Tag: Punk

News

Pretty Music For Punk Icons: A Conversation With The Dead Milkmen’s Dean Sabatino

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date September 30, 2014

Hello, everyone! We have been telling you for months that we were hoping to expand our Artist Spotlight series, and today we are doing just that. The world of metal has been left in our rear view mirror and we are now setting our sights on learning from a living punk legend. Whether you’re into underground music or not, there is something in this feature for you. Pay attention.

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. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

In 2014, it’s often a miracle if any band can make things work long enough to make it to their five year anniversary as a group. Far more unique however, are those outfits who have spent over a decade together. Even crazier than that are the two decade groups, and standing out above them all is a select group of musicians who have been performing more or less consistently for over thirty years. To reach that point takes a special kind of creative magic, and today we hope to shed a little light on how your group can attain that kind of longevity.

For more than three decades, with the exception of several years in the middle, The Dead Milkmen have been an influential voice in the global music community. There sound was born out of the very same bacteria that gave birth to the initial North American punk movement, and today it sounds just as infectious as it did when their debut album dropped in 1985. Their latest release, Pretty Music For Pretty People, is slated for release on October 7. We had the chance to speak with longtime drummer Dean Sabatino about the record, as well as the group’s legacy in music, earlier this week. You can view highlights from our conversation below.

I know The Dead Milkmen are not often held in the same regard as The Ramones, The Clash, or The Sex Pistols, but if you truly do your research into the history of punk in the US I think you will discover their impact is far greater than anyone has been able to accurately document up to this point. Pretty Music For Pretty People is a fantastic record that provides further evidence of the band’s enduring quality, and I hope for your sake that you find time to experience all it has to offer in the weeks ahead. Click here for pre-order information.

H: Hello, Dean. How are you today?

D: Pretty good. Things are looking good right now. We launched our new website yesterday, which recalls snail mail newsletters from back in the day. We also have a new album due out next Tuesday.

H: Happy to hear it. Thank you again for taking to speak with me. There’s a few things I’d like to cover, but we should start with the reason this feature was able to happen in the first place: The Dead Milkmen are releasing a new album! Pretty Music For Pretty People is set for release on October 7 through Quid Ergo Record. That’s a label the band launched, correct?

D: Yea, we are self-releasing our stuff now. We started that back in 2011 when we release The King In Yellow. Between then and now we did a bunch of singles, and it’s been great. We’re doing all our own stuff now.

H: Let’s go deeper there. What inspired you to start a label all your own?

D: I think mostly because we wanted to do everything on our own terms. Our own timeline. Working with a label may have resulted in deadlines and things like that, which doesn’t really work for us. Having our label has allowed us to create on our own terms, with our own costs. As a result, we’ve been able to take our time and put things out when it works for us.

I think it harkens back to the DIY attitude we had back in the day. It can seem difficult to do everything on the surface because of just how many avenues for music there are today, but it’s actually a lot easier in many ways.

H: Back to the album, Pretty Music For Pretty People will be your tenth studio album in a career that now spans over three decades. Do you feel it’s your best album to date?

D: It’s the best one at the moment (laughs). We’re pretty happy with the way it turned out. There are several songs that we released in the past as limited edition singles, but there are also six new songs created just for the record. Rodney did the sequencing and it turned out fantastic. We may have recorded over two years, but I think the record holds together as a full album. There’s some dark stuff on there, but it holds together and I think that is great.

H: Do you compare the material the band released in the 80s and early 90s to what you’re doing today, or do you view them as separate efforts?

D: I don’t think we look back in that way. It’s not like we sit down in rehearsals and try to make stuff that sounds like our old material. If anything, we are able to expand more now because of computers, software, and home studios. We’re more collaborative than we used to be because everyone can record on their own and bring ideas to the table. We just do what we do and it comes out the way it does.

I think some of the nicest things we have heard since our reunion in 2008 is anytime a fan tells me that our newer material fits in with what we did in the past. I hope the same will be said about our new record as well.

H: I’ve read interviews where you talk about the first time you got back together following your 2008 reunion and how that sparked a second wave of creativity for the group. I have to assume many of you have families at this point, so I am curious about how they reacted to the return of The Dead Milkmen. Can you shed some light on that?

D: I think they were pretty positive. I have a wife and teenage son now. When we played those first reunion shows in 2008 I actually took my wife and son down to the show. He was only 9 or 10 at the time, but he loved it. He’s known about my music for a while, and he’s always been very supportive.

There was a spark of creativity around that time, at least in my mind. We didn’t want to start playing together again and only play our old material. It didn’t make sense. So we decided to get together and write new songs.

H: A lot of what we do as a company involves helping artists understand the realities of a career in the music business. What do you think is the key to maintaining creativity later in life?

D: Try and use new technology to your advantage. I know this makes me sound like a cranky old man, but back in the day we did not have anything close to what is available to musicians today. If I wanted to do an interview like this, and we were on the road, the band van would have to pull over somewhere and I would have to seek out a pay phone to call you from.

We have embraced technology since our return, and it has allowed us to further connect with our fans. Our mailing list once included 10,000 people, and we like to think that we have always been friendly with people at shows, but we are able to do so much more now thanks to the internet. You can not only talk to them, but interact with them and learn from them. That’s exciting to me.

H: The new album is a lot of fun, but I feel like there are still some messages there for people to take away as well. What do you hope people gain or experience while listening to this record?

D: I think a couple of things, actually. Our music and lyrics may be based in humor, but underneath there are some serious issues being tackled. Even some of the things we were writing about thirty years ago are still relevant today, including gun control and right wing conservatism.

H: I’m not familiar with any major touring plans associated with the album’s release. Can fans expect to see The Dead Milkmen on the road in the last part of 2014? How about 2015?

D: We have two shows coming up in October. We are trying to work out more shows in the future, but we definitely want to make them happen. With the way our schedules work now, balancing work and family, it takes some time for these things to come together. We haven’t done a major tour since we reunited, but we will do a string of dates every few weeks or months. We will probably continue to do that for the foreseeable future.

H: With everything you have accomplished, are there any personal or band goals you would still like to achieve?

D: I would like to see us continue to write music together, but also maintaining our freedom as far as creative decisions and when things will be completed. Keeping control is a core goal for us.

H: That’s all I have for you today, but I thank you for being so open and honest with me throughout this conversation. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you and I hope we can dig a little deeper later on down the road. Before I let you go, are there any final thoughts or observations that you would like to share with our readers?

D: If you see us in public or at shows, please say hello. We love to meet our fans.

Tags Artist Spotlight, Dean Sabatino, interview, interviews, Pretty Music For Pretty People, Punk, The Dead Milkmen

Job Board News

Industry Spotlight: Chris Hansen (No Sleep Records)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date June 25, 2014

Hello and welcome to the only Industry Spotlight feature we plan to run all week. We don’t always advertise this aspect of our site, but a lot of the content that eventually finds its way to our front page does so because our readers requested it. You want to learn about bitcoin’s role in music? We’ve got you covered. Want to know about the guy who runs PropertyOfZack? We cover that too. Today’s post comes in response to a flood of requests we have received over the last six months, and it’s developed into what I believe is one of our best label-centric features to date. If you have any questions regarding the content of this blog, or if you would like to learn more information about the services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

If you want to succeed in music you need to learn to take chances. Everyone who holds a position in the music industry today does so because another current or former industry professional took a chance on them when they were little more than a music consumer with a dream. Was there risk? You bet. Was there a chance someone could lose their job? Definitely. Still, each and every day people take chances on dreamers as a means to promote the continued existence of this thing we call the music business.

For me, it was not until No Sleep Records’ founder Chris Hansen took a chance on a completely unknown high school graduate from Michigan that I was able to find my calling in music. The year was 2006 and I was just a freshman in college with a weekly show on our campus radio station. The studio had great equipment, but due to budget cut backs the music catalog had not been updated since the Y2K scare, leaving all incoming radio hosts to find, request, and otherwise acquire whatever music they wanted for their show. I had been an avid reader of Absolutepunk for about a year at that point, and as I started to plan my show I began using the daily news posts to locate labels and artists I might be able to promote through my efforts. It’s hard to remember exactly how many emails I sent, but I will never forget the rush of excitement I felt when Chris wrote back and asked for an address to send over some promotional materials. The initial shipment included a 3-song teaser from a then unknown band called The Wonder Years, as well as a full length album from The Fire The Flood, both of which I played at great length in the weeks that followed.

I can completely understand how some may see this moment of kindness as a mutually beneficial move for all involved that in no way had to extend further than one shipment of records, but for me it was all the confirmation I needed to know my life was on the right track. The fact I could convince someone like No Sleep to send materials my way meant that I could potentially work with any artist and/or label I put my mind to, which is exactly what I set out to do in the months and years that followed. Everything I have today, from the music news blog I still over see, to my role here at Haulix, only exists because Chris Hansen took a chance on me. He probably does not even realize he made that kind of an impact on me, or that he likely made a similar impact on the lives of countless other industry hopefuls, but that does not change the fact he was a positive force in my life at a time when I desperately needed a sense of direction.

No Sleep has been a member of the Haulix family for a long time, but due to the label’s ever-increasing popularity it has been difficult to find a time where Chris and I could work together on a feature for this blog. Fortunately, such a moment presented itself at the end of May, and we quickly got to work crafting an interview that not only retraces the origins of the label, but also offers some insight on where it may go in the years to come. If you would like to learn more about Chris’ efforts beyond what is found in the conversation below, please make it a point to follow No Sleep on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Hello. Before we dive in, please take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers:

C: Sure thing! My name is Chris Hansen, I run/founded the Huntington Beach based independent record label No Sleep Records.

H: Thank you for joining us, Chris. We have been looking forward to this interview since we locked it in earlier this month. Tell me, how is life treating you and the No Sleep Records team thus far in 2014?

C: 2014 has been a great year, and continues to get better and better. While the year is half over, we have so many more great releases to put out this year. Looking forward to it.

H: I want to touch on where you are now and the place you may go in the future, but first I would like to get a bit of background information on you. Do you recall the first album you purchased with your own money (bonus point if you include the format)?

C: Oh man, I believe the first Cassette I ever purchased was R.E.M.’s ‘Monster’ and then the first CD was Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Pretty sure those are accurate, if not then I have lied many times that they were the firsts.

H: Who was the first artist/group you can remember obsessing over, and how did you initially discover them? We’d love to hear an early Chris Hansen ‘fanboy’ moment if you have one to share:

C: I was in the MxPx fan club in junior high, or high school. Whatever year that was. So I guess that is the greatest “fan” aspect I have done since well I was in a fan club after all. I don’t remember everything that you got for being a member, but I do remember there was an awesome exclusive t-shirt.

H: Let’s pick up the pace a bit. Can you pinpoint in specific events or experiences in your life that may have laid the groundwork for the career you would eventually pursue? Maybe a great ‘lightbulb’ or ‘a-ha’ moment?

C: I have always enjoyed music and all things surrounding it, and I knew early on that I was not meant to play music, so instead I went down the path of working behind the scenes. After a few years of experiences at various other companies, and the timing was right No Sleep was born.

H: Did you seek out any education beyond high school, or did you immediately dive into the pursuit of a career in music?

C: I believe the summer after high school was when I took on my first “internship” at another record label, which eventually turned into a full time gig at their then sister company. As far as education goes, around that same timeframe I went to a community college for about a week, and then I decided it wasn’t for me.

H: While on the topic of higher education, do you feel college is a necessity for those wanting to enter the industry as professionals today? Should it even be considered?

C: This is a topic I have thought about, talked about and argued about many times. School wasn’t for me, but it is for some I think. It all depends on the field you want to get into as well I believe. as there are a lot of fields where school is literally just a debt you will have the rest of your life, and not something that will really help you in what you are doing. But with that said, there are many paths in life where School is needed. Again, that is just my opinion – which could be just because school wasn’t something I was cut out for.

H: The first industry gig I know of you having was an internship with Fearless Records and Smartpunk, correct?

C: Correct, I started an internship at Fearless Records I believe the Summer after High School, which then became a full time gig at Smartpunk who was their then sister company, worked in the same warehouse/etc in Garden Grove.

H: What can you tell us about the application process and your earliest memories with those companies?

C: I believe Fearless Records posted about an internship, to which I simply sent in a resume I had and did an interview. Mostly what I remember about my internship is disassembling a lot of Jewel Cases to be reused. Did that a LOT.

H: You were hired from the internship to handle content at Smartpunk, which you did for a little over a year. After that you had a brief break before joining the team at Revelation Records. Tell me, how did that opportunity come together? What kind of goals did you have for yourself and your professional career at this point?

C: I had known Vique and Jordan at Revelation from my time at Smartpunk and was lucky enough to get an internship when i returned to CA, which lead to a job in the warehouse. At this point I really just was wanting to work in the industry in some way still, and learn whatever I could along the way doing whatever I had to since i’d rather be working in the Warehouse at a label I love with great people, rather than working somewhere else i’d hate.

H: Your role at Revelation comes to an end in mid-2005, just months before No Sleep Records would begin. Did you know when leaving that role that you would be starting your own label? When did the ideas initially begin to flow for what would become No Sleep Records?

C: I had no idea at all, the whole inception of No Sleep in a way was a pure luck. While moving out to New Jersey to work at Trustkill I grabbed lunch with my friend Rick Robinett, who just happened to have a new EP that was paid for/needed a label to put it out on, and the rest is history.

H: We ask this of everyone, but what can you tell us about the story behind your label’s name? What is the origin of ‘No Sleep’?

C: Well i used to do Freelance Graphic Design on the side to make some extra money, the company used to be called Barton Fink Designs (after the movie with John Goodman, amazing film) and i decided to change the name to No Sleep Studios since at the time i had a horrible case of Insomnia (which has completely gone away, if you catch me up till a late hour, the world must be ending).

H: After the launch of No Sleep you joined the Trustkill Records team for nearly two years of work in the art department. What did you take away from your time there, aside from a paycheck, that aided you in developing No Sleep?

C: Everywhere i worked, from interning at Fearless, to being the Art Director at Trustkill helped me to learn various to do’s, and not to do’s in the industry – not to mention many connections/friendships that are still around to this day. Had i not interned/worked at every place along the way I truly do not think No Sleep would be around/where it is today. I am forever grateful for all the opportunities I have had along the way.

H: Was No Sleep a success from the start? If not, how long were you in the red before the company started to make any profits?

C: No Sleep was a success to me from the start, on the books? Definitely not. It took many years of hard work, and massive “debt” to become the “success” that it is today. I would have to say at least half of the time No Sleep was around there was no real profit made if you ran a P&L each year.

H: If you had to pick one release that signified when thing began to ‘take off’ for No Sleep, what would it be? We’d love to hear a bit about where the label was before this record came out, and how things began to change once it reached listeners.

C: There are a few releases that really made a impact along the way, and just made me take a step back and realize “Wow, this is really something.” The first one that really did that was ‘The Upsides’ from The Wonder Years. That album was the first time we made it into Billboard on any of their charts, it helped spread the awareness of No Sleep among the industry and the scene. A few other releases that helped a long the way would of course be ‘Separation,’ ‘Wildlife,’ and ‘Proper.’ But really, every release and every artist up until this point has helped to build No Sleep – sure some of them were successes and some could be called a “flop” from a financial standpoint, but I do not regret any release or band we have worked with.

H: There seem to be more indie labels than ever before vying for a bit of consumer attention. What advice would you offer to those just starting out to help them develop their business?

C: This is a question i get asked a lot, and is something i have a hard time answering. Really there has always been a lot of indie labels, etc trying to get the consumers attention, now there is just more social ways to promote it. So I don’t think it has really changed since when i started No Sleep, so hard work, lots of late nights, spending every penny you have, put out records from bands you truly love, and go in it aware of the fact that you won’t be rolling in the “dough” by any means.

H: Speaking a bit more generally, do you have any guidance to share with those who are simply curious about becoming a professional in the music business?

C: Get an internship anywhere you can that is in the industry, and see where it takes you. You can literally go anywhere from anywhere. The only thing that can stop you, is you.

H: Looking ahead to 2014 and beyond, what are the biggest challenges facing No Sleep?

C: I think one of the biggest challenges is finding true bands with a true purpose.

H: What goals have you set for yourself as far as your career and personal development in this business are concerned?

C: The same goals/etc since day 1. Release music from bands I love, learn as much as I can and enjoy the ride for as long as I can.

H: With the ever-growing amount of competition seeking to make a buck off alternative/indie/punk music, what steps are you and the No Sleep team taking to set yourselves apart from the rest of the industry?

C: The one thing that i think we have always done, and will continue to do so is release records from bands that we truly would listen to. We have stuck to the integrity that i set forth back in 2006, and i believe that is what has helped No Sleep to continue on this upward path. Sure following trends can make you a quick buck, but that won’t last a lifetime, nor will you be happy doing so.

H: You have been a Haulix client for several years at this point. What is it out about digital distribution service that keeps you coming back?

C: We have always been looking for a great place to allow us to share our music with those that need it early, but in a safe way. Haulix was that answer for us, and we will be lifelong customers of theirs.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

C: It’s true, there are a lot of shitty people in this industry, and I would love for that to not be the case.

H: When it comes to music discovery, where do you turn when hoping to find new bands? I am sure a number of our readers would love for you to hear their latest creation.

C: A lot of the bands that come to us at this point are word of mouth from other bands on the label, or friends who are in bands on other labels. Just bands that our family/friends have seen at shows or heard, etc. Hard work is the best way to get your music discovered at the end of the day. Cheap shortcuts don’t get you very far in my opinion.

H: Do you have any job or internship opportunities with No Sleep? If so, how should people go about submitting their application?

C: We generally will post about any internships or job openings by way of our social networks, so following them is the best way to be in the know. And just a note, 50% or so of the staff that has been/is at No Sleep was previous an intern.

H: Okay, I think that covers everything. This got a little long in the tooth, but I appreciate you sticking it out. Do you have any final thoughts or observations you would like to share?

C: Death to false music.

News

Industry Spotlight: Will Miller (Tiny Engines / Beartrap PR)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date June 17, 2014

Hello, everyone! After a brief absence from the blog it gives me great pleasure to resurrect our Industry Spotlight feature with a little help from our friend Will at Tiny Engines. The work he is doing in music right now is impacting countless lives, and I am thrilled to be able to share his insight on the future of the music business. If you have any questions about the content of the blog, or if you would like more information regarding the distributional services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

We talk a lot about how much of music is a tight knit community of professionals, but in the grand scheme of things the business as a whole is a large, towering infrastructure made up of countless tiny moving parts (no pun intended) that music work together in order to keep the industry alive. Every person who contributes is, in their own way, a tiny engine working to fuel the continued existence of the music business.

For the better part of the last decade, Will Miller has been contributing to the music industry as a blog owner, label founder, and alternative music publicist. He currently spends his time as the co-owner of Tiny Engine Records and one of the great minds behind Beartrap PR, both of which keep him incredibly busy. I knew from day one that I wanted to work with Will on content for this blog, but given the typical workload he encounters each morning I held off on making any requests of his time until the very end of May. He agree, and now a couple weeks since our initial conversation I am pleased to present what I believe to be one of the best Industry Spotlights we have run in recent memory.

Will and I have worked together since we were both beginning to find out footing in music, but I don’t think either of us realized how inexperienced the other was at the time. From what I can recall Will was extremely professional from day one, and in the years since we have been fortunate enough to work together a number of times on exciting projects. Earlier this year he introduced me to The Hotelier, and not long after a close friend encounter a bout with illness that caused a lot of pain and stress in my life. That record, which I would honestly have never given the time of day without Will’s seal of approval, has since become a beacon of hope and source of comfort. It may even be my favorite album of 2014, and there will no doubt be several other releases on my ‘best of’ list that I know solely because Will and the people he has surrounded himself with made it a point to help those artists get the recognition they deserve. If that’s not the sign of a true industry professional doing their job to the best of their abilities, I don’t know what is.

If you would like to learn more about Will and his efforts in music, please make it a point to follow Tiny Engines on Twitter. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Before we dive in, please take a moment and introduce yourself:

W: My name is Will Miller, I do press for Beartrap PR and co-own the Tiny Engines record label.

H: Thanks for joining us, Will. We have been looking forward to this feature for several weeks. When you think about your earliest memories with music, what comes to mind?

W: Hmm, listening to a lot of oldies, motown and beach music growing up with my Mom probably. I still love that stuff too, oldies but goodies.

H: Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money?

W: Oh god, I have no idea. I’m sure it was something incredibly embarrassing. Something pop or hair metal I would guess. I was an 80’s kid, for better or worse.

H: How about your first concert experience? Bonus points if you share some memories of the event.

W: I think it was probably the Guns N’ Roses / Metallica / Faith No More stadium tour which I really remember very little about other than Axl Rose changing his outfit twenty times. I do remember buying a tour tee shirt and then discovering it had cigarette burn holes in it when I got home. Maybe that’s how they sold it to me? I have no idea.

H: You’re known these days for being a part of the punk and indie rock community, but was that always the area of music that captivated you the most?

W: I would say I was always drawn to music but it was taken to a whole new level once I started to dig below the mainstream. My story is probably similar to a lot of people my age who got into punk/indie rock. Nirvana was the gateway for me and from there I just went further underground into alternative and punk and indie rock and I’ve lived happily in that realm since.

H: A lot of the people we have spoken can pinpoint a ‘lightbulb moment’ in their lives when they realized that the music business was something that appealed to them. Can you recall when you this realization happened for you?

W: Well, I’m not sure the business side of it has ever really appealed to me, it still doesn’t really. The A&R side of it is what has always captivated me, I’ve just always felt like I had a good ear for things. I’ve always had a thirst for finding new music/bands and wanting to expose that to other people. So, the label thing was always in mind. The publicity side of it was never part of the plan but they are both fairly similar. I also ran a music blog for five years. So, really, it all just goes back to wanting to share my love of music with other like-minded people.

H: Did you attend college? If so, did you study anything related to the music industry?

W: I did, but didn’t study anything music industry specifically, just business in general.

H: Having become a successful member of the music professional community, would you recommend others considering pursuing a career in entertainment make it a point to attend college?

W: I’m not sure I would ever recommend this to anybody as a truly viable career. Or maybe it just takes a different mind-frame than what I bring to the table. But, if you choose it just be passionate about your work. I think at the end of the day, Beartrap and Tiny Engines have made it this far cause we only work with bands and other labels we love and respect. And I think that shines through. But, I probably didn’t realize just how difficult the industry is, in terms of making enough to survive and continue. It’s definitely something you have to be committed to and have passion for in regards to the bands and music.

H: Tiny Engines was founded in 2008. What inspired you to launch your own label, and who was the first artist you decided to work with?

W: Yeah, like I said before, wanting to do a label has always been in my mind. I always thought I could do it and I felt it would be a fulfilling way to spend my days vs. some boring 9-5 job. Tiny Engines was founded in 2008 by myself and Chuck Daley along with our buddy Jeff Meyers. Chuck and I met and worked together at Deep Elm Records and we stayed in contact once I left there. I think TE was just an opportunity for both of us to get further involved in music. But, I don’t think either of us saw it as something that would be going strong six years later and getting close to 40 releases now.

The first artist we worked with was Look Mexico, we put out their Gasp Asp EP on 7" back in late 2008. Chuck had worked press for the band via Beartrap and had become good friends with them. And then I met the band and we all just hit it off and felt like they were the perfect band to start the label off with.

H: While we’re on the topic of the company’s early days, what can you tell us about the story behind the name Tiny Engines?

W: I can never really remember the whole story but Chuck came up with the name. I think it fits. We’re just a tiny cog in the machine. I think the name has always kind of aligned with how we run the label. We’re small and band friendly but we also try to run the label in a professional kind of way without ever being too business-ey about it.

H: What were your goals for Tiny Engines when the label initially launched, and how have they changed in recent years?

W: Definitely changed from the beginning. Originally we were just going to be a 7" label doing one-off releases with bands we loved. But, then the Everyone Everywhere full-length came along and that record was just too good to not put out, so after only two 7" releases (Look Mexico and Tigers Jaw) we changed our plans and did our first LP as release #3.

I’m not sure we have any grand goals for the label. Obviously things have grown for us and the bands. At the end of the day we still just want to put out great records and work with bands we respect. But, we also want to sell enough records to keep doing this and growing and provide our bands with more resources. And it would be nice to be able to take a little for ourselves here and there considering how much blood, sweat and tears we’ve put into the label. I’m not sure people realize the amount of work and hours running a label takes. It’s draining but also incredibly rewarding as well.

H: You are also a part of the Beartrap PR team. When did you join the team?

W: Chuck founded Beartrap in 2006 I believe and then I joined in 2007.

H: What came first – your interest in running a label or your interest in doing PR?

W: Definitely running a label. Doing PR was never in my mind. I’m quiet and reserved for the most part so press was never something I pictured myself doing. But, like I said before, it’s fairly similar to the label in that I’m only working with stuff I genuinely enjoy.

H: Both Beartrap and Tiny Engines have been growing at an alarming rate. Do you ever struggle to balance the demands of both jobs?

W: Yes, most definitely. Especially these days. I would say my workload for Beartrap and Tiny Engines are both at an all-time high right now. Currently I do all the press for Tiny Engines as well as the press for 4-5 other labels so yeah, it’s a ton of work but I enjoy staying busy. I"m a bit of an organization nut as well so that helps. It also helps to be a single dude with no kids and a crazy passion for music.

H: Without going too in-depth, please walk us a through a typical work day:

W: Oh, nothing crazy really. I just moved up to Charlotte late last year so Chuck and I could be in the same city and I’m temporarily living in the TE office (Chuck’s basement…see how much money we make from this?) right now. So, that’s changed the routine a little bit I guess. Beartrap is much easier to set a schedule for, with Tiny Engines you never really know what the workload will be like from week to week, just depends on our current release schedule. I typically get started on replying to email first and foremost, Beartrap and Tiny Engines related. After that it’s typically on to Beartrap work, whatever press releases and/or digital promos need to go out that day. I know what I have for that day / week and I’m one who likes to knock my work out early and try to get ahead for upcoming days /weeks. It’s definitely a lot to keep up with so it helps to be organized for sure. And it’s a ton of email throughout the day, responding and pitching and coordinating. That can certainly be maddening at times but that’s just the job. And I usually end the day with packing up Tiny Engines mailorder. Save the worst for last I guess.

H: Tiny Engines has been using Haulix for a while now, and from what I have been told you are incredibly happy with the service. What is it about our platform that keeps you around?

W: We actually just started using Haulix this year. We have a Beartrap account that hosts Tiny Engines albums as well as all the other records we’re working press for. It really is an amazing service and one we probably should’ve been using a lot sooner. Just having the ability to create a nice digital promo in a matter of minutes is a beautiful thing for someone who makes a living doing press. And then obviously having the ability to send out and track what press contacts are listening to and downloading is so incredibly helpful in regards to follow ups and targeting contacts for premieres, etc. And then of course having the peace of mind to send out a record months in advance and be protected from an early leak, that’s been nice for Tiny Engines as the anticipation has grown for some of our releases this year. It’s certainly been a great tool for the growth of Beartrap and Tiny Engines this year.

H: Looking ahead to the future, what are the biggest challenges facing Beartrap and Tiny Engines?

W: Just trying to continue to survive. It’s always about survival in this business I think. You have to be willing to adapt and look for new ways to spread the word about your bands. I think for TE it’s going to be a challenge to balance our growth while still being able to operate as a small label on our own terms.

H: What advice would you offer aspiring industry professionals hoping to one day find themselves in a position similar to yours?

W: Work hard. Be passionate and selective about the music/labels/bands you work with. And stick with it, put in the time. Too many people give up too easily these days. And that goes for just about everything in life.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

W: I don’t know. It’s a tough industry for sure. For bands and labels. I love it when bigger bands, labels, publications support & spread the word about smaller bands & labels they believe in. That’s something to me that there’s not enough of these days, just mutual support/appreciation for when people are doing cool stuff, big or small.

H: Vinyl has become a big part of Tiny Engines’ business. What is your top-selling release to date, and what color variant are you most proud of having pressed?

W: Tigers Jaw’s Spirit Desire 7" as of right now although The Hotelier LP is going to gain traction on that one sooner rather than later I think.

In regards to color variants, god, we’ve done so many. I would say the starburst variant we did for the new Direct Effect LP might be one of the best for sure.

H: What goals do you have you set for yourself and your career in the year ahead?

W: I don’t have any supreme goals, I just want to be able to live a simple, comfortable life and continue working with bands/labels/music that inspire me. That’s it, I’m happy if I can do that.

H: I think that just about wraps it up. Before I let you go, are there any final thoughts you would like to share with our readers?

W: If you love a band support them. Buy a record or a tee shirt or go to a show. If there’s a label putting out music you love support them. Like I said, this is a tough industry for bands and labels to make ends meet and continue doing what we do. So, I think it’s important to remind people to support what they love in some capacity or it could very well be gone one day.

Tags 2014, beartrap pr, business, music, Music Business, music industry, music leaks, music piracy, Punk, Record Label, the hotelier, tiny engines, tiny engines records, will miller

News

Blogger Spotlight: Dave Buck (Dying Scene)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date December 23, 2013

Hello and welcome to the last full week of 2013! We know many members of the music industry take this week off to celebrate the holidays and unwind from months spent staring at monitors, but here at Haulix we’re forging ahead with a full week of new, never-before-published content to keep you entertained while the snow falls. If you have any questions regarding the content of this blog, or if you would like to learn more about the services offered by Haulix, please email james@haulix.com and share your thoughts. We can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Essentially all of the sites we have featured hope to start discussions about music, but very few have actually built communities of their own. Before social networking became a craze nearly every major new site/blog had a forum, if not something even more in-depth, and though many may argue the age of Facebook is better you will learn in the paragraphs below there is still something to be said for building your own community of like-minded individuals.

Dave Buck is a person who loves music far more than he ever enjoyed writing, but after noticing a number of talented musicians being overlooked by the music blogging community he decided to take matters into his own hands. The results of those efforts is the now well-known outlet Dying Scene, which boasts a community of thousands of diehard alternative music fans hungry for news and tunes from bands both known and obscure. It’s a destination for people who don’t care as much about what is trendy as they do about what is simply great music, and today we will learn how it all came together.

If you would like to stay up-to-date with everything Dave Buck has going on, we highly encourage you to bookmark and frequent Dying Scene. Additional questions and comments can be left at the end of this post.

H: Thanks again for doing this. Before we dive in, would you please tell everyone your full name, job title, and the publication you’re here to discuss:

D: My name’s Dave Buck and I guess you can consider me the founder and “head honcho” of Dying Scene (the site and the record label).

H: This is one interview our readers have been requesting for a while, so let’s start at the beginning: When you think about your life with music, what are the earliest memories that come to mind?

D: Considering Dying Scene is a punk focused brand I’d love to tell you I was listening to the Sex Pistols at 5 but the truth is I didn’t discover punk rock until I was 15. My earliest music memory was listening to “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel over and over again on a little Fisher Price record player when I was 5 or 6 years old. Eventually I graduated to Weird Al and the Beach Boys and listened to them almost exclusively until I was in Middle School.

H: What was the first album you purchased with your own money? Do you still own it?

D: I’m sure there were albums before this but the first album I can actually remember purchasing with my own money was Nirvana’s “Nevermind”. Hell yeah, I still have it!

H: This is a bit exciting for me because even though I’ve read your site for a long time I do not know that much about its history. What originally attracted you to the world of online journalism?

D: Well, it wasn’t so much a love for online journalism that lead me to start Dying Scene, it was a love for music. I guess you could say that the impetus to starting a punk blog was my level of frustration in the coverage I was seeing in other online punk news sites. I was coming across some fantastic punk bands scouring sites like MySpace and some of the best of those bands were getting absolutely zero coverage anywhere on the web. Bands like Chaser, Youthinasia, Doesitmatter, The Bastard Suns and Skyline Collapse were just a few of the acts putting out punk albums that I thought were some of the best releases of the year and I was shocked that no so called punk sites were talking about them. I just thought, “if nobody else is gonna tell people about these bands then I guess I’ll just have to do it myself!”

H: Is your site your first foray online, or did you write elsewhere before deciding to step out on your own?

D: I’ve never written for any publication, online or otherwise, but I do have a career as a web product manager so whatever experience I was lacking on the writing side, I probably made up for on the organizational and tech side.

H: DyingScene is a name that sticks to the brain. What is the story behind the name?

D: When I was in high school I always dreamed of owning a punk record label. By the time I got to college the “EpiFat” style of skate punk that I had fallen in love with was sorta being replaced by the first emo wave. I thought that if I ever did launch a label I’d probably only want to put out albums reminiscent of the punk that I grew up on, a sound I falsely felt was a dying part of the punk scene. I guess I thought Dying Scene Records would have been an appropriate name. Fast forward 10 more years and the name still seemed appropriate. The punk scene did seem to be dying out a bit but I think it was more a factor of the existing media coverage than a lack of quality bands or interested fans. I wanted to pump new blood into the anemic state of modern punk rock and help salvage the remains of what felt like a dying scene. A new punk website was born.

H: There is more to DyingScene than news and reviews, you’re actually building a community. What can you tell us about the original motivation behind the site and its design?

D: [Think I inadvertently answered the original motivation behind the site in the answer to my last question.] The design of DyingScene.com, for better or worse, was done by me. I’m no artist so it may look a little rough around the edges to some but I believe it encapsulates the DIY nature of the punk community at large in an authentic way. Funny enough, the original header of the site was based off some cover art I designed for a semi-joke compilation album I put together for one of my old friends. It was he and I that wanted to one day start Dying Scene Records together back in high school and in the years that followed he sort of drifted away from punk in general. When I was making those amazing new punk band discoveries I mentioned earlier I decided to put together a compilation called “Dying Music From A Dying Scene” consisting of awesome songs from those bands. I wanted to show him that if we did want to start a label there were some killer unsigned punk bands out there that we could launch with. Anyway, I decided to package it up like a real CD with real looking cover art, CD jacket and all that. I thought it would take a few hours but it took 2 whole days and about 10 trips to Kinkos. By the end of the project I was so into the design I had come up with for it I decided to keep it going in the form of a website header. That lead to a whole homepage design, which eventually became an entire site design.

H: How would you describe the typical DS community member?

D: That’s so hard to say because our community has become so large and so diverse over the years. The trolls and complainers are always the loudest so its tempting to tell you that they’re all grouchy punk rock elitists who hate the Offspring and have perfect penchant for pointing out typos but the truth is most of our community are positive, left leaning (obviously) boys and girls who really, really love punk music.

H: What type of content did DyingScene produce when it launched, and how has that posting style evolved over time?

D: I’m sort of proud to say that as our site has grown the types of bands we cover has not changed at all. We still give as much attention to the smaller up and coming bands today with a monthly readership in the hundreds of thousands as we did when we were just a no name brand when we first started. Since day one we’ve done news, album reviews, interviews, band spotlights and some original content like trivia posts and band name origin stories. We still do all that today with very little changes in terms of its presentation but our processes for finding and putting together that content is ever evolving.

H: There are a number of sites featuring talent similar to what can be found on DS. What is it about the content and coverage you offer that sets you apart from the competition?

D: We cover the little guys, for one, focusing a lot more on new music discovery than your typical news site. That’s a big one. If we think the music is good we don’t care if the band only has 10 followers on Facebook. A lot of sites find it more profitable to only cover the bands with big followings because the simple truth is stories about relatively unknown bands don’t drive clicks to your website. I’ve got a great career outside of DS so I’ve never really had to worry about making sure we’re turning a profit. All our writers, myself included, do this for free and we do it because its fun and we want to share great punk music with people we think might dig it. Sure, we’ll still cover the big guys but in response to that I’ll quote something from our FAQ page:

“Imagine for a second that you’re a kid who does not yet really know about the punk scene. You don’t have an older brother that introduced you to it and your friends all listen to hip-hop. You’ve heard Rise Against on the radio and you know you like them so one day you do a search for them on the internet and you end up on a story about them on Dying Scene. Now that you’re on Dying Scene you read the next story on the front page which happens to be about a band called Part Time Killer. You’ve never heard of them, so you give them a listen and Holy Shit, you love it! You check out another band, and another, and next thing you know you’re buying the latest albums from 5 bands you’ve never heard of until today. Then you realize that the unifying factor amongst these bands is that they are more or less considered “punk” bands and now your mind is officially blown. So this is what Punk Music sounds like?! You tell all your friends about this “punk rock” deal and you introduce them to the new bands you’ve discovered on a very informative, sometimes funny and usually accurate website called Dying Scene. Some of those friends like what they hear and then they go and tell their friends, and just like that, we’ve helped dozens of smaller punk bands find new fans all because of one little article on a band the elitists shun because they think they’ve “sold out” or don’t fit their definition of punk rock. We call that a huge success.

Also, it should be noted that we at Dying Scene have absolutely no problem with punk bands getting popular and even getting played on the radio. Good for them!”

H: You mention on the site that you never launched with intentions of finding fame or fortune, but there are a handful of ads to be found if you click around. When did you first begin monetizing your efforts? Do you have any plans to expand those efforts in the foreseeable future?

D: We’ve sold advertising for quite a while now but so far all its done is offset some of the costs involved in running the site. Of course, as our traffic grows so does our revenue, and if one day Dying Scene breaks even I would be thrilled. If one day it could pay me back what I’ve put in and afford me a flight once a year to Fest I’d be beyond thrilled, but I’m not expecting it. Dying Scene serves its function as a fun and rewarding creative outlet for me. I’ve got my day job to pay the bills.

H: What is the most difficult part of this ‘job’ you’ve created for yourself?

D: Time management. We have nearly 40 contributors working on DS and that’s a lot of writers to stay in touch with and keep tabs on. There are so many moving parts at this point it requires constant attention to keep things running smoothly from an operations standpoint, let alone from a timely coverage standpoint. I’m multi-taskinging DS work and day job work all day every day, except on weekends when I’m multi-tasking DS work and life in general. It’s a ton of work but I love it.

H: There are a number of young artists featured on your site. Where do you turn when hoping to discover new music?

D: New music and new bands have a way of finding us. We get new profile requests from bands every day and I listen to every single one of them, deciding who makes the cut and who doesn’t. We also get dozens of albums sent to us every day and I listen to at least one or two songs of every single one of them. It’s actually not so much a question of where to go to find music as it is how to filter out the good from the bad amongst the constant bombardment.

H: Let’s turn the tables a bit. What advice would you offer bands hoping to gain your attention and one day make an appearance on DS?

D: If you want to get our attention go to our FAQ page linked in the footer of the site and read. From there you can fill out a profile request form and leave us a note in the appropriate box if there’s something you want to tell us. Like I said, I listen to every single band that submits a request so if you properly filled out the fields on where to go to listen to your music I WILL hear your music. If I like it enough I WILL feature you, do a story on you, or maybe even sign your band. If you want us to review an album then follow the instructions on how to do so, again written out on our FAQ page. It’s actually amazingly simple to get your music in front of us. Obviously all of this is superseded by the quality of your music. If we can’t listen to your music or the recording quality is terrible or you’re not punk you’re not getting on Dying Scene. Period.

H: When it comes to receiving music for review purposes, which distribution services do you prefer and why?

D: I LOVE bandcamp. So simple. So easy. If your album is already released and you want people to easily stream it put it on bandcamp. And its really easy to embed so if we like it, we’ll do a story and stream your music right on Dying Scene. If you’re album isn’t released yet and you don’t want the general public to hear it until it is Haulix does seem to be the best service. Easy to stream, easy to download. Clean and simple. Simple is key when you’re trying to listen to a dozen different albums a day all the while churning out never ending news stories.

H: Album leaks have been a hot button topic for well over a decade at this point. Do you feel they do as much damage today as they have in years prior?

D: If we’re talking strictly about pre-official release date leaks, here’s the deal: There’s three kinds of people when it comes to illegal downloading of albums. Those that absolutely don’t do it (or at least they’ll go back and pay for it if they like it). Those that have absolutely no problem doing it. And those who won’t do it unless its the only way they can get their hands on the album. This third case is where album leaks hurt bands and labels. They lose out on the revenue from the people that would have paid for it if they could have but they’re just so excited to hear the album they toss their morals right out the window. Having said that, I don’t think that amounts to too much so its no huge loss to the music creators. It’s hard to think of anything else as a “leak” since I feel like its inevitable for an album to eventually end up on an illegal download site. If we’re talking about that practice in general then yes, it is hugely detrimental to the band, labels, and music industry as a whole. Labels and bands don’t make nearly as much money as they once did from album sales. That’s a fact. And its a fact that it directly corresponds with illegal downloading.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

D: No more illegal downloads. Bands who work hard and put out good music deserve compensation and we should be happy to give it to them considering how much pleasure we’re deriving from their work.

H: What is your ultimate career goal?

D: I’d love to be able to do Dying Scene full time without the hindrance of a “real” job. That’s a bit of a fantasy though so I guess I’d settle for owning an online business of some sort that would allow me the freedom to live where I want and provide a little more free time to spend on passion projects like Dying Scene.

H: Thank you again for taking the time to talk to me. Before I let you go, is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?

D: The pleasure is all on this side of the table, James. Thanks a lot for the interest. For those of you that haven’t already, please check out the site if you’re into punk music. Join us on Facebook and say hi (me and/or one of my editors are on there all day and we love talking to our readers).

Tags Blogger Spotlight, dave buck, dying scene, haulix, interview, Punk, testimonial

News

Blogger Spotlight: Jesse Richman (PropertyOfZack)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date August 19, 2013

Another Monday has found its way into existence, and here we are once again with a new Haulix Blogger Spotlight. This feature is the longest running on our still-young blog, and this week it gains one of its lengthier entries to date. If you have someone you would like to nominate for a future installment of this series, including yourself, please do not hesitate to email james@haulix.com and share your story.

PropertyOfZack founder Zack Zarrillo was the very first blogger to be featured in this series, but only a fool would think everything POZ has accomplished in recent years resulted from the efforts of one barely twenty-something with a laptop and a lot of big ideas. In fact, the contributing staff that helps keep POZ atop the alternative news game numbers in the dozens, and amongst them lies one curious soul by the name of Jesse Richman. He may not be the top news writer in digital journalism, but his work on artist features has helped widen the gap between POZ and their closest competitors while simultaneously helping usher in a new wave of talent to alternative scene.

Sometimes you meet influential people in the strangest of places, and other times it’s more a twist of fate. For Jesse Richman and I the latter was definitely the case. SXSW 2013 was fast approaching and before I could log on to book a hotel I learned all rooms in the immediate vicinity of downtown Austin were completely booked. A chance conversation with Zack Zarrillo put me in contact with Jesse, and before long I had found a temporary home with him less than a mile from Austin’s biggest events. We had never met or spoken before arriving, but in the days that followed I was able to watch his masterwork first hand as Jesse prepared and conducted interview after interview with talent from all walks of life. In between press events he would catch bands, usually chosen ahead of time to maximize coverage, and on the off-chance he found himself with a free moment he would begin working on his posts for the following day via phone or laptop. His work ethic is unlike anything I have witnessed elsewhere in the industry, and it’s an honor to share his story here today.

We spoke with Jesse about his life before music, what got him interested in writing in the first place, and where he sees the music industry headed in the years ahead. You can read his thoughts on all this, as well as few details on what PropertyOfZack has in store, below. If you would like to know more about Jesse we highly encourage you to stop by his Twitter, or his personal portfolio site.

H: For those unaware, please state your name, the site you work for, and your role at said site:

JR: My name is Jesse Richman. I’m a Senior Writer at PropertyOfZack, which I’ve called home since 2010. I also do sporadic work for other sites, and maintain my own music blog as well (generally for more personal writing) at MakeupForTheSilence.com.

H: What was the first album you really connected with? How did you discover it?

JR: Music has been a part of my life since literally before I can remember; when I was a baby, I refused to sleep if there wasn’t a record on the turntable.

That said, the first album that really felt like it was mine was Live’s Mental Jewelry. I remember catching the video for “Operation Spirit (The Tyranny Of Tradition)” on MTV one afternoon and just being blown away by it – visually, lyrically, sonically. When I learned soon after that they were a bunch of 20 year old kids from a town less than two hours away, it became clear they existed specifically for me to find.

H: What inspired you to get into writing in the first place?

JR: It’s just something I’ve always enjoyed, and always had a bit of a knack for. A lot of it was just loving reading, and wanting to make something others would love and learn from too. A handful of good English teachers to encourage me didn’t hurt. That said, I never really had the creative impulse for fiction writing; expository writing, whether journalistic or biographical, has always been more in my wheelhouse.

H: You went to school to study law. What attracted you to the world of entertainment journalism?

JR: I did go to law school, and I actually still practice law full-time – it’s the day job which affords me the opportunity to pursue writing as more than a hobby despite the collapse of the marketplace. As for what attracted me to entertainment journalism, I’ve been a voracious reader of music literature for as long as I’ve been a music listener. I have memories of Study Hall periods spent in the school library, churning through decade-old issues of Rolling Stone. You’d have been hard-pressed to find a day where my backpack (covered with band logos drawn on in White-Out) didn’t have at least one music bio crammed in among the school books. I think it’s just always been in the cards that I would write about music.

H: Your work can usually be found on PropertyOfZack, a site that we have featured before. What is it about the content offered on POZ that separates you from your countless competitors?

JR: in our early days, POZ really distinguished itself with its video content – Live’s, Acoustic sessions, documentary coverage of things like the GK Holiday Fest. Over the last year we’ve made a strong push to expand our written content to match. We’ve introduced Perspective (our features series), weekly Friday Discussions, our retrospective Decade pieces, and now Inside – multi-article deep digs on key players in our scene. We’ve got a really strong core of writers, and we’re giving them the opportunities and the tools to explore their passions. Everybody wins – the site, our writers, and especially the readers.

H: The majority of your features involve interviews. Do you recall your first interview experience as a journalist?

JR: I’m sure I did some interview work for my high school paper that I’ve long forgotten, but I really cut my teeth working for the Arts section of my college paper – I think I sat down with every band on campus at some point.

H: Every writer is guilty of having stock questions they fall back on when times get tough. If you had to guess, which question do you think you’ve asked most often over the course of your career?

JR: I’m endlessly fascinated by the creative process – how songs are written, how bands go about arranging and recording those songs. I love to ask business-related questions, because nobody knows where the music business is headed but everyone’s got their opinion on it. And if all else fails, I ask what’s on the radio in the van/bus, partly because I’m confident enough in my musical knowledge that I can turn any answer into a launching pad for more questions, and partly because the easiest way to crack opena tough interviewee is to get them talking about something they’re passionate about.

H: There are a growing number of people who view what you do as a possible career path for themselves. What advice would you offer those who hope to make a name for themselves in writing these days?

JR: Write, write, write. Read other writers. Talk with other writers – it’s never been easier than it is right now to get in touch with virtually anyone. Debate, test their ideas, make them test yours, listen to feedback. Then, write some more.

H: You’ve racked up quite a list of interviewees over the years. Who is left on your “interview bucket list”?

JR: Anyone who’s made music that makes me feel! I don’t really have a list, but there are definitely some childhood musical heroes I’d love to really get in deep with someday – Ed from Live, Raine from Our Lady Peace, Colin and Mr. C of The Shamen. And if the ghosts of Kurt Cobain or Doug Hopkins of the Gin Blossoms feel like dropping by for a chat, I’m game.

H: What would you say is your ultimate goal as a writer?

JR: To be read. And to have something to say that’s worth reading. I might be putting the cart before the horse there.

H: PropertyOfZack is known for breaking up and coming rock bands. Where do you turn when hoping to discover new music?

JR: My fellow POZ staffers. Our fellow websites, like Under The Gun Review and AbsolutePunk. My friends in the blogosphere. I follow a list of 300+ music-related folks on Twitter – musicians, songwriters, producers, PR folks, journalists. Tumblr has a vibrant, if echo-y, critical community. Podcasts – I subscribe to probably 10 music-related podcasts.

I’ve also built up something of a mental list of must-read music critics – folks who, through their skill and insight, make me think about music in new, exciting, eye-opening ways. Nitsuh Abebe, Maura Johnston, Tom Ewing, Stephen Erlewine, Steven Hyden, Luke O’Neill, Leor Galil, Jason Pettigrew, Annie Zaleski, and many more. Everyone who posts at The Singles Jukebox. Apologies to everyone I’m forgetting. There’s so much more to writing about music well than just discovering new acts.

H: Speaking of music discovery, you probably receive a lot of submissions from young artists vying for a spot on your news feed. What advice can you offer young artists hoping to stand out in your inbox?

JR: Don’t bother. Really. I ignore virtually everything I get sent from publicists (and, sadly, from bands themselves). Write good songs, play good shows, build a buzz. I keep my ear to the ground, and if you’re doing something interesting, odds are it’ll make its way to me.

H: When it comes to receiving music for review and feature consideration, which services do you prefer and why?

JR: We wouldn’t be here doing this interview if we didn’t both think Haulix was the bees knees, right? I want tracks I can stream, and preferably download too – I’m a New Yorker and do a lot of my listening on the subway, where streaming isn’t an option. Haulix is straightforward and intuitive.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

JR: I’d find some way to put the money back into it! The last 50 years were a bubble, and that bubble’s burst, but it was a glorious bubble to live in, wasn’t it?

H: You tweet a lot about having big plans for the future. Before we let you go, can you tell us a bit about what you have planned in the months ahead?

JR: I’m really stoked for Riot Fest, both as a writer/interviewer and as a fan who never had the chance to see The Replacements live. CMJ is coming, and I’ve already started making plans for next year’s SXSW. In between all of that, I’m just going to keep writing as much as I can!

Tags 2013, advice for bands, interview, Jesse Richman, makingupforthesilence, music, Music Business, music industry, musicbiz, PropertyOfZack, Punk, testimonial

News

Industry Spotlight: Bryne Yancey (Punknews / BFG PR)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date August 16, 2013

Hello again and welcome to a very special edition of our Haulix Spotlight series. Fridays are usually reserved for our ongoing advice column, but due to a wealth of timely content we want to roll out that feature is taking the week off. If you are serious need of an advice fix, we suggest going through our archives and seeing there is anything you have missed up to this point. We’ll return next week with one, maybe even two new advice articles. If you have any subjects you would like to see covered, please do not hesitate to email james@haulix,com and share your idea!

When we realized we were going to begin covering publicists in our spotlight series we knew a handful of individuals would come up who are viewed as notable personalities in both the world of PR and journalism. Many publicists cut their teeth on the journalism side of things, and likewise there are a number of journalists who discovered a passion for writing during their PR careers. To successfully transition between the two roles is no easy feat, and to maintain a good standing in both simultaneously is nearly impossible. There is a large amount of room for questionable behavior, such as reviewing releases from bands you also work with (or hope to one day work with), and many choose to avoid that hassle altogether by deciding to reside on one side of the press or the other . Still, some strive to have the best of both worlds, and today’s highlighted talent is one such soul.

Bryne Yancey has been writing, promoting, and otherwise living in the world of punk since the days of Geocities. His passion for music paired perfectly with his drive to succeed at a young age, and it did not take long for the industry to take notice of his efforts. Bryne eventually found himself at MySpace, then later took his writing talent to the front pages of more alternative sites, including Alternative Press and Punknews. In 2012 he started his own PR company, Ben Franklin’s Grave, and when we caught up with him last month he could not be happier with his two careers. You can learn about Bryne’s adventures through the music industry, as well as his advice for bands and others hoping to make it, below.

If you are at all interested in a career in alternative music journalism or promotion, you owe it to yourself to follow Bryne, as well as his family at Punknews, on Twitter. Comment below if you have any additional questions for Bryne and we will get them answered as soon as possible.

H: For those unaware, please state your name, the site you work for, and your role at said site:

BY: I’m Bryne Yancey, and I’m a contributing editor at Punknews.org. I’m currently in charge of the reviews portion of the site but I do a little bit of everything, including social media, podcasting and occasional news writing and copy editing when needed.

H: Let’s start before music became a business for you. Do you recall the first album you truly fell in love with?

BY: I’ll be 29 this year and like most punks my age, I initially discovered it through the radio with bands like the Offspring and Green Day. But the first punk record I bought on my own, previously unheard, was the Suicide Machines’ Battle Hymns. I remember getting my allowance that week, riding my Dyno BMX bike up to Spec’s Music (RIP) in the small Florida town where I grew up, and seeing it on sale there. I’d never heard the band before, but I thought the cover art was really cool and *looked* punk, and when I noticed there were 22 songs on it it seemed like a lot of bang for my buck at the time. I took it home, popped it in my boombox and was blown away by the band’s speed, energy and passion. I was hooked.

H: Having an interest in music is one thing, and deciding to attempt to turn that interest into a career is another ballgame altogether. When did you realize you were interested in pursuing this industry, and where did you find your first gig (unpaid work counts)?

BY: Not too long after I got into it, actually; I was a self-starter, though not a very talented one. I remember creating my own Geocities site (kids under 25, Google it) and reviewing records on it. After that, I started a real webzine called What We Hate that lasted a couple of years, overlapping briefly with my early days at Punknews. That was when I felt I had initially found my “voice” and thought I could maybe, eventually do this sort of thing seriously.

H: In the earlier days of social media, you spent some time working at one-time juggernaut Myspace Music. How did you come to work at the site, and how would compare the experience to working at publications and smaller websites?

BY: At the time, Myspace was in the midst of one of its many relaunches, and part of this particular relaunch was the creation of the Curators program—basically, they hired a bunch of writers/”internet personalities” to curate profiles based on specific interests, hoping it’d draw users back to their site. The person heading the program emailed me out of the blue one day asking if I’d be interested; at the time, I think I was freelancing for Alternative Press a little bit but it was almost certainly my work at Punknews.org that got me that gig.   It ended up not working very well, mostly because of the reputation that precedes Myspace and the inability for them to shake it. It was different in the sense that I wasn’t writing or reporting very much as part of the gig; I’d find links to other content I thought was cool and share them with my audience, which in hindsight makes perfect sense in terms of how social media usually works. There just wasn’t enough time to build an organic audience there. But it was a lot of fun nonetheless, and everyone I worked with at Myspace was awesome and were both aware of the problems of the site, and were working hard to try to eradicate them. It paid surprisingly well for a freelance gig, too.

H: Having seen the first wave of social media fandom come and go, do you think the current reliance on Facebook and Twitter to do the majority of a band’s promotional efforts is a good thing?

BY: It’s important, but it’s not the whole story. The bottom line is bands still need their own websites independent of Facebook and twitter, even if it’s just a blog or something. Not everyone is glued to social media all the time, and Facebook *still* hasn’t figured out how to make their band pages that useful. For a while in the mid-2000s bands just had Myspace pages as their “official website” and look how that worked out. Learn from the past!

H: Currently, you’re a regular content contributor to the world of Punknews. What is it about the community at PN that attracted you to this team?

BY: More than anything else, Punknews.org has shaped me as a music fan and critic and that’s what made me want to be a part of it. The site hooked me on the fun and the thrill of discovery, and I’m still hooked on it.

I’d been a regular reader pretty much since the beginning in 1998 (!) and, I think in 2007 or so I started submitting reviews and weirdly, they were posting most of them. I began to gain confidence as a writer after that, and by the summer of 2008 I was a staff reviewer. Fast forward to May 2009, and I noticed that there’d been somewhat of a drop off in the frequency of news posts so I emailed Aubin Paul and Adam White to ask them if I could help out. They said yes. Let that be a lesson to all the kids out there: If you really want to do something, just ask. What’s the worst that could happen, they say no?

H: Punknews is one of the older alternative music portals online. What is it about your coverage that separates your efforts from those of your competition?

BY: We strive to give bands of all sizes equal footing in our newsfeed and in our reviews and try not to editorialize one way or the other, although in the last year or so we’ve taken a few light-hearted liberties in that regard. If I can speak for Aubin, I think the whole reason he initially built Punknews was that at the time, there just wasn’t a good site on the tubes that aided discovery of punk music and related genres, so we try to stick to that as much as possible. That covers both ends of the spectrum, too; we know a lot of our readers don’t like it when we cover major label bands, or dumb mallpunk stuff, but the fact of the matter is it brings younger readers to our site and potentially exposes them to other, much cooler aspects of punk subculture. Everyone has to start somewhere; no one was punk when they were born.

H: You launched your own PR company, Ben Franklin’s Grave, back in August 2012. Is PR something you have long been interested in?

BY: Honestly, other than a few fleeting thoughts here and there, not really. I love doing it now, though, but it was a completely happy accident in terms of how it started. My pals in the New Lows messaged me one day, asking for publicist recommendations and right then and there I told them, “Why don’t you just have me do it? I know the writers and have a rapport with them, and you guys *know* me, so why the Hell not?”

H: A pattern that has emerged over the course of our spotlight series is writers turning to PR work in hopes of more steady employment in the industry. Do you think this was a factor in your decision to explore this area?

BY: Oh, it *definitely* was. I was unemployed for a couple months last summer and at the time, thought I could make a few bucks doing press for bands and freelancing while I figured out my next real career move. It’s blossomed into this huge thing since then, in which I almost have too many clients to deal with, but it’s so much fun to work with smaller bands who have the songs and the talent, and just need a little extra push to get those songs out to the world. It’s definitely as gratifying as say, writing a big story for a website or a magazine, absolutely. Which I did not think would be the case when I started.  The fact is, the industry has been shrinking and coagulating for a while now. Most print mags are either going digital-only or ceasing publication altogether, and the amount of money one can make being a music journalist is almost completely unsustainable. Not that being a journalist of any kind is all about the money, but you know, you gotta eat and live, man, and unless you’re a Dumpster-diving freegan, that requires coin. Which is why the vast majority of publicists have backgrounds in journalism.

H: Outside of BFG and Punknews, you also hold down a full time job at a media company. How do you make time to ensure all of your projects stay current and up to date?

 BY: It’s a difficult balance, because I don’t consider myself a workaholic. I enjoy spending time with my friends and family, going out, sitting on my couch, watching TV, being lazy, all of that. I make sure to not let my work consume or define me, because I know from past experiences that no matter what you do or how hard you work, 1) there’s no guarantee it’ll translate to advancement, acclaim or even a steady job and 2) your friends and family will resent you if you choose work over them too many times, because when the work is gone — and in this industry, it will almost *always* be gone before you expect it to be gone — they’re still there. You gotta take care of them first, and make time for them.

It’s also important to be bored sometimes. Boredom stimulates thought.

H: Having worked in the industry for half a decade or more, do you ever see yourself in a position where you only have one job title?

BY: There will probably be a point in the next few years where I’m only doing PR and not really writing or reporting, save for an occasional blog or review here and there. I’m still having fun editing and writing for Punknews — I don’t do any sort of paid freelancing anymore — and when it stops being fun or I’m too old, I’ll quit. Right now I’m fortunate enough to have the time to do all of it, though.

H: When it comes to discovering new music, be it for writing or PR, what sources have you found to be the most reliable?

BY: No disrespect to any publications, including ones I write for, have written for or pitch to, but Bandcamp is the best for discovery. I spend almost every Saturday morning browsing Bandcamp for new releases (and buying a bunch), because it’s just so easy to discover new bands on it and their platform is straightforward: no ads, no bullshit. They’re only about the tunes. I wish every band and label had a Bandcamp page.

H: Let’s say the bands are coming to you. What advice do you have for those hoping to catch your attention to help them separate themselves from the countless bands looking for coverage?

BY: First of all, you need to write good songs. Good songs trump *everything*. If you’re not talented, well, it doesn’t mean you won’t eventually do something great but you have to be level-headed about it and know when you’re ready.

Second of all, have patience. Thanks to the internet there are now roughly a billion bands competing for a shrinking landscape, and success won’t happen overnight, if it even happens at all. Set smaller goals at first.

Third of all, if you’re offered coverage, take it no matter the size of the publication. I have bands come to me all the time who want to be featured on Pitchfork or SPIN like, immediately, and it’s cute but it just doesn’t work that way. No site is too small; take interviews with everyone when you’re starting out. It all helps. If you’re working hard enough, generally someone somewhere big will eventually notice you.

H: When it comes to receiving music for review and feature consideration, which services do you prefer and why?

BY: I have to say Haulix here, right? Juuuuuust kidding.

I really do prefer Haulix over other digital delivery services because of its ease of use. A lot of the other delivery services bog computers down with weird bugs, crash problems or hard-to-understand navigation. Oh, and if I have to download some weird client just to listen to your record I’m probably not going to do it, unless you’re Keith Morris or something. Haulix is simple. Haulix is consistent. Haulix is good.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

BY: Fan entitlement sorely needs to be put in check. The tumblr generation of music “fans” who leak records, don’t go to shows and generally lack empathy for how hard it is to make a living from playing music because they still live at home and have never had to work for anything in their lives really, really sucks. Not every kid is like that, mind you, but it’s definitely a problem. You’re a human; have some empathy. Don’t be so goddamned self-absorbed all the time.

H: Before we let you go, can you tell us a bit about what you have planned in the months ahead?

BY: On the PR front, there are some records I’m working coming in the fall I’m really excited about: The new Direct Hit! record for Red Scare is honestly one of the best things I’ve ever heard; I’m also gonna be working with a Puerto Rican hardcore band called KDC that I think are really gonna turn some heads. Iron Pier is firing back up with a great full-length from Deep Pockets and an equally cool EP from Self Defense Family that everyone will be hearing from me about real soon.

As far as Punknews goes, I’m just gonna continue to try and make the reviews as useful as they can be. We recently switched to a new daily review format that seems to be resonating. Aubin is also *this* close to finishing the newest version of the site, which will also be the best version of Punknews ever based on everything I’ve seen. He’s still the smartest guy I’ve ever met or worked with.

Other than that, I’m just gonna keep on working and living, man. I live in Philadelphia now, which I happen to think is the best city for punk rock in the world. Life is good.

Tags advice, ben franklins grave, bfg pr, bfgpr, bryne yancey, Careers, music, music biz, music industry, musicbiz, pr help, pr talk, Public Relations, Publicity, Punk, punk news, punknews

News

PR Spotlight: Jamie Coletta (SideOneDummy Records)

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date August 7, 2013

Hello, and welcome to the very first Haulix PR Spotlight. We have enjoyed getting to know the blogger community over the last two months, and we certainly plan to continue that series as long as there are writers willing to talk to us, but we also want to highlight those working everyday to get talent in front of journalists around the world. If you know a PR talent we should feature in a future installment of this column, email james@haulix.com and tell us their story.

Designer Roy Halston Frowick once said “Buzz and the right publicist are not only important, but crucial in show business.” If you’re a rising punk talent who isn’t afraid of a great pop song and people with the type of personality you cannot help but love, the right publicist for you may be SideOneDummy Records‘ Jamie Coletta. Since joining the team in 2012, Jamie has furthered SideOneDummy’s already well established brand online and off while simultaneously helping develop new talent from a wide variety of genres. She has been working nonstop within the industry for the better part of the last half decade, and in that time has worked with nearly every type of artist or group you can imagine. We are honored to have her serve as our first highlighted publicist, and hope the insight she provides will aide future PR stars in bettering their efforts.

As always, if you like what you read, be sure to reach out and let Jamie know you enjoyed her interview. She can be found on Twitter, just like SideOneDummy, and is often spotted singing at the top of her lungs while standing side stage at pop punk festivals across the country. If you have any additional questions for her, please do not hesitate to leave them in the comments section at the end of this post.

H: For those unaware, please state your name, the company you work for, and your role at said organization:

JC: Jamie Coletta, SideOneDummy Records, publicist. I handle in-house radio promotion.

H: You’re an East Coast girl who now resides on the West Coast, so surely you have a story to tell. When did you first realize you wanted to work in music?

JC: That’s hard to pinpoint but it probably all started from some random night at the Living Room (RIP) in Providence, RI. I would go there all the time in high school just to be around live music. I helped bands flyer from time to time, joined street teams and eventually starting booking local shows.

Once I got to college and realized that my school had an actual degree in music business, I knew that was the only option for me. I actually didn’t even get accepted at first because my grades were so low (woops). I ended up writing an essay about my favorite concert of all time (Yellowcard/Something Corporate/The Format @ Bentley College, 2004) that convinced them to let me into the program.

I moved to LA after college because I knew that it was the only place in the world I would be happy. And I am.

H: Where did you first find work in the industry (and yes, working for free counts in this case)?

JC: My first internship was at Riot Act Media with a great publicist named David Lewis.

H: Okay, now the big question: Where did you first find paying work in music, and how did you go about landing that job?

JC: My first paid job was assisting an independent publicist at Fly PR. It was short-lived, though, because only a few months after starting, I got hired to work at a major label and obviously took it.

H: Many may believe the ultimate goal of people working in music is to be part of a major label, but your career has gone another path. You were at onetime a member of one of the largest labels still around, then chose to go the indie route and joined the SideOneDummy Records team. What inspired this change of pace?

JC: Honestly? I didn’t like it. I never set out to be a major label publicist or work with pop music but I needed (and wanted) the experience. The majors are basically a jungle and if you’re into that sort of thing, then go for it. Personally, I’ve always wanted to work with the bands I love and have a direct hand in their success. That just wasn’t going to happen at a major pop label so after a few years, I decided to move on. I’m grateful for the entire experience, though, especially meeting people like Rey Roldan who put me in touch with the SideOne team.

H: There has been increasing talk of the necessity for labels ever since the rise of social media. Having gone from major to indie, do you feel smaller labels serve more important/lasting purpose than majors?

JC: Smaller labels have the ability to give you more of a hands-on approach and really work as hard as possible for their artists. Majors just shell out cash and hire a bunch of super smart people to make shit happen. You can still end up on the back burner at both but with an indie, your team is much more likely to care about your music and success, I feel.

H: Most of the artists you work with now fall under the punk category, but that was not always the case. Have you found any major differences between the various genres and artists you have worked with? Is any particular genre necessarily easier than another?

JC: Well our roster is definitely not strictly punk – we’ve got a really diverse mix of bands and artists here so that’s rad. But yeah, I’ve worked in a whole bunch of different genres now and I think it all depends on you. Personally I like punk and alternative so I tend to find it easier to work within those worlds because it’s what I feel most passionate about. Although a mentor once told me that a good publicist should be able to work PR for a bar of soap…

H: As a publicist, what advice would you offer writers hoping to work with your clients?

JC:

H: Piracy is one of the most discussed topic in the industry today. Do you feel album leaks are preventable? If so, how would you advise an artist to keep their music safe while still getting the word out? If you can, share an experience.

JC: It’s hard to say. If you don’t want your album leaking, then you really just need to be super selective with who you give it to. If you can, utilize a service like Haulix or something that will let you watermark the promo so you can track it if it does leak.

But at the same time, I feel like a leak is a sign that people care so much about the record that they’re willing to go through any length to get it early. Does it suck, especially after you & your team have been working your butts off on a release? Of course it does. But it’s a part of the industry now so you just have to be mindful of that when preparing a release.

H: When it comes to working with your clients, how do you prefer to share their music with press? What is it about this method that appeals to you the most?

JC: I would always rather show someone music in person, mostly because I can display my excitement better that way. But since we live in a digital age and the majority of my contacts are spread across the country, I use Haulix, Soundcloud and YouTube primarily. Each have their own unique benefits but overall I just like the process to be quick and painless for a writer whose trying to decide if they’re into something or not.

H: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would it be?

JC: There are so many talented musicians in the punk/alt community that get categorized as Warped Tour or Hot Topic bands and for whatever reason, that holds a negative connotation in the mainstream music world. I think that sucks.

Oh also, there is a major difference between hardcore and metal. Thanks
.
H: Your roster is as eclectic now as ever before. Do you have any plans or releases on the horizon you’d like to share with our readers?

JC: We’re putting out Chris Shiflett & The Dead Peasants new album later this month and I’m predicting that to be one of the best country/americana records of the year, hands down. Otherwise we have a bunch of surprises up our sleeves for the next couple months so you’ll just have to stay tuned for that.

Tags haulix, interview, Jamie Coletta, music, music biz, music indsutry, Music PR, PR, publicist, Punk, SideOneDummy, Spotlight, testimonial

News

Haulix Advice: Setting Up Tour Press

Post author By James Shotwell
Post date July 24, 2013

Today’s Haulix Advice column is intended for artists with more than one tour under their belt. We understand those of you just getting started may be excited by notion of having press cover your first tour, but we highly recommend waiting until you’ve crossed stateliness a time or two before taking the following steps.

As you move forward in your pursuit of national acclaim, touring offers a number of unique promotional opportunities that will help drive awareness to your music and (hopefully) add a little boost to ticket sales. In oder for any of that to happen, however, you will need to put together a plan of attack far in advance of your first date, and that is what we’re going to discuss today.

It may seem a bit premature, but artists hoping to maximize the exposure they are able to pull out of a single tour would be wise to begin planning those effort almost as early as they begin booking said shows. As a band, you should work together to develop a list of everyone you want to invite to a show, all the content you hope to create during the run, sites that offer pre-tour promotional options (playlists, interviews), and a list of potential sites and publications who may be interested in hosting said content. Be specific. Know when you plan your tour to start, as well as the promotion, and use a calendar to plan when you would ideally like your content to run. Once you’re on the road, finding the time to plan is going to be near impossible, and you’ll likely have a number of other issues and needs to attend to as well. Having a plan helps to not only suppress the stress of last minute organizing, but also creates a blueprint to follow if/when things do go off the rails (and let face it: they probably will).

As soon as you confirm your dates, take time to research writers who may work in the vicinity of your shows and email them with details on your performance no later than one month prior to the tour. Invite them to come, but be careful to not beg. Writers want to believe they’re either going to see the next great band no one has heard, an underrated juggernaut deserving of more attention, or an established act whose live show is even better than their album, not a group of musicians trying too hard to be famous. Pick an angle that works for you and use it to entice the reader. Remember: This may be your first time interacting with this individual, so make sure your initial impression is a good one. Being friendly and concise goes a long way.

A month out from your first date also happens to be the ideal time to begin locking in your tour content exclusives. This could be any number of items, but the two most popular tend to be tour blogs and acoustic performance videos. Both are great tools for furthering awareness of your efforts, and neither is all that difficult to create. Once you know what your content will be, develop a list of sites you would like to partner with for the premieres and begin contacting them. Again, being specific is key. Make sure your message includes information about your efforts, the tour, and as specific details regarding the content you would like to share with their readers. If it’s a tour blog, tell them how often you were hoping to run it. If it’s a performance video, give them a target week for release. Being too specific may turn some away, so make sure you allow room for customization. The sites you want to work with have a lot of experience in this type of content, and more importantly they know what works best with their readers. Trust them.

When you’re a week out from the tour, send reminders to outlets you have not heard from and check in on everyone who said they may attend. Provide contact information, including a phone number, and request the writer do the same. Every venue is different, and you nerve know when your press plans may have to change on account of an outside force.

Check in with your contacts again the day of the show to confirm their travel plans, as well as yours. Coordinate a time that works with your schedule for the day and do whatever you can to be early. If you’re completing an interview with said writer, check in advance for type of interview (voice or video) and prepare accordingly. We’ll have more tips for video interviews in an upcoming edition of Haulix Advice.

As with every Haulix Advice column, we asked a number of industry professionals to offer additional insight on setting up tour press. You can read what they had to say below.

If you have any questions or comment, feel free to leave at the end of this post and we’ll do our best to reply soon.

“My best suggestion to any up and coming artist who is looking to do their own press would be to 1- know their music websites and 2-Contact as many journalist as possible. Start off with doing a google search to see who has covered artists like you, or other artists you have toured with. After making a list of what outlets covered those artists, as well as their contact information, reach out to each journalist individually. Tell them about your band, when your last release came out, send some examples of music as well as tour dates. Always include the best way to reach you! It’s a ton of work but absolutely is worth the effort. Also, whenever you send physical music to a journals ALWAYS include contact information and a bio. The worst thing you could do is waste your time sending a CD to a writer and then them having no clue how to contact you” – Jenna LoMonaco, Kobalt Music Group

“As a smaller band, especially without a publicist, getting press for your tour is a daunting task. Even if you’re only playing 10-15 cities, that’s 10-15 unique local markets that you have to sift through and try to find the best way to promote your show. The best thing for your band is going to be getting local newspaper and radio stations to run any sort of coverage *before* you play your show in the area, to try to encourage turnout. However, many writers will only want to cover your show post-event and many radio stations will ask for tickets to give away in exchange for coverage. This shouldn’t be a worry for you – you’ll want to commit press passes and free tickets at each show in exchange for promotion. In terms of national and online media, make sure you know where writers are located, especially the ones that like your band. If a website gives your EP a good review, make a note that the writer is located in X market so you can offer him a free ticket to review your show. Keep an organized list of contacts that help you out in each local market, too – this (hopefully) won’t be the last time you play in that area, so you’ll want to hit these people up again in the future.” – Thomas Nasiff, Fuse/Bad Timing Records/Paper+Plastick

“There are two sides of tour press: Before, and after. Before you go on tour, you should be setting up press with sites that do pre-tour features. PropertyOfZack does Playlists, a way for touring packages to let us know what they’ll be listening to on the road. We include the tour dates in there for extra press.

Then for after, you have Road Blogs, interviews, acoustic sessions, and more. Make sure people haven’t forgotten about the tour once it ends. Keep the content coming” – Zack Zarrillo, PropertyOfZack

“Always plan to start your tour press no later than a month out from the first date. The less time you give yourselves, the less chance of an effective press campaign. The less effective your campaign is, the less impact it will have in show attendance.” – Patrick Ryan Williford, Persistent Heart Media

“No outlet is too small – if you’ve got the time and a .blogspot-type writer has reached out, make the relationship and take the interview. Any press is good press, and you never know where a writer will end up – taking that interview when a site is small could benefit you tenfold down the line.” – Jack Appleby, Siren Records

Tags advice, advice for bands, Alternative, artists, band advice, Haulix Advice, music, music biz, music industry, Musicians, musicpr, Publicity, Punk, rock, setting up tour press, tour help, tour press, touring 101, Touring Advice