[00:00:00] Welcome to episode 139 of the Bandhive Podcast. It is time for their episode of the Bandhive Podcast. My name is James Cross and I'm here with a very special guest Robbie Litchfield of the band saving vice how's it going today? Robbie?

I'm doing well, James, how are you?

I'm glad to hear that. And I'm doing pretty well. You can't see it. I got totally sunburned last week, so that's not the most comfortable, but I mean it's summer, so whatever it's worth it. Right. O . Yep.

Yeah, I got sun burnt myself on July 4th. I was like out playing whiffle ball with my cousins and everything. The next day, I couldn't feel a single thing in my body. I was like laying out diving for catches and stuff. And I'm like, oh yeah, I'm 27. Like I can't do what I used to when I was like 18. So I.

Yeah. So I've been sunburnt in all sore. So I

feel that,

Oh, man. Well, well, I feel like that's a perfect segue. I was bringing that up, cuz I was gonna say before the episode you were mentioning how you got this rechargeable fan and one of those would be really amazing for me right now. So I'm sure you've been using that the past couple days of your sunburn.

yeah. Yeah, no, I love fans, man. Especially when I'm [00:01:00] trying to sleep. Like, I don't know if I'm like weird like that. like I said, I know we talked a little bit earlier about this, but. when we're on tour having that rechargeable fan, I wish I could tell everyone what branded is. I can't remember off the top of my head, but it's literally in our band van, which I'm looking at right now.

So it's basically this like a hundred dollars rechargeable, 10 inch fan. And I purchased it right before we went on tour. And it is like the perfect volume. the perfect amount of like breeze. Like, I don't know. It's, it's great. It lasts like up to like five hours.

So that's really helped me be able to sleep with that, like background white noise,

absolutely stuff like that. Just the little comforts, having those in a van. Makes such a big difference. anyway, you know, you mentioned tour, that's really what we're here to talk to you about. So you are the guitarist and founding member of saving vice as well as you have Tyler and chase both on vocals, Benjamin on bass and Sam on drums. That is the lineup of saving. if you haven't been following the uh, [00:02:00] independent band news of the last few months, maybe you've heard of Saving Vice, maybe you haven't, but Saving Vice.

guys are from Vermont, which is awesome, cuz I'm from Vermont super stoked to have you on the podcast. And somehow I still haven't seen you live even though you've played here all the time, but we're here today to specifically talk about your recent tour without Lil Z. Which was supposed to be with little Z, but well, we'll get there.

So Robbie, before we jump in, can you go back to uh, 20 17, 20 18 when you started saving vice and just give us the history of the band for the people who are listening and don't know you.

So in 20, I wanna say 2016. Um, I was still in college at the time I went to St. Michael's college up in Colchester, Vermont. I knew I wanted to start a band. So what I did when I was in college was I actually had like a pop punk cover band. And that was a lot of fun.

We played some house parties. We even played out in the Burlington area. And then I realized like, I really wanna make [00:03:00] original music. I don't wanna play other people's songs, you know, as fun as it was at the time. and I wanted to explore metal core, which was like my real passion. I mean, I do love pop punk, but metal core was kind of like where I wanted to go creatively at the time.

So in 2016, I basically went on Craigslist, tried to find band members you know, which is a whole podcast story in itself. But over the years we basically, built the lineup in 2017. We put our debut EP lost words into the. reason a lot of you listening to this might be scratching.

Your heads is we took down that EP, and rebranded in 2018 and put out our new official debut EP color than dark. And that's pretty much the general story of like the founding of saving vice.

Yeah. And so now you've been around for about five years and you lined up a really interesting kind of cross genre tour. So it was you and dropout Kings and little Z. Now it's supposed to happen in uh, may [00:04:00] and June of this year. So just about a month and a half ago. And. Then everything kind of fell apart.

So can you tell us the story of how that tour came together and then we'll get into what actually happened once you

Yeah. Our agent at the time Ashley Ventura. basically us and dropout Kings were her clients. she also signed uh, Lil Z. . And basically we were all part of the same agency, which was a Mac agency, based in LA which is really funny because it's a hip hop agency, but , you know, we're a pretty much metal core band.

So we were definitely a black sheep on that roster. But yeah, no, I mean, the idea was great. I mean, to have like a multi genre. bill basically, us being metal core, we had a couple rappers in the mix, rash dog, Jupiter tirade and then we had dropout Kings who were obviously like new metal with a lot of hip hop elements for those of you who haven't heard of them.

And they're great friends of ours by the way, we've toured with them before. And then Lil Z, obviously I don't need to say much about him. He's kind of like [00:05:00] one of those big, you know, TMZ, figureheads tons of memes of him out there. and uh, yeah, so I thought it was really cool. I mean, the idea of having like. hip hop kids come out to these shows, be exposed to metal because as counterintuitive as it sounds like there are a lot of parallels between the genres. And we're seeing that now more than ever, artists like MGK, nothing, nowhere, ghost, Maine, et cetera, these people that are just kind of like bleeding the worlds together.

And I think it's beautiful personally. So I think conceptually like the tour. was really set to do something special. I mean, we had a lot of publicity even before all the drama came about, it was just a really interesting, cool lineup. I was super excited when we announced it.

So as far as the story goes this isn't me just trying to be political. I genuinely don't know. What actually happened at the end of the day? All I do know is that we drove all the way down to Dallas, Texas for so what festival?

Same thing with dropout Kings. They were there as well. And the second we [00:06:00] got down there my bass player. Who's probably the most like war war guy in the band. Kenman We were at like this Airbnb that we were staying at for the weekend for the festival. he just comes into the living room looked like a, he saw a ghost sore thing and he is just like, Lil just canceled the tour.

And we were all just like, what? Like we thought he was like, you know, it with us or whatever. So we're all like, what are you talking about? And he's like, look, look at his Instagram story. And he basically like made this post on his feet or his story or whatever, basically saying he's not doing the tour.

Didn't really feel like it, whatever. And he was like, sending a bunch of SAS towards Ashley. I think he even called her out by name, which is super unprofessional and inappropriate in my opinion. so that was terrible. And then, yeah, so like us and dropout Kings were like, dude, like what the Like we are, we're already here ready to do this tour. And then uh, basically what ended up happening was, he just dropped off. He didn't even show up for a set at, so what festival he was supposed to play that. [00:07:00] So he was just no call, no show. So clearly, again, I can't like speak on behalf of the guy.

Maybe it was, he didn't want to have that. Physical interaction, but like, clearly it wasn't just the tour. he didn't show up for his set at, so what festival down in Dallas? So like, it wasn't like necessarily the tour itself. He had an issue with like, he didn't even show up for his set at a major festival in Dallas, like clearly there was something else going on. In my opinion again, it's all theories at this point, he's given three, four different public explanations deleted. 'em all, all this posts. Like, dude's just not making sense. But honestly, James, like at a certain point, yeah, it sucked when we got that news and it was definitely really rough.

We had a lot of financial. Dependency on the tour happening and going smoothly. which maybe we can dive into a little bit if you want, but we got over it pretty quick because it's kinda like, all right, there's nothing we can do right now to really solve this. we did talk [00:08:00] to dropout Kings, cuz O obviously we're all there together at so what festival and they're like yeah, I think we're gonna basically, their strategy was to make.

Big public thing out of it, which is fine. You know, I, it felt kind of like, we were like, you know, the child in the backseat of the car while mom and dad were fighting, that's kind of how it felt to be in saving vice at the time. So dropout Kings basically brought on all this press, TMZ covered it and all these big hip hop, news outlets.

So we were kind of like dragged into that a little bit, which is fine because like, you know, again, there's a lot of publicity around our name. and I'll tell you, man, like our whole world got turned upside down and we had some split decisions, like in a matter of seconds, and it was just crazy how.

I had Ashley hitting me up and Adam who's my friend from dropout king, he's the vocalist. you know, three of us were kind of talking interchangeably and they're like, we're gonna still do this tour. Ashley's working, her ass off to salvage as many of these dates as possible so that [00:09:00] we could still do the tour, even though the guarantees are out the window.

Now it's a door deal type thing. It's what. But it's something that, a lot of bands probably would've packed up their bags and went home, cut their losses. But for us, it's like, nah, man, like we've been waiting for this forever. The pandemic was brutal on everybody. we want to go out there and we don't care if like the money's not there.

Like we're gonna go and do this. Like we're already here. So we all made that decision as well as, you know, dropout, kink. And I made a flyer. so I do graphic design. I used to do it like for a living that used to be like my side hustle, whatever. And I kind of retired my varsity jacket after a few years, I really don't like doing it, but I can do it.

And I did do it. So IDI the flyer tried to keep the color pallet, the same everything. So I recreated the born dead tour flyer in a matter of two hours. And I was with Tyler. Who's not on this podcast, unfortunately, but Tyler is my vocalist. He's kind of like the branding guy [00:10:00] in our band. So him and I were just hunched over my laptop, you know, my MacBook pro in Photoshop, trying to make this flyer so that we could announce it because Adam was like, yo, if I'm gonna do this press stuff, we need to have a new tour announced.

To be like, you, Lil Z, you know, whatever. So like, I don't know about you, James. I know you do like the production stuff too. I like to like give updates along the way so that I make sure I'm not wasting my time and the clients happy with what they're getting like, Hey, so far, how do these tones sound?

Whatever. So in terms of graphic design, I take a similar approach and I'm giving Adam these updates and then I send him like the 95% done flyer. Like I still gotta send her some stuff and, you know, you know, like housekeeping cleaning stuff up. And I say, Hey, like, you know, I'm wrapping stuff up right now.

How does this look? And I sent it to him over a text and then like five minutes later, he responds he's. Luke still just posted it. I'm like you what? It's like the it's like that SpongeBob meme of that guy, like you, what?[00:11:00] And he goes out and I look on Facebook and it's already trending and Like it's already viral.

I didn't finish it. It's not the final master file. he is like, yo, can you get me like the Instagram assets? I'm like, bro, like what the he has the audacity to be like, yo, gimme the story post and all this stuff. I'm like, bro. So I'm like working my ass off all night. I'm already stressed out and now I have to.

clean up this flyer, get the Dr. Uh, You know, Google drive link set up, just so, and I'm like, oh my God, I have like a square version for Instagram. And I'm like, I did not plan on doing this all night. Like, this was like a, Hey, you know, tomorrow morning, you know, we'll have our coffee and do this.

And he's like, Nope, just post it. I'm like, dude, it's like sending a client like the first draft of a mix. And you know, there's other stuff you gotta. And they just like upload it on this stroke kid anyway, you know, it's like, bro, like I'm not done yet.

it's

Like

Spotify, dude. I said,

 

yeah, I appreciated the vote of confidence man.

But like, geez, like let's, you know what I mean? Like let's think about [00:12:00] this a little, but luckily it looked good enough. I mean, it was like 95% done. It was just some like nudging stuff around, you know? So,

I didn't

notice anything looked off.

no, I mean, yeah. And I'm, I'm an ultra perfectionist, anyone. You know, anyone will tell you that, that knows me.

So maybe I was overthinking it, but I just was like, you, what? Like I was so Aw, man, that was funny. Not at the time, but looking back, it was hilarious.

so one of the reasons I wanted to have you guys on the show, which is now just you, since Tyler, wasn't able to make it

you stayed positive, at least publicly. I'm sure there was lots of like anger and frustration going on internally, but when it came to your public posts, you guys basically just said, This is what's going on.

It sucks, but we're gonna get through it. And this is what we're trying to do. You know, you communicated with your fans openly and honestly, without disparaging anyone, and so many artists would have just turned around, like you said, packed up their bags or they would've, said, oh little Z is a terrible person.

Like [00:13:00] he's screwing us over. That sucks. and you know, you guys basically just. We're not happy, but we don't know what happened. So like, we're gonna do the best thing we can, but there's one thing, or I guess two things that you didn't mention yet, which is you got to Texas and your van broke as well.

Not

once, but

twice.

there was like a third thing that happened that we didn't even publicly announce. Cuz we were like, Nope,

it was too embarrassing. I'll tell you about that though, here on this podcast.

For sure.

let's head into the van and then we can get to that third thing and uh, break the news.

Yeah. So basically what happened?

Ah, man, I, I spent, you know, the past few weeks ever since we've been home, I've been trying so hard to repress that stuff. so this is really like, I feel like I'm talking about a therapist, like, all right, let's talk about what happened. Like all this trauma that you went through, like, like let's, let's hold hands and do this together.

so I apologize if my memory's a little hazy, it's on purpose let's I tried to delete that hard drive. So let's see here when we got to Texas, pretty much when we got to the Airbnb, we had a garage that [00:14:00] we. Backed up our trailer into, we have a little five by eight which is super annoying, but in this one case it's really convenient.

So we backed up our five by eight trailer into this garage, shut it. And I went to like, basically get out of the, uh, the parking lot. And I put in reverse, except when it was in reverse, it wasn't like moving. It was almost like it was a neutral, like it wasn't catching and I'm like, that's weird. So I turned off, you know, off and on just.

Typical it troubleshooting type stuff. And I'm like, man, I was like, I can't get this thing in reverse. I had other members try it in case I was just like being an idiot or whatever at the moment. And no one could figure it out. so we basically were like, damn. So we drove to a mechanics shop, the guy looked at it and immediately was like, did your transmission is Like it's toast. we're like, holy shit. Like, obviously, as you know, that's like one of the worst things you could have break in your vehicle next to maybe the engine. So, you know, the transmission going out [00:15:00] was brutal, especially cuz we're in Texas. completely foreign land, we've never been in we're in Airbnb.

It's a holiday weekend, right? It's a Memorial day weekend. So, and this was on a Friday. We figured this out. So no chance. This was getting touched till Tuesday. at the earliest? in the mechanic shop we brought to they're like, you know, we can do what we can, but you're better off just getting it towed to a place that specializes in transmissions.

We got some homies down the street at uh, Eagle transmission. Down in Arlington, Texas shout to them. so we did that. We called them up and they did a free toe for us cause they felt so bad. they towed our van there you know, sure enough next week they worked on it. it took a few days because the part, the transmission that the ordered was taking forever, meanwhile, we're trying to salvage the born dead tour that we just talked about.

We made the new flyer and inherently we're already missing dates on that because it takes time to get a transmission. And, you know, we had the thought about like, oh, do we rent a van [00:16:00] kind of thing, but the amount of money. We would sink into renting a van. And then later I, you know, I get home in what I gotta fly down to Arlington, Texas with a, with my buddy or something.

And then we'd go drive it back up to New York. Like that makes no sense. And we'd spend easily like three, four, $5,000 extra on top of everything to do that. And we're not making 3, 4, 5 grand a night at these shows, especially now that they're door deals. Even though these are markets we played before and we would draw heads, it just like financially was not even close to making sense.

And I know there might have been some frustration from some of the other parties, but that's the business decision we made, bro. And at the end of the day, you have to look at your numbers and like, We talked about principle earlier and it's like, yeah, you know, you want to play shows that you can, if you lose a little bit of money to make it happen.

Great. But I mean, we're talking like four digits difference. The amount of money we would've played at these shows doesn't touch what it would've. We would've made [00:17:00] having a rental van and doing those dates. so it just didn't make sense. Plus, we were under the impression we would have this transmission within a couple days fixed which is what happened.

We had it that next Friday, which is great. We were on the road. We drove about 30 minutes out of Arlington. We were like on our way to Arkansas or whatever. I think we were going to Pennsylvania. I think that was the stop where we were trying to go. And basically what ended up happening was.

About 30 minutes in chase is driving and I'm in the passenger seat as like the navigator. And basically 30 minutes outta Texas, it's just like, he's revving. And it's like, woo, like it's not catching. And I'm like, that doesn't sound good. And he got really nervous at first I had all this cognitive dissonance, like, dude, we just got a new transmission, like.

You know what I mean? We crowdfunded this. Like there's no way, like there's no way it's up again. I was like, this is what new transmission sound like, you know? And then they kept happening and I'm like, okay, like, that's [00:18:00] weird. Like it got almost worse. And then Sam, our drummer, he's just like, oh, you just gotta break it in I swear to God I'm like Sam. I was like, this is a transmission, not a baseball MIT dude. Like. don't break it as soon as he said that, I'm like, we gotta pull over like, that. so we pulled over, we called the mechanic, described the symptoms we're experiencing. He's like, ah, yeah. He's like, that's not supposed to happen, period.

And you could tell he was so embarrassed. So he had his guy go to us. And we are so miserable, bro. We're so miserable. And so he has a guy come tell the van back, keep in mind. We're like 30, 45 minutes north of Arlington at this point. So this was an out hours, long process. We ended up Ubering backs on mechanic shop.

He looks and he's like, guys, I really like hate to say this. He goes, the transmission we put in there is a dud.

And he is like, it's like lottery ticket level, bad luck. Like you just [00:19:00] got a dud transmission and it's luckily it was all under warranty. So we didn't pay a dime for any of this,

Yeah, well,

yeah, exactly.

No, no, no. Yeah. Like it was all under warranty. It was there, I don't wanna say up, cuz it's not even really a up. It just, it was a bad luck situation. They got a du transmission, you know? basically they're like, all right, we gotta get a new one. It's covered under a warranty. And basically we uh, we stayed at a hotel. For a few days until we found out more information about the transmission, the new one. so that's what ended up happening. We got a new transmission.

I think we were back on the road that next Wednesday or something like that. So we're missing even more dates it's just brutal, man. It just feels like. It we're flipping a coin and it just keeps landing on tails. And you're like, nuh, no way. Like it's lottery ticket level, bath, look, that's the best way I can describe it.

How many times can you flip a coin and land on tails before you get a hits? Like, it's not even really a failure. It's just like bad things [00:20:00] happening. Like the metal gods just did not want us to play these shows or something. And then um, We finally get the transmission fixed.

They do a thorough test drive to make sure they're not sending us out again with another dud. We're back on the road. We're on our way to, This time we're on our way to Pennsylvania. So I, I must have been talking about something different before. So we are on our way to Pennsylvania and we're cheer and, we're just like so happy to get outta Texas.

We were there for like two weeks straight. We're approaching the Arkansas border, cuz that's the way we're headed. And like I swear to God bro, like 10 miles before. The border and we didn't post this at all, by the way, this is probably breaking news to a lot of people. We blew a tire. I swear to God, Luckily we have spares for everything. And at this point we're just seasoned vets with the problem solving. And, you know, we had a second to pout and then, I was like, all right, let's get AAA on the line. this was the Friday. now that I think about it and I'm like, we're not getting trapped here another weekend.

Absolutely [00:21:00] screw that. We're not doing that. So, we call up AAA and all up triple a and guy comes in like, I don't know, 20 minutes. he basically throws on our spare, we put our, you know, the one that's blown to pieces in the trailer. We take the next exit. We go to a discount tire and they give us all brand new tires.

which was dope while we were there, we got an oil changed, cuz why not? and, uh, had some food and we were back on our way as if nothing happened. yeah. the tire guy was like, yeah, he's like your tires. Haven't been swapped since, these are like the stock tires.

Like you're supposed to change him like at max every six years, especially as a touring band. And he is like, in these Texas, like how hot the pavement is down there. Like your tires are gonna blow if you're not careful.

So we were due for a brand new set of tires. If it didn't happen in Texas, it would've happened somewhere else sort of thing.

So. In a weird way. It was kind of like fortuitous looking back. But yeah, we were back on our way and we [00:22:00] continued the tour picked up in Pennsylvania. So we missed half the dates of the newly booked tour with dropout Kings, which was a real bummer, but we finished it out. We played Pennsylvania, we played the other dates and we went home and uh, I think we all probably cried a little bit in the shower, you know? And I'm not gonna lie. I mean like the morale of the band is definitely in a weird spot right now. we had a lot of soul searching to do and a lot of things that we wanted to um, figure out, you know, but I do think that I speak on behalf of the rest of the guys that, we want nothing more to be back on the road and do this again, improve to ourselves.

And everybody else that we can do this. And that this was just a fluke out of our control because there's nothing worse James than like letting fans down, you know, people that were looking forward to coming out to a show to see you and meet you perhaps for the first time. And you're unable to do it.

And I just don't want people to be nervous buying, saving vice tickets. Like I want people [00:23:00] to feel confident that we're gonna do it. And you know, it's just one of those things where it happens. I was so insecure about it at. and by the end of this tour, I just kind of made peace with it, cuz it's like, you know what?

Like there's only so much you can do, the best you can do is problem solve and figure out how to get back on the road and make smart business decisions. And people will have to understand and if they don't then that's on them You know, you mentioned how we kept our spirits up.

I think that's because we made peace with the situation cuz there's no change in the past. So what can we do now to make this better?

I think that's a great way to look at it. And to kind of go back to what you're saying a few seconds ago about want your fans to feel safe, buying, saving vice tickets. I think if they're a true fan, who's been following this story. They're gonna see, Hey, you did everything you absolutely could.

Little Z baed the transmission blew. The second transmission was a dud. Now the tire, like all of that stuff, you made the shows that were at all possible happen, you know, within reason like you, weren't [00:24:00] gonna spend, $5,000 on a rental van and then flying back and all that. I don't think anybody would expect you to do that.

And if they do, they have a very warped view of the music business

for independent artists.

we had a few people that were saying, why don't you just get a rental? But it's just like, bro, like the numbers were nowhere near matching up. Like it just made no business sense whatsoever. I mean, if it was like, we'd be out a couple hundred bucks kind of thing, then, you know, maybe we consider it.

But like we're talking like, career debilitating types of money. As, you know, you know, working with a lot of bands and touring and stuff, you invest a lot before you go on the road, you gotta, people don't realize this too.

It's like, you have to order that merch, man, you have to your gear set up. You have to do all these things before you head out the road. So there is a lot of trust that things are gonna go smoothly. I mean, luckily we do sell a lot of verge. So I mean, we weren't terrible in that aspect, but my point is that like, you know, if something doesn't happen.

that's cool that you're sitting on a mountain, a merge, but that bill still needs to get paid. They don't give a [00:25:00] if you broke down or not, they don't give a okay, well you owe me $5,000 for all this merge, so that's cool. they're getting their money is my point. So it's kind of like you invest a lot, a lot of bands do this. Um, you saw it last. spirit box was supposed to go out with, limb biscuit And the tour, I didn't end up happening. I think someone inly biscuits, one of their crew or someone really vital to the touring process.

End up getting COVID and they had to cancel the whole thing. so spirit box, this was like a whole big press thing was they were out something like 10 grand, cuz from all the merge they, they ordered for the tour. And I think uh, the limb biscuit team ended up compensating them or helping them out somehow to help pay for it.

But that just goes to show like one wrong thing can like cripple a. And that's exactly what happened to us. Like, do you think I want to do a GoFundMe or any of us for that matter? Of course not I want to be independent. I want to be able to do this, but the fact that we did a GoFundMe, it was like our arms were tied behind our back.

You know what I mean? Like we just had no other [00:26:00] option. It was either that, or just like quit altogether, and luckily, you know, we raised the money in a couple days. We had donations from a lot of great people. Ronnie raki reached out personally and PayPaled us some money for gas, which was incredible.

And a lot of the other, guys in the middle core scene, I, Chris motionless reach out tele from the word alive, reach out to me uh, in the band. So it was really cool just to see the whole community coming together around, all of the negative stuff that was happening. So it was like, there was a lot of beautiful things as well.

really traumatizing stuff. So it was, it was a very weird time in our band, a lot of mixed emotions.

Yeah. And I mean, that's the kind of thing it's tough. Like when I put together a budget for a band going on tour, I always say like, Hey, make sure you have some emergency budget aside, but you can't figure in like, oh, the van is gonna die twice. And the headliner's gonna bail. you'd have to budget for three times what the tour's actually gonna cost.

You just can't factor that in.

you know, and it's so funny, you see that because uh, James, I listened to [00:27:00] the Bandhive Podcast before this tour. I think I even told you that I listened to a few episodes. And it was really informative. There was some good stuff in there. A lot of what I already knew, but there was some interesting new ideas I never considered.

And I made sure when we got ready for this tour we all sat right here in my studio and guys on the couch, everything I had my big monitor set up and we went over budget and routing. I'm like, look, gas is four 80 right now let's round up to five. I I'm always conservative with budget.

exactly how you

exactly Yeah. Cuz you never know luckily gas was a lot cheaper in the south, which I didn't anticipate, but that's dope. Atlanta, Georgia, shout out to Atlanta. I don't know what they're doing down there, but gas was like a dollar cheaper than New York. So that was cool. But anyways you know, we uh, Basically went over the budget and like, all right, here's the, our food budget.

This is what we're gonna be doing for gas, which is quite literally the most, the biggest expense you're gonna have. So I was all like confident. I was like, man, we [00:28:00] got the routing figured out we got the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. it just goes to show you, I guess the biggest lesson I learned from this was that like, no matter how much you plan and planning is important and I'm a big planner.

In fact, I I'm an overthinker over planer in my opinion, but

Planning is super important. Every 10 minutes a planning saves an hour of work. That's one of my favorite sayings. I don't know where I heard that, but it is a great saying. And the biggest thing I learned was that,

the biggest consistency is inconsistency.

When you're on tour, like you're gonna have to improv, you're gonna have to make split decisions in the matter of a minute financial decisions, right? In the span of seconds, have to make a call. And I was kind of like the self-titled tour manager of the tour.

And it was just like, so brutal, man. It just, everything about it was just like having to make these decisions and can obviously I console everybody too, but at the end of the day, it's like, I'm calling the shot. So it's. I gotta be. Right. You know what I mean? And it's like, sometimes you're making decisions on things that haven't even happened yet.

And you're like, all [00:29:00] right, well, probability says this is gonna happen. And like I told you about the coin flipping man. The amount of times, I bet on heads that ended up being tales was crazy. You know what I mean? Should we get an Airbnb for this many nights? Cause they don't give a about your situation.

They just wanna know how many nights you want. I don't know how many nights we want, because I don't know how long we're gonna be here. You know? So it's like, you have to make an educated guess and I'm wrong obviously because we keep flipping tails. that was probably the most stressful thing for.

It was just like, man, how many times can you flip tails? Like, you know what I mean? And then you bet on tails and you get a heads. So you're like, cool. All right. That's sick. you know, like, maybe I'm speaking like a crazy person here. I don't know if anyone really understands, but it's, the best way I can describe what it was like,

Yeah, to me, it totally makes sense. And that might be from, you know, having that experience of everything goes wrong. Not to the safe extent you've had it go wrong, thankfully. But for some artists who are listening and they haven't had that experience of like, literally [00:30:00] everything can and will go wrong on tour.

I don't know, maybe it's abstract to them. But I guess kind of to pivot here, we've touched on how you kept that positive mindset. And I gotta think that was a, conscious decision. Like, Hey, we're not gonna go talking about anyone. We're not gonna complain. Like we're gonna just tell people what's going on and make this the best it can possibly be.

Right. Or was that just kind of a

natural thing?

that was deliberate. I mean, we were pissed and especially seeing Tripo Kings and the amount of um, buzz, they were generating around this. You know, it was very natural for us to wanna. Go out there and get upset and whatever. But at the end of the day, we spoke with Ashley.

She highly advised that we, kind of keep it to ourselves sort of thing. And, and I agree, I agree with her. I think it was the right move. Because at the end of the day, when you look long term and this isn't a knock on dropout kinks, you know, they handle it, how their team decided they wanted to handle it.

And. and you could argue [00:31:00] it did really well for them. And it probably did, but for us, like, we want to be known as a really, you know, professional band. I don't want to, you know, we don't want to be involved with all that type of negative drama type stuff, And it's just one of those things where yeah, it, it was a political decision for sure.

To abstain from that. And I'm a big believer in just letting out the Carfax. Lay out the car facts and let other people get upset for you. And that's what we did. And it worked. And like our fans were up in arms about it, but it wasn't a call to action and we weren't leading the mob. We just said, Hey, this is what happened.

And then they went out and did what they felt like they had to do, which is great that they have our backs. And it was cool to see, but, it was a, deliberate decision to stay out of it for.

Yeah, I think that's the right move. And you know, it's, I, I didn't really pay too much attention to what dropout Kings were saying, cuz I don't follow them. so they do whatever they want. But I think for you guys, that was the right choice

For our band, that was the right choice for their band. That was what they felt was the [00:32:00] right choice. And like I said, I think it worked for their case, but for our band, that's just, it's not. Our style, I guess. So, you know, we want to be a positive uplifting band. our music is about really messed up things in the world and like dealing with that.

And it's just one of those things that like, we wanna stay true to our, our mission, our beliefs and stuff. We're not a band that wants to beef. you know what I mean? Like we're not gonna be a negative Nancy band. Like we wanna stay positive. I think there's a difference between. Happy go lucky in a really bad way and being like positive, like healthfully positive, right?

We're acknowledging a bunch of things happen, but we're doing the best we can with a situation. So I think there's a, know, there's a balance. There is what I'm trying to say,

Yeah. And I think that's, a very healthy balance, you know, because if you just treat everything like it doesn't matter, then. you kind of desensitize yourself to things that matter and are bad and you should speak up [00:33:00] about which we're seeing so often in this country right now is that people are desensitized to terrible things.

I unintentionally dropped a band pun there anyway.

nice.

as we kind of wrap things up here. So back in uh, may right before this tour was supposed to happen, you dropped white rabbit, which is the most recent song you've put out.

and moving forward, what's next for saving vice? You mentioned you're kind of all reflecting on what's going on. And you did that show at higher ground at the end of June which, from what I heard went really well. So what's in the works for the band that you can talk about.

Yeah. So um, we have a new agent now and he's currently working on booking us a bunch of cool stuff uh, later this year. I can't talk too much about that stuff at the moment. I will say that we are playing when we were hungry Fest in October. Uh, I believe it's Thursday, October 20th in Las Vegas.

So we will be routing some stuff around that. So our next big tour will be in October, November. But in the meantime, we'll, we'll [00:34:00] probably play some one offs just to kind of keep our feet wet, and not go crazy. Cuz we spent two years in our houses, so it's like I wanna play shows. We all wanna play.

We made our lives tour ready for this reason. So it's like, we want to go out and do that. Musically speaking. Yeah. So white rabbit was the last release we did. This month on July 29th, we're doing a metal core cover of angels and demons by Jayden hoer. So that's coming out uh, later this month, which will be really cool.

self produced by myself again. And then after that we have a couple songs that we're gonna be putting out. I think either late August or early September, I'm not sure yet. These were the songs that we tracked with Justin Dubble formerly from ice nine kills earlier this year. We're gonna be putting those songs out in the next couple months and they slap, and I'm really excited cuz we haven't put out like a dirty, heavy song in a long time and we're gonna be putting one of those out.

Gotta keep those fans happy. So I'm really excited [00:35:00] about that. That's pretty much all I can say for now. Publicly. in, like I said, we're home now. We're just trying to save up money, work our asses off so that when we do get back on the road, we're a lot more financially stable.

And hopefully the next one can actually go somewhat according to plan.

yeah, fingers crossed for that. two things left is the first um, what advice would you give to an artist who wants to hit the road for the first time?

I mean, it's, it's

tough

If you to pick one thing

I know, because I would say planned, but I planned and it didn't go according plan. So that's like,

Have a plan Z perhaps

I have a whole file cabinet backup plans. No. Um, I would say, do a bunch of research listen to podcasts like James's you know, go on YouTube speak with other musicians like myself or other friends of yours, in bands that I've been doing this for a while and just kind of like rack up those tips.

And at the end of the day, it's like your experience on tour. You can only do so much [00:36:00] preparation and planning and research, like at the end of the day, you have to go out and do it. you know what I mean? You just have to go out and you're gonna figure out the nuance stuff, to um, have a somewhat successful first tour.

I would say, do your research. I know that's kind of a broadband type thing. but do your research talk to people who have already done it, make a Facebook post? I did. And I had a billion people comment and it was great. Most of the stuff I already knew, but there's some stuff that was like, holy Like this is a really good idea, and what works for one band might not work for your band, but there are a lot of really good tips out there. You just have to go and look for. and talk with people and network, which you should be doing anyway, but

that would be my advice.

All right, Ravi. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us here. And I appreciate you taking the time to sit down last but not least. Where should people go to find saving vice.

I think that we do a pretty good job being accessible everywhere. if you wanna follow us, you know, Instagram, Facebook, we're very active on we're on Twitter TikTok.

At saving

at saving vice I CA [00:37:00] made sure to keep it simple. And that's a pro tip for your bands for you guys listening.

Keep it simple. Okay. At your bandaid, maybe what state you're in. If it's taken, you know what I mean? Like something like that, just keep it very simple and keep it uniform across all platforms. Trust me. It's gonna save yourself a ton. Oh, 1 other thing. Speaking of this. So when we were on tour, I uh, had business cards made. You can go to staples. You can go to staples and for $20 you can get business cards. If you wanna spend a little bit more, you can get nicer ones, which we might do, but we got like 500 business cards for $20. It's got a QR code on it. Band logo. You mentioned, where can you find us? Like all of our socials, right?

Spotify at saving, vice our website, our crest logo on the other side, clean, simple, easy. You can hand it to people you meet cuz everyone's gonna ask you, oh, what band are you in? Hey, here's a card. You can go [00:38:00] check us out at your own convenience. You know what I'm saying? we've given out hundreds of these so far and.

It's so effective. So get business cards made and it's super

cheap. So there's no excuse

Yeah. That's 4 cents a card. You go anywhere for like download cards. It's gonna be like 15, 20 cents

per

download card.

yeah, like I said, you can spend a little bit more for something nicer, which I would recommend, but. We spent literally $20 on 500 cards and so worth it, dude, cuz you're gonna, especially when you're on tour, you're gonna bump into people all the time you know, like as show.

Sure. But like grocery stores, right. You meet the host of your Airbnb, whatever. And she's curious, oh, like you're a battle band. Like yeah. Here's our cart. Like, you know what I mean? Like just give him out to everybody.

It's huge. It's

huge.

I love that tip. That's something that I never thought of. And that's

next level there, man. All right, Robbie, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And I hope you have an amazing afternoon and best of luck with the future of the band.

you as well. Thanks for having me.