Photo credit New Norm Studios – Wright Media
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
We’ve got a 2015 Toyota Sienna named Ramona after Ray Wylie Hubbard’s “Snake Farm”. We got her in 2024 and have put about 50k miles on her. She’s been a great touring companion! We did have a scare at the end of our spring tour earlier this year when a semi’s tire exploded in front of us outside St. Louis and completely busted the radiator. We had to load all of our gear into a rental and make the long drive home not knowing if she was totaled or not. This was perfect timing, because earlier that day we had made our final payment on the car loan. Long story short, she pulled through and Coty flew back out to pick her up about a month later.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
We always try to prep healthy meals while on the road. We like to do grain bowls – rice or quinoa, a legume, some greens, maybe some pulled chicken, and “the sauce” which is basically a dreamy tahini situation that goes great on everything. It takes a little time on the front end, but it’s cheaper, it’s healthier, and it just works for our dietary needs. We try to avoid fried and heavy foods in general, but especially on tour. Not trying to feel loaded down while loading in and out of the gig. That being said, sometimes we have to get a little 1am Taco Bell. We’re only human after all.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
We don’t do a lot of string breakin’, but Coty does love a new set of strings on his pawpaw’s ‘69 Gibson J-50. He typically goes for Elixir Custom Lights every couple of months. I think we’ve changed Becca’s banjo strings twice in the last couple years.
Where do you rehearse?
We have a music room at home that is dubbed The Blue Room (can you guess the wall color?) It’s an eclectic mess, but we love it. Local art, whiteboard with an ever-growing to do list, incense, workout equipment, litter box, closet stuffed to capacity with our PA and other random gear.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Technically the first song we wrote together was called “Beer, Butter, and Each Other” that was inspired by a crab bake we had with some friends down in Charleston early into our relationship. The chorus is just “Oohs” and the song kicks off with “beer, butter, and each other / pizza and wine, everything’s fine”
Describe your first gig.
As most folks in music, we cut our teeth playing cover gigs. 4 hours, minimal pay (some for free to see if we were “good enough to be booked for a real gig”), background music in a chatty atmosphere where nobody cares what you’re doing over there in the corner, but could you please turn it down? We still have our giant notebooks filled with cover songs. Those gigs were important for many reasons. We learned how to start booking gigs and making money playing music, how to put our own spin on songs we loved, how to be resilient, and eventually how to share our original songs. Good times.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Coty was a middle and high school Spanish teacher and Becca was in marketing. There were many aspects from each of those jobs that we loved and still put into practice in our daily musical lives.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
We started Admiral Radio in 2019 and decided to give full-time music a shot once Coty finished grad school. We did a lot in that first year, especially for a couple of kids who had no idea what we were doing. Unfortunately 2020 had other plans for the world, so we went back into 9-to-5 life and being weekend warriors with music. We’d play 100 shows a year while still maintaining our full-time “non-music” jobs. We’d drive as far as we could for shows over the weekends (even had to fly several times) and always made sure to be back to work by Monday morning. It was a lot, but you gotta do what you gotta do! In 2024 we went back to full-time music and have been steadily touring ever since. We still have side hustles, but we’re grateful we can do what we love together and pay the bills doing it. We basically stick to the same philosophy now that we did back when we started: “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”.