachers and didn’t want to be influenced. I wanted it to be natural.
I didn’t learn a lot of the fundamentals about music and especially how to talk about music. How to communicate like what’s in your head to the other people around you in the musical language is such an important skill and if you don’t learn early it’s so much harder to get there later.
So, if I could go back I would like to take a music theory class and maybe some drum lessons when I was sixteen. Because now I’m working through even some coordination problems and that I wouldn’t have had to worry
about if I just had a teacher in the beginning. But man having teachers like I so much value having a teacher now and I wish that I valued that when I was young.
Suz: Interesting. Very nice. How about some of the other guys? What do you guys feel? If you could say, man, I would have saved so much time if or I would have saved so much money if…
Matt: We would save so much money if we would have figured out how to find people who could get our recording vision correct. But what we did back when we were younger was we just went to a couple of studios, like local studios around town. So, we went to this one studio, and we found this producer who we like, he’s a really nice guy, but the visions that we had for the music just didn’t line up.
And like at the time we don’t really understand that because we’re still very new to recording so we blew a lot of money and we weren’t extremely happy with the product that we got. But now, looking back on it if we had focused more on writing into a certain vain and then finding someone who understood that vision, I think we would have saved a lot of money and a lot of time just right there. And I think we all would have been happier with the product as a result.
Suz: Yeah, I think that’s common for a lot of bands that feel your pain.
Adam: I think a lot of the problems for us early on, and for me personally, boil down to like you need a clarifying vision of why you’re doing this. And you need to talk about it and I think you know it’s so easy for I think in particular a bunch of white high school guys to get together and be like we can all play instruments, so we should be in a band that releases music. And that’s like not, those are not the minimum standards.
You should have something to say and something that you want to perfect. We just didn’t think about that or I didn’t think about that for a long time.
You should make music because you want to do something with it. For a long time, it was like “I want to make music because I’m good at like putting chords together and so people should listen to me.” And make something that is worthy of being listened to and I think that requires a lot of clarifying of what your vision is before you do it rather than as you’re doing it.
Suz: Awesome answer. We have one more…
Michael C: I mean if I could go back in time, honestly, I would tell myself to potentially not be so serious. As all the other guys can probably vouch for that.
Essentially since I joined the band, you know I have a ton of fun on stage and stuff, but sometimes it doesn’t always show well. I’m probably what people would consider the very serious member on stage. Lately I’ve been working on that a lot, but I just wish starting at the beginning I could just tell myself to not be so serious, you know relax, loosen up and have more fun.
In the last few months or so it’s definitely got a lot better on stage. I’m definitely up there, you know, dancing around having fun. But sometimes you can still see on my face. I’m very serious.
Michael P: And, it’s so funny cause you’re like the silliest dude in Sub-Radio. It’s like the extremes of the duality and then as soon as you step off stage you’re like the silliest guy.
Suz: I feel like that’s so common.
Michael C: A lot of it is focusing on the music itself and making sure that you’re performing everything well, but at the same time you know when you’re performing you also want to have the crowd vibe off of how you are performing. So, if you are too serious, it’s like is this guy even having fun?
Suz: Yeah, Mike I’m really glad that you brought that up because you know it’s something we talk about a lot on this podcast. There’s so much structure, and so much routine and there’s so much planning and strategizing and so much that goes into it, that sometimes we forget to just kind of sit back and you know figure out why and realize why we’re doing it.
It’s to have fun, it’s to live, it’s to have great experiences and create great memories. And sometimes that can get lost with trying to juggle everything and not drop anything. You know that can get kind of stressful so I’m glad that you brought that up because I know a lot of our listeners feel that way.
I think it’s important to live in the moment. I know that’s why a lot of people have started meditating lately and trying to be that present self because that’s something a lot of us forget to do very often.
I wanted to talk about another thing that kind of flows into it because we’ve been talking about what you’ve learned over the years. We’ve also mentioned on the show about kind of being the newbie or being the small fish in a big pond as you get to the next plateau and as you move into a different stage in your career.
I want to get your take on it, but before I do I want to read this quick blurb from the Festival Beat. They had reviewed your performance at Firefly last year and I thought it was a really interesting quote that I wanted to get
your take on. They said about Sub-Radio at Firefly:
“Really they were almost our favorite show of the day despite being so early and at the tiny North Hubs stage. Their energy was incredible. The Sugar We’re Going Down cover was amazing and show that they absolutely deserve to be in the festival. They’re pretty much unknowns now, but we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see them blow up. They’re too talented not to. And since they’re releasing a single a month for the rest of the year they have plenty of new stuff coming.”
What’s your reaction to stuff like that? When you’re at a place like Firefly and your kind of the newbies or the unknowns as they call you guys, do you feel that pressure or do you just kind of do your thing? How does something like an opportunity like that feel to you guys?
Adam: Well that’s the great thing about the “unknowns.” To Mike’s point about, like you know, trying to lose some inhibitions on stage and it’s kind of liberating to get up on stage and know that you don’t suck and therefore you’re going to exceed people’s expectations. And you are also starting from zero, so you have the chance to pull in everyone.
So, all of that is like the low pressure. I think to me the high-pressure part is like you probably only have one chance to sell yourself to a lot of people because you know being such low profile you never know when they’re ever going to see you again. Or interact with your content again. So every show becomes very important. As far as showing your best face and communicating every single thing that you are about.
So, it’s a couple things, but I think mostly, especially at Firefly, we had a blast there because there was nothing to prove. This is the biggest crowd that we’ve played for probably ever. Mostly folks who never heard us and
there’s nothing to lose at all.
Suz: I think that’s a really great outlook. Do you do you guys all feel the same or does anybody have anything to add?
Matt: Pretty much we got to Firefly, and I was just having a blast because I was talking to a bunch of people I looked up to. We got to go back to the artist’s lounge and we got to meet a couple of people that we really, really love.
One of those bands is Mister Wives. I’m a huge fan of them, so I was very happy to meet them, but when we got on stage, at least for me, we’d run that set, how many times have we run that set, maybe ten times?
So, I didn’t really feel any pressure. I mean, I get a little nervous before some of the bigger shows, but honestly, we got on stage and just had fun with it. I think everyone did.
That was one of my favorite shows we’ve ever played. It was on a small stage and, yeah, there weren’t many people before us, but man we got on stage and a ton of people came to the stage and came to see what we were all about and it was a really good time.
Adam: You can see their pictures of us from Firefly, and it was hard to photograph us during the show because nobody stopped moving the whole time. There are a bunch of very blurry pictures of us on that stage because I think we were just losing our minds that we were even doing this.
Suz: Yeah, I think that’s great. I’m really glad that you all have that outlook, because I certainly have gotten there. It took me a few years to get to that outlook and I think that is important.
My dad used to say, “one of your greatest assets is being the underdog.” Letting people underestimate you is like the biggest thing you can have in your arsenal because, like you said, it can only go up. They don’t know you from anything so, if you stink maybe you’ll just kind of quietly go fade into the background and wait for your next opportunity. Or, you’ll really blow them away because they weren’t expecting, or they didn’t know what to
expect.
I think that’s really important for musicians to think about. When I read that review I thought that’s a really great thing that I wanted to bring to this show with you guys, is to all those other bands that are maybe too afraid to go do a bigger show or go play to a new audience, that it can really work in your favor.
Adam: Yeah, absolutely. I think this is probably a very cynical outlook, but I think that being better than people expect might be better than being good. At least for one time, If you’re the opener and they expect you to be awful and then you’re not awful. That’s better than doing the show you wanted to do necessarily. Especially when you’re thinking about these big shows that you’re nervous about or scared about or not living up to it. If you can just exceed people’s expectations I think it’s a big step.
Suz: Yeah. Absolutely.
Michael P: You kind of touched on it but part of the reason that none of us, it seemed, were super nervous about the show was because like Matt touched on, we had practiced this set like endlessly and so coming up to the show we were all very, very confident in our performance, in our knowledge of the music and our ability to play it.
So, if you’re gonna take the next step and go somewhere and play to an audience you’ve never played to before, I think it’s the best thing you can do. But man, you damn well make sure that you are confident in what you’re playing because if you don’t, if you’re not confident in what you’re playing, the worst thing is playing in front of a crowd you’ve never seen and being super uncomfortable the whole time and not sounding good.
Adam: Just quickly on that point, I mean we’ve seen a lot of bands, I mean we’ve seen a lot of bands the last ten years, not just at Firefly, who I think have maybe a lot of unearned confidence because they have the mindset
that we do but haven’t put in the work.
Like actually prepare what they’re going to do. They just assume that it will be good when they get on stage and I think you have to do both. You have to assume that you’ll be good when you get on stage and also eliminate any doubt that you won’t be good by doing it over and over and over.
I think that’s like one of the more common things that we see in bands, you know smaller bands, that we see live and we’re like there’s something there, but this is clearly the first time they’ve played all this stuff. I think to
Michael’s point it’s a common problem that a lot of bands have, and we probably had for a while.
Michael P: Oh, yeah.
Adam: Super, super, super underprepared, but still think that they’re killing it.
Matt: Yeah, if you’re underprepared it’ll definitely show. That’s the one thing. So definitely prepare for any big shows. It’s important.
Suz: Excellent advice guys. So, in the review that the Festival Beat said, they did mention the fact that last year you had released a single a month for most of the year. I think it was April through September?
Sub-Radio: Yep.
Suz: Okay, so, you did your EP, your debut EP in 2016 and then in 2017, as we just said you guys went to monthly single releases and then followed it up with a holiday EP in December.
I know you guys are working on another EP for the spring and I want to hear all about that, but I’m curious about where did the decision come in, or was it even discussed, that you would do an EP and then switch it to single releases and then do another EP?
Matt: Man, we went back and forth with that so many times. We saw a number of artists who had started to switch away from the album format and go into when they have music ready they just release it. And we wanted to give that a shot, so we did, and we had a lot of success with it actually.
But I would say the decision came after a series of meetings where we were just like, “Well if we do this then this will happen and if we do this then this will happen.” And so, we kind of went back and forth for a while.
Adam: It was like months of deliberations about this. To your point, I think we probably mentioned that the folks who wrote that review heard that we were planning on doing this for the rest of the year and we totally were. That was the intention.
We got several months in, and we were like, “This is a grind.” Because it was a grind. I mean it was fun and like kind of exhilarating to be just like cranking out stuff. I think we like learned a lot from it and I think our fans had a lot of fun with it as well.
And we are going slightly more traditional now with the lead single followed by an EP release. But I think it’s good that we have, like you know you mentioned, we had the full length out in 2016 and all the singles and now we’re doing sort of like a PR-backed EP style release.
We have a lot of experience with different kinds of releases which I think is good.
Matt: Part of the other reason is we talked to some friends of ours who are in some other bands who are touring the country, and they were giving us some advice on what they thought was the best route. They were saying smaller bands who are just kind of breaking out, the general consensus from their point of view was to release a single then an EP, release a single then an EP and just kind of keep doing that until one breaks. Then you do a full length. And that was their view on it. Which did work for them by the way there pretty successful.
Adam: If we could break that would be super cool.
Suz: Nice, that’s awesome. So, I’m gonna jump in to three fun little questions if we can go down the line you guys can answer whatever comes to mind first. Doesn’t have to be super rapid fire, but just want to get your take on some of this.
Each of you have one extra hour in the day. What do you do with it?
Michael P: Oh man…
Adam: We all looked at Michael.
Suz: Did I hit you with the Oprah question? Is this my Barbara Walters moment?
Michael P: Okay. That’s my… my dream is to literally never sleep again. I could stay awake for the rest of my life because I have so many things that I want to do all the time. My first answer is why only one hour? Why not several?
Suz: Because that’s not the question. The question is one hour.
Michael P: It’s funny we just had an interview like a little bit ago and it was like for Christmas, and they’re like what’s the one thing if you could have anything for Christmas and I was like a Time Turner. That would be my thing. But anyway, If I had an extra hour, man I would probably exercise.
Sub-Radio: Good answer.
Michael P: Yeah, it’s just you got to do it and I blow it off so much because I’m doing other things.
Michael C: Honestly, Mike’s gonna hate me but I’d rather use that hour to get an extra hour sleep.
Suz: There you go, there’s my guy. That’s right.
Michael C: I could use an extra hour to sleep and relax.
Adam: You guys could trade out. If I had an extra hour I would actually pay attention to like culture so, watch Game of Thrones or something. I don’t know. People have a lot of conversations that I can’t participate in because I don’t watch shows and it’s not because I hate TV it’s because I don’t have time. So, I’d like to do that.
Suz: Then let’s talk about, you mentioned the Christmas list, and this is kind of along those lines, but what I like to do with my other musicians in the Rock/Star Collective on Facebook is talk about a Big Ask.
So, what I mean by that is sometimes we’re afraid to go for something because we’re afraid the answer is going to be “No,” or they’re going to ignore us, or you know something catastrophic is going to happen if we dare ask for what we want. And most of the time you’re either going to get it, or you’ll get information on how you can get it in the future.
So, with that in mind if you had one request when it comes to your music career whether it’s to be featured on an album, go on tour with a particular band or to win a particular award, and it’s assured that your request would
be granted, what is your big request?
Michael P: That’s a great question.
Matt: I have like 15 of those already. If I had to pick one, that’s tough.
Suz: Yeah, and relate it to your music.
Michael P: The thing we always talk about and have not had the opportunity to do yet is to go on tour with a high-profile act as an opener. Like, okay, we can ask about Grammys, like sky’s the limit, but in terms of like realistic stuff, going on tour with someone that we strongly admire, that has a high profile in the musical world, that we can get a lot of shows in front of, like if we went on tour with Twenty-One Pilots or something like that for instance.
Or someone who’s like similar enough to our genre that has a big following that we could draw from and we can participate in. We’ve talked about that and how to do that and how to go about that, so that comes to mind.
Suz: Nice. The most important thing really is, I know is going to sound cheesy, but to put it out there in the universe. So, Twenty-One Pilots if you happen to be listening, they’re asking, they would like to go on tour. I mean and that’s the truth though, I mean I’ve gotten so many opportunities just because I’ve mentioned it and the right person happens to be listening. And you’re like oh, really? I mean obviously, like you said, it takes strategy, it takes hard work, but I think sometimes people are too afraid to ask for what they want.
So, who else has got one?
Matt: Oh yeah, I’m in. Walk the Moon for me, If I had to pick an artist, but another band for me, even ahead of them, would be Small Pools.
Adam: I feel like this is becoming like a relic of the seventies or something, but I would love to have a major studio just give us like two months to make an album. Write stuff in the studio and make mistakes or record thirty songs and only put seven of them on the album. Yeah, that kind of recording process for a project, man, would be incredible. That’s an insane financial investment for a label or for us, like in real life. But, if I were to get a wish granted that would be it.
Matt: I like your answer.
Michael C: A more realistic one would be to get some music endorsements. It would be nice to get like sponsored by like by Gibson for gear and what not. Because as a musician you go through gear quite often. Especially, Mike as a drummer goes through a thousand drumsticks.
Even strings, pics and even guitars, guitars as well.
Adam: So, Vic Firth if you’re listening…
Matt: And Ernie Ball. Ernie are you there? We use a nine standard, so…
Suz: You never know, you never know. So, then the last question that I’ve got for you guys is let’s say you’re each of you on your own you’ve got one day to join one band, play with them, do whatever, make a music video with them, record with them, whatever it is. Who would you each want to go and be in a band for a day with?
Living or dead. Could be any band.
Michael C: Oh man it’s so tough.
Adam: I know I’m gonna be in the Mountain Goats, they have nothing to do with our genre, but that’s my answer.
Suz: And you’re sticking to it, I like it. I like the gumption.
Michael C: Honestly, I’m just gonna say Small Pools.
Suz: Nice.
Michael C: Thy’re one of my favorite bands.
Matt: I’d probably say Two Door Cinema Club. I know every single song in their catalog, so that one’s pretty easy.
Adam: So that one’s actually feasible.
Michael P: My answer would be, I mean he plays alone, but like a duo singer and drummer thing with John Bellion. That would be my number one.
Suz: You guys I threw the tough ones at you and you came back with the good answers. I like it. It’s your turn now. Tell us what you got going on and then give our listeners an actionable.
Matt: February 23rd we’ll be playing at Rockwood Music Hall Stage One
Adam: In New York City
Matt: And then we’re also doing Lancaster, PA at the Tellus360 the day after that. So those are gonna be some good shows so if you’re around those areas come out and hang out we’d love to see you.
We also have a music video, that is out…
Adam: Presumably will be out either a few days before or a few days after you’re listening to this. Check our Twitter feed. I mean you know we’ve got shows, we’ve got our videos, but we also have a single that came out in January called What Are We, and we have a single coming out in a month. Then a full EP called Head First that’s coming out in April.
We’ll have some show dates really soon. We’re really excited to put it out I think it’s easily, musically, the most cohesive and exciting thing that we put together for all of us. Just an exciting project. So, we’re excited for people
to hear it because we haven’t put out more than one song at a time in over a year. It’s gonna be fun to put out a whole bunch of songs at once.
Matt: Yeah and follow us on Spotify if you want. Follow us on Instagram. Yeah, any of the socials.
Adam: So, if you want to listen to Adam Bradley follow us on Twitter. Michael is on Instagram. If you wanna listen to Matt and Mike follow us on Facebook and I recommend that you do all three — you do the trifecta, and then you can experience the whole band.
Suz: And everybody all the links and all the things that they’re saying will be in our show notes. Thank you guys so much. Thank you for being our first guest on the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast and thanks for lending us your talents with our intro and outro music. Really appreciate it.
Michael P: We were happy to do it.
Suz: Awesome, we’ll look forward to hearing from you guys some more and thanks for being here with us.
Sub-Radio: Thanks for having us.
Thanks so much for listening, Rockstar! I hope you enjoyed the interview. It was my very first interview I’ve ever hosted, so I hope I made you proud!
You can go to www.therockstaradvocate.com/ep13 and stream Sub-Radio’s latest single, What Are We, and access links to all other bands and noteworthy info mentioned during the interview.
Before we go, I wanna know: What’s YOUR big ask? Post it in our private Facebook group – The Rock/ Star Collective. Ya never know, someone may just be able to make it happen for you!
If you enjoyed what you learned today, you can access all current episodes using your podcast platform of choice, including iTunes & Spotify, or by visiting www.therockstaradvocate.com/podcast.
In the meantime, if there is any way that I can help you find better ways to communicate with your team, take action on what you really want, or get some clarity on whatever it is you’re going through, I’d be more than happy to!
Feel free to email me at any time: suz@therockstaradvocate.com.
Until next time, Rockstar! Have a wonderful week and I hope to see you back here next Wednesday so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- Let’s begin the interview! [03:10]
- How they assign roles [05:06]
- How they handle the business side of things [07:48]
- What do they wish they knew back then? [13:11]
- The importance of living in the moment [18:00]
- How to handle being the newbie band [19:24]
- Singles vs. EPs [25:48]
- What would they do with 1 extra hour in your day? [28:18]
- What’s their big ask? [30:38]
- What band would each of them wish to join for the day? [34:00]
- Where to find them & how to connect! [34:49]
Take a listen to their latest single, What Are We, and be sure to follow them on Soundcloud & Spotify!
Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
- Music video for “Up” by Sub-Radio is here
- Check out Chrissy Borsellino of WMA here
- The Festival Beat’s Firefly review is here
- Check out Mister Wives here
- Check out Twenty-One Pilots here
- Check out Walk the Moon here
- Check out Mountain Goats here
- Check out Small Pools here
- Check out Two Door Cinema Club here
- Check out John Bellion here
- Get tickets for Sub-Radio’s upcoming shows!
- Sub-Radio on Twitter | Spotify | Instagram | Facebook
Thanks for listening!
If you liked what you heard, help get this podcast in front of others by subscribing, rating, and leaving a review using your favorite podcast app 😉
