Hello? Hey, how are you? Pretty good, just sitting here in Louisville. Yeah, sorry about a few minutes ago.
No worries. We actually had a couple people step out, so it's just me, Dave the drummer, and Keenan the guitar player right now. Alright, cool, cool, cool. Hi, everybody.
My name is Lauren Goytel, and I am a program drummer at WXAB in Chicago. I wanted to interview you guys, because I know you're going to have a show tomorrow at Double Door at 8 o'clock, so that would be really cool for people to come out for Valentine's Day. Yeah, we're excited about it. It's a pleasure to meet you, Lauren, as well.
I know we emailed John a lot back and forth, but good to find me. Send my meeting in person. Right. Took a while, but, you know, we're there.
Yeah. Alright, so, how did you guys all meet? Well, myself, Dave, who is our drummer, and John the singer, all kind of worked in and around the same studio in New York in the East Village. So that's how we met.
The bass player, Pete, and the guitar player, Keenan, just met through playing gigs around town. I mean, we've all played with other bands in the city, and we eventually just kind of formed a group of who we thought were the most solid guys, because we got kind of sick of playing other people's music, and decided to kind of do something for ourselves in that regard. Right, okay. How has it been touring with you guys?
What's the experience been like? This is your first time touring, correct? It's our first time doing like a longer run. We've done 12 shows in 12 days.
I mean, it's interesting. On one hand, you know, you get the wear and tear of the day-to-day, wake up, go drive to a new city, load in, play show, load in again to the car, go sleep, then wake up and do it all over again. But on the other hand, it's really good to play every day together. Like last time we did a three-hour show or something like that, and John's actually both feeling a little rough from the road, so we do a lot of instrumental stuff, and we got to experiment, we get to kind of push the music forward, which is really cool, because by the time we get to the end of the Chicago-Minneapolis shows, I think it's going to be killing because we've been playing together every day for a couple hours at least.
So you guys are used to each other in the vibe and everything like that? Yeah, exactly. Cool, cool. Are there any funny stories that have happened on tour so far?
Hmm, let's see. This is Keenan, by the way. Hi. Hey, how are you doing?
Good, good. Let's see, other stories that have happened. Well, not too long ago, the night before last, we stayed at the cabin on a lake, and I was pretty much afraid that the owner of the cabin was going to come in and kill us. That's always the buggy.
Like if you screamed, nobody had a treat bell, nobody would hear it. Cabin up was, yep. So it was a little scary, but it's been a really good time on the road. We have gotten lucky, despite our fears in some of the places we've stayed.
We have gotten really lucky, and it's probably better than I've eaten at home in terms of food. And we've always had a roof over our heads, which isn't the easiest thing to get when on tour. Usually cats are sleeping in vans some nights. They're crashing anywhere.
But we've always had a place to stay, which is really cool, and food in our bellies. Some of the best foods, so I really can't complain about what's been going on. But yeah, it's been cool. Oh, John has gotten a little sick, like Anne said before, which is a little scary right now, because we've all been having to take up the duty of trying to sing and entertain the crowd, despite what we've been practicing for the last few months.
But it's those type of miracles that take the fans to the next level and the ability to really still keep the crowd entertained and change our way of thinking about the music to entertain people, rather than, you know, oh, it was rude, let's just play a bunch of instrumentals, like, you know, those are the tunes we normally play, you know? So it's really cool. Well, it's going to take you guys a backup plan, you know, just in case things like that happen. So good for you guys.
I think it happened. What makes you guys different from other bands that are out there right now? I mean, I think it's our... I mean, we definitely have a diverse selection of backgrounds in terms of music, genres, and music experiences.
I think it's just, you know, the combination of New York City, which is one of the toughest cities probably in the world, although I haven't been much out of the country in terms of, like, a music scene, because bands are dying a dozen. And that combined with our experience, both musically and technically, with so many different artists and musicians, and everything. I mean, Keenan is in the Wildcat for six years. I went to the music school for jazz.
John grew up in Brooklyn. Pete's been a session-based player and a gigging-based player for, I don't know how long, forever. I think he started at the beginning of time. Yeah, we have a nickname for him.
I named him Uncle Pete. He's so much older than me. I'm a young kid in the band. But, yeah, he's so much older than me, so he named him Uncle Pete.
He's such a lot of cool. He's always trying to give you advice while getting drunk, too. That's the best advice. And we have Dave who can play any song in distance on piano or drums.
So, I mean, it's definitely a good collection of minds, and we all contribute. It's not really, like, driven by one person or two people. So, I mean, it's cool. It's like a team sport action going on.
And also, like, taking it a step further, I think, what really, truly makes a difference in other bands is being able to give the listener an experience. You know, like, so many people, so many bands, you know, you go to their show, and they're just playing their albums. And it's like, okay, cool, but I could have just put this album on. Instead of spending $10 to come to the show, plus travel expenses.
But, you know, when it comes over to the Hustle show, it truly is an experience. You know, we try to take different takes on some of our songs. And we're always progressing on. You know, what you hear directly comes from, you know, our crazy minds trying to take the music a step further and give the, listen, not only an auditory experience, but a visual experience as well.
And I think, you know, people just seeing any band have that much fun up on stage, creating experience for themselves, you know, it takes it to the next level for the consumer, you know. Cool. You know, some bands are just there just to play and get out, but you guys will probably make that extra effort to, you know, join the crowd in and whatnot. You guys all have your own specialties within the band, so that makes you extra special.
And so I saw that you guys were using Kickstarter for your debut project, EP. So what do you guys think was the advantage of using Kickstarter as opposed to any other outlet? I mean, obviously the crowdfunding is huge nowadays. We wanted to put something together to not only offer people, you know, a chance to donate, but also to get something out of it.
So, you know, they get the EP, they get the final funder. As far as for just choosing Kickstarter, I mean, there's a lot of different outlets for the crowdfunding type thing these days. And I guess we just kind of decided that Kickstarter was the most known, not just for music, but for, you know, conventions and whatever. And yeah, I mean, just kind of the name recognition, to be honest, is why we went with them specifically.
But, I mean, it was successful. We kind of got to give people a glimpse into what we were working on just with our videos, but try to put like a little artistic touch on everything that we put out there. So, yeah, I think that really, it definitely helps, I mean, the money for sure to get our EP off the ground, but also just kind of help us to solidify our image and what we want to put out there. That's true.
Good for you guys. So, out of all the songs you guys have produced, what's your favorite? Oh, I'm Dave. I'm a drummer.
What's up? I guess each of us can only really speak for our songs. I think we all kind of have a couple of favorites. For me, there's one tune on our EP right in the middle, In Love This Way.
Oh, that's my favorite? Yeah. I was, it's a little bit of a cracking, I guess. I was really kind of happy personally with how my performance came out and also how our engineer made it sound.
His name's Denison. He's a fantastic engineer. I kind of look at him as our fifth deal, so to speak. I think it depends on the band, but not to get away from answering this question directly, but I definitely want to give him a huge shout out because, especially with a lot of the way music's made a lot today, a lot of times the band doing their thing, there's kind of a big divide between the performance space and the engineering space in the studio, and Daniel, our relationship between him and us in the studio is really, really collaborative.
But getting back to that particular tune, I just really love the vibe of it. It's super spacey and just, you know, it's got this really sort of dark, ominous, but not, like, negatively depressingly dark, ominous. It's just got this, like, kind of cool guy vibe to it, for lack of a better description. Yeah, that's definitely what I think.
So what was the overall, like, meaning or significance behind the song? Is there any? Or was it just kind of, like, under those out here? Well, I think actually John's mainly responsible for most of what's going on in the song.
I mean, he definitely writes all the lyrics. And also the main, the main riff is just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He actually sent me a text message one day, he's like, dude, I was walking the train, and I just heard a little bit of this riff in my head. And it was one of those things, I think this must be why I like this song so much, because he sent me a little voice memo with him humming that lick, and all of a sudden it was like 30 seconds.
I heard almost the whole arrangement in my head. I'm like, oh, yeah, I can't wait to press it. I'll get together and start working on this. I feel like I really know where this is going to end up.
And it pretty much did. But I mean, you know, if you listen to his words, you know, mostly about, you know, kind of a relationship song, a love song, I would say, I kind of doubt it as someone trying to, you know, convey to the person in his life how he feels about it. Yeah, again, you know, it's the mood of the song, really, that comes through with me. Yeah, that's a really good one.
Cool. So with you guys touring and being so busy, can we expect anything, like an album or a new project this spring or summer? Yeah, definitely. I mean, that's what we're working on next.
We have probably like 13 songs that weren't on that EP that we're going to have to be getting in the studio to work on. We already have two more done. We want to shoot a video for the one we just finished, so we're kind of holding on to that one for a second. Cool.
And that's what we're kind of just putting through the trials and tribulations of the road because we like to kind of test out our shows to figure out what works the most effectively before we put into like a recorded format. Yeah, that's definitely, once we get back to New York, that's going to be our number one priority is getting finished up down and putting another project together. All right, well, I can't wait to hear it. With that, who are your musical influences?
What makes you guys want to jam? I mean, we all get asked this question. It's funny because each one of us has a pretty different answer to it. We're influenced from everything from like jazz to classic soul music, to D'Angelo, to Jay Dilla, to Jimi Hendrix.
If you live in New York City and you're a musician, you have no choice but to hear a little bit of everything. And there's just a ridiculous amount of diversity of music in New York City. But that's cool though, because you're getting exposed to it. I know John, growing up in Brooklyn, he always talked about listening to salsa music, Latin music.
He doesn't really bring this up much, but for me, as a drummer, he's a hell of a percussionist. We had a lot of fun on stage again, when it's time to get busy with some drum stuff. For me, I grew up with my parents' record collections, lots of stuff in the 60s and 70s, British rock stuff, Beatles, Pink Floyd, by the way, also some jazz with Dave Brubeck and Cora Silver, and then some pop stuff that made you want to be a piano player, like Billy Joel and Ellen. And even again, Beatles and that stuff.
And then my dad also loved Motown, so there'd be a ton of that stuff going on. Definitely, I would say, Stevie is one of my all-time favorites, personally. So there's definitely a lot of that vibe that I try to bring to the table here. Yeah, like I said, it's kind of like a melting pot of kind of we try to just listen to good music.
We don't have a certain genre or anything like that. Speaking of listening to music, what bands or artists are you guys listening to now that you would recommend to other listeners? Oh, bands I'm listening to now that I recommend. There's this cat named Jesse Boykins III or something like that.
He's out of Brooklyn, New York or something. He's wicked nasty. You know, of course, it's D'Angelo. I've got to say D'Angelo.
D'Angelo's like, man, I've been trying, I've been shedding to that record, trying to learn every little note for months now since it came out. And that's like, I think that's the most progressive piece of music that's been made thus far that, you know, I think everybody really needs to get on and helps to take this music to the next level. Some other bands that are out now. Let's see.
There's awesome bands, Snarky Puppies, more instrumental stuff. They're really good. They're awesome, actually. They're recording down in New Orleans right now, I believe.
I don't know. There's a lot of really good bands coming out. There's this girl named Kristen Diablo that I really enjoy listening to. It's a little bit more like folk, singer-songwriter.
A little bit of country, but she's a rock and guitar player. She's from New Orleans, but she's always on tour, so she's playing everywhere all the time. She's great. And the host of bands, like, a lot of cats that, you know, we play with, we usually enjoy listening to as well.
And yeah, we're just hoping to meet as many musicians as we can so we can enjoy their music as much as we can get something to them, hopefully with our music. So, yeah. Right. And speaking of which, actually, it was said that you guys were working with Mob Deep, co-producing Dylan McBeat together.
How was working with them? That's actually a John question, to be honest. He's the one that was involved with that. Unfortunately, he's not here.
Oh, well. Sorry about that. So have you guys ever worked with College Radio before this? College Radio?
I mean, we did. We did a couple of things. I think we did one in Vermont when we were up there this summer for 90.1 up there at the UVM station. But I think that might be it.
Oh, right. Well, it's a start, you know. I mean, it's tough to get on the radio these days if you don't have a huge budget behind you. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, we can kind of say it in the print and online and those types of print outlets. Right. So do you guys think it's important to the music industry for College Radio to express their music interests and everything like that? For Radio too?
Yeah. I mean, I think it's always kind of weird when the people who are listening to music don't decide what they're listening to. In general, with everything, when people who are voting don't decide to get elected, you know? So, I don't know.
It's always tough. There's got to be a system behind everything, but I just don't know right now how the system's working in the best interest of the consumer. So, I mean, I don't listen to the radio that much, to be honest, just because I'll go through it and find nothing I like and then, you know, put my Miles Davis CD back in, so. Yeah, there's like advertisements and you really want to, you know, sit there and listen to them.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's tough. It's, you know, it's people... I'm sure you guys know more about it than I do, but I can't imagine that, you know, at least the big radio station's numbers are going up in the past couple of years.
Maybe they're trying to kind of scramble to figure out what to do now. Well, let's hope they fix it in the best way possible. All right. Well, since you guys have heard Rich City Hustle, they are having a show on February 14th, 8pm, at the Double Door in Chicago, Illinois.
Make sure to check out the interview, the concert, and all that good stuff. All right. Thank you guys so much for being with me today. I really appreciate it.
And good luck with the rest of your tour. Thank you. Bye. We'll be in touch.
Absolutely.