Photo credit: David Wells
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
We’ve gone through many different tour vehicles! Our current tour vehicle is a Prevost XLII, but we’ve gone through some pretty terrible vans, RVs and even my high school truck at one point. Our most notable break-down story is when our first bus caught fire in late 2019.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
It’s definitely tough to get into a routine, but we all try to be pretty selective of what we eat. Over the years, we have finally gotten a good rider set up with healthy options that venues provide us, so that helps a lot!
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
It’s a big running joke with the band, but I break my D or G string on an almost nightly basis during shows. At a minimum every 2-3 nights on tour!
Where do you rehearse?
We typically try to rehearse when we are touring to maximize our time on the road, so we will tack time onto our soundcheck to work through new material and pick what goes into the new live set.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
There were some pretty bad ones before this, but from what I can remember, “Quite Like You” was one of the first songs I remember writing.
Describe your first gig.
For our first full band show, we played a BBQ place for $200 outside of Killeen, TX and the owner actually left before we were finished and never paid me. I tried for probably 6 months to get a hold of him. I guess we were that bad.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Music is and has been my full-time job since college. There were a few years before doing music full-time when I was actually a part-time tennis coach with my brother; those were some really fun years. I played tennis in college, so it was a pretty easy way to make money on the side for a while.
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’ve definitely seen a steady increase these last 5 years. We always try to stay super lean with our touring because our main goal is to have the best team possible, but also keep everyone as comfortable as possible, which we finally feel like we’ve been able to do to these last few years. Hopefully, we will continue to see similar growth in the years to come after we release Norther on March 1st.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
Don’t do it all yourself. I had a bad habit of taking on too much and not getting help. It can be super overwhelming as a new artist with little-to-no budget, but if you invest in people to help you, it’ll save you a lot of time and heartache and enable you to do your job better and progress faster. Find a team you can trust – we are fortunate enough to have one now.