Latest / Caught on the Mike... / Recording Artist: ISITJOSH

Transcript

Recording Artist: ISITJOSH · Caught on the Mike...

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Disclaimer, the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of any entities they represent.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Next one, my next guest really stuck out.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the story gets crazy.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Through a little bit of research, I found out that once upon a time, we may have even crossed ads back in the day when I was playing music.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is it Josh?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Make live, dynamic songs that defy the found of genre and strike a chord with vulnerability and transparency through the lyricism.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm super excited to welcome Is It Josh to the podcast today.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Caught on the Mic.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Caught on the Mike.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is a funny story.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: We were just talking before we started recording.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's like two ships passing each other in the middle of the night.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: As I was wrapping up my tenure in the music industry in Omaha, Nebraska, my next guest was really just getting into full swing with his.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: He has found success online through platforms like TikTok and all the streaming services, but he's been in the music business for quite some time, starting with the MySpace era and now in the TikTok era.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Professionally, he know he is known as Is It Josh, my friend Josh joins me on the podcast today.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing, my friend?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing good.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: How are you doing?
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is, you know, I think this is uh an amazing part of this podcast story is the fact that we both have Omaha Nebraska roots, but we really didn't know it until the publicist made the connection.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was so wild.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't literally until like I think yesterday or today is when I found out.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was I was sitting at my day job and I'm reading your bio and I'm making I try and make some notes, you know.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do my due diligence.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, holy shit, he played in bands with Casey.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our mutual friend Casey Minken, you get a shout-out on this episode.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, Casey Minken.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: How's it going?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: You're in Philly now.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in Philly now, yeah.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: I love it up here.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was born on the East Coast.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in New Hampshire.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh my dad grew up in Newark.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: My grandma was an Irish immigrant, you know, to Ellis Island.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I have roots out here.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: So when did you make that transition moving back out to the East Coast from Omaha?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Two and a half years ago, two years ago.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Once once I was able to like uh realize, like, oh, okay, I'm getting a second chance at this.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like my my music career is taking off again.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'm in my 30s.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I had given up.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: I was in a corporate job.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so I just I it really just was able, I was, I was like, you know what?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not I'm not gonna stay in Omaha.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: If I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna actually pursue something, I'm gonna go to one of the top 10 cities in the country.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I do want to circle back to that because I think there's some commonalities that you and I are gonna be able to share because you know, the Midwest in general is I don't want to say underserved, but it's treated like flyover country.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Such a concentration of talent, but unfortunately, because it's not on a coast and it's not a part of a major metropolitan market, it sometimes becomes more competitive than collaborative.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Which is really not great.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's not great, and it is a very competitive vibe, uh, unfortunately.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it kind of becomes a thing where you want to be uh one of the best in your in your friend group or your scene, you know what I mean?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yes! You don't want to be the best in the world, you want to be the best in Omaha all of a sudden.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I was trying to escape because I got caught in that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: You and me both, and and well, I mean, shit, we're talking about it now, so let's just get into it.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was exactly my mindset when I walked away from it.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, I was telling you that my last show was probably one of the biggest shows I ever played, but it was having such a detriment to my mental health, something that I loved doing so much was beating me up and making me, I don't know, a lesser person on the inside.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: That it it became really easy to walk away from it finally when I did.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: I I cited as being my Super Bowl moment.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, this is as good as it's gonna get.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I mean, was that kind of a similar catalyst for you when you decided to make the move?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was, yeah, because you know, I was in a band called Hurricane Like Me prior to it, and it was uh right before the pandemic hit.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: I th I was 28, I think, and I we wrote this single and it hit a million streams in like no time.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was unbelievable.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: We had no I had never seen anything like that before, that type of success.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, it was blown up on YouTube, we were getting a music video ready for it, and then everything just got shut down.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like every business closed, we couldn't see each other, we couldn't meet up for practice, you know, like everyone was isolated.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we just gradually fell apart over the next two years and broke up and nothing came from it.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I went full into the corporate world.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it was when I started posting to social media again, uh just honestly to learn TikTok for the job that I had, but I ended up just posting, and I think like my fourth or fifth video just went super viral, uh, which I thought at the time because it was like a hundred thousand views, but then my following video had like 15 million views, I remember, and then from there it just kept climbing.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I think when I I I I flew out to New York after that to play a show, and I asked in the crowd, I said, Does anyone here even know who I am?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Are you guys just here for and all these people raised their hand and I'm like, what?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: And this one girl comes running down the middle, and I didn't have merch yet, so she had printed out a picture of my face on her shirt, you know, and she was like, I flew here from like Boston.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was my moment of like, I'm in a solo project, like I did this myself, and like this room is packed with people singing my lyrics back at me.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that was when I, I believe, quit my job and was like, I'm I'm gonna do this again if I have one more shot.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no disc to the waiting room because we love it, but you're not gonna have moments like that where somebody comes from Boston with No, and Omaha, you know, I believe it was Rolling Stone, don't quote me, uh, actually voted Omaha as one of the top ten cities in the world for underground music.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that was years ago, but the Saddle Creek Records era, Bright Eyes, all that stuff that was going on.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so it was a shame to see it just kind of you know, if you get embedded in a music scene for long enough, like I say that a musician's lifespan of 10 years is the equivalent of the real world's lifespan of 25 years, because we see so many different phase changes in such a short period of time.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said in the intro, you went from the MySpace era to the TikTok era, and if you really think about it, that's like four or five different stylistic changes, genre changes, the industry has changed and turned over so many times.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: I know my experience as an Omaha musician.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the Saddle Creek thing happen firsthand, but at the same time, there was this big thing going on at the Ranch Bowl at the same time, yeah.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there was this big thing, right?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's this big thing going on at the rock, and and like there were different venues doing serving different genres, so we were more than just Saddle Creek, but it was, I think it was actually the New York Times that did say that, and they called Omaha the next Seattle, and I always hated that tag because it made things fiercely competitive when it didn't need to be.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it did, it was a competitive scene.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um from what I found in Philly so far, it's not banned.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: I've reached out to bands last minute, uh, shout-out cherub dusty.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they were big, uh they ended up not playing the show because it was it was filled before they said yes, but they jumped right on it, and like all these other Philly bands were were trying to jump on one of my bills that we threw together in like a week and in Omaha, I just wanted, you know.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: It would have been like, I'm not playing first, I'm not playing last.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: You can throw me in the middle.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me, I had many of those, I had many of those discussions.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I had many of those discussions, and and I I will be honest, like, full stop here.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I was just as guilty of it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, time and growth has helped me tremendously, and I was just as guilty of participating in it as I was.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna take this victim mentality, like yeah, a hundred percent.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was an asshole too.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: In that scene, and I was definitely leading some of that scene during some of the you know what I mean.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I was definitely attributing to attributing to the the vibe, you know.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: So, in doing my preparation for this episode, I did a scroll of some of your social media, and at the very end of January, you put up a post reflecting upon 20 years of doing music and kind of finding your voice.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we've already we've only been on this episode so far for like 10 minutes, but we've already covered a really large span of it, but we haven't really gotten into the weeds of any.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So let's kind of talk about your origin story.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Why don't you tell your background and how you kind of came to be from where you were to where you are now?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it all started when I was 10 years old, actually.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, Jackson 5 and the Hanson Brothers uh noticed that they were kids.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I I was watching videos and I'm like, man, these kids are doing this.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I specifically saw like one of the Hanson Brothers was 10 when Umbop was recorded.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked my dad, I said, Dad, I need a drum set for Christmas, and he got me one.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I started when I was 10.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: My brother got a guitar.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: We put together a little band, you know, we played high school parties all through high school and things like that.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I got more and more into singing as time went on because I kept doing harmonies with my brother, and then eventually, you know, that led to me starting to just drum and sing harmonies and all these bands.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this is almost prior to the MySpace era, you know, it's just like leading up to it and just the beginning of it.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it wasn't until I I kind of left uh all these other bands I was drumming in and started singing in a band, Take Me to Vegas.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's when I really found like my drive and what I wanted to do.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, I don't want to be behind a kit, I wanna, I wanna be up here, I want to be you know, moving the show along, putting a show on.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um and we found a decent amount of success on MySpace and YouTube.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: But it's funny, we'll come full circle at the end of this.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: Back then we were pinned as a MySpace band, you know, and I think a lot of bands were like that's a MySpace band.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so we did the thing for about six years.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: We became that band that opened up for every band that you know that came through.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we we found that Omaha success.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: We were the best pop punk band in Omaha at the time.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we just couldn't hold on to a drummer.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: It was just the classic tale of not being able to hold on to drummers, and um we ended up just breaking up because of that.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think we went through five drummers and on the fifth or sixth one, we we quit.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I talked to Casey and started Hurricane like me.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that was the YouTube era, Facebook era, so completely different time, the era of spamming Facebook events, you know, uh things like that.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And it really took about a year for us to find our sound and write that that single that that that blew up.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh then we were labeled as kind of like this this band that was just kind of doing stuff on Facebook.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't really playing shows.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I've always had this issue of being like pigeonholed into like, oh, he's just a social media guy.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, these are the platforms that I have to use.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now eventually with TikTok, we've moved on to the Is It Josh project.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh again, I'm fighting that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he's a TikTok musician.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, no, I'm a musician who needs to use TikTok, you know.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: And and going back, the reason that I I really just dug into all this is because you know, up until I was 10, I was living this like perfect picture perfect family life, you know, and my the the home fell apart basically, and uh things were just terrible from like 11 on for me.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I just locked myself in the basement with those instruments and just played and played and played and played.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's where I got it in my head where it's like, no, this is what I'm gonna do for the rest of my life, and that's why I'm 34 years old right now, like still just just grinding, grinding, like as hard as I can.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: Every single day is consumed with how can I push this further?
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just been what it is for 20 years, and it's gonna be like that for another 20 years, to be honest.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it's it's weird because you go through I I don't want to use the term loosely because it is what it is, but you go through some form of family family or familial trauma, and you find that, especially in your formative years, where you're like 10, 11, 12, just getting into puberty, you find that music truly becomes your first and most consistent love in life.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's the exact same thing that I went through.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that's just what how I can correlate and and and and relate the story, and it does become a passion to a point where sometimes it's an obsession, and sometimes it can have very healthy moments, but also sometimes it can be an unhealthy obsession.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: My hands are bleeding and I'm splattering blood all over my drums, right?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Just beating the thoughts out of my head.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as far as you know, using it as a healthy outlet, you are very transparent with the Is It Josh project about um lyrical content being you know very heavy in the mental health aspect.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so far, off of your upcoming uh full release album, you've released three going on four singles.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the fourth single Can't Take Back.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk a little bit about the lyrical content and kind of what this music is all about.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so it's this album that these songs are gonna be on, is it it kind of became not a concept album, but the album now tells a story when it wasn't supposed to.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what this story is, it's kind of being told, especially with this single, is someone like me who battles, you know, depression and PTSD and bipolar and all these other things that I'm dealing with, and just trying to maintain relationships and loving relationships and friendships and things like that.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh Can't Take Back is a song about me letting all of those things get the best of me and saying something so stupid that I can't take back.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Once I've said it, I can't take it back.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I said it to someone I love, and they're you know, 2,000 miles away.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm in Philly now, they're back in Omaha.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this song truly was about like, you know what, I'm gonna take responsibility.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I might have these issues in my head, but that's not a that's not the reason to to put that on someone.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the song is about going and fixing it, it's about getting on a flight, flying across the country, you know, and saying, Hey, I'm you know, I'm sorry, like you know, I let's fix this, let's work on this, and and the tribulations of it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And and what this kind of ties into is when I started writing this album, I didn't realize it at the time because I started writing this album about two years ago because I was falling in love and I had no idea.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And by the end of this album, I had my heart ripped out, and just yeah, I couldn't even begin to explain, you know, just the worst possible thing has happened.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so this this part kind of sits in the middle, you know, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like things are getting a little out of hand here.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're dealing with your things, I'm dealing with my things, but it's also just like I did the stupid thing and I need to fix this, and it's it's it's about taking accountability, uh, and it's kind of a just a desperate plea of a song, like, come on, like we can't sit, like you know, we we gotta keep this going.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't want to run, like, let's let's do this.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, do you feel that because of your emotional growth and emotional intelligence that's come through all of these experiences that you could have written with this level of depth even five years ago?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm in therapy now, I work with psychiatrists, psychologists, you know, I've been hospitalized.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: Things have gotten out of hand, you know.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've hit rock bottom multiple times.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, especially in the last few years, you know, my life I went through a huge change, like things are incredibly unstable compared to where I was before.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I look back at some of my lyrics, especially with Take Me to Vegas, and I'm like, God, these are so juvenile.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I even when I would talk about like anxiety or things like that, like I couldn't, I it just it wasn't I hadn't fully sat with it yet.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I hadn't really thought about it, you know.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I will say, as somebody that's a slightly older counterpart to you, that I go back and I listen to some of my old material, and I think there's an accidental wisdom that you don't understand when you're in the heat of writing writing songs, that when you listen back to it, it's like, man, I this was therapy, and I didn't realize it at the time.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's it's easy to kind of go to that, well, these were some juvenile lyrics, this sucked.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But on the flip side of it, like there will be times where I'll be at the gym, I'll be on the treadmill, and I'll be like, all right, let's fire up the old ego machine and let's fire fire up the old ego machine and listen to some of my old shit and see if it holds up.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: And and I I will commonly surprise myself.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not a matter of it's whether it's good or bad, that's subjective.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: But there are moments where I will be like, okay, this is incredibly insightful to who I was at that point in time.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I will I will hear that, especially songs when I wrote when I was about 23, 24.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, I was dealing with substances and stuff like that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I would that was the first time I started putting that in my songwriting, you know, in very metaphorical ways, but it was very obvious what I was alluding to.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would say it was about 2016 when I wrote An Lie to Me, that hurricane like me song that that really blew up.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: And Lie to Me is actually a song about anxiety, and Anne is anxiety, I'll save it for genius, you know, but uh it that's when things really like started clicking for me.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like, okay, I can actually delve into this and and it's not so scary to talk about it because you know, you know, as a man, I don't want to romanticize depression ever.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's one of my biggest things is like I don't want to talk about it, I don't want to romanticize it.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I think emo musicians and angsty musicians like myself uh toe that line a little differently.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it's weird because as you do self-develop and you do grow up, you learn to take, as you said, more accountability for your own actions to where maybe some of your early material was just like, poor me, I'm such a victim.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: The world just got me down.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But now you're like, man, I'm really fucked up.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you know, I went through my heartbreaker phase, you know, when I was I got out of a relationship, a long-term one, and then before I got in this other one that this album was about, you know, I was a heartbreaker and I was writing songs.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if you go back and listen to my the Is It Josh song, sorry, that's about me going around Omaha and just breaking hearts.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm being sassy about it and cocky about it, and like that person just doesn't exist.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now that I've fallen in love again and have gone through that cycle and lived this entire other life, I go back and listen to sorry and I'm like, oh wow, I was kind of cold back then.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was kind of that person that now I am dealing with, you know, from the other side of things.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: So with the addition of streaming, because you not only came up into the TikTok era, but streaming became a qu totally different entity from the time when you started to where it is now.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how have you found that that has influenced your approach to music overall?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think uh and I I might even give some secrets here that a lot of artists you know don't want to talk about, but truthfully, it's it's looking at these numbers and seeing, okay, I had uh 38,000 streams come in yesterday, you know, and you can tell everyone like I got 38,000 streams yesterday, but you know when you look at your analytics that Spotify puts you on Discover Weekly or radio for that song, and you got 38,000 streams from people who don't know you, they weren't actively listening.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It just popped on their radio maybe while they were working or driving, you know, and maybe of those 38,000 streams, 150 people saved it, you know, right, and so that's one of those things I think is coming to grips with like uh and also telling the promoters that are booking me, like, hey, just because I have a million streams, that's not gonna equal a sold-out show here.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: These Spotify, the way they recommend things and put them in playlists, and you've just got all the stuff.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like, even me, like someone who is consistently consuming music, uh there is I'm not saving songs that are coming up.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it takes a real something's gotta stand out before I make my way to my phone and add it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that's one of the biggest challenges and just one of the biggest adaptations is not looking at those numbers and being like, I made it.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a million streams, I'm a solo artist, I made it maybe 10 years ago.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, not so much.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: You can get a hundred thousand streams overnight because Spotify said, Let's give them a chance on this playlist and then they'll pull you the next day.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's just so expectations, really, is the big cuz you you you're speaking my language here because as of as somebody that was like very active during the MySpace era, MySpace created these opportunities for bands to fake their vanity metrics, and ARs were looking at these playlist numbers on MySpace and signing these checks to artists like handing out water.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like its kids got signed before they had a song out just because they had good MySpace and ads.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like it's like, how do you know somebody didn't just set up a playbot and play because that was a real thing in the MySpace era?
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: But it's weird because I feel like Spotify and the streaming services kind of caught on to that early, and they do cat, you know, they catch flack, and it's a fair amount of flack for the way that they pay out.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I I it's refreshing to hear an artist such as yourself be honest and transparent about things like that because I don't think that people truly understand how much of a grind it is and how to measure your legitimacy versus you know what optics may portray.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and then also dealing with that because you know I've got a quarter million followers on social media, and social media has gotten so saturated now.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I used to be able to post a selfie and get 4,000 likes in 20 minutes, and that was just a day, you know what I mean?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: And now social media has changed so much.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: If I was to do that, if I was just to post a selfie to my Instagram, if I get like a hundred likes, you know what I mean?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Just because like it's just not good content, like you need virality, you need everything has to just be your three-second hook, you know, you're you're you gotta, and I hate it so much.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is so, oh my gosh, it is such a challenge because people don't understand that the crossroads between influencer culture and being a creative are at such a meeting place and melting pot right now, and the algorithm drives everything.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because as a podcaster, I deal with the same exact things that a lot of musicians deal with, especially when I'm dealing with publicists.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, it's like, well, you know, you're not getting a whole lot of engagement on your social media and this, that, and the other thing.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, yeah, but you're not privy to some of my statistics.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: I live in a different, you know, so it's it's weird because it's a constant proving ground and the algorithm is constantly changing, especially with Instagram reels and TikTok specifically.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Instagram is pushing photos now.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, actually, not they're not paying us for reels anymore.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the bonus, in our bonus program, we're only getting paid for photos right now.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's just like, what do you want from you know what do you what do you want from me?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm trying to keep up here.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's you know, I a year ago I hid my likes.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Best thing I've ever done.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Even on the videos that get like a hundred thousand plus likes, like I'm keeping them hidden.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I even keep them hidden from myself, and I've made this decision of like, okay, if I can't consistently go viral by posting my music and things that I want to show, I'm still gonna post those, and I'm gonna sit on that 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 view video.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: And even though I might be embarrassed, like I've got 75,000 followers, only 4,000 people watch this, and now everyone's looking at me and making fun of me.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's 4,000 people, right?
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's 4,000 people, and I really took what's one, I took a step back, hid my likes, and now you know what?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna post something, and the people who want to see it are going to seek it out.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I have it since I've started doing this and stopped memeing so much and promoting other bands and doing the influencer thing.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I got sick of it.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just I want to do my own music.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Once I switched from content creator to musician full time, like that engagement just fell off.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just what to expect, you know.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some of my favorite artists in the world will get the same amount of engagement as me, and I'll be sitting there like pouting, like, oh, I'm not getting the same that I used to get.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just it's a different world, and I think likes mean nothing.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I will watch the funniest reel, send it to five of my friends and not like it, and then I'll move on.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I just I don't double tap.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just so it's just a metric that doesn't matter to me.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you want to see my stuff, you're gonna see it.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: And all these people who are unfollowing me are getting replaced by people who are following me for the things that I am posting now.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, um, some of your virality has come about through the TikTok platform.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you know, taking a cursory search of your social media when it went down for that 24 hours.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: How bleak was that?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I actually I made a TikTok once it came back up, and that went kind of viral.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I feel like last night we all just went through like a really bad breakup, and we all just kind of crashed out and like put some things publicly, you know, we had people crying, and like you wake up with a little clarity, and we all kind of got back on there and we're like, hey, uh, hey, we can make this work.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like it literally felt like a toxic like breakup, and we're all just like coming out of it and just being like, oh, that was a little sorry, a little embarrassing.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, since you're kind of you kind of like to nerd out about the algorithm and some of the analytics like I do, when it went down for that 24 hours and then came back, did you feel the algorithm was the same or did it reset for the colour?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: It completely changed.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: Mine too.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've talked to other people and they're like, mine was fine, it was the same thing, but for me, it was completely different.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Completely different.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that my like my TikTok, some TikTok is just dead for so many people.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: I have friends that have millions of followers and are getting like 400 views, you know, it's just what it is right now, it's a saturated platform.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the fact that my like it's not just my feed, but my algorithm like that's being pushed out to people also was switched because all of a sudden my videos I was posting were doing like some very well with like ratios that didn't make sense, and like you know, if this video is doing well, then that last one should have really done well, you know.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_01: So something changed when TikTok went down.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right, some switches were switched somewhere.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's let's let's correlate all of this to your upcoming album release and how you strategize releasing singles and releasing songs and marketing your music going forward.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: New single, can't take back, drops on March 28th.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I've listened to it like no less than 10 times today.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: Fantastic song.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was privy to an advanced copy, but but fantastic song.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: I really expect this song to perform really well on all platforms.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um I and I I mean that as a sincerest compliment.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I don't just say shit to say it.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate that.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, when you launch this single, and this episode might drop after it after the fact.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't I'm not sure yet, but when you launch this single, how are you gonna use these moments as flashpoints to bring attention to this song that's really deserving?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh what's funny is I'm thank you for saying that because I wasn't actually sure if I wanted to, I was a little hesitant about this song.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: This almost wasn't gonna be on its own.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I had enough people be like, this is a really good song, dude.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, okay, we'll do it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I would say that you know, I used to have a strong pre-release strategy.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I used to push for pre-saves, and I could get thousands of them.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: But Instagram, Meta, I should say, and TikTok now have their own browsers.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: So when you click that link, it opens it up in TikTok.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_01: You try to pre-save on Spotify, it asks you to log in, it doesn't have your login info stored.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's a whole nightmare, no one's pre-saving.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so now I've kind of doing this thing now where I'm only posting about my upcoming release a few times, maybe three or four times.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then that Friday, when it drops, it's just balls to the wall.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and sometimes you know, I've gone comedy, sometimes I've gone serious.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I do insane things.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: I spent hundreds of hours making a video game that involved my top fans, and you could pre-save my song from the video game, and the whole video game is I got captured by someone, and you had to go save me before he stole my song, you know, just things like that.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: I will do insanity, right?
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Go all out.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and um I I I I I I did a lot of skits and a lot of comedy and stuff, and that stuff used to work well.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it still kind of does.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but right now I'm kind of going through and looking at like what's working, what's really working, you know, um, and how can I put my own spin on this?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because everything's been done already, you know.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to take something and make it better.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really a mix of okay, I have a new song out now.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: I have an album coming.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: If I promo for the next two months, uh my accounts are gonna die, you know.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really just gonna be finding that balance of like, hey, here I am talking about my normal life.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, here I am being a little funny, hey, here's my new song.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Just a reminder, hey, thanks for everyone who's been streaming it, you know.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and just kind of doing that loop and making sure that you don't get caught in the promo, promo, promo, promo, promo promo because people will just run away from it.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, it's finding that balance.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I've done it, I've I'm a marketer by trade like uh before I got into all this.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I've done all of this myself up until now.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: This is the first year that I've actually asked for help with a publicist and things like that.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, right.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's really I I'm a little nervous because I'm usually so prepared.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: And because so much has changed just in the last six months, right?
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: I really am just like shooting from the hip here, just just really trying to do my best to get this all done, you know.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we move in a place where you used to get an album, and then you'd hold on to that album for six months to a year while people reviewed it and did this, and you're taking your time.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I'm still waiting on masters to come back, you know.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: I have songs that are featuring uh like big artists and things like that that I can't talk about, and and uh it doesn't matter anymore.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm gonna get those masters back, and probably a month later that album is gonna be out, you know.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: So just adapting to that is gonna be really difficult.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've never done it before, I've never put out a full-length album by myself.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: They tell you don't do that.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: They say no label will want to touch you after you put out your debut album.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: But um, in my head, it's like, well, I I've turned down so many record label offers because it's like why I don't need a record label because uh I've done all the work myself.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: What they could do for me is maybe give me a big check that I've got to pay back over the next three years, you know.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's about the extent of it.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: But so you know, it's a common question I ask a lot of people that are entrenched in the business now that were also entrenched in it back in.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Do you like the new style of release strategy where you trickle songs out or not?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yes and no.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yes and no.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm very much a single guy, you know, like like if you look at my Spotify or undergo through that, you're not gonna see full albums, you're gonna see sporadic songs that I like, and it's gonna be all over the place from country to hip hop to rock to blues, it's everywhere.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, the reason we trickle those is so that uh you release a single, and then the next month you release another single with that single again, and those streams transfer over.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's some metadata happening, and you keep doing that, but you have to put out a song every month.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like I work with an amazing producer, uh, actually a producer team, Comfort and Venus, uh, on everything.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're my best friends, they're in Omaha.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Shout out Comfort Studios, and uh even at this pace, like we've got to release these songs, and uh some songs that we released a year ago that are gonna be on this album had to get a whole remix.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've had to remix them, remastered because our entire sound has evolved.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: He's gotten better, I've gotten better.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that's a very interesting thing to deal with.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that having more time to just sit on something allowed a lot of that perfectionist to come in that stop us from even releasing things.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So this kind of forces us to put stuff out.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: But now I'm at a pace where it's moving so fast that after I release something, I might be like, oh no, we left an automation in there that pulls down the bass guitar for two seconds and then comes back up, you know, a mix mistake or something.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like, how do we that's already out because we're moving so fast, it's just it's hard to keep up with.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's something that laymen typically do not understand about releasing music, is especially if you are going to make make it a collection.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Ironically, the debut album is called a collection of short stories about the heart.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: But um, if you're gonna release a collection, you want them all to sound consistent.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so you might have recorded song A a year and a half ago, but recorded song Z just a month ago.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's really hard to make those things sound like they're a part of the same.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably hard, especially if you switch hardware halfway through.
• 37:57
  unknown: Right.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think halfway there he got a like a quarter of the way through, he got a better mic, and then halfway through he got uh a brand new interface, and so it's just become this thing where it's like, okay, this last song we just recorded is leagues ahead of this one, right?
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: But this song also has a hundred thousand streams already, so we can't change it too much, right?
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we've you know, we've just got to like fine-tune it just enough so that it's on par, but it doesn't sound like a new song.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and and then and then you become burdened with the idea of do I need to chop this song or that song?
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't know if it fits the whole context of the story anymore, you know.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's the great part about not being on a label is this album has 17 tracks.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Dope.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a label would be like, yo, cut seven of those.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I you know, I don't care.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have a country song on here.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, awesome! Screamo song, emo, acoustic, pop rock, anthem rock.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this album, I I'm excited to see the people who are gonna review this album try to be like, this is the genre that this is because it doesn't it doesn't exist.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it just does not.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I know a lot of people say that, um, but I feel like I can truthfully say that this album is genreless.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love that, dude.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I love that because you you are absolutely right.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: A label's gonna come in and say, I want 10 songs of three-minute, 30-second bangers, not a second over on any song.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's two minutes and 45 seconds.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's crazy, right?
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how many summits I went to over the years and music conferences where you have a whole board of people and they review your music and they're like, no, this is the formula, and it's like Yeah.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we've got Sleep Token, who just dropped an almost seven song, and I transcended space and time listening to it.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: I spent levitating off my chair.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: It makes you really look at your music and go, hmm.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I could add something.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I actually get a saxophone in here.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: Get the dude, the shirtless dude from The Lost Boys to play on your album.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my you guys, come on, man.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: I know you push the genre for it, but leave alone for us.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's amazing.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let's talk about outside the scope of music just a little bit.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_00: What fills your cup outside of music?
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: What are some other things that you're into that help inspire you as a person and an artist?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say going down that route, uh, I'm very into poetry.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, been getting more and more into it, been getting more open about sharing it and things like that.
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because uh my lyrical content is already pretty intense sometimes about the mental health stuff.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but the poetry is, you know, even goes even further down that road.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I love poetry.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've taken up videography and I've been making my own music videos.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys want to check out my music video for Unclear, that's my post-hardcore song.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I made that all myself.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I think one of the biggest creative things for me is I'm a dungeon master for Dungeons and Dragons.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: I only do like homebrewed worlds, so I will spend at least an hour a day uh just creating this whole world and characters and backstories and plot lines, and then once a week, me and my best friends all meet up and we get to tell a story together, and that keeps my creative juices just really going.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's actually been times where like certain things have happened, like in the story, where I'm like, this might you know I might be able to draw some inspiration from this, you know what I mean?
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like kidding me, yeah, yeah.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: You just write a whole concept album around a campaign and you're good to go.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: Bard or something.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so those things.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh yeah, your typical nerdy stuff.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like I love video games.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_01: I try not to play as many video games anymore.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because I find myself to be a gamer that will end up like looking at spreadsheets and being like, how can I maximize my damage?
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I'll end up doing that for six hours, and I'm like, what did I just do?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, I'm probably only gonna play this game for another week.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, like anime and stuff like that.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: But the meat of it truly sticks around like poetry and just writing.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to write a book, you know, world building, just things like that, Dungeons and Dragons.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Anytime I can be creative, act a little bit.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome, man.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: So with this release impending, all of these singles, are you planning on doing some touring and coming back home?
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, actually.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh nothing to announce yet, but um, I just just got off a little tour, not just, but it was in October.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and actually I booked it myself uh and it kind of it went poorly in the sense that our second show, the venue's power, went out.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so we couldn't play it, and we had to like rent equipment and play at some patio somewhere.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then like on our way to Nashville, we hit a deer at four in the morning and totaled the van.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I left this tour hurting, you know, it's not a smooth tour.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I know with this album, I'm definitely gonna do another tour.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: I gotta get down to Omaha, I gotta get down to Midwest, and then skip over Omaha.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's I was talking to one of the promoters from 1% about you this morning, and he's like, Oh yeah, he goes, I'll never forget, I'll never forget Josh.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, He just played a show at the reverb not too long ago, and it was like one of our best shows that we've had there.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: We filled it, and it was on like a Thursday.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where like I remember my old band, uh Take Me to Vegas had an album coming out, and they were like, We booked it on a Sunday, and they're like, Why are you booking it on a Sunday?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked them, I said, What's Your capacity here?
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like 250.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, okay, he's like, why are you asking?
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, we have one bartender.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you should get another bartender.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they just would not believe us.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, we're just some Sunday band.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that was a sold out show.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And they had to call in like three other staff members.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember it was just wall-to-wall packed.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was a Sunday.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like that's amazing.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: When you grind the same city for so long, eventually you can just fill a room.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the thing I think that a lot of people don't take away from their own story is that it's not a sprint.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is a marathon at times.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you're either gonna constantly be running or you're gonna restart over and over and over.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it sounds to me like you're not afraid to start over if you need to.
• 44:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's just starting over as many times as I need to.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's a big part and a big element to your story, and I think that's something that people are gonna really appreciate with you and this chapter of your musical career.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a lot of moments where it's like, I thought I made it, you know, and it would just get ripped away.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought I made it again and get ripped away.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: I played in front of 40,000 people opening for cheap trick and 38 special.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: I thought that was my break.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't, you know, the million streams, that wasn't my break.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Getting a quarter million social media followers, that wasn't my break, you know, and it just it's just a thing where you just have to keep grinding.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: And being someone like me who suffers from you know bipolar disorder, my mood swings.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a couple weeks ago, I was hypomanic and I was getting things done.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was up till 4 a.m.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm getting content pushed out and boom, boom, boom, sending emails to people who I shouldn't be sending emails to asking questions, and they're like saying yes, and I'm like, oh, okay, cool.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: I just got this big deal, and then you know, I crash hard when I crash.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: And being on the internet, I have to put myself on the internet every day.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so there are days where I will be crying for hours for no reason.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just depressed, I'm just sad, and I'm crying, and I will literally clean myself up enough to make a funny video, you know, and I've even tweeted that and like made jokes about like stop crying long enough to post a meme, but it's it's it's truthful, and like yeah, so battling that while I'm also I have to be so forward-facing on the internet and constantly being like, you know, I can't get on there.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: I do post some sad stuff every now and then, and I tell people, hey, you know, I was hospitalized and you know, I chose to stay, and now here I am six months later.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we get into those things, but I don't always want to post those.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I really sometimes will just come on and be like, hey guys, how you doing today, you know?
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where and uh yeah, I think it just bleeds into all aspects of my life a little bit.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, every once in a while I'll do one of these episodes and I'll say um unsolicited advice from your friend Mike that you didn't ask for.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: But but I will tell you that there is a a time that'll probably be coming for you if it's not already there, where you find that the best audience for you to serve and for the sake of your mental health is you.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: That at the end of the day, if you're satisfied and you're happy with what you've created, that is the best thing that you can do for yourself.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: And audiences are circling back to authenticity.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's you know, going back to our conversation about social media and everything, you know, we can talk algorithms, we can talk statistics, we can talk all of these conflated things like numbers, but you know, at the end of the day, being authentic to who you truly are is the best thing that you can do for yourself and the best thing that you can do for a would-be audience.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I think that's great advice, and I think that's a beautiful thing to say.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I think that's something you know that I work on in therapy and that I work, I'm actively working on that right now is seeking my own validation.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't need ever, you know, to I got a new song, let me send this to all my best friends and see what they have to say.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can just sit with that and be like, I wrote a pretty good song.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't need to seek this out, and so finding that internal happiness, documenting it, uh putting it out there on the internet to show people like, look, I quit my job.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have this front up where I'm on the emo's not dead cruise and partying and I'm hanging out with all your favorite artists and doing all these cool things backstage.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am struggling.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So I I am very cautious to to balance that and be like, hey guys, look at all this cool stuff I'm doing, but also, hey, let me just check in real quick.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm having a hard time, I don't feel right just doing this, so you know.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think the thing that strikes me about your story is there are so many similar parallels to myself and things that you've experienced where it's that, oh my gosh, it's almost about to happen, almost about to happen.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: That happens over and over and over.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I will tell you, like, for me, when the pandemic happened, like the day after, when everything shut down, I crashed out really hard.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_00: My routines just completely got screwed up, and I'm a I'm a creature of habit, but it also gave me an opportunity to take a step back and like start doing things for me again.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those things ended up being this podcast.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I look at doing this vessel very similar to how I looked at all of my music, and I think at the end of the day, vanity metrics aside, so long as I'm happy with the end result, I'm doing the best thing that I can.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I I I think you're doing the same thing with this batch of music.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate that, and it's it's nice to hear that because I do feel that way.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: I truly do feel that way that I'm being you know very authentic with this stuff.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: I never really would sing about love, I never really would do all this stuff, and I, you know, uh it is, it's all coming back to authenticity.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I see it with my followers too.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: They really appreciate when I step away from the the is it Josh and Josh shows up for a second.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, yeah, yeah.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, leaning into that and leaning into that preservation of a positive outlook and uh looking through the windshields as opposed to rear view mirrors and how we can be better than what we were before.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: My closing question is a huge one.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: I ask it every single episode.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're like 160 some plus episodes into the show now.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's awesome.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, my closing question is what's your advice for making the world a better place tomorrow than what it is today?
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, that is a great question.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and truly the I'm just gonna say the first thing that comes to my mind, and it seems like such a cliche answer, but it truly is to we need to start treating people with the exact level of empathy that we would expect from someone else.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not it's not surface level, it's not transactional, it needs to be a human compassion and human love for each other.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to be able to answer for your brothers and answer for your sisters and your friends and your family and listen to them and have those tough conversations.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we need to just open up more.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: Everything's become so closed down and everything's so massed up.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: And if we could all just open up to each other, love each other, platonic love.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful thing.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_01: Spread more platonic love, love your friends, you know, just spread it around, and then we won't be so scared to talk about the bad, you know.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: So many people that we lose in silence, you know.
• 51:51
  SPEAKER_01: If if we would just open up a little bit more, spread love, spread positivity, then it creates these windows for us to feel a little more safe to talk about some of the things that are bothering.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, man.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, tell my audience where they can find you online.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so best place and easiest place to remember is isitjosh.com.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's where I've got just all of my links and everything that's going on.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_01: I've got an iOS app, the isitjosh ios app that's now on web as well.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and then all my social media is just is it josh.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and you can basically find me anywhere.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, anywhere you find anyone.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, we're everywhere.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_00: Can't take back drops March 28th.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode drops after that, then go to Spotify and listen to it.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if this episode drops before it, make sure you pre-save it.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, man, Josh, I am glad to know you.
• 52:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad to have another brother from the Midwest.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_00: Go.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I and I hope we get to run into each other in the real world sometime in the near future.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Josh, thank you so much for doing the podcast.
• 53:05
  SPEAKER_00: The world's a much better place with you and it, my friend.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks for having me.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_00: What a fun conversation.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to thank my friend Josh for joining me on the podcast today.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you follow him on all social media platforms at isitjosh.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_00: Also, visit his website, isitjosh.com.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: While you are being generous with the follows, make sure you are like, following, and sharing anything caught on the mic related.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: It always helps.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_00: Visit me at my website, www.caughtonthemic.com.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_00: Always new episodes up there.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: Click on the past episodes tab, and you can see every single episode I have recorded.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: All guest inquiries, email me, caught on the mic at gmail.com.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: I love hearing from you.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Caught on the Mike with Michael Clark.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Michael Clark.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you.