Welcome to Episode 65 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, Matt?

I'm doing pretty awesome, James. How's everything over there on the east side?

That is wonderful to hear. I hate to go back to the weather yet again, but on the day of recording, it is Groundhog Day, February 2nd, and the East Coast is being hit by a massive blizzard. So what better episode topic than, ah, winter warm up. Now, Matt, you had mentioned that a lot of this is gonna be somewhat redundant because we've basically been in a 10 month winter from Cove. It and yes. Oh, man. I just realize it's now been 11 months.

That makes me sad. So we've talked a lot about. Hey, these are the things you should do in your down time. But for this episode, we're going to talk a little more about things that you should specifically do during your winter downtime every winter. Not just when there is a global pandemic keeping you from playing shows because a lot of artists really take a break and stopped turning during the winter, especially in the colder regions. Like up here in Vermont, where, where you are in Colorado, it's really dangerous to go on tour, jeering January, February and sometimes even March.

And obviously there's the holidays in December, so people don't like to twitter too far into December and all that. So in general, the music industry shuts down from, I would say, December 15th until the first or second week of January, and this is major labels venues. All of that stuff will just be doing the essentials because everybody's taking time off to go home and see their family, especially for an industry like the music industry, where so many people are transplants to L. A. You just see like a mass exodus of people going back home for the holidays.

I think this is, you know, not just when there's a pandemic. This is every year the industry legitimately shuts down for 2 to 3 weeks, sometimes even longer. But we want to make sure that you're not hibernating the entire winter and just not doing anything every single year for two or three months, because that in the long run will hurt your business quite a bit. So we've outlined five areas where you can focus on your business. You should just say something about being a bear, that hibernates or something.

So your business doesn't gain all the weight that out Bear does. Before hibernation, I wrestled a bear once. Hey, set me up for that. Oh, you set me up for that. That is diabolical. I had to. It's early in the morning. No, you're you're absolutely right. James Winter is one of these really weird times for musicians and industry. People are like all of the live shows kind of slowly morph into the E. D. M. Dance party type shows the New Year's Eve type craze. You know where people are more focused on spending time with each other, rather than going out and having more traditional social experience or going to shows.

So, yeah, the whole industry likes to shut down. It's very hard to tour. If you are gonna tour, do it in the South. It should be blatantly obvious to people, but in the North it snows more than it does in the South. The closer you get to the equator, the less the temperature changes. That's not to say that some of the Southern states don't get snow, but it's definitely gonna be a lot safer for your road conditions and for your vehicle. Now, I don't know how many of you guys have ever driven a van and trailer through a mountain pass in winter time.

There is nothing for lack of a better term. Makes your entire body clinch. I still remember one time when we went over the Snoqualmie Pass between Seattle and Spokane was closed and we had to get from Oregon back to quarterly in Idaho. And so the only way that we could take was this other road, which was even sketchier of a pass, and we got all the way to the top of this pass, where it was snowing and write A soon as we crested this hill, my drummer chase.

He touched on the brakes and the van did not slow down it all. And directly in front of us was a guard rail heading over, you know, 8000 ft mountain, the whole drive. We'd all just been listening to music talking, doing our normal things. When that van started to slip, every single one of us shut up, the music went off. All of us were about as tense as a two by four. And we just set are silent prayers and slowly but surely went down this hill Aslo is possible.

And honestly, I would attribute chases, fantastic ability to drive our vehicle under high stress situations for for us remaining safe. But ever since that particular moment and we were young when this happened, we were on just a weekend warrior. We did like three shows, and we were coming back from this one. Touring in winter is like, if we're gonna do it, we're gonna, like, pop up into the north, maybe and then go back down south and do most of our traveling around the South. You know, there's a lot of people who who still, like shows and a lot of places like Georgia who never get snow.

And you know there's there's a lot of good markets you can still do is long as the venues are open. But the biggest thing that we want to hit home with this is winter is dangerous. It's very, very scary. You're driving a giant battering ram and you have a lot of weight. It already takes a long time to slow down a van and trailer. So if you soon as you add this other physical property where friction has changed and you start sliding and things like centrifugal force start to play a little bit more in the movement of your vehicle, you're inviting a whole new plethora of dangers into your tour.

So when it comes to winter, if you're gonna tour, if you have to tour if you want to tour, make sure that you're doing it smart. If you're gonna tour, tour the South. If you can't tour the south, make sure you got nice winter tires on there. Make sure you know how to drive in the winter and, you know, makes you have things like chains and and other stuff. Winter is dangerous. And if you don't believe me, look at any major band. I'm sure every single major band that you listen.

Thio has a story about winter that is, for lack of a better term. Terrifying. Yeah, look at Bayside. That's just one example. Look at Weezer. Absolutely. I mean, they wrote a whole acoustic album about that experience, and that's terrifying. For those of you who don't know Bayside actually lost a member during a winter accident, it brought them all closer together. But it is one of the like, more grievous, sad stories in the industry, and it definitely accentuates the head reality of the dangers of touring. We've all heard about crazy accidents and things like that, and there's enough of a degree of separation that we don't realize how real it is.

But, you know, the risk of getting in a car accident is already one of the highest risks on the planet. And then you start encouraging that by traveling all the time, and you're inviting a whole lot of room for error into your life. And so when you're on these winter tours, when there's snow on the roads, it's just one mawr thing that is working against you, Absolutely. Having done in the November weekend warrior tour up here in New England, where everything was dry and there was no snow that was already bad enough just because the thought of if there's a storm tomorrow, we're gonna have a problem.

So that was already nerve wracking because of that. And, I mean, when I I moved across country a few years ago in December, and we could have driven across the country in four days from Northern California to Vermont. But instead we chose to where I really chose to go south, drive the whole day down to L. A. And from there go through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas up through, like Arkansas in Nashville. And so we didn't have any snow until we got to somewhere around Pennsylvania. And that was such a good decision, because otherwise we would have been in snow the whole way, going through Colorado and the Midwestern states.

There you're also inviting a whole bunch of wind in a swell when you when you hit those, you know, the Midwest is is very windy. The prairie states are Oh, yeah, they're blustery for sure. Definitely. That was just such a relief to be able to do that, yet took an extra day. Added quite a few miles in an extra Airbnb. But it was totally worth it. Always worth the safety? Absolutely So on our list, we have five things that we would recommend you focus on during winter.

These aren't the Onley five things you should focus on. There are so many other things but these Air five that we wanted to highlight today and talk about so you have an idea of what you should be doing instead of just hibernating and enjoying some sweets with your bear tooth, that's payback for I wrestled to Maryland's. That was awful. Uh, sweet tooth bear tooth. Same difference. You need to practice, James. You need to practice. And that's our first point. It is. And we're not saying I should practice.

My puns were saying we should all practice our instruments more. So maybe we should both practice our puns, too. But practicing your instrument? Yes, I'm sure that we sound like a dead horse that we have been relentlessly beating because practice, practice, practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? You practice. How do you become better in anything you practice. How do you perfect your craft? You practice practice has a bunch of different forms. Some people, Ah, lot of guitarists that I grew up with. They loved practicing scales.

They loved learning warmups. They loved running through all sorts of different things. You know, whether it was learning a guitar solo or learning a chord structure for a song or even reading a book. That is about music theory that basically sharpens your skills. Holmes, who you are as a musician and helps you come out of your hibernation better. These are all great investments. Some people practice different. Some people like for me. When I was learning how to play bass, when I was really focusing on practicing all the time, I learned song after song after song, I sat in my room and I plugged in my base to my aunt and I looked up tabs to Chili Peppers songs, and I sat there and I played them over and over and over again until I couldn't get them wrong.

And I didn't even notice this. Um, it wasn't until I actually started playing with my drummer years later, that He told me that I had a tendency to add parts to Flea's bass lines, and it was because I had played them so many times that I started to add my own personality into other people's music. And so it started with that practice. It started with me learning how they did things, and then that helped me kind of have a philosophy on how I played, how I wrote.

And then slowly but surely, after doing it so many times, they say that Anam mature practices until he gets it right and a professional practices until he cannot get it wrong. Those are words to live by. In my opinion, that is like a mantra for life. And so when you practice, just figure out what you're gonna do. Maybe it's scales. Maybe it's just something as simple is like, Hey, you know what? I want my fingers to get stronger. I need to build muscle memory skills. Maybe it's that you already have a catalog of music written, and you just need to practice that more.

You need more of a rehearsal. You need to sit down and start with your songs. Maybe you're already operating at a level of the game where you're good at what you dio. You have good stage performance. You have good writing skills. You're competent, your instrument. But maybe what you need to focus on is playing your live set as a whole as a streamlined start to finish process. Once you get into the professional level of the game, you know, if you have a 25 minute set, you're gonna play for 24 a half minutes and so you're set needs to be exactly 24 a half minutes.

And so you as an individual, you need to make sure that whatever piece of the puzzle you are, you're pulling your weight. So this practice is for you. It's for your band. It's for your business. It's for your bandmates. The more you double down on your abilities, the more that everybody will succeed. J. Lo. She's not very memorable, but she started off as a backup dancer in a music video, and then she taught herself how to sing. And then she wanted to be in movies. And then she wanted to start a product line.

And you know what? You know she did. She increased her value. She became worth more and more money. And it wasn't just because, you know, people said J Lo was worth more money. It was because she practiced assumes. She realized that she wasn't making it doing exactly what she wanted. She made herself as an asset more valuable, more diverse. She said, Oh, you know what? I can dance. So I'm gonna dance All I can sing Well, now I'm twice as valuable. I'm gonna act now I'm even better.

And so this is the idea that you want to start implementing. If you're really, really good at guitar, maybe practice a different style because, you know, if you like, listen to your favorite band and you listen to the first album and you listen to their last album and I will give anybody five bucks if they could tell me that their style hasn't changed. If you as an artist aren't evolving, if you're not finding new passions in your music, then in my opinion, I would say you're not getting better.

I say that naturally, you know, all of our tastes change. Hopefully, they dio Hopefully we're getting smarter that we're getting more enlightened. Hopefully we are learning new things and increasing our value. And if we're doing all of these, everybody benefits from that. So how is this really gonna benefit you? It's gonna benefit. Your writing is gonna benefit your new material, which is our second point. You have this wonderful time of year every single year. That's designated for nobody toe work. When you can sit and hone in things that just aren't quite there yet, Maybe you have a song that's 90% done, maybe a stage presence.

You know that that works really well. But you haven't practiced it with your bandmates. There's gonna be different things for each and every one of you guys, and you need to isolate what that is. But when you're spending this time practicing, if you become so good at practicing, this is naturally going to bleed over into your writing as well. A true artist is somebody who can implement the new skills and the new talents that they are learning into the music that they're writing now. And that's hard.

But that's what pushes us to get better. That's what we should always be striving to dio. You know, if you learn a new art technique. You instantly want to practice it. And if you practice that and you hone it and then you implement it, then you're going to start getting your good feedback and things like that, and that's gonna be like, Hey, you know what? Maybe we should try this. That's what great bands do under off. When the iPad came out, they said, We're going to use sounds off of the iPad in our new album.

Now, if you were to do that today, people would laugh at you and ridicule you for it. Because iPad sounds air this low quality stocks sample, whatever. Whatever you know, it's just they're not quality. But a new tool was created and they instantly jumped on it. They practiced with it. They learned they tweaked their frequencies, and they implemented it into the first album that they released right after that. So these things are being used by larger artists in the industry. They might be harder to realize, you know, most of the time you only find out about them after the fact in gimmicky press releases, because it's some sort of marketing point.

The only reason I found out about the iPad samples was because of a marketing point. I didn't go and talk to the guys in under oath. I didn't go watch a nail the mixed session and figure out what they were doing. You know, I had to hear from a press release. There's always new opportunities and new things that you can jump on. And so if you're curious about something, just jump in it. Well, on that note, I will jump in and say Yes, absolutely. Writing and practicing are so important, and I know you said, We talk about practicing all the time.

I'm pretty sure it's at least every second episode we talk about. Practice makes perfect, and that goes for your instrument, obviously, but also for anything else you're doing. If you're creating content for social media, practice makes perfect. If you are trying to write emails for your email list, practice makes perfect. It goes for anything that you need to do for your business, which is our third point, and we got a couple of sub points here. But the main thing is getting your business in order, and the first thing is building your website.

If you do not have a website. You need a website. There's really no excuse for it. Yeah, I know. It costs a little bit of money. You can put up a website for about 50 bucks a year. That's like, what, 2 50 a month? That's a no brainer. You need to do it because a website is your central hub. And yeah, you know what? You can have Facebook. You can have instagram. You can have tic tac. You can have all of those. But when it comes down to it, if somebody is trying to check your band out to see how seriously you take things, if all they find is a Facebook page, they're going to say this band's not going anywhere.

They don't take themselves seriously. Also, the website is where you can sell merch and yeah, Facebook and Instagram are rolling out merch stores, but it's going to be much better for you if you can also sell merch on your own website. Because imagine this. Somebody googles you, they find your website. They go there, they click the merch link, and it takes them to Facebook. Oh, that person doesn't have a Facebook account. How are they going to buy your merch now? Anybody can buy merch from your website.

They don't need a Facebook account. They don't need an INSTAGRAM account. They don't need a Google account. All they need is an email address of some kind and, um, address to get the merch shipped to them. And, of course, a credit or debit card or PayPal or whatever it is you take on your website. The point being, it's great that all these social media platforms they're coming out with built in stores because, yes, that increases your visibility. But that only works for people who are on those platforms.

You need a place where people can stay in touch with you, even if they're not on social media, even if they are on social media. But never check it personally. I have a plug in on my computer called News feed eradicate er, so I literally don't see my Facebook feed. That's to keep me from getting distracted. Sometimes I check on my phone, but not as often as I probably should, because I miss a lot of news, you know, that's pretty interesting, James, that basically you use a tool to make sure that you are not being distracted from running your business.

I know that we've talked about this before where we've talked about investing in tools that make your business better. Investing in tools that cover your own ass are also very, very good. If you have a tendency to get distracted by things like a Facebook feed thing, that news feed eradicate er is a fantastic tool. So I just kind of wanted to add an anecdote that when it comes to getting your business in order a lot of the time that is finding tools and tricks that you can implement.

It doesn't have to be this like business tool in order to make your business better. If it's something as simple is like, Hey, you know what I need to get Spotify premium so that I can listen to more music regularly so that I could get more ideas for what is current so that I can try to implement those styles and then that's a good investment. There's a different paradigm that you can have when it comes to looking at tools. It might be a physical tool. Might be a guitar might be a humidifier might be, You know, whatever you might need.

Maybe your investment needs to be new strings or an amp or a practice, Sam, for something like that. Maybe your investment needs to be deleting your social media. That's not gonna be for everybody. I think social media is a door. If you go through it for certain people, it will be good for certain people. It will be bad. It's still a tool that you should always try and utilize. But the point is, is getting your business in order means using tools to do so. Exactly. And the best thing about news feed eradicate er is it's a free chrome extension.

If you just Google chrome news feed, eradicate er it should come up and you can install it from the Google listing. It's so useful, like I can look at Facebook and I don't get distracted. I love it. That's incredible. And notifications still show up. But I just checked the notifications. If it's work related, I look at it, you know, if it's in the band, I've group or something like that. But if it's something like so and so commented on somebody else's post, I'm like okay, I'll save that for later, and then I usually forget.

But that said, our next sub bullet here for getting your business in order is creating and sticking Teoh a social media content schedule. And by this I mean saying, Hey, we're gonna post something at these times on these days and that's something. Could be, you know, a photo, a video, a montage. Ah, link to another artist you like. And you can figure out what platforms you wanna post it on, whether it's tick, talk order, instagram or Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Right now, the biggest thing for artists seems to be instagram, but tick tock is quickly taking off a swell.

I would always recommend having a Facebook page, but the best part of all this is when you create the schedule, you can use a tool. Personally, I like publisher P U B L iar. That'll be in our show notes at Band I've got rocks slash 65 to set up your schedule. You can, for example, tell Publisher to post on your instagram page every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and you can set an individual time for each of those. All you have to dio is feed it posts to share.

They just added video capabilities for Instagram, which is amazing. You can now do photos and videos on Instagram via publisher, and obviously it works for Facebook as well. As far as I know, there's nothing that works on tick tock. But Publisher will even be doing stuff on YouTube and other social media. Is they do Pinterest. I think they have pretty much everything. Twitter, obviously the main thing being you set your schedule and then you just put the posts in and it'll pull them out in the order.

You've uploaded them, so you don't actually have to worry about your schedule. Once you set your schedule, add the content and it will do the rest for you automatically. Plus, you can select multiple accounts so you can say, you know, well, I have the same schedule for my Facebook and my instagram. Or maybe, if not the same, schedule a similar schedule where it's like the same day, but just a slightly different time, and you can put those posts in and then we'll share it to multiple. You just check one leg, a little extra box and we'll go to both of them or check three boxes and I'll go to three different accounts.

It is amazing tool. So if you want to check that out, like I said, it's called publisher P, U B L E r and the link that will be in our show. Notes at Band I've got rocks slash 65. One thing I want to add about the social media content schedule is when you're dealing with a bunch of different platforms that all kind of service slightly different purpose. It is very, very, very powerful. If you use those different platforms for unique types of content, there's obviously certain things that will bleed over well, Ah, Facebook status and a tweet have a perfect amount of bleed over.

They both work well together. That's something you can post to both of them. However, on your instagram, you might want tohave more unique content. Maybe it's something that's just a simple Azaz, a guitarist sitting and playing a beautiful piece that they wrote. Maybe on Facebook you're incorporating mawr giveaways and things like that into your schedule. You're focusing mawr on the actual interaction with your fans. There's a certain light that each one of these platforms is seen in a lens that people see it through. Instagram is more glamorous to use as a huge marketing platform, and so people kind of want to see a window into your life.

You're not getting on Instagram to say thanks so much for 1000 listens. You know, we're so happy you're using Facebook for that because that's where you want to talk with your fans. So that's where your your forum kind of should be. And then you wanna make sure that your places like tick Tock. It's like mostly Ticktock videos or humorous. And so maybe if you guys are a bunch of clowns, and maybe that's the best place to show that off. Maybe your instagram feed is gonna beam or of serious videos.

Mawr of technical videos, Mawr of the Art, The Passion Behind the Art. And then you have a tick tock that's more of like everybody being goofy, the behind the scenes behind that passion and the humanity of it. Same goes for a YouTube channel. YouTube used to be exclusively for really high quality content videos and state of the art music videos and blah blah, blah this and people who could make funny videos, you know, of their neighbors running into a fence and things like that. Now it's a little bit more, Ah, window into your life.

Now, with things like H G, T. V and keeping up with the Kardashians and reality TV. In general, people really want to see more about you. Maybe your YouTube channel is a little bit of a hybrid to where it's like, Oh, yeah, Here's some videos that air like the passionate playing. Here's some videos of us behind the scenes, funny stuff like. And then here's the video, like us on tour in winter, being terrified, going over a mountain pass, you know, like the drama. And so there's different areas when you know if you're getting on Facebook every day and you're posting about drama, you will destroy your fan base really quickly.

But if you turn that drama into a video form that is inclusive, that's not going to turn people away. That's like the equivalent of, you know, trying to look away when there's an accident on the side of the road. People want the drama when they want to know more about you. And if you're doing that through a platform where they can't, you know it's like Facebook is less tangible. It's less relatable. So, like it's really good for posting show flyers and keeping people informed and like having conversations with people on developing good relationships.

The place where people are gonna fall in love with you is like on your YouTube personal channel on your instagram, your tic tac's and on these social media is that allow people this glimpse into your life. You can use these tools to give people different windows. That's gonna be your best strategy because A it's going to incentivize people to come toe all of your platforms. For me. I do a whole bunch of the writing in the band. Well, if I were to get on tick tock and basically just talk about my writing process over and over again, and that was the only place that I did that than any fans who are intrigued about, a live in Barcelona's writing process would have to go to our tic tac.

And so you can use these tools to basically appeal to different markets all at the same time building your network larger than you ever dreamed of. I definitely agree with that, I think with one caveat. Which is Don't spread yourself too thin. If you have trouble keeping up with content on one social media platform, don't go out and try to make a content for every social media platform. Pick the one that seems to have the best results for you. Try and dabble on a few different ones and see what works and then stick with that one.

But yes, having different content for each platform is absolutely vital. Like you said Facebook statuses and Twitter posts tweets, those go hand in hand. I would say that photos from Instagram or videos from Instagram can go to Facebook very easily. I would not want to post anything from Facebook or Twitter to Instagram. Like I see people who screenshot a tweet or a Facebook post and share that on Instagram. The Instagram algorithm will push down posts that have too much text in them. They don't want text out there, so yes, in theory, you're getting the word out there.

But do that in a story, not a post, because stories I frequently see people sharing text and I think Instagram is more apt to allowing that because stories or a brief thing, it's kind of like flipping through the news, you know, so have a plan for each social media profile. But don't spread yourself too thin. If you could only handle one, just focus on that one and then as appropriate, share the content from that platform to your other platforms. And keep in mind that the important part is having quality content.

And so, like, a lot of bloggers will actually talk about this where they set out to start a blogged. And then after a while they had stretched themselves too thin. You know, they were saying they were gonna write every day, and then after trying to do that for a while, they burned themselves out, and so then they had to take a step back and say, You know what? I'm only gonna publish one piece per week, and this is a pretty common story among bloggers. Very common, and in turn they switched to writing one piece of content per week, but that was much more content rich and pretty much unanimously.

They would see better results, so don't throw out something just because it's like, Oh, I haven't made a tweet today like, Oh, I haven't made a Facebook post today. That's OK. If you don't have something to post about, don't throw up something that's terrible. Maybe you can do something simple. It's more like a, you know, a show photo or or something like that, something that still appeals to some part of your audience. Just make sure that whatever it is it's calculated and that its quality content. Yeah, definitely.

And that's where having a tool like public comes in because you can think about stuff in advance and get it up there. And that way you never have that panic moment of I didn't post anything today. What do I post? And then you write on your Facebook status? Hey, everyone, what's up? Like That's not a good post for a band. And that's what happens when you in that last minute panic of I didn't post today. So use a tool. Whether it's publisher or one of the other alternatives.

There's Buffer Hoot Suite. Later, there's a bunch, but personally, I think public is the best one. That's the one we use for Bandhive. Use a tool like that to plan ahead. And that way you'll never have that panic moment before we move on to points four and five Briefly want toe Reiterate how important networking is. We talked about this in Episode 61 which was Now is the time to start planning your post pandemic tours. There's a lot of peas in that, but networking is so important. And when you have downtime like during the winter, that is a great time to highlight areas of the music industry where you would like to know more people, whether that's publicists or talent buyers or label and our reps or just people who dio any certain subset of the field.

If you wanna find more sound engineers or lighting designers, or I don't know why I'm on a live music thing. That's not a bad idea, though. Get with live music cause they're not doing anything right now. In winter, they have downtime, too. If no one's playing shows, they're not working shows. So find those people and connect with them, even if you don't end up hiring them. You have that connection, and they might at some point say, Oh, Hey, you know what? A band dropped off this bill.

We can get our friends so and so in there. Like, let's see if they're available for the show or even something more mundane. Like, if you have a sounder lighting question, you have a friend that you consent a Facebook message to and say, Hey, sorry to bother you. Do you have five minutes to look at this? You know, like, Matt, you ask me audio questions all the time. You know how I'm like Oh, my God. Audio. I wanna answer this. You know, like exactly I always get excited.

And I end up, like, if I don't know the answer, I end up googling stuff and trying to help you figure out what it is that you need to get things rolling again. Exactly. Make some connections with whatever field you think is appropriate within the music industry. And just keep that networking skill going and utilize your downtime. Absolutely. You know, another good use of your down time. And this is a very crucial one. It goes hand in hand with the tools maintenance on your gear. This is another thing that you could do over the winter months, it gets really cold.

And so, like if you're in acoustic artist, you need to have your guitar humidified. A whole bunch of moisture gets sucked out of the air during the winter months, and and maybe you're already naturally in a drier climate. And so it's not as large of a risk for you. Or maybe you store your gear well anyway. But it's just something, you know, like two vamps like tubes get cold guitars there. Would they warp. So, like you need thio, make sure that whatever you're doing, like it's good timeto restoring your guitar, I'm gonna Guitarists need to hear that, like restoring your guitar right now.

Take your freaking strings off, Clean the fretboard, Put some lemon oil on there if it's the right kind of wood. Yeah, and re string it. I don't know why musicians air so horrible about re stringing your guitars. And don't worry. As I'm saying this, I'm talking directly to myself because I also in horrible about restraining my guitars by a box of strings and set them next to your guitars. And then someday, when you're sitting there in your board, then changed, Um guitar strings should be changed frequently, and you're gonna do yourself a giant favor by maintaining your guitars, maintaining your bases, maintaining your instruments.

You wouldn't go three months if you're a singer without talking or warming up your vocals. So keep that in mind that your vocal cords of the same thing as your instruments on the wall they all need maintenance. They all need upkeep. They all need consistent use. There's lots and lots and lots of things that you could do with all of your gear. If you're in audio engineering, maybe that's gonna be like up keeping your cables. And, you know, if you're focusing on touring, maybe that's up keeping your vehicles, making sure that if you are going to hit the road soon that you've got oil changes and things like that taking care of you have good tires on your car.

There's all different manners of things that this upkeep is going to apply. Thio. So you know, if your guitars air in pristine condition, think about what other part of your business might need Upkeep. Maybe you need a design overhaul on your social media. There's a billion different things that you could basically take with this kind of like maintenance and upkeep. And the point is, is you don't want anything to stagnate. So as soon as things have started stagnating, now the wearing and the tearing begins whether that's in your actual gear in your hardware and your software, maybe, you know you need to go through and update your old APS.

Maybe you need to just go through and update your contacts. But that kind of walks hand in hand with the networking we were talking about. So maintenance is very, very, very crucial and fantastic to do during these nice, cold months, agreed. And I got to say you sparked a few thoughts in my mind. One I have here on my desk, a little thermometer that also has a humidity sensor building. So I can always look over and say, Oh, it's 32% humidity in this room right now. I have My guitar is hanging on the wall behind me, so I know that between here and 10 ft behind me, it's probably gonna be relatively the same humidity.

That way, if it gets too dry, I'm could be like okay, time to put them in their case with the humidifier because I don't want them on the wall getting so dried out during the dead of winter. Same thing for summertime. If it's super humid because my studios in the basement, it does get pretty humid down here. I've seen that thing. It actually shows the all time highs. 84% humidity. You better bet next summer. I'm gonna have a dehumidifier in here. Since I'm tracking that now, it's like That's way too high.

That needs to come down. And it was cheap. I think I got two of them for, like, 15 or 20 bucks on Amazon. The other thing that, since you mentioned audio, I do not want to even count how many studios I have seen, where the desk is clean and then behind the desk, there's just like an inch of dust on top of all the cables in the back of the rack units and all that. It's like clean that out. Dust is the enemy of your gear. It gets sucked into your computer by the fans, and it will make your computer heat up more, which makes the fans work harder, which means that eventually the ball bearings and your fans are going to give out, and then you're going to need to replace the fan on your computer because it's making way too much noise.

Or if you can't actually replace the fan on your computer because you can't take it apart because it's a non iMac and it's a hostile to take apart, which, yes, technically possible. But the average person doesn't have the skill for it. Then you have to buy a new computer. Or if it's a MacBook Pro or something like that. It's also for if you have audio equipment, dust gets into the little potential monitors. The dials or the fader is on your board. You have to clean all that out because the dust will mess up the electron ICS.

It'll make favors stick if you have gear that has a fan on it. Same thing is the computer. It sucks in that dust. And then the inside of your gear is getting coated with dust, creating more heat. So your stuff's gonna be less efficient. It's using more electricity, and it might not sound is good, depending on what kind of gear it is. It's really important That's another thing. One of my Christmas gift to myself was I realized I was using a bunch of those little compressed air things that are ridiculously expensive, and you just throw them away when you're done.

When it's empty, I was like, It's gotta be a better solution. I found a little hand held vacuum with a host so you can get into hard to reach places that you can actually put the hose either to suck dust and dirt in, or you put it on the other end to blow filtered air out and replace those little compressed cans. I want to say it was about 60 bucks, so it's a little more on the expensive side. But four of those cans was like 30 bucks. So in a year, I'm easily going to make back that money by not using one of those cans every month or two.

So it's really important to do that. Proper maintenance on your audio gear. Please don't mess up your studio. That actually brings us directly into our fifth and final point. The last thing that you can do is go to the studio if you have material written. If you've taken your time you've practiced. You've rehearsed your live performance. You've built your website. You have created a social media content schedule. You have all of your ducks in a row go into the studio, go get that stuff. If you already have demos recorded going into the studio, we kind of encompass both demos and final products in this category.

But if you have ideas, you need to get him on paper. Every step that you take towards the actual publication of your music is progress, even if that means that it's like you're going to scrap it later, that doesn't matter. There's no such thing as a bad demo because it's either a demo that you use or it's a demo that you learn from. So when you have downtime, trust me. Studios need money to if you have the opportunity to get into the studio. Definitely take that opportunity.

Make sure that you're prepared and practiced because studios cost money and I'm finding a lot mawr hourly rates being posted by different studios and whatnot, and that's pretty consistent. But the point is, is that if you're paying by the hour to be in the studio, make sure that when you go in there, you are warm and you are practiced and you have your demos ready and you are good to go. Not only is that gonna make your audio engineer really happy with you, but also it's gonna make your pocketbook very happy with you.

People throw away tons and tons of money sitting in the studio doing nothing. Don't be that person. Make sure that you're prepared. Make sure that your practice to make sure that your warm make sure that when you're in there creating your art, you're pouring your passion into it. And anybody that hears it knows unquestionably. But that is your passion, you know, like this that does it for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening. We hope that even though winter is almost over, this episode will inspire you to go get off the couch and do something for your business.

Remember, your band is a business, so you can use this downtime not only this year, but every year to further your career. If you're not already a member of our Facebook community, we would love to have you there you can find us either by searching for banned hive on Facebook. Or you can go to Bandhive dot rocks slash group in your browser to be automatically directed to our group. We'll be back with another brand new episode next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern time. I'm not going to say who it is, but we are gonna have a special guest, and I think you're really going to enjoy the episode, so be sure to tune in for that one.

You can find it in your favorite podcast app. Until then, have an awesome week. Stay safe and, of course, as always, keep rocking.