Live Free Or D.I.Y. Episode #03: Exposure
Episode Description
In this episode, hosts Dana Bollen (Two Week Notice Podcast / Touring Roadie) and Andrew Mall (Music Professor - Northeastern University) are joined by nine of our Season 1 panel members to discuss the impact that exposure can have on D.I.Y. music scenes and what happens when these bands and this music reaches mainstream attention and success.
We address the question: Is there such thing as too much exposure in D.I.Y. music scenes?
Panel members for this episode include:
Norman Brannon (Thursday / Texas Is The Reason / Anti-Matter Zine)
Ace Enders (The Early November / I Can Make A Mess)
Joey Chiaramonte (Koyo)
Chris Wrenn (Bridge9 Records)
Brandon Davis (Vanna / Fever333 / Lions Lions / INSPIRIT)
Ali Lipman (Cape Crush / Moon Over Salem)
Johnny Grimes (Furnace Fest / Workplay Birmingham)
Jeff Apruzzese (Passion Pit 2008-2014 / Drexel University)
Tony DeBacco (Videographer - Boston D.I.Y.)
PLUS an additional clip of Ace Enders from Dana’s Two Week Notice podcast (full interview here: Spotify | Apple)
Episode Links
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Credits
Thank you for your contributions to this podcast:
Anthony Robbins (Research Assistance)
Ioanis Pintzopolous (Production Assistance)
Kira Burr (Graphic Design)
Todd Pollock (Cover photo)
Casey & Iodine Recordings
Piebald (podcast theme music)
Aaron Stuart (cover photo talent & legend)
Northeastern University (funding)
Episode Transcript
Joey Chiaramonte: There will always be a room of kids somewhere. There will always be a place where 40 people are seeing a small show in a more small-scale or DIY setting. That stuff doesn't go away. That will persist forever, and I think people -- with size and scale, I think people get nervous about that going away, but that will always exist. Shows where just local bands are playing and friends are going hard for their friends' bands, that's eternal.
Dana Bollen: Hello everyone and welcome to Live Free Or D.I.Y. My name is Dana Bollen, I'm your co-host and alongside me is my man, co-host, music professor over at Northeastern University, Andrew Mall. Today we are going to talk about exposure in the DIY music scene. Professor!
Andrew Mall: Hey Dana!
Dana Bollen: How's it going?
Andrew Mall: I'm doing great. How are you?
Dana Bollen: I'm great. What do you got for me today?
Andrew Mall: Today, Dana, we're talking about live music from this perspective of exposure, perhaps even overexposure. We'll be talking about DIY spaces, like semi-legitimate spaces, underground house shows, basement shows, Knights of Columbus halls, that kind of thing. We'll be talking about concerns for overexposure in those scenes. What are people worried about once those scenes or those venues start blowing up? We'll also be thinking about what are the business needs? What are the financial needs? How do we have a financially sustainable scene if we limit ourselves to erring on the side of hiding it, of excluding people? But by the end of our conversations today, Dana, we get to a point where we have a lot of perspectives from many of our interviewees who argue that we need to do the best that we can to make sure that we are making our scenes in our DIY music communities visible, that we are communicating our values very clearly, and that we are accessible to as many people as possible. If we don't do that, then we risk dying out.
Dana Bollen: Well said Professor. I have another question though.
Andrew Mall: Okay, Dana, what's up?
Dana Bollen: I want to know what's an early basement show or like a VFW / Elks Lodge kind of thing from back in the day when you were a kid that really stands out to you?
Andrew Mall: Man, I went to a bunch of VFW halls when I was in high school. VFW hall shows. They were mostly like local hardcore. The one that really sticks in my head is from when I was in college. It must've been 1998 or '99, it was at a punk house that was rented by some of the guys in the band Midtown in North Jersey near Rutgers, and the basement show that night was Piebald, Raina Maria, Hot Rod Circuit, Midtown, Thursday in a basement at the Midtown house.
Dana Bollen: Unbelievable. What's really cool about that, dude? All those bands are still active till this day.
Andrew Mall: Yeah, and I've seen several of those bands in the last few years too. What about you, man?
Dana Bollen: Well, Professor, I remember seeing Piebald and Cave In back in the day playing the old Andover Town Hall in Andover, Massachusetts, dude. They would do holiday shows every year and, speaking to exposure, a couple decades later, I'm with Piebald, we're playing Boston Calling opening up for -- Tool is playing the same stage later to close it out. Weezer played the festival that day. There were like 40,000 people there and it was just so massive. Another example, I didn't see these bands like in basements or anything, but I just did this tour with these bands who all started out playing basement shows and Knights of Columbuses. The lineup was A Day to Remember, The Story So Far, Four Years Strong, who are all well-established and well-known bands at this point, and then there was a fourth band on the bill every night to open up the show.
It was a three-way split between the tour, so each band got to do one third of the dates. It was Militarie Gun, Pain of Truth, and Scowl, who are all incredible bands in their own right. And they're still playing hall shows, but they're also still playing Furnace Fest and stuff like that. But I just loved the fact that a band as big as A Day to Remember is taking out bands like Militaries Gun, Pain of Truth and Scowl on this massive tour. Talk about exposure, dude, we played Red Rocks on that tour. And it was all like these pavilions, thousands of people there every single night. I remember a few of the shows, looking up at the ceiling, and I'm looking up at Stanley Cup banners and it was just like, "This is such a cool tour." And I couldn't help but think, Professor, the impact of that tour alone -- nevermind all the other tours that are happening around the world -- featuring these bands that are still DIY or started out in basements and Elks Clubs and stuff like that. Just the impact that every show every night on that tour, this scene has aged to the point where people our age are coming to these shows with their kids. I can't help but think that every night there's got to be some kids in the crowd that are inspired by a show like that to ask for a guitar for Christmas or sign up for drum lessons and maybe start their own band one day.
Andrew Mall: I think that's so cool. And I think the other cool thing, and you said this, is that so many of these bands start out at all-ages shows whether they're in illegitimate spaces like basement or underground venues or they're at rented halls like a VFW hall or an Elks Lodge or something like that. But I'll tell you, Dana, that in doing our interviews with our panel, one of the things that I'm learning as a 46-year-old who doesn't really go to all-ages shows, is that there are fewer and fewer spaces available to throw all-ages shows, to host all-ages gigs. So that's where we're going to start the conversation today. And first we're going to turn to Chris Wrenn of Bridge Nine Records.
Chris Wrenn: In the 26 or so years that I've been in the Boston area, there's been at least twice now where DIY hardcore shows and punk shows in basements and in DIY spaces are a necessary thing. It's one of those things where artists want to perform in places where there might not be a place for them to perform, so they have to create their own space. They might not have the resources to do something above the level and permitted and authorized and all those things. So they do them in basements, they do 'em in these spaces. I mean, I remember going to shows, I think it was the Berwick in Roxbury and it was literally the basement of a commercial space. There was one entrance in and out, so it was totally a dangerous space, but I saw some great shows there. I remember there was only one thing in this basement and it was a pallet full of hair gel and I don't know why it was there, but it was just chilling there for all the shows.
These are things that were like, if there was a flyer for it, it would say the date and the general city and then "ask a punk" because they don't want to promote where exactly it is. But with respect to that, people like to promote the fact that they're doing these shows and they want people to know about them. And on at least two occasions, I think the Globe, the Boston Globe, has done these stories about this vibrant, artistic punk scene that happens either in Allston or -- I think both times it was in Allston. And all these people talk about all these basement shows that they're doing that are illegal ultimately, and then the next day they get raided and shut down. There's this fine line where it's like, look, you want people to know what you're doing to have people be able to find it, but you have to be discreet about it on some level so that you don't blow up your own spot. And that's exactly what happened both times.
Dana Bollen: Chris Wrenn Bridge Nine Records, what a cool little story there. I love the flyer, "ask a punk." I think that's probably just Instagram now or word of mouth is always powerful. Right, Professor?
Andrew Mall: Word of mouth is currency. Word of mouth is how you know you belong to these scenes, to these communities. There's this academic concept called subcultural capital where the idea that knowing that you belong is key to word of mouth and vice versa. We're going to hear next from Tony who is a videographer in the Boston DIY scene. He's been going to a lot of shows in the Boston area, sometimes two, three shows a week, recording bands and being a part of the scene. He's actually going to walk us through from his own perspective some of the impact of this Boston Globe article that Chris was talking about.
Tony DeBacco: There was an article that came out I think October, December of last year [2023]. It was a bunch of interviews of people in the DIY scene. There was specifically one venue that is famous for being too loud and getting shut down all the time. The article featured a lot of people, some of whom are my friends, and a lot of them seem to not know where the article was going when they were interviewed. They just assumed that it was a student doing something for a project like everybody does when they're a student. And it blew up. It got published in the Boston Globe and was basically on the front page of the Globe for a few days. And if you looked in the comments of that article -- I guess I'll talk about what the article said. The host of the venue was basically saying, "Yeah, hosting a house venue is a party all the time," and kind of described it as a party. And all the interviews were cut really short to one-liners from a lot of different people of them just saying it's kind of just like a fun space to hang, and didn't really talk about what a lot of people think.
The problem was that there weren't a lot of small venues and there still aren't a lot of small venues. So, there were a lot of comments on the article from obviously adults, as in homeowners and people who are active in local politics, probably. And it was a lot of them saying, "This isn't safe, these people need to stop doing this," citing fire code violations and stuff. And the cops seemed to kind of crack down after that. There were two reactions. One reaction was to go further underground and stop promoting shows and it kind of being a word of mouth thing. And the other reaction was the thing that my friends are doing, I think, which is hosting above-board fully legal shows at churches and community centers and even local bars and stuff like that.
Also, I mean we're all getting a little older, so all of the people that I am seeing evolve with how they listen to music and how they promote music and how they put on shows, I think is also simultaneously just a natural progression of people being involved in a music scene. My friends who are hosting these shows at community centers and stuff, they're approaching 30 years old, so I think the amount of time they want to spend in a basement is getting a little less as well. If they can find a way to make a little money off this so they only have to work half as much time at their normal job and then they can run shows and do something sustainable in that way, I think that's beneficial to everybody.
Andrew Mall: I really want to lean into this because I think hearing it from Tony's perspective and thinking through this conflict is hugely important for understanding why it was a big deal. Because, Dana, can I ask you, why do you think this Boston Globe article was a big deal for the Boston DIY community?
Dana Bollen: Well, on one hand, it could be really exciting and probably was. Because it's like, "Oh wow, we're doing something really cool to the point where the Boston Globe," which is definitely the biggest newspaper in Boston and one of the biggest ones in the country if not the world. So it's like, "Wow, that's really cool." But on the other hand, I know that there was some backlash to that. So that's the flip side, right?
Andrew Mall: I mean, the backlash is this: these DIY house venues and basement venues, and sometimes they're even playing in the backyard, these are mostly young people. Teenagers and young adults in their early twenties who can't find a place to play at the other bars and clubs in the Boston area. Or maybe they simply, if they're not musicians, they can't even get into the bars and clubs because they're not 21. So they're kind of, from a business perspective, these house venues are filling a gap in the marketplace. They're definitely filling a need in the community. And the other thing is that these are safe spaces. These are safe spaces for people who may not feel comfortable in other social events at colleges. At frat parties or house parties or going to the hockey games or football games. Maybe they're just not into that or maybe they don't feel safe in those environments.
Dana Bollen: Well, Professor, speaking of having a safe place, there's also just the literal sense too, like fire codes and stuff, right? I mean, so the cops coming in to shut something down. Well, on one hand it's like that makes sense. I mean, look at that Great White show in Rhode Island from 20 plus years ago now. I mean, people died. So there's that aspect too.
Andrew Mall: No one wants anyone to get hurt, obviously. That Great White show in Rhode Island is not the only thing. There was also the warehouse fires in San Francisco a few years ago that was also DIY space that was not up to code.
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Andrew Mall: So, all of this is to say is that our licensing and our zoning and our fire codes exist for a reason. They exist to keep us safe as people who go to shows, as people who walk into buildings, to know that that building is structurally sound, that it has enough exits for everyone to leave in case there is an emergency, and many of these basements wouldn't pass muster. So I want people to be safe when they go to shows, but I also want those shows to be available.
Dana Bollen: Agreed, Professor. And the flip side to that, in regards to cops coming in and shutting these things down, it's like, all right, is it because it's not safe or are they just looking for something to do? And I'm sure that's obviously different from town to town, community to community.
Andrew Mall: One thing that I've heard, especially here in Boston where there's a very large student community just overall with all the colleges and universities, is that cops often will turn a blind eye to keg parties. Same number of students, same number of young adults, in a basement in a living room, having a good time. Cops, they know keg parties, they understand keg parties. We're going to hear from Ali Lipman shortly, and she really makes clear that from her perspective, cops simply just don't understand DIY shows. It's outside of their realm of experience. She says that part of the challenge is that law enforcement simply don't know how to react, and when they don't know how to react, they fall back on policy and on licensing and on the law and they just shut it down instead of finding a way to work with the students, the young adults, the kids who run these house venues.
Dana Bollen: Want to kick it to Ali?
Andrew Mall: Yeah, we're going to hear from Ali Lipman. She runs shows in Boston's north shore neighborhoods in suburbs, and she's also in the band Cape Crush.
Ali Lipman: I think it's important that we have a space for young people, and there has been less and less of that as my time in the scene has gone on. The landscape is just more litigious. Business owners are more worried about liability. So when I was a teenager, I could go to shows, I could go to shows on Lansdowne Street. There wasn't that many places that I would be excluded from as a teenager who wanted to see live music as desperately as I did. However, today that is not true. There are not a lot of places where a teenager can go to a show. A teenager can't go to a show at the Royale, most shows at the House of Blues. It's a much different landscape. Young people want to see live music, they're desperate for it, and there just really isn't a space. So when there's not a space, you'll see a lot more of them making space. So a lot more basements show up. That is just a result of there not being all-ages music spaces, and there really was when I was young, whether it was something like the Art Space or even just the bars on Landsdowne, they would allow young people to go to shows, go to. So I think that is one area where I've seen a lot of change, something that I'm kind of fighting in the tide against.
Andrew Mall: Hey Dana, I just want to pause Ali right here and amplify some of the things that she's bringing up in our interview with her. She's talking about this perspective that people who aren't involved in DIY music scenes might have of concerts as places where they're just giant parties, where there's a lot of drinking and a lot of drugs and maybe sex. And as a parent, I can really understand this impulse to protect your teenage sons and daughters, your teenage children. As a taxpayer, I can understand this desire to make sure that the places where our young people are hanging out are safe. I totally understand that. She also then talks about how this sets up an antagonistic relationship with law enforcement where young people, teenagers and young adults, they can't rely on the cops, on the police to have their back to stick up for them, and that can be really, really dangerous.
And she's referencing domestic violence and sexual assault. It can result in situations where the scene might have to police itself because if you call the cops to investigate an altercation, next thing you know they've shut down the whole venue and no one wants that. To me, it's this tricky component about inclusive spaces. What happens when you start including people who don't have the same values, who start putting the scene individuals at risk or putting the whole scene at risk? And from Ali's perspective, that puts the community in this really uncomfortable position of maybe even denying access to certain people who might be threats to individual safety or to the scene's safety.
Dana Bollen: Well said, Professor. Ali had a little bit more to say, so let's kick it back to her.
Ali Lipman: I think the biggest threat to most local music scenes is that you'll attract the attention of law enforcement, that they'll come and shut down your shows and they don't really understand it. It's hard to explain to law enforcement that what you're doing is positive. What you're doing is art and not what you're doing is a party. I think I have the same trouble explaining to my mom why I wanted to go to shows when I was a young person. For her music was like, it was Woodstock. It was drugs and nudity and debauchery. And for me it was community, it was feeling like I was part of something and art and emotional expression of music. And I remember it was difficult to try and get that point across, and I think that I still think about that when I am talking to people who don't love it the way I love it, that they aren't really going to understand how important it is to certain people.
So yeah, I think as a "scene elder," somebody who's involved in the community, I want to make sure that we have the support of local government and law enforcement and kind of play by all the rules that I need to in order to make sure that the events that we're holding are safe for people of all ages. But I think that when there's a lack of that, lack of what I'm trying to do, and you have these illegal kind of, they're like speakeasies, right? It's like we know it's illegal, but nobody wants anyone to get hurt. Nobody's trying to break any rules. Everybody's just trying to have a good time and make it happen. So I see a lot of that. How do we keep this secret enough and how do we make sure that law enforcement doesn't find out about what we're doing so we don't get shut down?
I think in general, people want to make sure that their scenes are safe, and in the absence of cooperation from law enforcement, sometimes that means that you have to put your butt down about who's allowed to attend and who's not. When there's accusations of things like SA [sexual assault] and DV [domestic violance] or even somebody being intolerant or racist, there's been a lot of times when I've seen scenes take that into their own hands and say, "This is not somebody that we want to come around anymore." So yeah, it's interesting, because then you end up as a scene being judge, jury, and executioner. It can go either way. The person can say, "Fine, I won't come anymore." Or, all of a sudden you're like, "How do I get rid of this person?" So it's tricky for all communities.
Dana Bollen: Love what Ali said there, and she's got a great perspective to bring to the table, Professor. That covers, I think, a good snapshot of the basement side of things. So this episode, again, the theme here, we're talking about exposure and what happens when these bands start to blow up, so to speak, and the shows get bigger, the tours get bigger, the festivals get bigger, so let's start diving into that. What do you say, Professor?
Andrew Mall: Yeah, let's do it. Up next, We have Ace Enders of The Early November. We asked him to share from his own experience what happens when bands who came up through the DIY scene start to get mainstream attention and success.
Ace Enders: If you look at even the scene that I was a part of in 2000 to 2008, I would say was our real heyday of that scene, and if you look at it like that, it was like this very tight knit, everyone was on the same page: Yes, we're coming for our spot. We all knew that we wanted the scene to grow together. And then it's like, "Oh, well, but now this band's got a song on MTV," so then we have to. Or then this band has got a song on the radio and then they have to, and it's a very, if you look at it like that, that is the only effect. If it gets exciting enough, it's going to become mainstream. Once that happens, then everybody's going to make a lot of money for a little bit of time and then it's all going to go away.
Yeah, I think that's when you see the true colors come out. For sure. I mean, some of these artists right now in our DIY scene -- When We Were Young with Fall Out Boy for instance, they became one of the biggest bands in the world and still are one of the biggest bands in the world. It's amazing to see, and I think of playing VFWs with them, I think of playing skating rinks and whatnot, and you see where they are now and just how true they've stayed since the beginning. Someone like that. I remember talking to Pete [Wentz] back then. He was the same person through the start of their career, through them becoming big, through them being on the radio and being like, dude, this guy knew what he was doing the whole time and he was just a businessman. And you see that happen and it's very cool, I think.
Andrew Mall: I love hearing Ace's recollections from, again, almost 25 years ago, thinking about this moment where bands that have kind of bubbled up out of the indie DIY underground are getting a lot of mainstream attention. Like he says, they're getting spins on MTV, they're getting played on commercial radio, they're playing larger and larger venues, bigger and bigger tours, and they're finding audiences that are kind of far from their roots. I think that's really exciting for a lot of reasons because it brings music, a style of music and a kind of music and an approach to music-making that starts in basements and starts in local communities -- it brings it to mass audiences.
Dana, one thing that I was thinking about is we're reflecting on how exciting it is to be in a basement and to be exposed to music and to think, "Well, I can do that." Imagine having a similar experience, but in an arena or at a stadium to see people that kind of look like you and dress like you, and they're not pop stars. They're not Taylor Swift playing a guitar that you have hanging on your wall or that your older brother or older sister bought for 150 bucks. "Yeah, I could do that." I think that's a hugely exciting thing to lean into and to really think about.
We're going to hear next from Jeff Apruzzese, a friend of mine who teaches at Drexel University, teaches music industry. He was a founding member of the band Passion Pit. He played with them basement shows when they were just starting out as a bunch of Berkeley students here in Boston, and before he left the band, they were playing some of the largest stages in the world, giant festivals, big tours. One thing that is really clear about Jeff's story is that to get from those basements to those arenas, you have to find listeners and fans and consumers who aren't basement show kids, who don't know anything about DIY. At some point in our conversation, Jeff mentioned "You can't control who your fans are when you're at that level of exposure and success." So I asked him what he was thinking about when he said that.
Jeff Apruzzese: Well, originally I was sort of thinking about that Kurt Cobain quote, and I don't know if it was Kurt or Krist [Novoselic] or some of the band, but they're basically talking about when jocks started showing up to their shows that they knew that they had crossed into the mainstream. I think that's a whole other argument when you think about DIY historically. Not that you get to control who's going in your shows and even DIY spaces, but it sort of has a built-in character, a built-in space of attendees, whereas when you start getting the larger shows, you don't have control over that. And part of success -- air quotes "success" -- of building a larger fanbase is creating some of those diverse communities of people that might not have necessarily been a fan of your music before.
Dana Bollen: That was great perspective. Up next, we're going to hear from Brandon Davis. What I love about him besides just him as a human, he is a DIY hardcore kid. He was in the band Vanna, he's currently in Inspirit, and he's also in a band that is playing massive shows and festivals, Fever 333. So he's really been through it all. He's a veteran in the scene. We asked him what his take is on the term "sellout" and its relation to the DIY music scenes.
Brandon Davis: I think the sellout thing is an interesting topic because I guess if whatever you're doing in your music, if it has a particular message that you stand up for and that you agree with or something that you're trying to stand by, and then you do the opposite of that for money, I think that that is what people consider to be selling out. There are people that think that Turnstile has sold out because they went from being a hardcore band in the hardcore scene to playing festivals with System of a Down and Korn. Me personally, I don't see anything wrong with that. I don't think that you should have to limit yourself to a certain world if you're being offered the opportunity to be a part of other things. I don't see why that would be considered selling out. It's not like you've done anything wrong to the hardcore community by performing elsewhere. So to me personally, I don't think something like that would be considered selling out. But yeah, I do think that if you do the exact opposite of what you're saying you stand for and then you accept money for that, then I would say that yeah, I mean, I'm probably not going to personally pass judgment on it, because you don't know everybody's life. So it's like if you've got to be a sellout to feed your kids and you're not hurting anybody, I'm probably not going to be mad at that.
Andrew Mall: Dana, I love hearing from Brandon there talking about selling out, and it strikes me that in DIY music, we're kind of afraid of money. It's not like the dollar bills or the credit cards are going to jump out of our wallets and attack us, but I think we're afraid of being seen as exploiting our friends or exploiting our love for this community in a way that's really unseemly or that is maybe too similar to how big businesses exploit art and exploit culture. Does that make sense?
Dana Bollen: It does make sense, Professor, but why is it bad for a band to blow up and play a stadium and make money? What's the problem? I don't see it.
Andrew Mall: I think that we're afraid of money in part because it is way too close to actually being a business or being commercial or being a capitalist. It gets us way, way too close to the actual mainstream music industry, infrastructure, whatever, where there are the largest entertainment conglomerates in the world that are signing bands and artists to predatory contracts and just making money off the backs of these people who really just want to play their music for folks and make a living and put food on the table. I think that's part of it. But then it swings -- if that's what you believe, if you believe that big companies that exploit artists and bands are evil, you can believe that so strongly that you get to the point where, oh, anyone who's making money off the back of an artist or a band is evil. And what if that anyone is me or you or anyone else working in DIY trying to not go poor or broke doing it? Sometimes the only way or the easiest way really not to go poor or broke doing it is just to let more people know about it. Right?
Dana Bollen: Agreed. I also think -- trying to put myself in the position of someone who's in a band, been grinding it out since they were kids, and they have an opportunity to take a big paycheck, you got to strike while the iron's hot. Because those same people or that same band probably is in debt or barely breaking even. And going back to what Brandon Davis said, you don't know what other people got going on in their personal day-to-day lives. And I also want to add: the amount of time that it takes to commit to be in a band, to write the music, to record the music (which costs money), to get new gear (that costs money), and then to go on tour and play these shows that we all love so much and hold a full-time job and have a family and raise kids and put food on the table. If you just think about the amount of time that that takes and the amount of money it costs to do that, well, I want to see these bands get paid.
Andrew Mall: I want to see these folks get paid, too. When they're out on tour they're not at home working their day jobs if they have a day job. So they got to make enough money to pay the rent or pay the mortgage in the apartment or the house that they're not living in right then because they're on tour. They're a band, so they got to split it three, four, or five ways. Maybe they've hired a merch person or a tour manager like you to help make sense of the whole thing. Some also hire people to drive the truck and the van for them. You do some of that work too, right? So now we're talking about, it's like an enterprise where they're hiring people to help them do the work. That means the little bit of money that they make from the shows gets divided up into more and more slices of this pie.
Dana Bollen: The overhead is insane, and if you're on a bus, on the low end, like 1200 bucks a day, you got to pay for the driver, you got to rent the bus, you got to pay for gas, and that's just one piece of the overhead. Maybe you have a lighting person, a sound engineer, a merch person, guitar techs, and what's beautiful about that is you're giving other people work.
Andrew Mall: Yeah.
Dana Bollen: That's how I get work.
Andrew Mall: Yeah, you're investing in the community, you're investing in the scene. Absolutely.
Dana Bollen: A hundred percent. And the other thing is, you're losing precious time that you'll never get back. What if you have a newborn baby, but you've had this tour booked for a year or something like that? Those are moments that you're never going to get back. So there's definitely a lot of pressure to come home with some money
Andrew Mall: That time spent away on tour, we have a term for that: it's called the "opportunity cost." And the opportunity cost is really what you're not getting done when you're pursuing something else, whether that is having relationship, being a parent, working a day job, or pursuing another professional career trajectory. You have paused all that to do something else. So it better be fucking worth it, right? It better be worth it. If this podcast, this whole series is about sustainability. We have to recognize when the things that we're being asked to do are not sustainable. And losing money constantly on a tour, on playing out, that's not sustainable. That's not healthy for our bands and for our artists and for the people that work for them.
Dana Bollen: And guess what? That time away while on tour, you come home probably already feeling pretty guilty. Hopefully you got some money to bring to the table. And you know what else, Professor? When you're on tour working for a band, there's no health insurance. There's no benefits, there's no retirement plan, there's no 401k.
[Two Week Notice clip] You know what this actually reminds me, Professor? I had a very similar conversation with Ace Enders on the Two Week Notice podcast. So for those who don't know, the Two Week Notice podcast is a show that I host. I've been doing this podcast for a while now. The whole premise of this podcast, I host it and I interview musicians in the hardcore, punk, emo, DIY, the scene. I interviewed Ace Enders in October of 2023, and I think it would be very fitting to play a clip from that episode right here.
Ace Enders: If you're not selling 5,000 tickets a night, you're pretty much, like, you're middle of the road. You're trying to get by your blue collar.
Dana Bollen: Do you think that's the number, 5,000?
Ace Enders: I mean, depending on how many people need to make salaries off of that.
Dana Bollen: Totally, yeah. I just toured with The Front Bottoms, we played Red Rocks, which almost sold out.
Ace Enders: That's a huge spot.
Dana Bollen: But we also had to pay Say Anything to come play, right? And we're torn with Kevin Devine. Amazing. But the rest of the tour were rooms like 2000 or so, and pretty much the whole thing was sold out. And I didn't mean to cut you off, but to me, I'm like, man, this band is so big. Or I toured with The Story So Far last year, the tour package: Story So Far, Joyce Manor, Mom Jeans, Microwave. Amazing tour package.
Ace Enders: Yeah, that's a huge tour.
Dana Bollen: Oh my God, it was like the coolest tour ever. It's like the best. I almost didn't miss a set at all. But they played Shrine Outdoors, LA 7,500, that was the biggest, and that did sell out, incredible. And there were some 4,000 cap rooms sold out. But to me, those two tours are my best examples. Or even when Piebald opened for Dashboard selling out 1500, 2000 caps. To me that's like, you made it. Where did you make when you hrow that 5,000 cap number out there? To me, that's an astronomical number.
Ace Enders: But if you think actual, you got to think of it in different terms and you also have to think of your definitions. "You made it," what does "you made it" mean? You made it on a stage that big or you made it to where you don't have to think about money anymore, because they're two very different things.
Dana Bollen: You're right.
Ace Enders: And one thing that I always -- before I go into one thing -- the reason I brought up 5,000 is because it's like when you can sell that many tickets and you are headlining that room, your guarantee is going to be much better than the stage below that, the 2,500 to 3000 cap rooms, and that is much better than the 800 to a thousand cap room. So, not that there's anything bad about that, trust me, that's awesome. You're making great money, but you still have to tour in a few months. You still have to tour a few months after that. You still have to tour a few months after that because you're paying. If you have five people in a band and you're splitting it evenly and say you gross 500,000 off of that band, off of that tour, that's not going to last you more than, because you got to keep money in the account. You got to keep money to do things. What are you taking? And $70,000 sounds like a ton of money. It sounds like a ton, but that doesn't mean that you could just sit for the next year. Life is extremely expensive.
Dana Bollen: And so many people have to get paid. They got to pay me. They got to pay guitar techs and the lighting people and the sound guy and the tour manager and the opening bands and the bus.
Ace Enders: Dude, don't even get started on the bus. That's like $1,200 a day at the low end. So when you're thinking of that stuff, it's like, yeah, you made it and you made it to the doorstep. You didn't make it into the house, you didn't make it to the bedroom. You might be able to knock on the downstairs bathroom door and see if you could use it, but you didn't make it to the bedroom. And that's part of being honest about everything as well and being transparent and understanding like, "Okay, yeah, we're doing great, but there's still a lot of work to do." One thing that I was always frustrated about with the beginning at my start, The Early November, we got successful pretty quickly, and I cherish that and I'm so grateful for it. We had many lulls since, 23 years worth of ups and downs.
Great times, some really low times. But the reason that I bring that up is because in the beginning it was like, "Yo, you made it. Everybody made it." The mentality was almost like, you made it, now we're going to party. Now we're going to do this and we want to do, we're hanging. And it's like, well, no, we made it to, we're knocking on the door. We're not in the house, and we're certainly not close to that master bedroom right now. We're not getting near the jacuzzi. We got no invite for that. So you got to realize that, yeah, you're here, but you're still in the middle of the opportunity. You haven't seen it through. And a lot of younger artists, you think like, "Oh man, I'm on this stage that I always wanted to play. I did it. This is it." Well, no, it's not. And you know that that's true too. You didn't do it. You're in the midst of trying to do it. You did it when you're like, Taylor Swift did it.
Dana Bollen: Totally. Yeah.
Ace Enders: She did it.
Dana Bollen: The percentage of people that do that is so small.
Ace Enders: So then you've got to define what is "making it." Is making it being able to say, "Okay, I only have to do music once a year, a tour once a year. Yeah, it's 80 shows. I only have to do that once a year and then I could just enjoy my life for the rest of the year. I don't have to worry about making a new record to do any--" what is "made it"? Does that provide your future stability? Does that provide health insurance? Does that provide your retirement? No, that's not even accounting any of that.
Dana Bollen: Plus the manager gets paid, the booking agent gets paid, so many pieces to the pie. Yeah, yeah, moving parts, exactly.
Make sure to check out the Two Week Notice podcast on most podcast platforms or just follow the link in the description of this current podcast episode.
So, there's so much to it. I think that a lot of people maybe don't realize, and it's cool that people are still coming out to shows and buying a couple of t-shirts or buying that record or just showing up and singing along because these bands, these artists, they're giving it all they got and leaving nothing behind. And in regards to selling out, my take on that is, well, they're up there doing what they love and what they want to do and making a lot of people happy. Most people in this country are working in jobs for an evil corporation or a corporation that they really don't buy into when it comes to morals and stuff like that. So who's selling out? It's not the person on stage playing guitar.
Andrew Mall: You know what I keep coming back to is, why is it that we love this music and this scene? What do we get out of it? Do we love it because it's secret, because it's small? Or do we love it because there's something powerful that we discovered in it? I think I would venture to say that we love it because there's something powerful in this scene, in this community, and this music. Why wouldn't we want to share that with other people? We're going to hear next from Johnny Grimes. When we interviewed Johnny Grimes, he definitely was coming from a place where people had been criticizing Furnace Fest for selling out, for being too big, for being corporate, and I think he understood some of where that criticism was coming from. But at the end of the day, he wants us to really look at the values of this music and this scene, and he really wants us to question, do we have special access to that, or should we really be working to make sure other people can also benefit from it?
Johnny Grimes: I think that there would be folks that think that exposure is a bad thing and that we got this little secret and we don't want anybody else to know about it. And I kind of take a different approach. It's like we've got this secret, I want as many people to be exposed to it as I possibly can because I love it, and I want people to be involved. So it's a different approach. Do we keep it a secret? Do we protect it with fists of fury, or do we open it up a little bit and say, "This is who we are, this is what we believe, this is how we act. These are the principles in which we stand on. This is kind of how you conduct yourself in a circle pit, a mosh pit, whatever," and expose people to that? Because at the end of the day, I'd much rather 150 people be there enjoying it, believing it, living it, than 5. But yeah, it's just a little bit different of a mindset. Do we want to hold onto it? Is it secret? Do we want to protect it at all costs or do we want to expose it to the world? There is a different way of living and believing. There's a different way in which you can view people and treat people, and I think all that's positive.
Andrew Mall: Dana, I have a question for you.
Dana Bollen: Yes, Professor?
Andrew Mall: Can our scenes ever get too big?
Dana Bollen: I don't think so. I really don't. I want to see all these bands succeed. The more eyes and ears we're going to get on this music, the more tickets we're going to sell, and the more that this scene that we love so much is going to thrive. That's my take on it.
Andrew Mall: We asked the same question to Joey of Koyo. He came up through the Long Island DIY scene. Here's what he had to say.
Joey Chiaramonte: A band could be too big for you to enjoy anymore. Like, that's valid in one's personal taste and perspective. I don't truly think there's a "too big" in terms of scene because, although some things perhaps can grow too big too fast or become too cool, too fast, however you want to view it, there will always be a room of kids somewhere. There will always be a place where 40 people are seeing a small show in a more small-scale or DIY setting. That stuff doesn't go away. That will persist forever. And I think people -- with size and scale -- I think people get nervous about that going away, but that will always exist. Shows where just local bands are playing and friends are going hard for their friends' bands. That's eternal. Whether people accept that it's true or not, in my opinion, that exists no matter what. For that reason, I don't take too much concern with scope and scale, but it can ruin things for people. Like, scope and scale can ruin a band for someone, and that is totally valid.
Andrew Mall: Dana, when I spoke to Norm Brannon, he was thinking about this too. He was thinking about the fact that this is not a naturally reoccurring organism. This is not a society or an organization that has a method of constantly bringing new people in to replace older people as they age out or die off or whatever. And instead, it's something that we have to pay attention to if we want the music and the communities that we love to be available and accessible to people five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now.
Dana Bollen: I think what it comes down to, Professor: exposure is necessary for the sustainability of the DIY music scene.
Andrew Mall: You know Dana, Norm Brannon 100% agrees with that. From his experience playing in Texas Is the Reason and in Thursday and as the creative force behind the zine Anti-Matter, he's been part of this scene for a really long time and has been talking with people about their experiences too. We're going to hear from him next. He's the last voice on our panel today, Norman Brannon.
Norman Brannon: I've been fairly outspoken about the fact that I don't really care about whether or not things get certain amounts of exposure or whether or not it feels overexposed. When I think about the community that I come from, I've been going to shows for very close to 40 years, which is insane. And I've seen waves of our community getting more sort of mainstream attention and then going back into the underground and then more mainstream attention and then going back into the underground. And I have seen a community and an ideal and a sort of ethic that has persisted throughout. None of that has really changed the game. It's maybe changed some people's lives, like a band like Turnstile, they're doing really well right now. A band like Knocked Loose, they're doing really well right now. But when that mainstream attention fades again, which it will because everything is cyclical, the community will still be, there intact and doing the same things we've always been doing.
I think financial access is a huge part of it. The majority of people I know don't have any type of health insurance, and that immediately takes something off the table for most people. That's something that is just not going to happen. When I say that, I'm also talking about bands that you might think or "the fans" might think are doing really well. They're really big. But as a touring musician, as someone who's been doing this my whole life, I can tell you that bands that you think are really big, to get to that level, it's really expensive. And so a lot of the bands don't actually come back from those big tours with a shit ton of money. And a lot of times we have to sort of sit down with that money and go, "Well, I'm not touring now for the next six months. I've got to make this last."
So whatever little you make, you got to stretch it out, and then you got to do whatever side hustles you can do. I mean, I have a friend right now who's in a very popular band and he's got a part-time job and two other side hustles and his band. And he cannot afford to drop any of them. So health insurance? Not on his list, right? He's just trying to pay his rent in a major city and trying to figure out how to live. So I think financial security is something that, again, when we talk about DIY and we talk about sort of the financial guilt that we put on each other for wanting to make money, there are genuinely, authentically good reasons to want to make some money. And one of those is to be healthy and to look after yourself and to maybe even go to a doctor every now and then.
Dana Bollen: All right, and that wraps up this episode of Live Free Or DIY. On the next episode, please join us, we're going to be talking about community. To me, this next episode really might be the heart of this entire series because the communities that we build around these DIY music scenes are just as powerful as the music itself in a lot of ways.
Andrew Mall: Thanks for listening. That's next time on Live Free Or DIY.
[Credits roll] Live Free Or DIY is co-hosted by myself, Andrew Mall.
Dana Bollen: This show is also co-hosted and produced by Dana Bollen, editing assistance from Ioanis Pintzopolous
Andrew Mall: Research assistance and production assistance by Anthony Robbins. Funding provided by Northeastern University.
Dana Bollen: Graphic Design by Kira Burr. Cover photo shot by Todd Pollock. Podcast theme song brought to you by Piebald and Iodine Recordings. Head on over to Iodinerecordings.com for very special anniversary vinyl represses from bands such as Piebald, Fastbreak, Quicksand, Further Scenes Forever, Stretch Armstrong, as well as incredible new artists signings, The New Scene podcast, and so much more. That's Iodinerecordings.com. And lastly, if you enjoyed the show, make sure to rate, subscribe, and follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram. You can find links to everything in the show notes of this very episode.