An indie rock band that hails from Black Hills, South Dakota, they played 120 dates last year, including headlining at Sturgis. They’ve opened for the likes of Third Eye Blind, Uncle Cracker, and Puddle of Mud. They have amassed more than half a million streams on Spotify alone and had their album chart on the iTunes rock charts. They have 13 new songs ready to record.
"We see lots of bands, they put out ads and things like that, we always think that's a horrible way of going about it. Or posting on social media, 'Oh, we need a new' so-and-so, like, keyboard player or whatever."
"If you're a band and you're not touring, are you really a band? Playing live is the most important thing you can do. It's your best opportunity to share your music and your craft with fans and potential new fans. It's kind of the life blood of what we're trying to do."
"You definitely don't want to ignore markets for very long because you want people to remember you."
"We kind of have a saying, 'We're gonna take over the world ourselves.' We always just, we know no one else is going to work as hard as us."
"What's great about working with a producer and a separate engineer is we had outside perspective and you can kind of let go and just worry about performing."
"We were starting to establish ourselves with original material that was working and that's always something these promoters are looking at. They also want to add a drawing card to a national or an act that's coming in from out of the area."
"It's getting more difficult to get on those, kind of, exposure-type stages. I would say, my advice would be, hone your original 45- to 60-minute set and make it really powerful and then just get your name out there with those promoters and with those venues."
"The green room was just a farmhouse and so we're in the first bedroom on the first floor and then we see the guys from Third Eye Blind come in and it's like, 'Oh yeah, there they are, in this farmhouse'."
"As an opener, if I could give any advice to up-and-coming musicians, is, be a support act. And by that I mean, be supportive. Don't go out of your way to try to get the attention of the headliner. You're there to support the show and make the show be as best as possible. And if they're gracious enough to come up and talk to you and want to meet you, that's awesome on them. But otherwise you're just there to make sure the show goes well and you put on a good show and you're not a distraction for the promoter or the headliner."
"We've had those experiences where you show up and you have to use the house p.a. and you sound horrible. The audience doesn't know that the p.a. sounds bad. They just think the band is bad. And we want to control our own destiny as much as possible."
"In today's day and age with Spotify and people can get music instantly everywhere, I feel like you have to put music out as often as you can to compete and be relevant."
"Lights On"
"We Were Young"
Bonus audio content with Judd Hoos