Java-Sept-Pages-2018

That’s one of the most unique perspectives in
terms of the musicians I’ve interviewed. Do you
think that shaped your way of going about the
band? Because you guys are doing everything
independently, correct?
Completely independent and pretty proud to be that
way. We’re proud of how hard we’ve worked to get
where we are, and we’ve done it all pretty much by
the sweat of our brows.
How has that helped, not being part of the scene,
in deciding to go the do-it-yourself route?
At the time we were coming up, the Phoenix scene
had a kind of mythos around it for me that I didn’t
fully understand. I figured I’m going to keep my head
down and keep on practicing, writing songs, and
utilize the advertising and marketing skills that I
picked up from my degree. I decided I was going to
do my best to make this thing work.
Was it frustrating?
There were a bunch of house shows being put on
around Tempe, but whenever I reached out to throw
my chips in, I never really heard back. I got turned
away by (places like) the Trunk Space and I didn’t
really understand what was lacking. I guess, in
hindsight, it was because I didn’t have any presence
in the scene. So there weren’t a whole lot of reasons
for people to want to add us to their shows.
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But we kept moving independently and eventually got
in just by showing people how hard we worked. We’d
go out to First Fridays and play acoustic renditions
of our songs. Eventually we landed a show at the
Rogue Bar. It was great to actually be in a room with
speakers where we could play, and we gained some
good fans there.
What was your first big show or, more
accurately, when do you think the band began
to get noticed?
We had the opportunity to open for a band at the
Crescent Ballroom. That was when we started
to establish ourselves. It was kind of this weird
integration into the scene after we had already
gotten started – rather than coming up in the scene.
We realized if we worked hard, had good songs and
played them well, then we could succeed. And that’s
kind of been our model this whole time.
Once we’d played in Phoenix a bunch and we had
a little money – we never put money from the band
in our own pockets. We always put it back into the
machine, so if we needed to rent a van and buy food
on the road, we could do that – (we) were able to
go to California for a week or two. Then we went to
Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. We started making
the rounds, and it hasn’t really stopped. We just kept
on the road and have basically ridden it as far as we
could because that’s what we do.
Nice. Have you ever toured the whole country
at this point?
Oh yeah. We’re out like seven to nine months of the
year. We live on the road in our van. Her name is
Tamata.
I am going to go out on a limb here and say that
since you’re on the road so much, you guys are
all doing the band full time.
Yes, this is something that we all focus on, but we all
have side hustles that we work.
Oh cool. What’s your side hustle?
I’m involved with an app that comes from Phoenix
called Bravo Tip And Pay. It’s a really fantastic
disruptor for the PayPal market where you are able to
send money to a service professional and to friends
and family. It’s essentially safer and easier to use
than any of the competition.
So, you guys have been doing this for a bit now.
I assume you’ve got things down, but what’s the
toughest part about doing it on your own?
One thing that comes with the political clout of being
on a label is getting to play the king of all festivals,
Coachella, for example. Coachella gets booked up
pretty fast because they’ll book a band like 21 Pilots,
and their label, Fueled By Ramen, will be like, “Okay,