Welcome to Episode 19 of the Bandhive Podcast.

Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am James Cross here with my co host, Aaron Gingras of Suburban Samurai. Hi. How are you today, Aaron? I'm quite well. How are you?

Glad to hear that. Thanks. I'm doing fine. And it's super special because we also have Infinite Signal. Here we have Kelly and Eli Kent. Are you guys we're doing? Well, thank you. Yes, they ever Thank you. That's awesome. Well, it probably is because you guys live in San Diego. So that Z every day, every Thursday. Yeah, which and I lived there for a year and a half. And there's, like, no snow, which that's always a plus. And you guys know this You lived in Minnesota for a while.

So exactly true. We're glad to be here. Yeah, plus, I mean so Cal is like the pop punk music center of the world. So it's like the mecca right now. Yeah, well, it was back, and we're making it The Mecca. Yeah, we're coming back. Mecca number two, Which happened, of course. Right after I left. Thank you, guys. Thank you. But anyway, so we're here to talk to you because you released Love me, Not your e p just a few months ago or at the time we're recording this.

Just about 2. 5 weeks ago. Eso that's been, I think, by far the most, uh, polished release you guys have done not only musically, but also from a marketing standpoint and a branding standpoint. So that's really what we wanted to talk about here today because it seemed like the two of you. Well, three of you counting Drew Nelson who's not on the interview. The three of you pulled something off that I think pretty much most regional de II bands just can't do or not. Can't do that's the wrong word.

Don't know how to dio yet. There's a lot of chicken to the egg to it. Or just don't Yeah. Ah, lot of bands are kind of like, uh, it's like, What's that movie? Um, dreams. I was thinking you were gonna ask, What's the word? And I could be super pessimistic and come up with a lot of words. Yeah, well, I think it's kind of the field of dreams attitude of if if we play it, they will come or if they if we record it, they will listen something like that.

But that's exactly what you guys didn't do. You actually put a lot of effort into it. That's what we want to talk about and get listeners to understand that the more effort you put into it, I wouldn't say it's exponential. But you can clearly see a difference between bands who put out a CD and make like to Facebook posts and bands who did what you did and have a really killer marketing plan. Your posting about it pretty much every day. You had music videos leading up to it.

You have pre sale packages. That's all fairly standard for, you know, major twittering bands for quote unquote bigger bands. Yeah, yeah, but for a D i y band, that's almost unheard off. So I was really impressed by how you executed that. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. There's a lot of work, but it was a lot of work that has so far paid off totally worth it. I'm glad to hear that not only was impressive, but it was also really cool to see that you don't need to have a management team and a booking agent and professional graphic designers, which I'm sure you guys have professional graphic designers.

But it's not like you have a team that's on retainer. You found everyone and pieced all these pieces together rather than like a management team would have, you know, the go to person for graphics, for audio, for all these different things. So to start things off, how long ago did you start working on theme marketing plan for Love Me? Not so before we even recorded or we went in for pre production. We had an idea to get a friend of ours or just someone to hire Thio film and take photos of our preproduction session because all three of us are hands on deck, we don't really have the time, or it tends to get for gotten when we try and man that stuff ourselves Yeah, and a lot of times for our previous recordings that I would bring in just a camera on a tripod.

And either I'd forget to, like, put it recording, or it would be recording. And it's like it's this one angle and it's not great, so it doesn't really matter anyway. It's just kind of like we're documenting it for our own purposes. But we wanted something really cool that we could show other people this time. So yeah, that we went into the studio on March 13th for our pre production and 10 days before that we because we thought of this last minute we hit up a friend who is a videographer and photographer just about doing that day.

And he said, You know, I've been wanting to kind of document the process of a band in the studio from start to finish. So if you guys would be cool with that like we'll do that, I'll give you one minute clips from each day that I attend. I'll give you a bunch of photos and stuff like that. And so, honestly, the marketing side of this started when we found out that Jesse was going to be doing all of that stuff for us. Yeah, once we knew what we were going to get from him and they were like, Okay, we can really use this to push our release and we can plan out kind of structure how we wanted to lead up so that it SSM or exciting push that it's actual music and actual lead up to the drop Exactly music.

It led up to the release of our single Wolf, Spain and the Music Video. So March is about 11 months in advance from when we release the album. So this was March of 2019. Okay. And so it sounds like essentially, it started as somewhat of a happy accident that Jesse wanted to do this, and it just fit perfectly with what you were doing. We had the idea prior to this to kind of keep things under wraps and not talking about the fact that we were in the studio recording.

Of course, our friends knew about it. Um, we would if we're playing shows, we would say, you know, we're in studio right now, like this is a new song that's gonna be coming out eventually, but any social media stuff. We all kept that just on our own phones and just saved for when it was time. Yeah, we would have done that either way whether Jesse was going to be involved with that or not. Thankfully, Jesse was involved with that, and he did an amazing job with that.

Yeah, unbelievable. His little clips and his photo is just like he's so good. He just captures it perfectly. That's awesome. And it sounds like it was something that really benefited. Not only you, but since this was something he wanted to experiment with, I would hope that he got a bunch of good footage for himself to that he can use for his project. Exactly. And that's what he wanted to do is kind of just have that kind of under his belt. Get that under his belt for something to say.

Hey, you know, I imagine he's going to He's going to say, Look what I did for this band, I could do this for Ear Banda's Well, that's perfect, because that way it was, you know, mutually beneficial for you guys and for Jesse, definitely. And so the videos you started releasing these clips on a weekly basis. Was it September October? Sometime around, then I think, right it was in October. Um, it was the first weekend in October that we released our first one minute clip, which was pre pro.

So what we did was we released a video on Sunday with, like, a Line, a lyric from one of the upcoming songs, and that's when we started using our sad rose emoji. Then I believe, on Tuesdays and Thursdays we posted photos from that session. So pre pro, we'd get the one minute clip from Jesse along with sometimes 20 pictures or so. And then we would pick the best three or six or whatever. And we would post those the following Tuesday Thursday just to keep a constant flow of media going.

So Sundays like a minute recap video, Tuesday photos and, like Cem, Cem or like, explanation or quotes or stuff like that. And then Thursday, the same thing. And then all of a sudden, the following Sunday, you got another video coming out. Gotcha. Yeah, The next Sunday was drums, so we did pre pro drums, guitars, bass, vocals. And that was what, five weeks? I think we held off one week on the last one. I can't remember why, though. We were originally going to be really seeing wolfsbane a lot earlier A couple weeks earlier.

Oh, that's right. But we kind of dropped the ball on the whole uploading Thio digital distribution sites. That was my fault. You have to upload them pretty far in advance when you want to do a scheduled release on. But I didn't know that. So we're like, give a minimum of two weeks for your upload to hit all streaming platforms. And we were like a week, Yeah, worst case scenario. I mean, it might have been up in five days, but we didn't know. So we're like, we're gonna have to hold off for another week on this one, just to be safe.

But that was the cool part about it was we hadn't released any dates yet. No one knew when we were going to be releasing anything. All they knew is we were releasing these videos of us in the studio. My hair was completely different by the time we were releasing everything to when we were in the studio and people didn't put two and two together. People were like, Oh, you were in the studio last week. Saw that I was like, Yeah, that was, like four months ago, but yeah, yeah, even at the beginning, maybe the first two or three episodes.

I didn't have any tattoos on my left arm, which is a full sleeve now. So, like we're releasing stuff and I have no tattoos. And Kelly's hair is different and, like they still didn't like quick, it doesn't really catch on to it. I mean, everyone just kind of expects bands of our caliber to post things while you're doing it, and that's exactly what we did not want to do this time around. It was kind of a bummer, because it's really exciting to be in the studio. But at the same time, it all kind of paid off.

And people who are friends and bands noticed people who are not in bands noticed. Promoters around the area noticed it was just a really cool thing for us to do and kind of push ourselves in our own boundaries. So what we just trying to get to the next level should dio Well, I think it's really interesting that the way you spaced it out because you're saying people thought you were in the studio at that time. And obviously, you know, people think the more professional bands, let's like, you know, in quotes, professional, go into the studio for like a month and a half.

And that's just what they're doing for a month and a half, or even now with smaller budgets. You know, the major label bands. We're spending less and less time in the studios to, unless it's like, you know, Green Day, they probably have pretty much carte blanche to do whatever they want, but like, you know, those mid level bands that they're on the radio. But they're not playing arenas. They're probably down to half the time or even less maybe, of what they used to do. Or they might be recording at a friend's place.

Who has a home studio or something. You never know. But so it seems like you almost gave that appearance that, like you're in the studio for a month straight, just like that's what you're doing. It kind of felt that way, I think, Yeah, all the content, Yeah, because we're like Monday. Here's a recap video or Sunday. And then Tuesday Here's a bunch of photos from us in the studio. Thursday were in the studio again. It looks like we're in the studio, like, all these different days in a row.

And it's from, like, one day, you know? Yeah. So, on that note, how much time did you actually spend in the studio? Oh, that's a good question. Um, I have a spreadsheet. Hang on. Okay, you guys, the numbers guy, for the most part. So we did pre pro, middle of march. We started drums the beginning of April. I believe we were finally done with everything in August. August 24th was our last day. That was our group vocal session. And then we got mixes and masters back in, I think End of September.

And then Wolf Spain came out at the beginning of December. We'll have to say I have the feeling that Eli and Aaron would be best friends. Spreadsheets. That seems like totally something like you would do. Erin is just like, okay, these are the dates were in the studio, and this is what we accomplished. Like I could see you doing that. Oh, for sure. For nothing else like use against somebody. I don't know. E no. You guys don't know Aaron personally, but he was production coordinator for, uh, Arena amphitheater level touring artist for a few years.

So he's like a spreadsheet whiz, and I love spreadsheets. But if I ever have questions about spreadsheets, I ask Aaron. That's just how it goes around here. Setting the expectation. Well, The other day I was at work and I had a texted Eli and asked him about how to do something on Excel because I didn't know how to do it. But, you know, he knew he was like, Do this this this and spreadsheet master over here. He's got the spreadsheet up right now. So if you did pre pro in March and then finished on August 24th, that's about five months of recording.

17 days we spent in the studio on and off, and it was a total of 69. 6 hours. Okay, so that's a little more than 10 hours per songs. It's five songs, so you know, we could say that you were at about 13. Let's just, you know, guesstimating around it. 13 hours per song, which is actually pretty respectable. That's about a day and a half of recording per song. We cruise through pretty well, Adam. Cisco was the one who recorded um, us and hey said we cruised. Yeah, we came in well under budget from when he was estimating That's awesome.

To be clear, was that the 69 hours? So for many, was that 17 days, however many days was that in support of tracking the material that would find its way onto the release? Or was that did you sort of cluster around of pre production? Uh, in with the time spent in the studio which found its way into the release and or I guess, how did that work? Did you, uh, come out with some, like, super rough got demos and that you spend time in the studio working on pre pro?

Or did you sort of separate those two items and was pre pro, sort of on your own or somewhere else? And I guess, Where did you guys do? What? Yeah, So that 69. 6 hours that includes 10 hours of pre production. So our actual tracking time was 59. 6 hours a read on for this release. Um, basically, I came out with just a ton of demos the summer that summer before So summer 2018. And between that time and preproduction, we kind of cut those down into what we wanted toe have is like a solid five track EP. We also had an additional three songs that we were kind of working out.

So we added those into our pre pro day kind of get a feel for him. What would really work? Well, work all of the other songs, though all of the five that are on the E p. They were complete start to finish even from pre pro Day. And then Adam sprinkled his magic in there and was like, Hey, you should double this chorus. Hey, we should do this. I really want to hear this again. And that was kind of it for pre pro versus tracking. Um, we just kind of laid it all out.

Yeah, I think they were about 99% done at during preproduction. Oh, my God, that's awesome! Super streamline. Yeah. Three songs we did record during pre pro that we have not done anything with. We didn't actually track those for the ape. But now we have them for later. Also awesome and so out of curiosity than to it's because you mentioned you had whittled it down. So you ended up with essentially eight songs that air that we're almost done. Yeah, on your pre pro day. How many songs total did you have before that?

How maney did you cut out? So I started. I ended up with a total of 48 demos and whittled those down to eight. Okay, I remember reading somewhere. I think we've discussed in the last podcast, uh, with Matt, actually which this ties in perfectly to Episode 16. How you could save thousands on your next album, not only because of the pre production, but in that episode we literally talk about how you can save time in the studio and spend less time and money there by being well prepared. And that's exactly what you two were talking about.

That even your engineer said that you came in way under budget because you were so prepared. So that just goes to illustrate that if bands were prepared, they save money. So if somebody hasn't listened to episode 16 yet don't check it out at Bandhive dot rocks slash 16 Save some money. And one thing I do want to add on to that is, um, every day that I came in to record my guitars. Typically, my songs have, like at least three guitar tracks, sometimes upto like five and wear a three piece.

So it's guitar, bass and drums. Yeah, all of those tracks I made sure to like, be completely memorized by the time I got to the studio so that I didn't have to sit and like, look through my audio and be like, Oh, what did I do here? I can't remember. I have to sit and, like, relearn it. It was like we wanted to be in studio and just, like nail it out like we go into the studio because we want to track. We don't go into the studio to write.

I know there's some bands who do that. That sounds incredibly stressful to me, but we like to lay everything out. We practice once or a few times a week leading up to that. We was probably more than once a week, but we make sure we know our parts and we know what we're doing. And obviously, things are gonna change. Like once we actually hear the drums kind of singled out, and Druze kick is doing something completely different thing. We're gonna change my baseline a little bit. But in all reality, like the songs air essentially done by the time we walk in.

Other than the the little suggestions that Adam had for us, that was about it. Yeah, to be honest, that's really how it should be. Because if a band comes in prepared like you did, everything is less stressful. It runs in a more smooth and efficient manner. You know, like you guys had a pre production day. That's great. That's what that day is made for it to make sure that when you start the actual recording, everything is as expected, there no unpleasant surprises or anything like that. So now you went from 48 down to eight, down to five.

So you cut out 43 songs. Essentially, yeah, we're all of those actual songs or just kind of pieces. Some of them are. Some of those were like riffs that were 30 seconds to a minute long bad. I couldn't figure out where to go with them, or they didn't quite fit right. Or you know something of that nature. Okay, But I would imagine that, like, out of the 48 like you've got to have. Like, we were talking about the five that made the record or the release. And then you had three others, which are now, you know, perhaps prepared to do something with later, out of the like 30 some odd that like nobody's gonna here or at least right away.

Yeah, you've probably got a bunch of risks in there. But I would also imagine you've got a bunch of other like songs which are more flushed out than others. And so I just want to offer my appreciation for, like, the ability to, like, pare down that much. I'm hearing you when you say, like your guitar player, you've got like, 3 to 5 different parts than every song, and you've got 30 things that, like, didn't end up making the cut. I'm a drummer, but like, I've been best friends with my guitar player for 20 years and he's a chorus guy.

So not so much for the guitar but like I could just appreciate, like, how many things were like, Oh, pretty cool that, like you had to make the difficult decision. Oh, yeah, They're all like your kids and your like which, which one do I keep? You know, exactly. Love them all. Yeah, but it's all about, you know, feeling out the vibe of the record. We don't we Obviously, we want to try and keep things cohesive and and we want things to sound like they belong together. And sometimes Eli will bring something to practice and will try and flush it out.

And sometimes sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes we're like, Let's give it a shot. So, like dandelions in the dark was one where I was so excited for this song and I played Kelly the instrumental, and she's like, Wait, give it a shot like let's see what happens when Drew adds in his touch and I was like, Okay, but then we played it enough times to where I was like I don't know, it's a little it feels a little too happy like it up. But I finished the vocals.

Yeah, Then the vocals came in and then it was like, Oh, that's a great song like we I love that song now It was one that I kind of wanted to scratch, but I It's also one of those things where you got you got to give it a chance sometimes, too. So it's hard to figure out what demos do. We give a chance because we're certainly not going to sit and try and flush out 48 songs on, Then try and pare down from there. What do we feel you know, like when you hit that riff and you hear it and you're like, Everybody's like Oh, yeah, that's something.

Let's work with that. We know what to move forward with and sometimes you get lucky with, like, dandelions in the dark where it finally comes together when the last piece falls into place and, like, you know, it has that potential that whole time, and then it clicks at the end. It's just kind of flushing out those decisions. I don't know what it is, but I feel like there's got to be like a one word. Maybe it's not even like in the English language, but like, ah, one word.

Describe er for, like, that feeling where it's like you're right. That is so awesome, like, Yeah. And that's exactly how that one went for me. I was like, Yeah. And then he added in the melody and the vocals One day I was like, Okay. Yep, you got me. There should be a word for that. I'm sure there is, but I can't think of anything either. I'm gonna dig for that. Okay. Let us know what you find. In the meantime, dandelions in the dark that, you know, ended up being the intro track for the E P. But another way, because I really want to drive on this point of writing a bunch of songs and picking the best ones is you cut almost 90% of the songs you wrote.

48 down to five. It leaves it with the yeah. 10. 4% of the songs made it. Yeah. Okay, so 89.6%. Yeah. So you have to drive home that point. You cut 89 to 90% of the songs that you wrote. Thio make a cohesive sound. That's what you're talking about. What was the biggest challenge of doing that of cutting out all those other songs aside from, you know, having the feeling that you're killing your kids essentially, like you're saying. And for me, it's kind of picking the direction of the sound that the album is kind of taking because ah, lot of those songs sound extremely different from each other, and some of them fit in the same vein.

And some of them we're like, maybe to Poppy or Thio slow they didn't There's something wrong with how the songs go together. A lot of these I don't even hear. So Eli, sitting here in our apartment demo ing out a lot of stuff on his computer, all kind of test, Kelly. And like, she'll come home from work. And I'll be like, Hey, listen to this. Listen to this rift, And if I don't get a good reaction, I'm like, Okay, this one's garbage. I'm gonna move on. Yeah, you mentioned like there are a few that, like maybe ended up standing a little too poppy, or I'm sure there are a few other words that ended up sending a little bit this other way.

So again, with starting out with so much material like before. Whittling that down, you wind up with five tracks or, you know, doing something with eight before you ended up, you know, deciding on a studio date, deciding on final song names, Any of that Did you have after with whatever you've done before this release, Uh, did you have an idea of what direction you wanted to take the sound next? Like, did you have an idea of like, Oh, like I really like this ref or this song, this demo?

But it's too poppy. So therefore, obviously, we're not going to go in that direction or like with the, you know, 40 some odd tunes that you had somewhat structured. Did you have 13 that were a little too Poppy? And you just as likely may have gone in that direction versus, you know, 13, 10 or 13, which were to punk rock or too heavy, Or did you guys already sort of have an idea of, you know, kind of the general direction you're headed and to follow up on that while you're answering Erin's question?

Did you catalog the songs to Yeah, I have. I saved them all in a demo folder and I think it's titled 2019 Demos. So if you want to come steal him, yeah, a bunch of demos. So, to the first question for me, it might be different for Kelly, and it might be different for Drew. But for me, I based a lot of what I'm writing next off of the reaction that I get from the songs I've previously written. So a big song for me off of the dread was the burden and, of course, the dread as a track.

And I feel like those got really solid crowd reactions, and they always feel really good to play live. There's just that feeling that energy on stage and with the crowd. So I kind of hone in on that feeling with those tracks. And I say, How do we take this? And we make it new and we keep that energy and kind of create like a new sound. But we keep the same roots, so to speak. That's kind of my process for working on a new sound, and some days I'll just wake up with like, a riff in my head, and it might end up being like one of the riffs that air to poppy or too dark or too punk or something.

And I want to record it anyway just to flash it out and see if it goes anywhere interesting that I've really want to take. But for me, that that's my whole process is honing in on what has worked and how to reinvent it. So essentially, you're not re imagining your sound. You're just molding it into your new Yeah, it just kind of honing in on the stuff that has worked for us. But also we don't want to be repetitive. Yeah, I wanna capture that feeling. But I wanted to be new.

And if you look back through our first full band recording, which was, Hey, kid, that actually had anyone else other than Eli in it. Hey, kid, versus where we're at now. There's, like, this steady progression, um, from like, this straight up kind of pop punk band to something a little darker, but then a little bit different in our next one. And this one is just continually progressing, and but finding a way to still make it us capture the spirit, but reinvented kind of Gotcha. So now that we've talked a little bit about the production process.

And we started off with the marketing and kind of shifted directions as part of the whole marketing push. Did you see a snowball effect with interaction? Likes comments, all that kind of stuff online? Did it grow over the months you were promoting? Yeah. So, like I mentioned earlier, we used the sad rose emoji. It's the funniest little emoji that you confined. I have a tattooed now because of this. Um, and that kind of came about. So I wanted to do something to wear. Like there was just this constant and no one knew the e p name.

No one knew anything other than we were in the studio. So he started using this sad rose emoji with everything that we're posting and a few videos into it. Other people started using the sad rose emoji. And, like, excessively, some people exclusively respond to us with on it was just I tried. That is something different. Just to kind of see what's going to capture people like our people even gonna pay attention to that. Who knows? But why not try it? And so I think that right there is a big example of people started paying attention, not only to what we're posting, but what we're writing underneath our posts, which sometimes can be.

You never know if people look at that part or not, right? It all had meaning to us, and we all did it very intentionally whether or not people were going to notice. But for the people that did notice, it gave them something extra to look for. Yeah, it was like we constantly had these people using this and I still see it to this day. I still have people responding to me in these emojis and a stupid as it sounds, it actually kind of It helped almost build this whole little thing that we're doing.

As for engagement on posts from pre pro, all the way up through Wolf, Spain, when we first posted the pre pro stuff and the photos, I think people were like, Oh, cool there in the studio. But there wasn't a lot of a reaction from it, and I think that's because every band that I know that's on the same kind of level we are and us up until this most recent release, we've always been like Hey, we're in the studio and then you don't hear about anything from the studio until 11 months later.

Two years later, sometimes never. People are like, Oh, cool. And then they don't really expect anything. When we first posted about being in pre production, people were like, Oh, that's cool. But then the next week, when we're like, Look, there's drums, they're like, Oh, that's cool. And then the next week, when we're like here's guitars, here's base here are vocals Then I think people kind of started to realize like, Oh, this is more complete than I originally thought. I remember being pretty disappointed with the first Post like the first Couple, because, like we have this big grand plan for our marketing release and we're like, here it goes like, here's our first posted Let's do this and it's like one like and we're like, Oh, it wasn't one life.

But the response wasn't that amazing. And then as we continually posted this stuff, I think people became more engaged in and started realizing, like what we were actually gearing up to Dio. We're gearing up to to release new music Ah, lot sooner than people had probably expected when we first posted on social media about it because you waited so long. Yeah, we I mean, like I said, we started pre pro in March and we posted at the beginning of October. So that's seven months right there. That's seven months that we were working.

We were playing shows and I think that was another big thing for us Was we stayed active in the seven months that we were recording and getting ready for this? We did a couple of little weekend or tours to kind of talk to people about Hey, yeah, this is what we're gonna have coming up. We're gonna be releasing new record. We're gonna be coming back to you with this new record. I looked it up and we did 20 shows between when we started pre pro and the end of December and over half of them were shows that were out of town.

I went off on a huge tangent right here, but I think that's one of the things that bands tend to not do is the focus on one thing we're going to write, and that's all we're going to dio. That's actually what I wanted to dio started. I wanted to. Dio and Kelly brought up this good point that we want to stay relevant in the scene, and the only way to do it is to continue to play shows and be present at shows and engage with the community.

I told the guys we either are going to continue playing shows or we have to be and we go out to as many shows as we can. San Diego There's like five shows going on every single night, which not possible to make all of them, but to just be active and be present and just have people know that you're still there. I think a lot of times bands just kind of dropped off the face of the earth when they start recording or whatever. If you're Green Day and you can post a new single, the whole world will stop and listen to it.

That's a whole different story. But if you're a small active, do it together band like D I t do it together. I know Aaron had something else. What was it? Oh, my gosh. Thank you. It's decided yourself, but I did steal that from somebody else, but yeah, I'm a super big fan of decided yourself, decided yourself and do it together. I love those two things. I have a feeling that's one thing that a lot of D I Y bands get too stuck on is being D i y.

To the extent that they want to do everything, everything theirselves. And you've talked about this in your previous episodes, I've listened to I think I'm I'm through quite a few episodes, but you've talked about this like it should be delegated to someone who could do it better. And that's one of the things that we we embrace that for this Yeah, James and the Better Band Bureau. This has kind of been like almost my like I've kind of taken. I've really been taking notes on everything that you guys have been doing and saying and kind of putting it to practice versus just listening to it and throwing it to the wayside, because what you're saying makes sense and you are Onley here to try and help people in.

It's working well. We think it is. Who knows what other people think about us, but tangents. Well, first of all, I really appreciate that. So thank you for not only listening but also implementing it. And I hope that's what other people are doing to is not just listening and saying Okay, cool. Like, because if somebody is just listening it and saying Sure get to know that's not gonna do anything, you have to actually implement it. No, take it to heart and actually practice it, because what do they say?

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Well, that's what most bands do. They just do the same thing over and over, and they expect different results. And that's what we did up until this most recent release. That's what we've been proven, that it is good to step out of our comfort zones and try something different about how it goes. Reach out for help. That was a big thing for me, was delegating to others or to you let devils in a lot of stuff graphic design and things like that.

When I was like, Hey, we should hire someone he's like, but I could do it. I was like, Yeah, but someone could do it better. It probably wasn't that mean about it, but e probably waas Um but it's true. It's true. We used to print our own T shirts. But why? Why should I spend the time and the money and the resource is printing our T shirts when we could get them done for approximately the same price? Um, and I could focus on something else, like booking our shows because I'm the one who does that.

I'm We don't hire anyone to do that because we haven't felt it necessary quite yet. But, yeah, putting your hands in too many pots, it is just we've learned to cut back on that quite a bit. Yeah, well, and there's this saying, Jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe you can do everything, but why not focus on the art, which is the actual product that you are trying to put out there and let other people do the what They dio stuff because we want to perform the music and we want it.

We want it recorded, but we're not the best at recording it. So who do you go to? Someone that loves recording and that's their thing. You know, this is the first time we released music that has not been any part self recorded thistles the first time we have put out designs that have not been done with Eli. We've taken input from Adam Cisco in this studio. Usually we don't have an engineer or somebody to help us produce songs. But Adam came forward with all these great little ideas to add to our songs.

And that's something that a we normally wouldn't have and be normally myself, I'd probably be too prideful. And I'd be like, No, my idea is better even when it's not. And then, you know, just kind of embracing the external input and just being like, Hey, this does sound really cool and it's different and let's go forward with it. Video and photos videos always on our video and photos. And that's the first time this has been the first time that we've used someone else for video and photos.

And, yeah, it's worked out. Ah, lot better than we could have hoped for next album. We're gonna hire somebody to write the songs for us and record your on stage. Maybe next time around you'll have the budget for Max Martin, right? Eso you mentioned shows a little while ago. I want to talk about your release show but real quick and, you know, obviously Onley if you're comfortable sharing with this. But how much if you have to give a ballpark figure two D spend on marketing for the entire album, we kind of took care of different parts for mine.

I threw in $100 to submit Hub, which James has talked about on the podcast. Yeah, so listen to that. And out of that, I think we only spent about $37 in submissions. And out of those submissions we got, like, less than 1% success rate, which is what's expected with which is what's expected. And I don't feel like that greatly benefited us for, like, the amount of extra exposure that it gained us. If that makes sense, it's nice to have. Our MP was very nice and, uh, quite a few nice things about us, um, and then exposure for listeners.

That's me. I wasn't gonna I was gonna throw that out there, but, you know, way did have a very nice just to be totally candid, we did have another blogged that accepted one of our submissions. And literally all they did was copy and paste parts of the website that I had already made. Eso they obviously didn't do anything, except it is go to the website, take a couple of bits and put it on their block. And I was like, Well, that was a waste. It's also kind of our fault because we didn't read.

That was on the blog's reviews from Submit. Hub was Yeah, Yeah, we kind of blanket submitted. Yeah, we did. So a total of $37 there. I spent about $15 in Facebook ads. Just kind of targeted marketing for Facebook ads. Eli is incredibly savvy with editing. So he did like the video promotion for our show. The email blasts that we put out male chimp I believe is free, right? Yeah. We use mail chimp for our email blasts, and I don't want to go into how much we paid for Jesse to do the documenting on Lee out of respect for him because it was a total try aled basis.

He was like, I have no idea of what we're going to get. I'm gonna give you so I'm in charge you an incredibly minuscule amount. It's incredibly out minuscule for how much we got. We got a really good deal. It was experimental for him. We know that he puts out quality work, so we trusted him with the whole process. You know, it didn't really stress us out at all to be like, Here, take the reins. We know what you're doing. We know your quality is Yeah. So he he charges a very little amount for that, um, and then our music If are we talking music videos to Do you wanna talk prices on those?

Yeah, if you're okay. Music video for each video that we did it was about I believe we came in about a grand each for each video when taking into account not only the videography and the editing, but also the renting places and cabin rentals that we did on the woods. Um, having friends act for us, which they agreed to be paid in food. Um, yeah. Plus your your CD pro moans to Oh, yeah. I did see d promo $50 before our CD really show. I printed out flyers physical flyers.

I did those and then also spent the time making like a demo CD to hand out at shows. And it had two songs from each band that was gonna be playing our show. All of the show info on the back We put a QR code to Q R codes. One was to band camp free download of the tracks in case you don't want to use a CD or have a CD player or something, and then the other was to the Facebook event, the time and money spent doing that.

We found out afterward that we could have done it cheaper through an actual company to do it all for us. Way probably through in about 150 there so honestly, between music videos and not actually Jessie's portion of the documenting the recording process, we probably spent about $2500 in the marketing process and had you done more D i Y music videos, which I mean, obviously we just spent a bunch of time talking about why you should hire people, but the entire marketing had you done the music videos yourself would've been about $500 basically, is what you're saying.

That's impressive really, really impressive because it seems like you got a lot of organic traction on social media just because you were posting regularly and had this plan in place before you started doing anything, you kind of had it laid out. What, you're gonna dio Yeah, I believe on instagram. We're really close to 1000 followers on Instagram. Not that this means a whole lot. It's cool. Metrics Thio kind of keep to look at it on a big scale picture. We were around 700 followers before we started posting everything.

We've gained almost 300 in that time, and some of them may not be completely like legit organic people who are actually interested on in us. But at the same time, we do have more people interacting with us. Our numbers have gone up incredibly video views on instagram and likes on instagram. I mean, it's all Yeah, it's all growing. So I think it's it has really paid off for us and then to talk about the pre sale stuff. The marketing behind it kind of led up to those pre sales that paid off all of the lead up to it and then dropping these pre sales and being like, Hey, here it is that helped us.

People were paying a little bit more attention. People were buying our stuff. We actually were able to fund most of, if not probably three quarters of all of our marketing stuff via band funds, merch, sales, um, payouts from bars, venues, whatever. That's totally new to us. And yeah, I mean, that was really, like a feeling of accomplishment. To be able to say, Hey, let's use the band funds because we have some Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, then then leading up to the pre sale drop, we did that, and then we were able to cover another.

I think half of our merch expense just via band funds and that was That's something we haven't really done before, which is it's all kind of relative. We know more people now, and we've played more shows now, but also we've done this. The the new record release was a whole different way. So would we have gotten the same kind of response? I don't know, but we got this response that's all that matters. Well, that's really cool. And speaking of the pre sales, are you comfortable sharing how Maney pre orders you received.

Total doesn't know dollar value. Anything. Just how many copies of the album or the E p. Where you able Thio essentially get out the door before it was even released? Yeah, I'm gonna ballpark this because we had a couple of people just hit us up separately from our website because friends do that. You think we're around 20 or 25 that was before the show 20 or 25. And our average cart was probably e want to say around $40 was probably an average. Okay, that's pretty awesome. And then, of course, you had the release show where I'm guessing you sold a boatload more.

Yeah, we had a couple of goals going into that release show since we're talking numbers and I'm not scared of talking numbers before the show, we sat down and we said, Look, our merch goal is 300 bucks. We want to sell at least $300 in merch in our door goal, which, with the venue we played at it was a 80 20 split with the venue and then we played with four bands. So the four it was split evenly between four band and we wanted to get at least $100 in a payout per band.

So $400 total that went to the band's Yeah, So 500 in sales? Exactly. Yeah, And so 100 people paid through the door. We ended up at 2 95 in merch sales, and we ended up at 92 in the door off Nice. So it seems like you had really realistic goals to. I think that's important because somebody could throw a goal out there just randomly and say, Oh, we wanna make this. But you guys seem to have had some thought in those goals because you got so close to them. It seems to me like you had some math behind that already.

That's all. Kelly. I use merch, Cat. Thanks, James. So I'm able to track all of our sales per show per month, and I found that in the last six months or so playing shows we averaged 100 to 150 merch sales. So when it came to it being a whole new show, we've got 345 new pieces of merch, whether that be CDs posters, hoodies, long sleeves. So it was a hefty goal having 300. That's almost triple what we normally do. But it's a special show on and everything's new, and it was a hefty go about a realistic goal.

Still, we're $5 short, Kelly said. 300 I said, Why don't we just sell all of it? That would be way better, E said. That would be better. But But, yeah, it was funny because our drummer came in. We were talking at practice one day, and Drew was like I want to do 300 March Sales was like, That's exactly what I was going to say as well. So yeah, we hit that. And interestingly enough, and excitingly enough after the show, we had another. I think almost 200 sales come in online. Oh, okay, so I couldn't have asked for much better.

I didn't ask for much better. I was hoping for that 300 with that. We I mean, it's one thing to have high hopes, and it's a whole other thing to have those achieved and like, Wow, I can't exceed your own expectations. But our expectations were still pretty pretty lofty, well grounded but lofty all at the same time. Well, real quick calculated the per head. So for someone who hasn't been following band, I've that long. The per head is basically how much you selling merch per person. So for your release show, it's $3.

26 which, to be honest, is kind of on the low end. But I expect that's actually on Lee because so many people already had pretty ordered it that they didn't need to buy it night off. Exactly. We had a lot of people already wearing the hoodies. We had a lot of people already wearing one of our yeah, long sleeve, one of our T shirts that we weren't doing that night. But one of our most recent T shirts. I think I counted, like six people wearing the same infinite signal T shirt, which was so cool eso In reality, it might have been a little bit more, but at the same time, we considered it a success.

Yeah, well, that sounds really awesome. And one last thing about this show before we move on and start wrapping this up his Eli you designed the lighting show Oh, man, I could talk about this 40 hours here we owe one of the questions we continually bring up at band practice is how do we stand out? How do we make ourselves different? I would say, probably a year ago I was like, We need to get lights a year and a half ago, year and a half ago And then, you know, I was like, Oh, yeah, like we can kind of look into it.

But this this this and we're like, Okay, whatever. We should get lights. No, let's not get lights. And then Drew comes into practice one day because we should get lights and you guys like we should get light. That's not exactly how it works, just about things before adding lights to our previous work. I mean, it's just like it's one little step up from where we were, and we were at a point where we have this new album, new recording. Everything production wise is so much better than it's ever been.

Now is a good time to bring in lights. It kind of a of us. And so it lined up really well. But I just like telling that story because it's like 85% true, but yeah, So we finally decided, Yes, let's do some freaking lights and let's see what we can figure out. So we go to Guitar Center. We talked to the guy, and he's like, Yeah, you just get this in the D M X thing in your daisy chain of and it all works together And I was like, I don't know what you said and go home and study for a little bit and go back to Guitar Center and talk to the guy some more, and then we kind of narrow down. What?

What would look cool for a three piece? What do we think would look cool? Because we have no, what are stages that half the time we're not even playing it. Actually, not even have three quarters of time. We're not even playing on a stage. We were playing on the floor, and it's a small space, but what's gonna work on a bigger stage with a bigger place? So we're trying to figure out what would the cool what would work well for us, what's going to be fairly minimal and not take up a lot of room, and then we pull the trigger.

Yeah, we went to Guitar Center, used the gear card. We got, like, four years, no interest financing, because that's the best way to do it. So these lights are actually being paid for via our band money, which is it's almost free for us. Yeah, So we got the light, and then that was in November and we held onto them at work. I had saved my vacation, and I had two weeks of vacation to use before the end of the year. So in December, I'm like, I'm gonna go, like, right around Christmas to give me the extra day, a couple of days for Christmas and New Year's, and I'm gonna have, like, 14 days off straight.

I think in the 19, maybe it's 1914 would have been just two weeks. Yeah, so with the vacation 19 days, 19 days off and I was like, Man, I'm gonna relax and I'm gonna enjoy myself and go do things in San Diego and have fun and and then I'm like, Wait. Well, this is the time that I have free to dive into lighting, So let's get the lighting done first and then I'll enjoy myself. Little do I know lighting is not easy and it takes a really long time to Dio.

You figured out the program pretty quickly. I figured out how to connect everything and how to actually program the lighting in about 2. 5 hours, which I was really proud of because I was super fast. So I was like, Great, I know how this works Now all I have to do is go through the steps and be like, You know, here's what I want for this. Here's what I want for this and it's really, um we use American deejay my DMX 30 And for those of you that know and don't know, you can program down to 4 1/100 of a second.

That's as precise as you can get with it, which is insane. And I'm like, Great, I could be as exact as I want. And I spent 45 hours over my entire vacation in a dark apartment. No, no actual vacation time. Just programming light snow, but it looks cool, but it looks great. And I was, but I was so annoyed with it, so over the whole lighting thing that we finally went into, take this to practice and actually put them to use and and run it from the computer and just didn't care.

I was like, Look, look at how cool this looks. He's like whatever I don't care and seeing 1000 times, just like I was so over it and it took me I want to say three weeks of not seeing the lights and then coming back into practice and then being like, Oh, yeah, these are really cool. This does look awesome, but and then I was happy. But for that like month, I was so mad. It's not fun to be around. But that's so red, though, because, like now you've got it.

Sounds like if you're holding onto the gear, the hardware you've got the show file for until forever and like you can kind of like piecemeal, take it apart, like build other shows like You've got it. That's awesome. How many do we program? I think we program 12 songs. You program 12 songs, Yeah, 12 songs and they can all. I mean, when we dropped it into a whole set, we could rearrange them, we could line them up into different set lists. We can't automate any of them that we want to go into the next ones or pause whenever we want.

And yeah, our drummer Drew. He played to a click track and he kind of man's the computer back by him and we just follow him and we had a much longer set time on the 31st. Then we probably normally will and so will be able to just kind of pick and choose and drop it into a drop it into a line and it'll play from it puts our pauses in when we want our pauses. It will sequence the songs like we want them sequenced and we'll just cruise through are set that way.

We've come through quite a few technical difficulties, like in practice, and we're just trying to troubleshoot that kind of stuff. And we have a really, really, really small, inconvenient little practice space, so you can't really get the full effect of it all. And with it being this whole new thing, and most bands are going to get only get about 15 minutes of change over during a show, usually five of that is unloading the other band off of the stage before you can even throw your stuff on the stage again.

Like James said in another episode, like being prepared and having your stuff set up, obviously drums. They should be staged and ready to go. And so we had to try and figure out how we were going to do this with this additional lighting with this additional computer with all of these additional things, but still keep it under that 15, 10, 15 minute time crunch. And so we actually rented a rehearsal space that's much bigger than ours. Loaded in, loaded out like we were on a stage, kind of came up with a game plan of everything and made sure that, well, I can get all of the lights set up and working while I'm setting up our cabs and guitars are ready to go.

And Druze already back behind the kit, just being ableto execute that change. But the lights it's hard to say how much of a difference they made. It feels like they made a massive difference, Um, with our really show. But it is a special occasion. It is a really show, so there are quite a significant amount of people there. We got a lot of really good feedback on lights, and I think that's really important. Is that you stand out in a local scene because everybody plays the same stage.

Everybody has the same amount of time. It's what you do differently that makes you stick out. So if we can have 30 minutes of the most insane light show you ever seen that we can fit in this little local stage that's gonna make us stand out, and that's gonna make people talk. And that's gonna make people pull out their phones and put us on instagram stories or whatever they have. And I think that's a really important part of the lights. Is that not only does it look cool, but it generates conversation.

I've had so many bands come up to us now, and first of all, curse at us because of what we're doing. Andi, that's what I like. I want all of them to curse at me for the music videos and the way we did things, and we're really setting the bar for ourselves like we're not in competition with anyone else. other than ourselves. We're trying to be better as a band. We're trying to be better as performers and trying to make our own show interesting. And if that inspires our fellow musicians and our friends to do better or do things differently thin, that's awesome.

But first they curse at us and then they are like Damn, like that was great, Like that's setting a bar a lot higher and I'm like, well, setting the bar for us a lot higher. Each man does things differently, and this is the path we're taking. But now we've got multiple bands saying, Dude, after your light show, I wanna look into getting lights. I'm like, That's awesome. That's really cool. After the show, her something like over 45 instagram stories that we were tagged in just that were tagged in, that I went through and responded to and reposted, and I don't know that if it were just a regular infinite signal show, if there would have been that money or if it was because of the lights.

But we're not going to know that anymore, because we're going to use these lights every single time we play, whether it's a tiny little skate shop that's the sides of my living room. Or it's the Moreau in Hillcrest, which is bigger than our living room. It's bigger than my living room. I just want to take a second and sort of regurgitate and, like, re appreciate load in for your release show was not 11 a.m. like you were, you know, messing or not with these lights on stage all afternoon, you know, before having dinner and then going in, like welcoming the other bands, which is what a lot of people do do.

But I'd argue that what you did was more impressive. You took the time before the day of show. It sounds like you totally did all of that in, like, the same length change over you would have had Or I would have had or James were, like, anywhere, any other show. Yeah, that's awesome. We actually talked to the sound guy, um, prior to the show starting, and he allowed us to set up some of our lights in advance ASL, long as it's not interfering with the band. So we had our two front lights already set up.

And then during the changeover we had to bring out the three extra lights, get them going, get the computer going, troubleshoot any problems before our set, which we still managed to cram into that time. But we came up with a really cool process when we were practicing how we're gonna basically get our stuff on stage before the show. Yeah, because there's gonna be times when we can't get Teoh a venue that early or or something happens and we can't set up prior to So we still we don't wanna be cutting into our own time and we certainly aren't going to cut into anyone else's.

If we do run behind, we're going to cut ourselves short on, not about trying to cut anyone else's set short just because we can't figure our stuff out. So we wanted to be able to like, worst case scenario. That's literally what we're doing. When we were rented, the rehearsal space, I told the guys has, like, worst case scenario, all of our gears outside, we're going to load in onto a stage and we're going to set up the lights were going to set up the banner. We're going to set up everything in that 15 minutes and e I have it written down.

I still have toe like copy it and eliminate it because that's just the kind of person I am. We have all of our cables labeled and another list written out as to what's what. So that could be like, Hey, Drew grabbed me this power cable and you could be like Deal. I could do that. Not only does Eli run the lights and stuff, but we can help if he needs help. So my base rig is really easy to set up. I'm set up in a couple minutes to three minutes.

Same with his guitar, AMP. But as long as the drums are on and and good to go, the other two of us can help Eli with anything he needs help with and having that process kind of down and drilled into our heads and being able to do it in that 15 minutes. Like I said, that's gonna be worst case scenario, but it is gonna happen. So why not plan for the worst case scenario for our release show? We got lucky we got to set up in events, so we had a little bit extra time.

So how much time did you get it down to when you were practicing it from outside to fully set up inside. I think it was 13, 13 minutes. Yeah, So even if the other band took five minutes to get off stage, you're still getting stuff into the venue while they're loading off the stage. So exactly, it's still totally doable. That's awesome. Were people who will hop up onto a stage or wherever and ask Hey, can I grab this and take it off for you? I'm not going to just sit there and wait for everyone to take their stuff off.

If the driver doesn't want me to touch this stuff, then I won't touch their stuff. But maybe I'll go ask the guitarist if I can help them get their cab off of stage or something like that. I understand our equipment is expensive and people are very picky with how things are carried and how things are handled. So I totally understand and respect that. But at the same time, I'm not just gonna sit there and wait for people to do their thing. I'm gonna offer my own helping hand if they'll take it.

So it sounds like to kind of surmise it. We've got, like, 40 to 50 hours figuring out the light show in the programming we've got months and months and months of like whittling 50 songs down to five, putting together whatever you know, whatever the set list was, you played that night. You've got all the time in the recording, the promotion for the release, what the live show is going to be, the lighting renting out of the rehearsal space and getting your tech town. And then you have the show and it was awesome.

And now it's over. What points are you still sort of driving forward, knowing that the release show is a little bit ago? What points are still useful for any marketing on items that you're trying to market now, whether it's like merch or some upcoming shows in or out of town? And I guess what forces, I guess, are still at work as you move forward into 2020. That's a great question, because once this release show was here, I was incredibly stressed. I'm the one who does all the booking.

I did all the planning for this I did all that kind of stuff. I hold a lot of weight on my shoulders when it comes to this stuff, and not that anyone else puts pressure on me, but I do it to myself. Mine. Andrews sole purpose before we play the show is to make sure Kelly is relaxed. Yeah, that was a goal to try and do that. Can I give you my guitar and bass players phone numbers? Because, like that, I, like, totally relate to the booking things.

Yeah, it's like I feel like if it doesn't go well, then it could be partially on me, you know, like maybe I didn't do this. Maybe I didn't do that. So I was pretty stressed on the 31st, and the day was there and I was thinking myself, Man, like it's over like it's kind of like a wedding, you know? You plan and plan and plan and plan and plan, and then all of a sudden it's here and then it's over. But the thing is, is not over.

And that's the most important part. And I like, I'm glad you touched on that because we're still drumming up ideas of ways Thio promote our merch to promote our online sales. I think that's one of the things that we can really improve on as a band and as a brand is boosting our online sales. So we have some ideas that we talked about it or last practice. Jews been out sick with this nasty bug that's been going around? I heard. Erin, you've got a little bit of that too, huh?

Little bit. Yeah, a little bit. So he's finally feeling better, and his whole family got it, too. But we've got some ideas of of how to kind of up our merch game and our advertisement for our merchandise are content for sure. And we have more music, video ideas in the works, and honestly, it's just being constantly there so that you're relevant and you don't fall off the face of the Earth. We've got a lot of shows booked for the next few months. We are going to continually get on the road at least once a month.

Weekends work best with us and with our daily kind of regular lives. And so if the guys say, Hey, we can do weekends and I'm gonna book us on weekends and do weekender out of town. And so we're continually hitting these a few areas to kind of keep building there. And believe it or not, we actually have more content that we're sitting on right now that we are eventually going to be releasing just different things. I keep forgetting we have more stuff to release its all sitting there.

It's all sitting there waiting. And if this podcast episode is airing like two months from now, maybe it will be out by now. I don't know where should people go look for it? Where can they find it? So obviously our website infinite signal dot com. But don't go today for God. This podcast isn't coming on for a few months. Go today because it will go today. I'm revamping it right now. I updated it all the way up through to the release show and then I was just like, spaced on it.

Yeah, infinite little dot com. We'll have all of the links, all of the music, all of the videos. Obviously, you can find us on YouTube with infinite signal. Instagram is our main communication, probably that in Facebook, instagram is infinite signal see a Facebook is infinite signal. So one last question for you guys feel free to answer this separately if you don't both have the same thing in mind. But what is one thing that you think is most important for any artist to learn from the experience that you had getting ready for the love me not release?

I think we agree on the same one right here. Yeah, we talked about this last night and we talked about it constantly ever since we started the recording process. And that is don't post things until you're ready to release, build your content, save it and come up with a really good plan to release it. It's something that we didn't realize up until recently. And I'm sure, you know, we see other bands do it. Obviously, bigger bands do it all the time. It just didn't like click that we need to do that.

And when we did it, it was like, Why doesn't everybody do this? So we're telling all our friends like, hold your content, hold your content, build it up, come up with a plan, release it, keep people excited and interested. Yeah, You don't have to tell people what you're doing at that exact moment with recording. Like I said, I've seen it before where people are excited, they post that they're in the studio, and that's really cool. But I personally have gotten so used to seeing people post that they're in the studio and I don't get excited about it.

I'm like, Oh, that's cool But I want to know when your new music is out. You take bigger bands, for example, and see that they're in the studio. But they're going to be saying that they're in the studio typically right before they're going to release something, and that's the way we wanted to do it. And that's the way I think a lot of bands should start to do it. Your phone. Well, hold on to those videos that you took in the studio. You can wait. You can hold on to all of that stuff and build it up, build up some hype because if we would have posted, what is it almost 11 months ago that we were in the studio doing preproduction.

Everyone would have for gotten by now, but I don't know the biggest thing for me in this whole learning process in doing something different is it's a lot more exciting having things lead up to something that's going to be coming out soon. And one of the biggest things as well is having having I've notes here. I'm reading Kelly's notes and no, don't okay, sorry. Anyway, they're really funny. Don't post things until you haven't released eight. Coming soon is the worst thing that I could hear as a fan.

Coming soon is the worst thing you could say as a band. I say it once in a while, ironically, but I hate that word or that phrase coming soon. That doesn't mean anything to me. I've had people posts that they're coming soon and it's been two years. What soon to you? It's such a such a general term, and it has no meaning behind it. That doesn't tell me anything unless you're saying coming soon. Nudge, nudge wink wig next week. But people don't know that people. I see that coming soon phrase, and I just think great you're working on something.

No idea when I'm gonna get to see it, whether it's a music video, whether it's a single release, whether it's, ah, whole album, whether who knows what. But that's like the worst phrase that anyone could use to try and hype up something. Unless you actually are coming soon, as in like the next week, that doesn't generate any kind of excitement behind that. And one of the biggest lessons learned was we were originally gonna released Wolf Spain, in the middle of November. We didn't actually post about that.

And thank goodness we didn't because we didn't actually release it until the beginning of December. We waited two weeks because we had the upload issue. So, yeah, we didn't announce that. You know, November, this date, we're going to release it. And then that day comes and we're like, just getting way. You have to wait another week. We never said we were gonna release it, so it wasn't a big deal for us to push it, which was really cool. It's just internally a big deal. Yeah, but for me, like, yeah, it's exactly like the whole you have content and it's like you get bummed out because you can't release it right away.

And then drew months passed about this. By the way, Drew was like I'm leaving my wife and kids for 15 hours in a day to go record. I can't even post anything. And I'm like, No, dude, you can show your wife and kids when you get home, but we're going to save this stuff. When we did the group vocal session, a lot of our friends were like, uh, Kelly, you guys have to post that I was like, No, we're waiting. Like how you guys not gotten this yet?

I was like, You guys can post things like That's fine. I don't I'm not gonna delegate who can post things and who can't. But we as a band are not going to be posting anything until we know that we're ready to release something. And I think that's the biggest lesson we learned. It helps not only that, it was good for us to do it as a band, but it actually helped, are released and releasing her music videos and in another music video. And then, oh, here's our record.

And maybe you were working on another music video. I don't know. Maybe we've got more content, we dio, but I'm not gonna tell you what it is and it's coming out soon. E Like I'm saying it sucks to hold on to it because you have all this cool content. But when six months past, you look at it and you're like, Whoa, I have this huge stockpile of content now and now It's really exciting because I get to plan out how to strategically release it, and then you can kind of see your plan play out instead of just releasing things as they happen.

I haven't album in my phone. That is, I've infinite signal and I've infinite signal life and infinite signal, just with pre pro and videos, from recording and videos from music videos and stuff like that, all the behind the scenes fun stuff that goes on. I have over 300 things in there. Not much of that has been actually released out to the world. But you know, the other day we used throwback Thursday as a reason to post stuff about the Wolf Spain music video shoot, which we did back in the middle of October, and you can still release those things.

There's still exciting. There's still things that people want to see, but it's going to mean a little bit more when they know what's coming or when you have an actual plan. Yeah, that leads me to one more question. When you're posting on Instagram, do you do each post manually, or do you have some kind of tool to schedule them for you? That's one thing I've been lacking on is looking into the scheduling tools. I personally will go on and post everything. I think I should look into that.

I'm probably going to assume as we end this conversation, because there are times when people are on instagram and there are times when people are not on instagram Saturdays and Sundays. People aren't hanging out on on instagram on Friday nights. No one's on there. So why would I e need to remind myself to not post things, Or if I do, it's things that don't need to be seen. Like we wait until Sunday night to release our one minute clips because Sunday evening, the weekends winding down, people are getting back into the routine, and what are they going to do?

They're going to scroll through Instagram to catch up with what they missed on the weekend. And so, um, we did that I kind of looked at our stats on Instagram because you can see when people are active and when there's most people online or what days. So, yeah, I should be utilizing those tools and make my life a little bit easier. And just speaking of auto scheduling, male chimp and YouTube scheduling, unbelievably awesome God release mail, Chimp Male Blast at 10 a.m. and auto schedule the YouTube release at 10 a.m.

and just boom, it's all done for you. You do it a couple days before you don't have to worry about it. All right, well, and to help in your hunt for instagram scheduling, I personally like to use buffer b u f f e r dot com. Okay, one of the things that we I have been lacking on is that social media scheduling other than our plan up to released it. We have had a very strategic schedule there, but after that, it's kind of trying to balance when we post about our next show.

When do we post about throwback? When we posted just a cool photo when we post that kind of thing, So that's one of those things that I'm really proud of this release in the way we did it. But there are always areas and opportunities to improve, even if we are happy with what we did and that right there is one of those things where we can improve upon, so thank you. All right, well, Eli Kelly, thank you so much for taking the time out. Thio, you know, spend your Sunday afternoon not at work here with us basically doing more work.

We're talking about the work way. Really have been looking forward to talking about this. It's something that we as you were really proud of it. We put a lot of work into it, and it's really cool that other people have taken some notice to it. Just in in that, I think it all pays off, but it's paying off more than we could have hoped for. So thanks for ah, hanging out with us. And, um, I'm gonna continue listening to your podcast cause I'm learning a lot of things to it's It's awesome. What?

The two of you and then I just recently got to an episode where there was another person. Correct? Yeah. Matt comes in in episode seven and then eight was his first not solo episode, but not his intro. And then So Aaron now does all the odd numbered episodes of me and Matt does the even numbered episodes those air. Awesome. What? Thanks so much for spending your Sunday with us, Thio. Both you and an air in here. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Thank you again. And I think you probably know the tagline by now.

Since you're a listener, keep rocking. Love enough. Uh huh. Once again. Huge. Thank you. To Kelly and Eli from Infinite Signal for taking the time to be on this show and talk about what they did for the release of love Me not and what they have been doing since the e P dropped. So again, if you want to check them out, you can find them at their website, which is infinite signal dot com instagram at infinite signal CA and on Facebook with infinite signal. Please give them a listen.

And of course, you can scream Love me not on Spotify apple music and pretty much everywhere else where music can be found. And make sure that you tune in next week for an interview with Josh Nachbar on Entrepreneur in Boston, who started a software company so he can earn money from that while spending as much time as he wants making music. So that will be out next Tuesday at 6 a.m. In your favorite podcast app. Thanks again for listening. I hope you have an awesome week and keep rocking.