Welcome to Episode 108 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross. I'm not here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. But once again, we have a very special guest, a return guest, Fang, Von Wrathenstein, A K A Ty Christian of the most metal band on earth.

If you listen to episode 82 a few months ago, you know who this is. If not, you can go check that out Bandhive got rocks slash 82 Lords of the Trident Ty. How's it going today? Doing really well. I just had my teeth cleans. So I have extra fang power today. They're nice and white. Did you? Really? Because I just got back from the dentist today to oh my God, we're dentists. Pros. Yeah, no, I I literally, I was I was talking to my dentist, by the way, I got a new dentist and my dentist rules.

She walks in. She's like, you're in a power metal band. Oh, let's talk about the last power Wolf album. I'm like, who are you? That's amazing. Yeah, she came in and we talked about the new mastodon record. Oh my God, she's yeah, she's amazing. I would never go to another dentist ever. I'm so jealous. So my dentist, I also went to a new dentist. He wasn't that cool. At least he didn't say anything about metal when I mentioned I do music, but for the first time like usually it's like the hygienist does the cleaning and then the dentist comes in and tracks and says like okay you're good.

See in six months the dentist actually did the cleaning himself. So I was like this is this is new, Like this is a good service. But man, what are the odds? Are you going back on june 7th because I got my six month appointment for june 7th. I am not no, no, I think I think it's too close to Prague Power Usa So I tried to stay away from early june gotcha. Okay, so this is a one off. It's not a continuous thing of having the same appointments.

Oh, I mean like you know, you know, we can call each other and we can confirm afterwards and just kind of sync up so we know our teeth are perfectly in the same state every time we get together and talk, you know, Yeah, exactly. Gotta clean the things well, you know, all of that aside for the people like the three people who got through our talk about getting our teeth cleaned, Thanks for tuning in and thanks for sitting through that. We're going to get to the episode now, but just before we jump into things Ty you do mad with Power Festival.

And since the last time we talked that festival happened back in august and I'm curious how it went. I do do mad with Power Festival for the people who are unfamiliar with it is the United States only and I think maybe the world's only arcade pinball and heavy metal festival, we take all three of those wonderful things, smash them all together into one room. It's a two day festival room full of arcade and pinball games that are all on free play. We bring in people from the arcade and pinball community to act as special guests.

We had shang Tsung from mortal kombat two here this year. He's actually kind of a recurring guest. He's a really cool dude. Uh, and we had a, we had a wonderful time. It was two days of really fantastic music and awesome camaraderie. It was quite a challenge. It was definitely the worst year in terms of stress levels that I've ever had with Mattis power because of covid and it was impacted even more so because a couple of weeks before the festival, the Dane County Health Association that were in Dan County here in Madison Wisconsin issued a mandate that you have to show vaccination to get into basically a place of business, like, like a concert and I was going to do that Anyway, I was kind of holding off on doing that because I was so worried about all of the logistics of doing that.

And then, you know, the day before I was going to announce it, The Dane County Health, you know, came out and said, oh there it is. So that was nice because it wasn't like my fault, quote unquote, you know? Yeah, you had a scapegoat. But then two days later after that they came out with a mask mandate. And so it was basically me like holding on for dear life hoping and praying that in the two weeks before Mattis Power they didn't come out and do an occupancy limit.

I'm surprised I didn't lose all my hair worrying about this because it's, you know, if that would have happened, we had 404 150 people and I would have had to cut that probably in half and explain to a bunch of people who already had plane tickets and already had accommodations and already had a plan that they were suddenly not allowed to come anymore. Thankfully that did not happen. Everybody came through the door. We only had like probably eight people that dropped due to the vaccine restriction and quite frankly, I didn't want them there anyway.

So, you know, if you're not gonna you're not gonna be vaccinated it. No, I don't want you in my festival. I don't want you at my shows. Absolutely not. And we didn't have a single confirmed case of covid, Everybody wore their masks, Everybody was fully vaccinated. We had a joke going around, We were saying, you know, you must be this respectful to attend mad with Power Festival. We didn't, we didn't have a like we barely had any incidents of anything like everybody was, it went off without a hitch and it was wonderful.

And I only got my face Photoshop down to Hitler twice. So that is a win, jeez and I take it this was by the anti-vaxxers who were upset that they couldn't go the people who Photoshop my face on a Hitler, they weren't coming anyway. Like they didn't have a ticket. They weren't going. We had a lot of backlash online of, you know, middle aged dudes wearing oakleys making a video from their truck, you know that we're like, well, I hope this damn festival burst the ground and that never never recovers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

You know, I ain't going, I'm like, yeah, you're not going because we sold out of tickets in like 48 hours in april. Like if you didn't get a ticket, you're not going, I hate to break it to you. But yeah, so yeah, a lot of, a lot of the backlash was from people who were like, we're not going would never go a lot of it, I could kind of safely ignore, but it was just very draining, having to respond and having to deal with the, you know, all that happening.

It was just a lot of negativity when it should have been a lot of positivity, but all that being said, it worked out great, Everybody had a fantastic time. All of the bands did just fabulously. We only had a few little technical hiccups here and there, but that's going to happen at pretty much any festival. And yeah, and the stage is set, so to speak for next year, for Mad with Power Five, it should should be Mad with Power Six, but you know, Mad with Power Five.

And we, at this point, we have almost a full lineup. I'm still working out some of the details with the headliners are two headliners, so they haven't been announced yet, but if I get who I get who I hope I get. I think people will be very excited. The rest of the lineup is absolutely stellar. We have a band, I haven't announced this band yet, but we have a band that is going to be a reunion. It's the reunion that I don't think people would have thought would have happened.

It's a reunion of a band that I think people will be very excited to see, and they're also kind of reforming with some new material. Yeah, I think people were very excited about it. That's sick. Well, so this episode comes out on december 21st, where should people go to find the lineup as far as has been announced by that time, yep Mattis Power fest dot com. We've got a video that we showed actually on stage of this year's mad with power fist And that's going to show you all the lineup we've got for 2022 so far.

And then yeah, as stuff comes out, we will announce it on the, on the Facebook page and on the website and Instagram and you know, all the different places that you can go online to to follow things, we'll announce them. They're perfect. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how that lineup pans out. I hope you get the headliners. You want me to? I'm glad the festival went well. And I'm looking forward to seeing what is going on for 2022. And then just before we get into the topic of today, which is sponsorship, which is something that I don't know a lot about, you know more than I do.

So I'm really stoked to talk to you about that and pick your brain. But for people who didn't listen to episode 82, like I told them to or they don't remember now, why don't you tell us a little bit about the most metal band on Earth Lords of the Trident. Right? Yeah, So I am the singer for Lords the trident. We are the most metal band on Earth Man a war will not return my phone calls for a mano a Mano cage match because they are scared 100% scared to face us in the ring.

But you were the most metal band on earth, we are a band basically full of, you know immortal warriors that right, The most metal music that you've ever heard. So if you've never seen Lord of the Trident live, there's a lot of armor explosions, Confetti, fire swords, more explosions. It's a very fire centric show. We set a lot of things on fire, much to the chagrin of many venue owners all over the world. But yeah, but we play, we play all over the world. We actually have a tour coming up end of 2022 where we are playing Japan, how sick we played europe in 2019 were playing all over the US and we're actually coming out to boston at the end of december to play with seven spires for their um cd release party.

So it should be really, really fun. No way, yep. I did sound for seven spires like five years ago. Oh man! Small world, just one show, but this is when they were still like babies like 20 years old and like in college and stuff, yep, yep, so were the main band before them. The direct support I suppose you could say for their big cd release show on New Year's Eve, so really excited to going out there. We put together a fly rig, consolidated everything down into a backpack except obviously my armor is going to be a little bit of a challenge.

I'm thinking about maybe just wearing it like, like you would a coat, You know, when you go on the plane because you know, it's like, oh, you can only bring one carry on. It's like, no, I'm wearing my art. Like this is my coat. Yeah. I think you can probably get on the plane with it, but getting through T. S. A. There's definitely gonna be that secondary inspection. Okay. Side note every time, I don't know if this happens to you, but every time I go through T. S. A, they touched me down in the private parts every time they're always like sure that there's something came up in the scan.

I'm like, man, I must just have like big dong energy or something like that. I don't know what's going on here, but you know, it's all that metal. Yeah, every time. So yes, I'm sure I'll get patted down if I try to wear it on the plane. But boy, wouldn't, you love to be the stewardess when you come on the play and it's like, oh uh, there's a guy, there's a guy in armor in, you know, 42 D, let's make sure we get him an extra rum and coke.

Here's the challenge. Film it for Tiktok or for the gram. You got to put this on. Social media. Yeah. Right. Alright. You gen z here's, here's the new Tiktok challenge. Get on a plane with armor on. Woo. Yeah. Anyway, you know, speaking of armor, your armor is not like a race car drivers uniform with like uh, labels and stuff, plaster all over it, Your armor is your armor. That's right. So when it comes to sponsorship, like this pivot here, Oh man. When it comes to sponsorship, What do you typically work out with as a deal?

Like how do you stay on brand? As a band while still giving some little kick back to your sponsor in the form of promotion of their brand. Right. Right. Right. So, you know, first and foremost when most bands think about sponsorships, 99. 9% of the time they are thinking like, oh man, we're going to get sponsored by Ibn Ezra by kessel custom guitars or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and they're going to give us free stuff and in return we get to be seen holding that free stuff on the stages that we play and okay, if you're like Metallica or if you are a band that is touring stadiums, you know, then yeah, that might be a good deal for Kessel custom guitars or for Ibanez or for Pearl or you know, whatever kind of percussion thing you've got there.

Yeah, that might be a good enough kickback, but like 99. 9% of the people who are asking me this question are playing like, you know, big doc's Roadhouse bar and grill on a saturday night, you know, like kiesel custom guitars doesn't care about you and should not care about you, there's absolutely no reason for them to sponsor you. So the first and foremost, when we're talking about sponsorships, I would say make sure that you temper expectations. There are a number of music gear brands out there that will basically willy nilly offer sponsorships to just about everybody.

And the sponsorship that they offer is you get 10% off In our online store drumsticks. It's a this is a great example, like, there's a lot of drumstick companies who will like easily give drummers a sponsorship and say, yeah, you get 5% off On our online store. And I mean, like, if you think about the economy of scale with that, right, drummers will be going through drumsticks like candy, because they're going to break them. And, you know, my drummer has like, I don't know, 50 pairs that he just brings along with him and he's he needs to have that many because he goes through them over and over and over again.

So 5% off for a company, you know, is not that much in terms of off of their bottom line. And if they have 400 bands all playing tim's great drumsticks dot com, that would make sense for them from a marketing perspective, because there's a lot of it expands over a large amount of area, a large amount of bands, right? And then bands can say like, you were sponsored by bob but the reality of it is that the sponsorships that you want to get the sponsorships that you really want to aim for as a band.

Those big sponsorships, right? The o the keys of custom guitars or the Ibon and sponsorship of the P. V. Or the blah blah blah blah blah. That sort of thing is only really gonna come for you when you've made it to a certain level to the point where you probably don't need that sponsorship. And that's the hard thing is like you get the sponsorship when you don't need it when it's more of like a Okay, okay, fine. Alright. I guess I'll try this new head on tour if you you know whatever.

So, you know, for for people who want to try to get into sponsorships. The first thing that I recommend that people do is they hyper localize it. You're not going to get a sponsorship with Pearl Drums, you're not going to get a sponsorship with kessel custom guitars. But could you get a sponsorship with like the local tequila company in your hometown where you hang out every other saturday night. Yes, great example for us is that we formed a sponsorship with Bos Meadery. Bos Meadery is a local media company here in Madison that makes really incredible.

Really, really, really incredible. I'm not just saying this because we're sponsored, like I legitimately love their meat and hang out there all the time and over the years with us working together, we've been able to create a custom Lords of the Trident mead, which has been really cool for us and as up sales for them, we've been able to have them sponsor mad with power fist, which has been great for us from a bottom line perspective where they'll give you know, X amount of money or they'll give X amount of resources or whatever and really, really great for them because the sponsorship is hyper localized, right?

Most of the people that come not most, but like in the beginning of Mad with power, a lot of the people that were coming to mad with power fest were people from Madison or from the surrounding area or people that would stop in to the mead hall to see what it was all about before they left. Nowadays we get people coming from, from all over the country and all over the world. But that early sponsorship as Bos was growing as we were growing, that made a lot of sense.

We worked hand in hand with them in that sort of away and the sponsorship was more of like a business friendship, you know, we wanted to see them succeed because I love their meat, I love the people, they're local and I want to see him do well, you know, when they succeed, we succeed because when they succeed the scene gets bigger people come to Madison and we can do more things, you know, hyper targeting with them like we did a we did a thing where we made, I don't know, 1000 coasters with Lord of the tried and Patreon and like funny funny pictures on them and they use those coasters for months at the Mead hall.

So it's that sort of like much like previously when I was talking about hyper focusing on like Youtube ads and facebook ads and things like that, you should also hyper focus and hyper localize on your sponsorships to begin. The main kind of problem with attracting a bigger sponsorship is the one thing that that will attract them to you is if you already have sponsorships, it's like the, you know, you need five years of experience to get this entry level job problem. Yeah, classic. Right? It's the same thing.

It's like, okay, it's an entry level job. So if you want a sponsorship with SK be cases then before you get that sponsorship with escapee cases, it's a lot easier to approach a big company and say we are this band, here's what we've done over the last you know, five years. We are also sponsored by this, this this this and this it's a lot easier for a big company to say, oh, these guys are legit when you have five other sponsorships, not in the same space, right?

So you wouldn't want like another guitar sponsorship if you're going for kessel or whatever, but if you have a whiskey sponsorship and we've got a case sponsorship and we've gotta, you know, were partially sponsored by a local car repair place and they do all of the repairs on the automobile. But you know, if you, if you have the sponsorships already, even if they're hyper localized, even if they're, even if they're just small things, business friendships, basically, it's a lot easier to then go to a bigger business that has a sponsorship that you might actually want and then say, oh yeah, we already have these five sponsorships.

It makes you seem more legit. It's much like when a band gets signed to a label, like, are they a different band after they get signed to a label? No. Are they any better? No, but they have an air of legitimacy surrounding them because somebody has already said yes. So, you know, if you're looking to get into the sponsorship world, the first thing that you want to do is just to get somebody to say yes. And ideally it should almost always be somebody that you know that you trust and a product that you really like and really can get behind. Sorry.

That was a lot of that was a lot to dump, right? All at once, but that's I mean that's kind of par for the course, right? No, that's great. First of all, clout, clout is the word that I'm thinking of this whole time, like you gotta have that clout, but also it's the same thing that I see when artists say, Hey, cool, like, so we played our first bar show to 50 people, so what are we going to open for you to on the arena tour that's coming through?

Um after you work your way up, and you know, you play like 100 cap, and then a 200 cap and then a 400 cap, and then a five and then 1000 and then a 5000. Like, then maybe you can open up for you to on the arena tour, it's stepping stones, and as much as that's not always the rule, there are exceptions. Like on last week's episode, I spoke with Jackson Cochin, who was a tour manager and their first tour ever, they had never played a show before, he did like one warm up show with them and then they went on tour with Young Blood and their fifth show ever was sold out Alexandra Palace in London, which holds 10,000, wow, that's insane.

But that never happens. That's like, the exception proves the rule, and that band is also on Youngblood's Management and all that kind of stuff. So, it that's what you're saying, Somebody said yes, and then they're like, oh, hey, like, we could put this band that we work with with this other artists that we work with, good, they'll do it for cheap because nobody knows who they are and they'll get more exposure, which is good for them as well as for us, it's exactly what you're talking about.

It's getting somebody to say yes, and then once you have that, yes, you know, you start working with this company, you start, you know, brainstorming ideas, the partnerships and sponsorships and that sort of stuff. They don't have to just be, we get X product for free or we get X product for discount. A lot of the best sponsorships and partnerships that I've ever done and the ones that have been the most fruitful have been like, you know, you promote us will promote you, that kind of thing.

Like there's no exchange of money or goods or whatever. It's just that like, hey, we really love what you're doing, we really love your product and we use it all the time and we, you know, we put it in music videos and all that sort of stuff, which you guys be interested in doing something with our big dumb faces on it and most of the time they'll say yes, because it's an easy yes. You know, it's like, let's say I was a big captain morgan fan, you know, All right, it's all right, let's do something a little closer to life.

Alright, 17 92 single barrel bourbon, gorgeous, right, that's my favorite bourbon. If they came to me and they said, hey, we want you to put a bunch of bottles of 17 92 in the back of your next music video and then we'll come up with a very special like Fang von Rath Einstein face on the bottle version of 17 92 or we'll make a bottle shaped like your big dumb head, how about that? I'm like yes, yes, that's it. I would easily do that, even if it costs me a little bit of money because it's, it's that promo, right?

It's, it's another way of getting around towards clout, not only are you working with this brand, but the brand is also interested in working with you and then more people who would, you know drink 17 92 or whatever, see your big dumb face on a bottle and they're like, oh, I wonder what this Lord of the trading band is all about, you know that kind of thing. I mean a lot of that happened with us with Bos Mead where we were so intertwined with Bos for so long and literally literally had our big dumb faces on a bottle of me and our big dumb faces were being sold in the grocery stores all across, not only like Madison, but kind of like lower Wisconsin and that helped us out quite a bit, you know, we didn't get any free meat out of the deal, we didn't get any free, you know any free this or that out of the deal.

I mean I still go into Bos Meadery didn't just pay my full tab. I'm not like some sort of like royalty there, but it was a huge publicity stepping stone for us to kind of break into different markets in a weird way, in a non musical way that touched a different group of people, a different subset of potential fans that we would have never reached before. So I think, you know, another way to think about the sponsorship is quid pro quo. You know, we'll do something for you, you do something for us.

Nothing has been exchanged except for easy free publicity stuff. Yeah. And it's still a great way to trade. I mean if you think about it, you could be paying facebook for ads, you could be paying to put up posters, whatever, but just getting your name out there is a good trade, Especially if the brand's lineup, like it sounds like the brand's really do with Bos Meadery, that's a fitting part of your brand. You know, maybe if somebody is like a straight edge band, that's not the best idea, then they can go with um, what is it?

Death, water, liquid, death liquid, death. Yeah, exactly. Them go with them, you know, but something that fits the brand and the aesthetic and I don't know, Bos Meadery. But I would assume that their brand is not like poppy happy bubbly. Like, you know, polar opposite of Lord of the Tribe. It's probably somewhere more towards like were dark and brooding or something. You know, they have skulls on their logo. It's very there you go. It's very good. But the funny thing though is that they have two sets of logos, they've got the skulls on their logos for like, you know, like the ooh, this is our meat and then they have like kind of more flowery type of meat where it's very, it is very like Bos Meadery, you know, kind of kind of a logo.

It's sort of funny, but I mean, you know, generally, I think that also kind of that dichotomy also kind of encompasses Lords of the Trident. We just came out with these patches, new wave of nice metal buds, nice. So we yeah, we are, that is very us to were very, very much nice metal bud. So it works with us. But I would say for most people, right? Everybody has, everybody has a somebody in town that they either frequent a lot or they know the bartender or they know the owner or that kind of stuff.

Start there, go to that company and say, look, can we put your name on our website, can we, can we rep, you know, a patch on our patch vest, Can we work something out where we do a partnership deal in terms of publicity that would be beneficial to both of us and kind of go from there and then you can eventually, after multiple years of doing this and proving that it works for you then you can start to go for bigger for bigger companies that might be interested in you and honestly much to the chagrin of a lot of people and much like a lot of the things in the music industry 90% and like a lot of things in life, 90% of it is like knowing somebody, it's who you know we got our sponsorship with escapee cases because we knew the local sales rep who dealt with escapee cases and he put in a good word for us, he heard we were looking for a case for our in ear box that we were building at the time and he said oh well you know I know the person that SKB And I wonder if they'd want to do a sponsorship with you.

So we we talked with SKB And it was it was an easier yes for them because we already had basically we already had three liquor sponsorships at the time. And so they were like, oh well ship we're being sponsored by this and this and this and this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah that that works and once that partnership happened that is a situation full disclosure with SKB Where we get cases at like a very very very very heavy discount right? We still pay for our cases but it's basically at cost is what we pay, it is an incredible amazing sponsorship and we are so lucky to have it and so thankful to have it because I mean like yeah, we we put cases on everything now and it's amazing.

But when you get that big sponsorship, like an escapee or Kiesel or an Ibanez or pearl or whatever, when you get that big sponsorship, you absolutely positively have to do everything in your power to make sure that you are wrapping their brand and giving back to them as much as possible. I did have a pretty frank conversation with with our Rapid S KB who basically said most of the bands that we, you know, that we give a sponsorship to, we have to kick them off within six months to a year because they just basically they get the sponsorship and then they act like, like that's it, it's over that kind of thing.

When we got our escapee sponsorship, we made a number of videos for the channel that actually still still do pretty good, where we do like a gear rundown or you know, I did a video where I explained how to build and in Iraq which turned into a really popular video on our channel and we very, you know very clearly showed the escapee case and we said, you know, this is why we went with SKB We think you should go with escapee blah blah blah blah, all that kind of stuff.

That sort of evergreen content for S. K. B was a gold mine, they were like, oh this is this is way better than somebody just taking a picture of their case and tagging sk B blah blah blah blah blah. So we did that, we did a number of photo shoots, like with the cases where we say okay, you can use this for promo shoots. And then what we do also is we also make sure to put their logos at the end of every single video that we make, right?

So every video at the very end, we've got our sponsors logos, we've got the sponsor's logo on the website. You know, we have a whole sponsorship area on the website, any time we take a photo for instagram or whatever that has the cases in it. We'll try to tag escapee. We do uh thank you, sponsors section on our podcast where we, you know, we'll pull up an S. K. B case and then I'll make up a funny story about it, We're out at nam in California and we got this little tiny itty bitty escapee case and it's a full on escapee, like it's indestructible, you know, so it's this little itty bitty baby?

S KB case and then they put inside of it like hand sanitizer and aspirin and Lozenges, they call it like a nam preventive kit or whatever and it's amazing. But once you're done with it, it is this full on escapee case that's like too tiny to hold, I mean anything. So we bring this on our podcast and we're like, you know, we want to thank S KB for sponsoring us. This is our fabric a egg holder. Huh? The thing I like about escape is I can put my fabric eggs right in here.

I can throw this down a flight of stairs. I can run over it with a freight train. I took a baseball bat to this the other day. You know what? I still have those fabric eggs, baby S KB who and we sent that off to them. Apparently they like, they call that the fabric egg holder now and they, they pass that around the office and this is all to say that when you get that, when you get that big sponsorship and even if you get smaller sponsorships, it's always important to think about what can we do for them.

So that the business relationship continues to grow much like getting on a tours when you are top of mind for somebody, you will have more opportunities, right? So the more that you do to foster that relationship between your band and their business or you know, in other cases, between two bands or abandon a booking agency or whatever, the more you do for them, the more top of mind you are, and then the more top of mind you are, you're the first person that comes to mind when they're like, oh, who should we, who should we make this case for or who should we, whose big dumb face should we throw on this bottle.

Oh, that guy who's always talking about us, you know? Yeah, Well, I'm really glad that you brought up S K B. As an example because everybody thinks of like guitar sponsorships, drum sponsorships, that kind of stuff where people in the audience are going to want to know, hey, like what guitar is that you're using? I've never seen that before. Like, it looks like a less pole, but it's not a Gibson, what is it? Or, you know, drums like, oh, you have SJC drums, like I can see that because that's what the drumhead says, because you don't have your own bands, one which you probably have the Lords of the Trident drumhead, but you know, the average band doesn't typically get to that point yet.

So people see like, oh, what brand is this? But with cases, no one's like, what's that case? Like, I really want that case. So going the extra mile, I'm sure is massive for them because like you said, they're not used to it and that's not to say artists shouldn't do this when they get a guitar sponsorship or a drum sponsorship or something, but those things are much more in the forefront then a case. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, everybody needs a case, you're gonna need a case if you are a gigging musician, you absolutely 1000% need a case.

You need a good ass case, right? You need a case that's not going to break on you. That's going to take care of your instrument because if your instrument fails, then you fail, especially if you're flying united. Oh my God, I wish they made an escapee case for my throat. Honestly. Like I put my throat in an escapee case every single night if I could. But yes, and that is another great point. That sort of leads into another great point. There are obvious things that musicians look for to sponsor you.

But then there's a lot of non obvious things where you could go towards this for a sponsorship or partnership or some sort of quid pro quo publicity thing that would probably way more beneficial to you as an artist because I mean, let's face it, yeah, having a custom guitar is real nice, but like people will have a guitar that they like and that they're comfortable with and that will be their guitar and they're not going to switch out guitars every single night. Like no, they have a guitar that they like and that they can play and that's it.

But like cases or tires for your road. Uh, mobile. I kept saying like try to mobile in my head from my, try to mobile for tires, you know how many tire companies have heavy metal bands, you know, like posing in front of their tires like yeah. You know, Firestone baby with literal fire. Yeah, exactly. There's all these extra things that are music related in a sense. But you could get more publicity, more mileage. I'm still on the tire metaphor here. More mileage out of right than just a guitar or a drum set or symbols or whatever.

So think about the different things that you use when you're on tour. Think about the different things that you use when you're playing a gig. Think about all of the brands that you interact with and maybe think about, okay, what can I look towards? You know, O Lord of the trident sponsored by in text blow up beds when we're done and with our, with our, with our God, I wish we were sponsored by them when we're done with our shows. We want a comfortable place to sleep because normally it's a barroom floor in text.

Good stuff. As long as you don't have a cat. I learned that the hard way. Yeah. Side note I I own 25 in text blow up beds right now because every mad with power. We're always putting bands up in like friends of friends houses. Oh yeah. So I purchased 25 blow up beds. So if anybody, if anybody ever comes on tour, I say, oh, stay at my house, can we bring the whole tour? Yeah. Bring the whole tour. You know, I got 25 beds. Like let's do this. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, and here's the thing you're talking about all these brains and I'm gonna send you clips of all this that you can then send to those brains. Yeah, exactly. So even though you're not sponsored by in tex, maybe you will be now because you're on the record of having 25 in text mattresses to put sleepy bands into a comfortable place where they can rest. Right? And also try and come. I'm still fucking waiting. I'm waiting. That's too good. I'm right here. It's in the name. I've got it ready.

What are you waiting on? Come on. We know you have the clean teeth like we just talked about that earlier. I do. Come on. So yeah, I mean there's there are so many other different things that that you can be sponsored by or sponsor or you know, partner with that will help to, you know, increase your reach as a brand than just instruments. Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we kind of start to wrap this up, I have one big question for you, which is, it's a two part question one, have you turned down any sponsorship offers and to are there red flags that you would advise people should look for to potentially turn down the sponsorship offer because I want to put this out there.

If there's something they should know, they should know this. Yeah, I've turned down sponsorship offers before. Yes, I could probably say this because they're not around anymore. There was a thing, a local thing called scorpion shots where they had like flavored shots with little baby scorpions in them. And the idea was that you'd add it to a shot and you eat the scorpion and take the shot and yeah, I don't like that, you know, like, I'm sure it was fine, I'm sure the product was great, but I personally think that's gross and I am not going to be like, I'm not going to be eating scorpions every other day on camera to help you with your brand.

Like, oh, you know, no, thank you. Okay, the immediate red flags for sponsorships as a smaller band. First off, see who else is being sponsored by this brand, make sure it's not a fly by night company and make sure it's not something that they'll just sponsor anybody who comes around, like I said earlier with that example with the drumsticks, it sometimes makes sense for drumstick companies to sponsor like a million bands and offer 5% off. And if that's something that really, really, really, really works for you and will help your bottom line then by all means go for it.

But don't expect that sponsorship to be like an in road to a bigger sponsorship, the bigger brands will understand that if you're sponsored by Company X drumsticks, right? And Company X drumsticks is sponsoring 10,000 other bands that doesn't necessarily show them that you have any clout. It just shows them that Company X. Is like using this, this kind of marketing for their own, you know, means basically. So, you know, check to see who else is being sponsored by these brands and then check to see what the deal situation is.

You know, if what they're doing is they're offering you like what is essentially like a coupon, 5% off, 10% off, that's not really a sponsorship or a partnership. If it's 5 to 10% off, what that is, is that's a black friday coupon, Maybe a real sponsorship, a real partnership. We're looking more in the 30 to 40% off or even like the kind of at cost sort of a thing and that, you know, with great power comes great responsibility with that comes more responsibility on your part as a band to do more for that brand, right?

So if somebody is willing to offer you 30 to 40% off of music gear or whatever, that is probably more of a green flag than a red flag. If somebody's offering you 5% they don't really care about you. Especially if, you know, if you have a band member who works at Guitar Center, they can get a better deal than that, right? Right? That's one of the things to look out for, if they don't tell you upfront what they expect from you, that's another red flag, they'll say something like when we did our thing with SKB You know, they'll say something to the effect of like we saw your Youtube page and we were wondering if you could do a couple of videos that means that they've already, they know who you are, they have invested the time to look at your band, your brand, whatever and they know what you can offer them, right?

So that's like, oh, green flag, They know us, they have a plan for our partnership, if they don't give you anything up front, what they expect you to do for them, that's a red flag because it's like, oh well they don't even care who you are, they don't understand how the relationship is going to work together. So yeah, probably, probably not good. The biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest thing that I would say to anybody looking to get sponsorship partnership, whatever is you absolutely 500% need to love the company, you need to love their product, you need to be able to stand behind that product and defended escapee cases are amazing cases.

We have thrown things off of the back of moving trucks accidentally that have been fine because they've been in an escapee case. Like I will stand behind S KB 100% the people there are amazing now if there was a fly by night company that offered us free cases but their case is sucked, I wouldn't want to be behind that. I'd rather take, you know, a 30% discount on a good case that I know will work than 100% discount on a case that I think is going to mess up my gear just as that kind of an example.

So going back to the scorpion shot thing, you've got to love it. You gotta be able to be excited about being sponsored by them in order to make it work because otherwise, like why even bother. That's another great reason why hyper localizing your sponsorships when you start out is wonderful because you already know the places in town that you love and you bring your friends too and you tell them you got to try this or that or you got to eat this. If your car breaks down, you got to go to this place, you already have that built into kind of like your ethos.

Like I go here, I eat this, I drink this, boom, you've got it right there. If you don't like the company, don't, don't get in bed with them, you know, like don't do that, you gotta gotta fall in love with them first before you start decided to sign that paper. So yeah, I'd say, you know all of those things, that's what you want to look for in a good sponsorship. Yeah, well this has been so helpful and so I opening like any of the absolute basics, like don't aim high right away.

Like start small and work your way up. But this has been so beneficial for me, and I'm sure it's gonna be really beneficial for the Bandhive community as well. This was inspired by a thread in the group, like, I don't know, like five months ago now that you reply to and I was like, hey we should have you back on the show and then things got crazy and like a week or two ago I found like uh yeah, we're gonna have Ty back, like let's do this.

So thank you for coming back. I'm excited to hear that Lord of the Trident is going to be on the East Coast on New Year's Eve. Before we go, what's the plan for 2022? We already talked about Mad with Power Five, but you know what's up for the band? We have a new record coming out, We finished the record in on july 1st, it's currently being mixed and mastered by none other than Jacob Hansen, who is basically the God of mixing power metal at this point. He's done the last couple Unleash the Archers Records of Fantasia.

I mean the list goes on and on, Vole Bee is crazy. So we've got a new record coming out, we are going to be releasing it in a very weird way that's never been done before, as far as I know to kind of get people interested. I talked to the pr manager that we're working with about our release for this record and he goes, huh? I think I could get Forbes to write an article about this, this is really, really revolutionary and I'm like okay, so it's coming, I can't tell you when, I can't tell you how, I can't tell you why, but it is coming out and I think a lot of people will be really interested and jazzed about the way that we're putting it out at the moment.

We have eight music videos planned for this record. So check that out. You can check us out at lourdes the trading dot com. Like I said, we're gonna be touring Japan At the end of 2022 and we're actually putting together a fan package with another local company that I love to death, a local Japan tourism agency that specifically does small, tiny tours boutique tours around very specific subjects and like personalized to the people that are going. So we're gonna be putting together a Lords of the Trident sightseeing Japan tour sick where we're going to take probably 15 to 20 people.

And this is going to be open for our Patreon backers first and I absolutely positively guarantee it'll sell out very quickly. So get on the Patreon if you haven't done that yet. Patreon dot com slash or to try it and if you want to do this it's going to be sightseeing by day and they're gonna follow us on tour by night. So they're gonna go to every show, they're gonna get to see every single band that we play with. It's gonna be a bunch of local bands.

It's gonna be a bunch of really fun local japanese bands. And then you get to sightsee Tokyo, kyoto Osaka, probably Hiroshima all over the place, probably Nagoya, It's gonna be a lot of fun. So that's coming up at the end of 2022 matters. Power fest is in the middle of august this year, 19th and 20th, next year, 19th and 20th. And we've got most of the, most of the bands already confirmed. Check that out mad with Power fast dot com. And then other than that, we are, we're probably going to be doing a big release party around the release of the album.

Whenever that happens, who knows, I don't even know. And we probably will be doing a little bit of a tour around that too. So, all the details will be at lourdes and trading dot com. You can check us out on facebook on instagram on the twitters and the, all the, all the things that you kids love, we have a Tiktok, I don't understand that. I'm too old old and dead inside, I'm a french existentialist painter. About Tiktok, like, I don't understand it. The kids, you know, they just want to make these teak sense of ducks.

I don't get, did you know? But we'll, you know, we'll be on, there will probably post something on Tiktok at some point. But the big thing, right? That if the big, big, big, big thing is get on that. Patreon, Patreon dot com slash sort of the trident. Even if you sign up for a buck, you get so many, many, many things for free. So yeah, absolutely signed for a buck, you get all sorts of crazy behind the scenes stuff, exclusive, videos, exclusive, music exclusive merch and yeah, and it helps us out directly.

Alright, well, killer Ty, thank you so much for joining us, listeners, Go sign up for the Lords of the Trident. Patreon and if you want to hear thai talk about how you can set up your own Patreon, Head on over to Bandhive got rocks slash 82, that's the number 82 for our episode with Ty, every band should be on Patreon Ty Christian of Lords of the Trident. Hey, thanks again so much, I really appreciate it and I hope you have an awesome day and happy holidays because uh this comes out on December 21, so it's almost holidays of all kinds time.

Happy holidays to you too. Hope you have a very metal Christmas and holiday time. Yeah. Mhm That does it for this episode of the Bandhive podcast, Thank you so much for tuning in and listening and of course, big thanks to ty Christian a k A fang, fun Wrath Einstein of Lords of the Trident for joining us on the podcast again, I learned so much in this episode, it's really great to dive into new topics that I'm not so familiar about so I can learn as well.

I really enjoy doing that. So thank you. Ty for sharing your knowledge and listeners. I hope you all got lots of great information out of this. I know I sure did and I just have one to ask for you. If you have any topics you want to hear about, please let us know. Just drop us a line on social media. We're at band, I've got rocks on instagram or go to your email. I know it's old school but email James at Van five dot rocks and just let us know what you want to hear.

And we will gladly find a guest who can talk about that topic because I like learning. If it's something I know about, maybe we'll do an episode with just me and matt. If it's something we need a guest for it, we will absolutely find a guest who can teach us all about that topic because that's just how it goes. We're all here to learn. So thank you again for listening. Happy holidays, whether it's Hanukkah christmas, Kwanza. Any of the holidays you celebrate, We hope that you have had or will have a great time with family and loved ones, even if you celebrate some other holiday, that's fine.

Happy holidays like we support them all, I forget the staff, there's like 20 holidays in the month of all different religions and denominations. So celebrate whatever feels right for you. We appreciate you so much and we just hope that you can have a good time with the people that you want to be around this month and really all year round. So thanks again. We'll be back next Tuesday with another brand new episode until then have a great week, Stay safe and of course as always, keep rocking.