When And Why You Should Consider Re-Issuing Old Material

Hello, everyone! Welcome to the weekend. Unless you’re reading this during the week, of course, then I guess the proper way to open would be to welcome you to wherever you are at this exact point in time. That sounds a bit to INXS for me, so I’m sticking with the weekend.

You may recall that Saturdays are usually reserved for our Journalism Tips series, but this week we received a guest blog we felt was too good to sit on for another week. This is an Advice column for bands, but there is plenty aspiring industry professionals can learn as well. This blog exists to promote the future of the music industry, and to do that we need input from people like you and your music-loving friends. If you have any questions about the content in this article, or if you have an artist you would like to see featured on this blog, please contact james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

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On last year’s Black Friday, I was laying on my living room floor with my dog and contemplating whether or not I should quit my job or walk 12 miles to work at the mall that day. I, unfortunately, chose the latter, worked retail for 10 hours, then walked another 12 miles home. The absolute only reason I bring that up (and the only reason it’s relevant) is because as I was dragging my body down my street and back to my house, our drummer Jake called me and point being, at the end of that long horrible day, we decided we were going to sign with Tragic Hero Records and they were going to re-release our album.

That was my best attempt at an “introduction”, so now that you know the “what”, here’s the “why”. We originally self released our EP, “Cold Bones” in October and despite how hard we worked to do that and how proud we were of ourselves, we weren’t 100% happy with it. One of the main reasons was that myself and Evan (our other singer) both had the flu while we were recording. So basically, the first EP didn’t actually represent the way our band sounded (at least vocally). On top of that, we had left 2 songs off the original release (to save them for a future split/small release), and wound up regretting that decision and not wanting them on any release other than “Cold Bones”. We felt like had we put those songs on any future releases, it wouldn’t be genuine in terms of representing the progression of our band and might’ve even led to those songs quickly becoming stale to us. The strangest thing about the timing of the opportunity was that we had formed these opinions long before the idea of signing to Tragic Hero or re-releasing the album had ever come up. We essentially had just come to conclusion that our first album wasn’t everything we wanted it to be, and we were gonna “get em next time”, so we really couldn’t have gotten any luckier. But I also don’t want to make it sound like this was a decision that took a single phone call to make. Even when Tommy from Tragic Hero initially contacted us, our response was, “fuck you”. For whatever reason, he wasn’t very bothered by that, continued to talk to us and offer help, and that eventually led to a very long series of conversations on the phone.

Through those conversations, Tommy made it clear to us that he liked our band for what we are and that one of the main reasons he took interest in us was a couple of different YouTube videos he’d watched of our shows and how kids reacted to our songs live. In other words, he made it clear that he noticed us for the only things we’ve ever wanted to be noticed for. Our music and how it affects people. So, as far as any advice I could give to to anyone that might find themselves in a position to make the kind of decision we did, all I have to say is do what’s right for you. And I don’t mean that vaguely, loosely, or emotionlessly. Truly do what’s right for you based off of:

A – Why the opportunity even came up in the first place (take a step back and see if it’s “for the right reasons”)

B – How it affects your “purpose” and career in the long run (basically, don’t sell your soul or fuck yourself contractually/financially), and more than anything

C – Honestly think about if you even want to fucking do it in the first place. Because despite how obviously awesome our opportunity seemed, had we not already wanted “another shot” at our album and had it been for reasons other than what I mentioned above, we absolutely wouldn’t have done it.

Work hard. Get hard. Stay hard. Bye.

This post was written and submitted by Dominick Fox, vocalist and guitarist for the band Bad Luck. If you like what you read, please make it a point to support Fox and his musical efforts whenever time and finances allow.

James Shotwell