This week, in honor of the additions to the 2019 lineup, Brad & Barry dive in to the artists playing the often forgotten Who Stage! So excited because there are LOTS of discoveries this week! Plus, the guys talk to Matt from Drax Project, another Who Stage addition for this year.
Topics: Bonnaroo, Drax Project
Guest: Matt Beachen
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Is there a more apropos band name for today's show then?
I don't know how they found me.
Bonnaroo found you and put you on the Who stage today.
This is the What Podcast and we dive into bands playing the Who stage, the Cafe Axe, the bands just announced this past week as additions to the lineup.
I don't know about you, but I'm having probably more fun discovering bands than being excited about seeing the name axe that I know.
Right, I was going to say that too.
The first thing I was going to say was this is outside of the show that is all about me, Bratz Picks.
This is my favorite one of the year.
This is my favorite one of the entire series because today we get to dive into bands that we have no idea who they are.
Well even last week with the rap and hip hop thing, I just like that.
I think it's a lot of fun.
That's why we started this last year.
Remember, we looked at the lineup and said I don't know 70% of this lineup.
So that was the whole idea and I enjoy it.
And it was an artist from last year that we found that played the Who stage that I think was maybe the turning point and when we started realizing, oh this is a thing.
We can do this every week if we wanted to and it was Davey.
The day that we found Davey, he found himself on the Who stage later on in the summer and then we just got obsessed and then we found band after artist after band after artist over and over and over after Davey and it really gave us the wind to our sails essentially.
Absolutely.
That was a lot of fun.
Davey was great and if you remember right after that show was Warren Tready who just did the Grand Ole Opry apparently and crushed it.
Well here's the thing about the Who stage.
And by the way, if you don't know, that's Barry Courter from the Chattanooga Times 3 Press.
I'm Brad from WDOD Radio, Hits 96 in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
This is the What Podcast, a podcast for Bonnarooians by Bonnarooians.
If you missed any episodes, of course, you can check out the whatpodcast.com and we will of course give away Bonnaroo tickets if you interact with us via the whatpodcast.com even on Instagram or Twitter at the what underscore podcast.
The Who stage is maybe the hardest stage to play in a festival circuit.
I can't imagine a harder place than three o'clock in the afternoon on a Saturday when people are so tired, they're so beat up and the heat has destroyed them.
Standing on the hottest stage in America with the sun beating right down onto you with no shade whatsoever but one random tree to the right.
I don't see how it gets harder than that.
I don't disagree. I kept thinking though when we were talking to our guests who will come on later about something Adam from AJR said, talking, they also started sort of as buskers.
And we're talking about how hard that is, you know, to grab somebody's attention if they're walking by on the street versus I think you asked him about that show down in Atlanta maybe or even the even the run of the Chihuahuas.
The difference between busking where people are walking by and you got to grab their attention versus they're there kind of to see you.
Well see that's they're there for a show.
Okay. But the difference is is if you're playing on the street, you realize that people are going to be walking by and you realize that more often than not they don't care.
If I'm standing on the Who stage, I'm doing everything I can to bring you in.
And if you're still not paying attention, what a hard place.
No, no, I'm not disagreeing with you at all.
It's almost it's almost you can just look at it.
Some of those people in that audience and they're like, man, not so loud.
That's allowed.
Realize what kind of night I had.
What's going on?
My ears are ringing from post Malone.
I'm still but that Davie show is a perfect example.
That's right.
That's we went because we picked him and we randomly found him.
He's a Bonnaroolette guy and it hit everything that you and I like.
Absolutely.
And we went hoping to meet up with some listeners to the podcast.
I don't think we did.
We just kind of wandered over.
But the thing I remember about that show is they were having so much fun.
Yeah.
And just it just reached out and grabbed you.
You're better because at that time of the day, that's the slot that I'm talking about.
Absolutely.
That Davie midday hot as hell slot where was it a Friday or is it a Saturday?
Either way, it was not fun.
We'd already been there a long time.
We had been there a while.
I got in a fight with the lady that day.
It was so weird.
We were everybody was irritable.
There's just you got to be really good and you got to have a spine like steel to be able to stand on the who stage.
That's why I like them so much and I think that's why I enjoyed going through this as much as I did because they did.
They did a really good job of finding pretty much across the board every genre they could find to put on that stage throughout the throughout the festival.
We're going to keep harping on the Davie thing.
But that started one of my favorite days ever at Bon Roos.
Really?
Probably my best day because of Warren treaty.
It was a whole thing.
St. Paul and the Broken Bones.
Well, I know it was Mavis Staples.
It went like this.
So we wandered over there with a couple of our campmates, Mike and Chrissy, just kind of wandered such a positive vibe, so much energy from those guys.
They were like, oh, let's go over here to this Warren treaty thing.
We think we like that.
Yeah.
And cried.
Balled like a baby.
Balled like a baby.
Unashamedly left there went to Mavis Staples.
By the way, listeners walked up to us at the Warren treaty show and we're just red faced and covered in tears.
I don't know what to say to you right now.
I mean, it was so powerful.
Left there went to Mavis Staples.
She started doing Freedom Road, right?
I keep wanting to call them Redemption Road, but it's Freedom Road.
Cried again.
Left there to see Niles Rodgers.
Oh, yeah, that was your Niles Rodgers show.
Who talked about being cancer free.
Cried again.
Three straight shows with actual tears.
I'm really rubbing off on you.
This is getting very strange.
And it wasn't just me.
It was Mike and Chrissy.
We went and I'll never forget.
If you start wearing your hair like mine, we've got a big problem.
Niles finished and that was what?
Not Muse.
It was something.
Was it Bon Iver that night?
Really?
It was something big.
Yeah.
And I can't remember the schedule, but boy, that makes total sense.
Niles finished and Mike looked at me and he said, I'm done.
There is no way.
We have a guy at camp that does this every year.
He gets this show that gets him, that strikes a record straight through to his soul.
And then he's like, I'm out.
We had four of them.
Three, whatever.
And then he just leaves.
He literally just leaves the festival, drives home.
He said, I don't, there's nothing against whoever's next, but there's no way it's going to top.
It did.
The day that I've already had.
It did.
Maybe.
The Bon Iver double set, absolutely f-ing did.
Did you cry?
A little bit.
Yeah.
The first go around I did because I had, I love, we talked about this last year.
I love 22 a million so much and that album meant so much to me.
And then the, the subsequent sort of super jam after that, I was in a little bit different
of headspace by then.
So it didn't hit me as much as the first show did, but yeah, I did.
It was a good day.
You're right about that.
We went back to camp and decompressed and I think later maybe even went to see some
of the EDM.
I don't remember what, what a great day.
It all started because you found a who stage artist.
Exactly.
Then he got behind.
And that's what we want to focus on this week.
We've gotten your, some of your suggestions via Twitter, via Instagram.
We put together some of ours.
In a minute, we're also going to talk to an artist that was added to the lineup Drax
Project.
Now I know you're not going to know much about Drax Project, and nor did I when, when I first
was introduced to them, but they're from New Zealand.
It's a couple of guys that one guy plays the drums, one guy plays the sax, and then they
combine their sound and made it Drax.
So it's Drax Project.
Then they added a couple other guys to it and became a foursome.
And then for some reason, and you'll hear this from Matt's story in a little bit, they
start playing on the streets and then they open a couple of shows in New Zealand.
Then they get on a couple of shows with Ed Sheeran.
And then all of a sudden major labels are looking at them saying, Hey, we want a piece
of this pie.
We think we can take you to America.
And that's when I got introduced to them and I brought them to my little festival here
in town that I, they organize.
I'm not going to bore you with that.
But Drax Project, one of the Thursday performers from the Who Stage, we'll talk to Matt from
the Drax Project here in a little bit.
But first we played, I started everything out with, I don't know how they, I don't know
how, but they found me a brilliant, brilliant Back to the Future reference.
I think that I'm going to go from them into my first Who Stage artists that I want to
show you and tell you about the way that they do this.
A little background, maybe pull the curtain back a little bit on the industry is there
are essentially two types of artists that these festivals put on as sort of filler,
as to like make the lineup full and give you something throughout the day.
One is the people, the industry really, really, really want to break or they really need people
to see so that they can get some money back.
There are some of those and the ones that you see on the Who Stage that are like that,
start looking at their other festivals and if they're playing other festivals, it's mostly
an industry thing.
The industry are driving those things.
It's maybe not so much a Bonnaroo, they went out and found them.
I like the people that don't have any other festivals on their lineup.
I really like those guys because those are the ones that Bonnaroo and AC and somebody
in that office plucked and pulled and dropped right into your lap.
And I want to start there.
At a guy that you would never in a million years give a two cents to.
You would never even try to see one of his shows because he doesn't have a funny name.
He doesn't go by a different moniker.
He's not the tallest man on earth or Bony Vare or he's just a guy named Patrick Dronie.
That's it.
His name is Patrick Dronie.
I know this is going to sound a little strange, but would you in a million years go see a
show by a guy named Justin Vernon?
If you didn't know it was Bony Vare, would you just go see a guy named Justin Vernon?
No.
Probably not.
No, but I'm not sure I would go see a guy named Bony Vare either.
Good point.
Because partly, you know, it's embarrassing to say it wrong.
You know, it's not Bon Iver.
You know what I mean?
This is pretty easy.
Patrick Dronie.
Right, right.
But there's so many of these that you read and I think you said Noted the other day.
I didn't know that's how you pronounce it.
Yeah, we have a band coming to town called Noted.
N-O-T-D.
N-O-T-D.
I would have said N-O-T-D.
There's so many of those.
The thing is, if you're just a regular guy right now, you can't just be your name, which
is a very strange place music is in.
But it'll change.
It's already changed.
I mean, maybe, I guess, but if you don't have Father John Misty as your moniker, does anybody
pay any attention to you?
I really don't know.
I know.
You know, remember, it used to be everybody had to put a Z.
What's that?
You had to put a Z in your name.
Everybody had to have a Z.
Sure, yeah.
So that's gone away finally, thank you.
Well, it was very strange.
Originally, my name was Brad Zdiner.
It was very strange.
So this is Patrick Dronie playing the Who stage.
I found him and I haven't stopped listening to his EP.
It's called Who Music and the People, two of our biggest duels in music history.
And in the career, and all the characters we put together, it kind of built a character
I know you got a how to go You wear it like a morning robe
I got a how
I'm from Nashville, Tennessee, you know somebody from AC stumbled upon one of his shows in
Nashville one day and said, Oh my God, this kid's got it.
And he does.
He's an amazing songwriter.
His voice is terrific.
You know, he just has one of those branding issues that if you don't, if you're not caught
by the name, are you going to go see that show?
Are you going to go see him until a clock with that kind of sound in the dead of summer
in the hottest place, maybe in America in that moment?
I want to because I think it's going to be a nice, really chill moment on Sunday.
Patrick Dronie on the Who stage.
Yeah, I've got a another Nashville artist too.
Is he playing any other for this person playing any other festival by the way?
I didn't look.
I didn't think to look.
I was going to ask you, did all of your picks, how did you pick them?
I mean, did you have a system?
No, I listened to all of them.
Did you?
Yeah, I just listened to all of them and I saw and I just wrote down a couple that I
just stuck with me because I could probably go through all of them and talk to.
I would talk about this all day.
Honestly, I would talk about every artist playing the Who stage if I could.
I guess it's a podcast.
We could do that if you wanted to, but that's a little bit too much like, you know, what
wrestling guys do.
But I don't I could do this all day with them.
I don't really have a system.
I literally just whenever I hit.
I didn't either.
I just randomly picked names that interested me and then played music and I liked it.
It's fun to listen to these with that Davey discussion that we just had in mind.
How is it going to play on the farm?
What time of day do I see them blowing up type of thing?
You know, will they be bigger?
I just like I said, this is a lot of fun to me.
This is funny that you say that you you wonder if they're going to be bigger while you're
listening to them or seeing them on the Who stage.
When I asked you that the other week, you said, no, I don't think about that.
I don't remember.
I don't.
I'm not denying it.
You mean when I'm picking them?
No, when you're when you're seeing them on the Who stage, you say to yourself, man, these
guys are going to do something.
Oh, yeah.
No, I don't.
I guess not.
No.
OK.
This was no, I don't think so.
Has there been an artist that you've watched at Bonnaroo that you said, oh, my God, this
is them on the ground floor.
This is going to be something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Courtney had a little bit of heat, though, when she did that Thursday night show.
Yeah, you're right.
And that was she was probably underbooked, if that's the right.
Yeah, sure.
Word.
Yeah.
Thursday Night Headliner.
That was not the spot for her.
And everyone was already talking about her.
But that show definitely Leon Bridges would be another one.
I had occasion to speak to him this week because he's coming to town next week.
That show at Bonnaroo, as we talked to all of these artists who have done it once, was
huge for him.
But he felt like that show and that particular tour was sort of coming of age for him.
Absolutely.
I bet.
But that was an amazing show.
He was already hot, too, like you said.
But that was one I thought, yeah, this is this will.
I mean, I bet there's somebody listening right now that saw the Lumineers on the Who stage
and probably looked at him and was like, they got it all.
They got everything.
They got that sound.
They're going to cut right through the noise to radio, to pop music, to cultural zeitgeist.
It's going to happen.
Yeah, I don't recall any small ones that went.
I'll give you one.
I remember the middle, you know, like, Avid Brothers.
I remember.
I'll give you that that stage act.
Adele.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, Adele.
I spent five minutes at it.
I was like, see you later.
Wow.
She's got it.
And I'm leaving.
I don't need to see any more of this.
I got it.
Again, we could do an entire show on.
Wish I'd been there.
Yeah.
Shows.
But let's go.
Let's start off because it's Nashville.
Let's do Republican hair.
Who's Republican hair?
I picked this.
This is a guy named Luke Dick.
He's a Nashville guy.
It gets better.
Boy, it gets bad.
The irony is already open up the door.
Let's some of this irony out.
I know.
Republican hair.
I thought that's either going to be terrible or kind of good.
This guy used to be a professor.
He ran a forklift and then he's a documentary maker.
He made a film called Red Dog that's about his childhood spent hanging out at topless
bars.
OK.
And now same way I grew up.
He writes.
He's written songs for Dirks and Eric Church and Miranda Lambert.
What kind of a piece do I mean and what kind of a piece do we see?
If you're cruising in a high nail, looking for a mantra, I got you.
Wanna be a star on K-Day, sipping Chandon on your payday.
I'll spot you.
You don't need no lead to shoot.
Don't need no sword to slay.
Don't need a big red button to detonate.
Fuck a bomb, drop a seed.
Fuck a name, drop a needle.
Wild Beard, I'm a man.
I'm a man.
I'm a man.
I'm a man.
I'm a man.
Wild Beard killer.
You can be Steve Miller.
Fly like an eagle.
Fuck a bomb, drop a hot mic.
Drop a beat, get it real tight.
You can rule the world.
Get your shit, but girl ain't gotta be evil.
Fuck a bomb, drop a single.
Man, that's really fun.
Is the rest of the stuff like that?
Is that sort of irreverent and pointed in the songwriting?
The other one that I was able to listen to this morning, yeah.
Really?
I think it's worth walking by and checking it out.
That is not my style.
That's not something I would pick, but that's part of what I like about what we're doing.
It sounds a lot like an artist that I had.
I'm going to play it.
It was actually a suggestion from a listener, but if you want to... I'm going to play it,
and then the second that you get the artist that you think this person sounds like, stop.
Stop me.
Just wave at me.
I'm going to stop the song.
The second that you identify what artist that he sounds like.
This is Sego.
Hope I can do it.
Here we go.
All right.
Barry's got it.
Beck?
Beck.
Nailed it.
Yeah.
That's exactly right.
All right.
Let's go.
Yeah, we got this suggestion Sago from a listener and I'm so glad that he did because Sago is
great.
I mean, he is so fun.
And boy, if you are, I have a feeling somebody in AC or whoever decided to book Sago also
booked Republican hair because boy, they are right in the same lane, aren't they?
Probably.
And they're both going to be fun, right?
They've been a lot of fun.
That was my thought.
Bet you're only there on different days, aren't they?
If we look at the schedule.
Republican is Saturday and I don't know when Sago is.
I guess I should probably be more prepared then, huh?
Hey, I'm sure you're looking at a schedule.
I was ready for the quiz.
Do the work for me later.
This is the What Podcast, a podcast for Bonnarooians, by Bonnarooians, another artist that's playing
the Who Stage, Drax Project.
Now Drax Project, we talked about them a little bit earlier today.
They're just now getting to the States.
They're just now coming to America.
They were nice enough to do my show at the radio station that I work at.
I'm putting on this little event called the Running of the Chihuahuas, which is like this
dumb dog race that I do every year, 12 years deep.
And it's been copied across the country.
City after city have been copying this idea.
Well, eventually early on we decided to add some music to it because my bosses kept screaming
at me that we needed to sell more beer.
I had to add...
And you are a radio station, not a kennel.
That's what I've been doing so wrong in my career.
So we decided to add music to it.
And then so year after year I have to find bands that will just come play a dog race
for free.
That is not an easy thing to do.
So when I found Drax Project and they were nice enough to show up and play the race,
I just had one request.
I'll pay for your hotel.
I'll pay for your back line.
I'll pay for your food.
I cannot pay for your airfare.
I cannot get you from here to from New Zealand to here.
I can't do it.
So they were nice enough to come and build a tour around the states and around our show.
And they're doing radio shows up and down the East Coast and around the country that
will take them.
And then they decided to jump onto some festivals too.
I don't know how Botter who found them, but I'm pretty excited for Drax Project.
Matt joins us now.
Hey, Matt.
What's up, man?
I'm Greg.
How are you?
Matt, how are you, man?
Welcome, I guess, to America.
Have you played any American shows yet?
Well, thanks so much.
Well, we've played two or three shows, kind of low key things, but nothing as big as some
of the things that are coming up.
Started off as a busking duo kind of playing covers.
So Sean, the singer, was on saxophone and myself, I was playing the drums.
Drums plus sax equals Drax.
That's how we got the name, Drax Project.
But then we've added Ben on the guitar, Sam on the bass over the last maybe four years
ago we did that.
And from there we started doing our own, writing our own music.
Because when we were busking, we were just playing covers.
So whatever we could do to get people's attention.
And yeah, so once we had the four of us started writing our own music, did a whole bunch of
shows, we've done so many shows around New Zealand, our home.
So to be out in America is really a dream come true.
We've always liked pop music.
We've never made like a conscious effort or decision, sorry, to be like, yeah, we are
going to be a pop band.
We just kind of write the music and play the music that we...
I don't know, it's all of our favorite influences into a melting pot.
And then the four of us stir that pot around and when it's all cooked up, you get Drax
Project.
So we're fans of all types of music.
I know that's generic, but it's actually true.
We'll be listening to...
I love listening to Chris Stapleton and then I'll put on Young Thug and then I'll listen
to Eva Cassidy and then Sean's over in the other room.
He's listening to Count Basie, old school jazz, crazy stuff.
But we're music fans.
And I think, yeah, our music is just the big melting pot of everything we like.
For a long time here anyway, we like to try to keep people in certain lanes or whatever.
But now it seems like people are more like you.
We talked about this on our last episode.
I might do just the same.
It might be country one song followed right next with an EDM song for me.
So I understand, but is that kind of a cultural thing or just you guys?
I'd say it's probably a bit of a cultural thing back in...
Because in New Zealand, we're kind of isolated and we're looking out to the world a lot and
we're taking in a lot of different music from around the world because we're such a small
country and we're influenced quite a lot by, particularly American music.
So we get a lot of that.
It's interesting that you say you look out into the world for American music.
I don't think that there's been a time, at least on the top 40 charts or in pop music
in general, that we've had this much international derived artists.
I mean, Ed Sheeran in and of itself, you guys went on tour with Ed Sheeran.
So it's odd looking out from the window in New Zealand and seeing it as American music.
In America, we see nothing but an influx of international stars coming into us.
Dua Lipa, Five Seconds of Summer, you know, and you guys doing so well.
And then I realized that New Zealand has sort of a, and correct me if I'm wrong, a hometown
music problem.
I think I remember this correctly.
There was a thing that happened maybe a decade or two decades ago where there was like this
voluntary program that pushed New Zealand radio stations to play a certain percentage
amount of New Zealand artists.
It was voluntary because it was hard to find New Zealand artists.
So what are some of the guys in around your country that you look to?
Right, right, right.
Well, some of the people that we look up to who they're actually from our hometown of
Wellington, which is quite a musical little city.
I'd say Fat Freddy's Drop is a band that we all love.
Even like Lorde, I know it's a classic, but Lorde is pretty special.
How she kind of paved the way for other people like us, I guess.
It just showed that people in New Zealand can actually crack it and the world is your
oyster.
You can actually get out there and do it thanks to the internet a lot.
But also that is possible.
So that was cool to see her do that.
A lot of great producers.
I mean outside of Lorde, I mean the only ones that really come to mind from New Zealand
is Crowded House and Flight of the Concords.
Those are the two that come to mind.
I don't want to insult your home country, but I was stunned that New Zealand hadn't
produced more international stars than that.
There's got to be a reason, right?
There's got to be something about it.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, we're a country of four million people.
Maybe we're just so far away from you guys.
I don't know.
It feels like all of the barriers have broken down right now in terms of international,
and looking out, as I said before, we're looking out all the time and we're taking in a lot
of other music and that's inspiring and influencing us.
We've always aimed very high.
We've never thought, oh, let's be a New Zealand band and try and take over New Zealand or
something like that.
We want our music to stand up against the best artists in the world and the top artists.
That makes sense.
That's our philosophy anyway.
First of all, that's how you guys got your name, right?
It was Drums and Sax, so you put it together and got Drax.
Also when you're performing on a street like that, you have to play songs and material
that resonates, that connects with people, right?
Totally, yeah.
They'll walk on by if they don't like what they're hearing, so I'm guessing that kind
of helped influence the diversity of what you guys performed, right?
That's a very, very excellent point.
That's totally how...
That's played a big part in us figuring out what people like, what people can connect
to and also what's fun for us to play that connects to people.
That being the foundation of the band has been really important because it meant we've
played a lot of shows where we're performing musicians firstly and recording artists.
That kind of developed over the last couple of years off the back of being a live act.
Now that we're getting our recorded music out there and it's been a while, it's cool
to have the backbone of playing live.
We're not intimidated by any crowd size or...
I mean, we've played, as you said before, opening for Ed Sheeran.
That was just a mind blowing experience of 50,000 people three times, so three nights
in a row.
We were just as nervous for that as a 300 person show in our hometown.
We back our performance because we've been doing it for so long.
Yeah.
Yeah, but it's been great to...
There's some covers that we still play to this day that we used to do when we were bussing
like that Crimea River song, Justin Timberlake.
We still play that every show pretty much.
I don't think we'll ever stop playing.
I feel like there'll always be one cover at least in our live set because you can just
see it.
You can see it in the crowd when they recognize something.
Yeah, the face changes.
It just connects instantly.
You're playing on the streets of New Zealand and then you put some stuff on Bandcamp in
2014 and then you start adding some pieces to the band.
What point did people start calling and saying, hey, we want to do something with you.
We want to make this into something.
When do those wheels start moving?
When did you get off the streets is what he's asking.
Yeah.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Well, it's funny because it seems to be a very natural progression.
We went from busking on the side of the street to bar managers walking past and saying, hey,
come and play in our bar tonight for this amount of money.
We waited up.
Should we do it instead of busking?
Yeah, let's do it.
We start doing that and then some people at the bar over time will be like, oh, why don't
you come and play at my friend's 30th birthday?
All right, cool.
Let's do that.
Then we're at the 30th birthday.
Hey, why don't you guys come and play at my company's Christmas function?
Oh, yeah, cool.
Let's go do that.
Then from there, we start playing a lot of kind of private corporate stuff.
At the same time, we're writing music.
We made an EP in 2014, the one that you said on Bandcamp.
That allowed us to do our own shows, so charging tickets for people to come to our own shows.
Off the back of busking and playing these little random things, there were enough people
who had seen us and were interested to come to these shows.
So then, yeah, it builds from there.
We release more music, maybe a couple songs, make it onto New Zealand radio.
That puts the name out a little bit more.
But we're always playing shows through this whole process, refining the live set.
We start getting some opening slots, which has always been really cool.
So we did Brian McKnight.
He's like an old school R&B dude.
Wow.
That's a weird combo.
Yeah, yeah.
When we heard that, we're like, what, really?
So that was cool.
That was a bit of a test for us.
I mean, like, four white guys walk out and you can just tell the room, oh yeah, what's
going to happen here?
But it actually went really, really well.
And then we get other opening slots, like the Ed Sheeran one, which was a...
Well, the Ed Sheeran one came off the back of Woke Up Late, our single, which we dropped.
Right.
It was released in late 2017, back in New Zealand.
Which is where I wanted to go next with the song Woke Up Late, because this is a very
interesting...
To me, this song is a lot like what's happening in the industry.
If you're paying attention, it's happening a lot around the industry in that a song will
be released and it'll have a little bit of life to it.
And then it'll go dormant for a while.
And then out of nowhere, a insert person here will pick it up, like it, maybe put their
own voice to it or just push it out in their social media.
And all of a sudden, boom, the song's got new life again.
And Woke Up Late is exactly that story because you guys had a pretty nice little single and
Woke Up Late by yourself.
Then Hailee Steinfeld, a Nickelodeon star, she's had some hits here on American radio.
She picks the song up, she puts her voice on it, and now all of a sudden it's back and
it's hitting the American charts and it's bringing you into America in a way that you
never had been in before, all because your song decided somebody wanted to give it another
go, wanted to give it another go around.
Totally, yeah.
And that's just crazy.
I mean, because we wrote that song in Ben's bedroom, our guitarist, in 2017.
We released it in November and it goes straight to number one on the Shazam charts for about
three months straight in New Zealand.
So it's just like, people are just like, who are these guys?
Who are these guys?
But it's quite interesting because we've already developed a nice little fan base from all
the live shows and a couple of EPs.
We had a small following there, but that song just went straight to mainstream radio and
just started slamming all over that back home.
That was kind of the tipping point.
Like, we're going somewhere now with Woke Up Late.
We did a tour with Camila Cabello around Europe, opening for her.
That was crazy because that was our first time out of New Zealand as a band, traveling
around Europe and all these crazy places.
That was a real eye-opener for us.
We're forever grateful to Camila and her team.
But off the back of Camila's tour, because at that level, everyone is friends with everyone.
Someone from Camila's team knew someone from Hailey's team.
They showed someone from Hailey's team the song.
Hailey heard the song.
She liked it, wanted to get on it.
And then now, I mean, it's hitting American radio, which is something that doesn't happen
a lot for a New Zealand artist.
Watching and learning and enjoying the ride, like it's pretty crazy.
To even be talking to you about it is pretty cool.
I'm curious about something you said earlier about you guys always dream big.
Or thought big.
I wonder how all of this might be different had you just sort of, you know, your goal
was to be a pretty good bar band or a pretty good local band.
I'm just wondering professionally, mentally, whatever, how you think it might be different
and how important that has been that you have thought big all along.
Yeah, well, that's a really good question.
The whole journey up until now, it has really just been a natural progression.
And I mean, we've worked hard, we've played a lot of gigs and stuff, obviously.
But yeah, looking outwards a lot and not getting too caught up in like the New Zealand thing.
Not even a New Zealand thing, but just like a, that's a hard one.
Everything just feels like it's happened naturally.
And then we've released a song that we really like and it's connected with people all around
the world.
I mean, that's cool.
You go from busking in New Zealand on the streets and now you're doing American dates,
including Bonnaroo, which is where star after star, artist after artist have just begun
and exploded their careers in basically these small little stages on the sides of Bonnaroo.
If you want to find a American success story, you can probably find 30 of them starting
on the Who stage and starting in the cafe acts from Bonnaroo band after band after band
made their money, made their careers doing starting exactly where you guys are starting
in America on the Who stage of Bonnaroo, Black Keys, Portugal, The Man, Avett Brothers.
They all started in the same exact place that you guys started in front of 50 to 200 people.
And you guys get to now do that in the summer of Tennessee.
Now, do you know anything about Bonnaroo?
Firstly, no pressure.
Yeah, no kidding.
That's so cool to hear.
So, do I know anything about Bonnaroo?
I know a lot about the lineup and it's pretty overwhelming.
And to be, yeah, I mean, this is like a legendary festival that's known around the world.
So, I mean, yeah, that alone is so cool.
I mean, like Post Malone, Jose, Kacey Musgraves, Childish Gambino, I think is playing the same
day that we're actually, no, we're on the Thursday.
You're on Thursday.
That's right.
Yeah.
I mean, like we're on the Thursday.
I saw that Bulo is actually playing the same day as us on the Who stage.
And I literally discovered, well, I heard one of her songs for the first time maybe
three months ago and I was just like, man, the song is crazy.
This is so good.
I think now we're probably hopefully going to meet her and I want to tell her how good
that song is.
She's so good, man.
She's so good.
That's awesome.
When you go through the lineup, that's pretty interesting that you're already looking forward
to seeing people that you want to actually see at Bonnaroo.
Are you planning to stay the entire weekend and experience the festival?
I think, yeah, I think that will be the plan for sure.
Yeah, we've got to see some of these.
There will be people on this lineup that we cover, like we play them.
We've got to go see that live, how to do it properly.
If you play it right, you know, the way the Bonnaroo works, you could find yourself out
into GA camping playing somebody's campsite.
Our friends from Repeat Repeat in Nashville last year, they literally played at a bus
in GA because they were invited to play out.
Don't limit yourself to any experience at Bonnaroo.
That's our professional advice.
After doing this between each other, 30 years.
I'll do it all.
Do everything, see everything and say no to nothing.
You might have to do a little busking set.
Hey, if you guys now look, you're going to come to the Running of the Chihuahuas on May
4th.
And when you come to May 4th of the Chihuahuas, me and Barry will go ahead and get your will
plan for you guys to come back to our camp backstage at Camp Nut Butter, which is a camp
in the woods with 600 square feet of carpeting.
We've got our own podcasting studio set up, giant cartoon heads on sticks.
It's basically a playground for all things Bonnaroo backstage.
So you guys can come back.
Yes, it is.
We're slumming it.
We're slumming it, Matt.
It's another thing for your resume too.
Running of the Chihuahuas, Bonnaroo and the short set at Camp Nut Butter.
Come on by to Camp Nut Butter and you can stop by and we can do the very first ever
performance at Camp Nut Butter.
That would be pretty amazing.
We've got to have one of those.
That would be.
I'm sold.
I'm sold.
I love it.
I wanted to ask how you guys heard that you were going to be playing Bonnaroo.
I just have to imagine that was a pretty big moment to get that phone call.
Yeah.
Well, we've moved over to LA for a few months and we're kind of just filling up our schedule
a little bit and we're getting all these crazy, crazy things happening.
So our manager actually told us you guys are going to be playing at Bonnaroo and then showed
us and we looked up the poster and we're just like, what the heck?
Really?
So that was cool.
This was like our first big festival in America that we've ever done.
So that is really, really, really cool.
So it's going to be something we never forget.
It's going to be one of those.
I feel like it's going to be one of those moments.
Like you said before, all of the legendary acts have played the same stage that we're
doing, the Who stage.
This is going to be, I've got a feeling in my gut that it's going to be something special.
Yeah, I do too.
And that Thursday night has become, Brad and I have talked about it many times on this
show that Thursday night has become maybe one of our favorite days.
It is my favorite.
It is a favorite because it's the first day of the festival.
It's just a different vibe.
Morella's high.
That's because we're clean.
And we're clean.
Yeah, Morella's Hikes are clean after two hours.
We're still clean, but everyone is just so excited to get started and the acts, you know,
it's not the big, the two main stages aren't up.
So it just has, I don't know, it's a completely different vibe and we just really look forward
to it.
We've discovered some amazing artists that we weren't familiar with before.
Courtney Barnett was a Thursday night.
She was.
That's right.
It was a great, great show that people still talk about.
So it's a great opportunity for you guys to meet new fans and new fans or fans to find
new bands.
So well, thanks for sharing your knowledge on it.
I don't know what your catalog entails, but if you guys have a street performer background,
you're going to do just fine filling in the rest of the time.
You're going to do just fine doing cover after cover of artists that are already a Bonnaroo.
That always plays well.
You're going to do fine.
Yeah, yeah.
We've got it.
We've actually got a lot of unreleased material, which we've been testing over the New Zealand
summer.
So yeah, it'll be a 80 to 20 split original to cover.
So that's exciting.
We're looking forward to it.
Matt, thank you so much for this and we'll talk to you very soon.
Congratulations on the success.
Thanks very much, fellas.
Great to talk to you.
See you soon.
The What Podcast, a podcast for Bonnarooians by Bonnarooians, Drax Project, appearing
Thursday night.
I'm going to guess it's going to be a Thursday night show at the Who Stage at Bonnaroo.
Today, the episode all dedicated to Who Stage artists.
That was a lot of fun.
Nice guy.
He's a really nice guy.
And you know, that was, I think we now have the longest distance conversation history
of the What Podcast.
Was it longer than First Aid Kit?
How long was that?
First Aid Kit was...
I don't know my geography.
Sweden?
Yeah.
Definitely, definitely further.
Definitely further west.
Yeah, other side, right?
All the way on the other side.
Yes, Barry.
We are international.
I told you from the start we're big in North Korea.
How is that possible?
They don't even have the Internet.
I don't know.
When we look at the stats, we're big in North Korea.
Thank you, Kim Jong Un.
Again, I just sort of picked, I just randomly picked names that interested me and I thought
I recognized the name Soak.
I don't or didn't.
Soak is actually the name of, I don't know how you say this name now, Breedy?
So it's just one guy?
It's a girl.
It's one girl.
See, here we go again.
Like I was telling you about the guy earlier, how do you survive with just your name anymore?
You've got to be Soak.
Soak like Drax, which is combined drum and sax.
Soak is soul and folk.
It's Breedy.
I'm going to say it's Breedy.
I don't think it's Bridey.
B-R-I-D-I-E.
Forgive me for not knowing, Mons Watson, she's a Northern Irish singer songwriter.
Man, you found somebody that may be this year's Bjork.
She's got a Bjork Edge to her, doesn't she?
Yeah.
That's a good Sunday coming down.
Very Sunday, yes.
Very Sunday coming down kind of.
That'd be my Bahamas.
Yeah, that has definitely got a very ethereal sound to it.
I wonder if that's going to, again, we're back to does that work on a Sunday at two
o'clock in the afternoon, three o'clock in the afternoon?
You might want to be anywhere else but Bonnaroo.
Boy, that Sunday morning is a really, really tough one.
And by the way, the Sunday morning last year is the year of the big storm.
We're literally just trying to hold camp together with everything that we have.
Yeah, that was one of those where we could have died.
We had one person at our camp.
Poor Barry.
I mean, it's pouring down rain on Sunday morning.
And Barry is camp dad.
He waits up for all the kids to get home under his blanket on the couch.
And then once the kids are all home and everybody's settled in bed, that's when Barry can go to
sleep.
Also, when the house starts to collapse, Barry's the one to fix it.
So the tents are coming down, the rain is pouring in.
So Barry's, it's like you had seven limbs.
You were trying to keep everything up.
Meanwhile, there are two people under the tent in which you're trying to keep from collapsing,
just falling asleep on their chair.
Poor Barry is trying to keep them alive and they don't care one bit whatsoever.
No, they were out.
They were out.
Until the lightning hit.
Until the lightning hit and everything collapsed on top.
It hit a transformer.
Yeah, so I got to imagine when you go through some of these artists, are they playing other
festivals?
Or are they plucked straight from somebody's playlist and put onto the Bonnaroo stage?
Those are the ones, like I said earlier, that I really like a lot, that I really want to
at least champion and get behind and give a shot to.
And I think that I found this year, you talk about Davey, we keep coming back to Davey,
I think I found it this year.
I think I found this one.
I got one too that I really like.
They did soul really well last year.
They found some really good soul artists.
I think they might have found another one from Nashville.
I've actually had a friend of mine tell me about these girls a little while back and
it didn't register to me until I saw their name pop up on the Bonnaroo playlist and I
said, oh my God, that's them.
That's who he's been talking about.
Check this out.
This is the new respect.
Oh, don't you find no home by me?
Oh, by Lord, if you're listening, tell him go ahead and get going.
I've tried living life right.
Don't know if I want to do it anymore.
No, cause I've lived a pretty good life.
I'm going to shock and amaze you, Barry.
Three girls and a guy.
They were the kids of preachers.
Did you see that coming?
What did I do as soon as that song started?
New respects.
I wrote it down.
I'm going home.
That's what I'm listening to this afternoon.
Yeah.
So that song's really good.
It's a little different than what the normal stuff is.
I mean, they go from sounding like they're from, they're doing rock songs in church to
Jenna Elmone.
They're really, really fun.
So give them a look on the who stage this year.
Now Barry Corey, what else you got?
It's got, I like that.
It's got a little T-bone brunette.
It's got a little white stripes.
I like that a lot.
And this next band that I picked, I think also has a little white stripes to it.
Probably more than a little.
King Nun.
Again, I think I just picked kind of based on names.
There you go.
That's the problem.
What?
That's why you'll never pick Patrick Dronie.
That's what I'm pro, that's my problem with all of this.
Like King Princess, she's amazing.
But you know her actual name?
No.
No.
Patrick Dronie.
P-Drone.
Come on dog.
Let's find something else.
Let's do this.
Let's brand you.
I also went and listened to Item A just because I liked the name.
I can talk about Item A all day.
I love them.
It doesn't reflect what I thought it was going to sound like.
You thought her name was Item A, didn't you?
Just not what I was thinking.
I was thinking Southern gospel or something.
Oh, it's so good.
King Nun is a four piece band and I guess Chinese Medicine is the song that I picked.
Little punk thing, it's got a little surf thing, it's got a little grunge, a little
raw.
I just like that.
When I think punk and surf, I think Barry Courter.
A Chinese medicine place.
Covenant proof that it's all legitimate.
Sometimes it does when it's a law in itself, but is it fact it'soriginal, is it real?
In reality we are её and we do it for なんでもあれ.
You've got to watch how rebellious you are.
You know when I hear that, you know what I hear?
Alternative radio.
I hear that could be any song on the alternative radio charts in a heartbeat.
Anytime you want to turn on alternative radio or serious alternation, that could be there.
Yeah, and you listened to all of them and chose your favorites.
I just sort of randomly picked and liked what I heard.
So I'm saying that just because people listening out there may say, why didn't you do this
one or why didn't you do that one?
Totally by random.
We could have.
This is so strange that you, like we keep mirroring each other's picks.
It's like Super Bizarro World.
You choose something and then I choose almost the identical match to that because I put
on my list Friday Pilots Club.
Now you tell me if this sounds any different than what we just heard.
It's cool, you know, the way they've been treating you lately, cause you real messed
up on the daily.
They tell you things you wanna hear, they say, well honey, love, what would I do without
you?
Well at the end of the day, it's a game.
So many miles and I'm moving the same way, but you know where it goes.
She's been moving so fast, I've been taking it slow.
I'm not at the end of it.
I'm not at the end of it.
Okay, so I can really get into stuff like this and I can get into the King Nun on occasion.
Here's where I got it.
You gotta be very careful for me.
The second that you start and make that Imagine Dragons 21 Pilots turn, that's when I'm out,
dude.
Dude, these guys walk such a fine line with me.
The minute that they go there, I'm probably out for good.
Fair enough, fair enough, but also consider a lot of these bands on the Who stage are
gonna be new, they're gonna be young, they're still looking for their voice.
That's right, that's a good point.
They're transitioning from whatever.
Teenagehood to adulthood.
Barman, garage band.
Some of them in the very awkward 23 year old phase.
Exactly, they're still trying to figure things out.
But again, for me, that's part of the fun.
I love finding those bands and watching them grow.
That's a great point because if you watch that repeat, or let's go back to our buddies
Repeat Repeat, Jared and Kristen.
If you watched that show last year on the Who stage, their album, and believe me, I've
heard it.
That album that they did on the Who stage, if you think that that's what you're getting
with the next album, watch out.
Watch out.
You grow and you find new sounds and new lanes that you wanna try as an artist.
You're probably right.
I would probably give somebody not enough benefit of the doubt, but I'm just so ingrained
in hating that Imagine Dragons sound so much, so much that it turns me off almost like watching
like a really hot chick smoke.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it takes the pretty off of it.
Yes, it takes the pretty off immediately.
It's exactly right.
I get it.
I'll go you one further.
This is what, again, I'm name dropping, but it's my job.
This was what Leon Bridges and I talked about this week.
Here's a guy who, kind of like we talked with Paul Janoway of St. Paul, he always had that
part of what got him attention was that he did that 60s, 70s soul thing.
Sounded like Sam Cooke.
Sounded like Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, but then you get Pigeon Hole.
And so that's what Leon and I talked about quite a bit.
His last record, to me, works because it moves that forward and largely because it's a very
personal record.
It's something he wrote.
So you identify with the songs.
And one of the things that he said we talked about was, and you and I have talked about
it, when we first started listening to Leon a couple of years ago, I said, why not just
listen to Otis or Sam?
But I get that you and I are, what, 10, 15 years apart.
People your age and younger want their own Sam Cooke, their own Otis.
I've got my own Otis.
It's Otis Redding.
It's Otis Redding.
You know what I mean?
I don't mind somebody occupying the same lane.
I don't mind that.
I totally agree.
That was my point.
Why not just listen to...
But I think Leon has done that.
I think he has taken that comparison.
I think Paul has too.
I think the last St. Paul album moves it forward.
Well, I see what you mean.
But look, I've got a high bar when it comes to that second album, especially when you're
in that Pigeon Hole space.
Leon Bridges' Coming Home was such a monumentally important album because it brought that sound
back to a place...
For a guy like, there's nothing but 60s soul like me, I was ecstatic to hear something
like this, right?
Right.
And ecstatic that that sound was now prevalent.
St. Paul's the same way.
Both of them, I would probably not say this to Paul's face because I love him too much,
but those second albums, it's tough.
They're not that good.
It's the sophomore jinx.
And I didn't think the Leon...
They call it that for a reason.
I didn't think the Leon Bridges' second album was as good as the first.
It's very difficult when you are pigeonholed like that.
And the other problem that Leon had is that if he's worried about being pigeonholed, he
did that to himself.
Did you ever see the live show?
I mean, when you sound like Sam Cooke, dress like Sam Cooke, act like Sam Cooke, dance
like Sam Cooke, I mean, you're sort of doing that to yourself.
The gold standard for me when it came to this is Alabama Shakes.
They put out an album that you could very well be like, I don't know where they go from
here.
I don't know if they can expand on this sound.
And holy God, did she do it as well as I can remember anybody in that vein.
You've got such an iconic sound.
How do you take that and then expand upon it?
The Shakes are really the only band that I can think of that did that.
It's really, really tough and it's something that I have talked for many, many years with
artists about.
And one of my favorite, and I don't remember who it was.
I wish I could because it's such a great line.
What happens is you have that first album, it blows up and all of a sudden you see nothing
but the inside of a bus windshield.
The label is trying to milk every penny out of you that they can for as long as they can
off of that album.
So too often the next album is written about life on a bus.
And I can't remember who I was interviewing, but he says, yeah, nobody cares that your
chauffeur is having a bad day.
It's a great line.
But that's what the album has become.
Suddenly it's, I miss my family.
I miss my home, whatever life on a bus is about.
So you miss some of that.
Plus you've got label people in your ear telling you it needs to sound like the first one.
And that's why that one's kind of tough.
What if you're somebody that has written a bunch of really big hits, maybe even number
one song, maybe even two number one songs, then you want to break out onto your own and
do your own thing.
Do you think that's as difficult as somebody who's had a really successful first album
and then has to write another one and get out of, I don't know, say the box that they're
in?
Which one's harder?
Which person is probably because it, again, it's, you know, you've had that taste of
success.
Do you want to repeat it?
Do you want to completely undo yourself?
Do you want to alienate your fans?
This is the conflict.
I mean, this is what I talked to all these guys and have for 30 years about.
And it takes a confident, well, you know, Leon is again, one of the, he's a young guy.
He was washing dishes.
Oh, he's a baby.
He was washing dishes in 2015.
And then this thing blows up.
You know, we've talked to, you and I on this show, talked to some of those guys that had
AJR.
Took what?
Eight years, 10 years?
Right.
That's a whole different animal than suddenly your first song blows up.
Yeah.
And then you got all these people in your ear trying to tell you what to do.
So well, the reason I ask is because there's somebody playing the who stage that has written
two number one singles and now is trying to do it on their own and talk about it.
A formidable experience to write number one singles for Halsey and Zara Larsen.
And then all of a sudden find yourself in a Tennessee field in the middle of the summer
on a Saturday at two o'clock in the afternoon.
This is DeLacy, my man.
Yeah, so we get him on a life.
More than you
You're a supermodel
Shaped just like a bottle
He could run his fingers through your hair
I bet you look at time, though
Don't you know he's my dog?
I was running wild for a minute
He's the only one who can get it
So, bitch
Don't steal my man
He's got a weakness
So can somebody like Delacy make the transition from being an amazing songwriter
and writing songs for other artists and then all of a sudden do it herself?
She's got a good formula. I've heard that song before.
Yeah. Yeah. Called Jolene.
You know? She's got a good formula. She knows exactly how she's going to write a song.
She's got a good voice too. A lot of times those studio songwriters
don't always have the power. They don't translate. They don't translate.
They write well for somebody else. But I like that.
I really like her a lot. But again, because she's a who's stage artist, she's new.
She has one song. I don't know what else she does.
We talked to Drax Project about it earlier.
You know, how do you fill up a set when you really only have four or five songs?
You've gotten an amount of success really quickly and you're like,
What do I do now?
You know, that's an interesting point. And it's going to be the case with a lot of these bands, right?
They're again, they're new, they're young. They maybe have the one song.
They maybe half of the set maybe is filled out with what they were doing five years ago.
And like Matt said earlier, he said, Well, we've got a lot of new material.
And I also have that busking experience, which is you can play anything.
You can play anything, anytime, anywhere.
You know, we have that we have street performers here in town
and really just sort of picked up in the last couple of years.
And the more I talk to them, the more I don't know.
It used to always kind of have that, yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's what you do. It sort of does still.
Well, no, it's changed. It really has because a lot of the veteran local guys are digging it because,
hey, you know, it's a decent little afternoon's worth of money for a couple hours work.
But they really do like that that experience of having to figure out how to grab somebody's attention.
It's a great point. If you're like, I'm sure there are like
budding musicians that listen to this product, right?
If you want to like get a good example as to how the world works
when it comes to this industry and maybe give you a game plan
or a roadmap to where to go and how to do this,
boy, listen that Drax project conversation. Listen to the AJR conversation.
They're telling you how to do it. That's how they did it.
It's very rare that you're going to be a Bozzi.
It's very rare that you're going to write one song and all of a sudden go number one.
That just doesn't happen.
Post it on social media and boom, you're a superstar. Doesn't happen.
You know, like DeLacy has the right, you know, number one singles.
And even after that, she's still playing the Who stage on, you know, a Saturday afternoon.
Or you could be somebody that also is playing the Who stage
that I think is going to be the industry's next push.
I know for a fact that they they love her and the labels and the label loves her.
The labels trying to get her to a place. I don't know where that is.
I don't even think they know.
You know, she's one of these Billie Eilish sort of enigmas.
Like, do I put them onto radio? Do I put them into festivals?
We don't know where she fits, but you better see her now
because my bet is if there's a star that comes from the Who stage, it's going to be Buelo.
There are some artists that you just know have it.
They just got to figure out what it is. Buelo's got it.
And if there's one that I know, no, no, is going to blow up at some point,
I don't know when, but at some point, there's just too much of the machine behind her
for it not to at some point start connecting Buelo on the Who stage.
Let me ask you a question based on our last episode and something you just said
and some of the comments that we got.
First of all, thanks to everybody for sending all the great comments.
You guys are so nice, number one, but also the comments continue to get longer
and more thought out. I think people are enjoying the conversation that we're sparking.
One of those based on last week, this idea of the cross pollination
of all of the different genres, where do you think that's going?
I'm asking you as a radio guy in particular.
We're talking about labels trying to pigeonhole people.
As we said last week, it's you and me and the labels that try to come up
with all the record labels that try to come up with all these genre labels.
I find the labels to be a lot like dad in that you have to pull dads kicking
and screaming out of their comfort zone to listen to something that they might
not understand to begin with. You've talked about it a lot.
You've learned a lot about what is going on today because your kids made you listen to it.
The best example I can give is somebody like Billie Eilish.
They know they have something, but they don't know what it is.
They're too scared to put it out because they're afraid of failing.
There's a lot of money that they've invested in Billie Eilish.
They've got a load, millions and millions of dollars.
If they make the wrong call, they're out a lot of money.
They're too scared to go in one direction. They're too scared to go into a different direction.
Most of the time, they try to ride the fence and do a little bit of both.
That's when it fails the most.
The ones that they're counting on is somebody that they can ride the fence on
and the public then tells them what the answer is.
That's what's happened to Billie Eilish.
There is not an artist that is more bizarre for the industry, at least my industry,
as to what to do with her because it doesn't sound right on the radio.
It doesn't flow correctly. It's a totally different sound than we're used to.
It's way too dark, but yet if you look at sales, streams, she's everywhere.
Absolutely everywhere.
The public has basically forced the label into doing this that they probably wouldn't have done
if it was just by their own devices.
I completely understand, but the labels have been that way forever.
What's changed is there are now so many different outlets, like you said,
with the streaming and all of that.
I mean, our own Kane Brown, who's from this area, Chattanooga, was very similar.
He was posting cover songs on social media and getting millions of likes,
and the labels didn't want to have anything to do with it because they didn't know where to put him
because he sort of mixes that hip-hop and country.
But it became too big.
I'll go one step further. Old Town Road right now from Lil Nas X.
Lil Nas X is just a guy that started playing around on that app, TikTok.
He writes this bizarrely weird song in a minute and a half, and now it is everywhere.
It's everywhere. Bieber is tweeting about it.
The Jenners are tweeting about it. I'm playing it on our radio station.
It is massive. It's selling like crazy. It's streaming like crazy.
On the chart, it's like 38.
Is that the one they just took off the chart, like yesterday?
On the country chart, yeah, because the country had no idea what to do with it.
And then Billy Ray puts a remix with it, so now it's back on the country chart.
Is that a blank? I mean, do we fault the charts and the country folks and the labels
and say, you guys are just missing out? Quit trying to...
That story is a little different because country radio and the country label industry,
they're very protective. They do not like sharing their artists.
And the second that an artist goes to another format, they write them off.
So, for instance, the reason why Maren Morris is as difficult...
To pull the curtain back a little bit, I really, really want to talk to Maren Morris.
I like her a lot. I think she's got that Taylor Swift quality,
that the second that she wants to cross over and become major, she can.
The problem is that I can't get her right now because country label...
What label is she on? She's on Republic.
The Nashville version of her label that she's on refuses to let her go.
And so the pop side of their label is like, dude, do you understand how much money you're losing?
Do you understand what you're doing to her career?
But the countryside refuses to let their hooks out of her because they're so protective of their artists.
So the second that something like Lil Nas X happens, they want it, but then when we take it, they're out.
They're completely out.
I get what you're saying and it's not new, but my question is everything else is new.
Does it continue or who's going to end up being the loser in all this, I guess?
Because I'm not sure I'm asking the question right.
But it sounds to me like if the fans want it, they're going to get it.
They're going to get it one way or the other.
See, this is where, and I know people dog on pop radio and top 40 radio, as do I most of the time,
but there's only one place that all of that stuff can find refuge.
There's only one place where that stuff can just live.
And that's top 40 radio because they're a catch all for everything.
They can take anything they want to from any format and put it right there and make it a thing.
So collectively, as the hundred and eighty five top 40 radio stations in the country,
they can single handedly as an entity make something make something happen,
which is why labels care so much about top 40 radio, no matter what you think about it.
Alternative radio ain't doing that because there's not that many alternative radio stations.
Triple A radio is not doing that.
If you follow any of the data that collects where the money goes, the first place it starts is always radio.
And if you don't get if you don't get that radio kick, it's going to be very difficult for you to actually maintain
and keep a superstar and and monetize somebody the way that they probably should be monetized.
I hear you. I'm going to make a prediction based on nothing,
just a gut feeling that a year from now it's going to look entirely different.
I agree. Now, see, here's where this is the only difference.
Yes, it's going to look a year different from a year now from now.
And yes, it looked different a year ago and a year before that.
But what's been the constant? What you meant radio? Yeah.
Yeah, that's been the constant since literally the 30s.
So yeah, podcasts will come. Satellite radio will come.
And they'll be they'll be great appetizers and they'll be great side projects for the for the main meal.
But if you don't have the radio play, it's going to be a lot more difficult.
Now, what we love about Bonnaroo is that they position and program their festival almost in an anti public sentiment.
They almost they program this almost like, well, I don't really care what's popular.
This is what we think are the tastemakers and what we like.
That's why I enjoy the product so much. I agree.
And I and I think we've kind of touched around it, danced around it.
I think that was a big game changer for me that that just that they don't program it based on what that's right.
We used to always say here. I mean, we're a mid market town.
So the shows that we used to get, if it didn't play on the radio, it wasn't going to sell a ticket.
And Bonnaroo didn't care. Right.
Think about that. That was such a mind change. Yeah, that's right.
For me, for everybody, it was it. The first thing you and I said today was I enjoy now more finding the bands I've ever heard of.
Fifteen years ago, that was not the case. Right.
I mean, we might have said it because we were music snobs.
We're also in the minority and wanting new product and to absorb different things.
But I think that's what Bonnaroo has created. I think it's changed the whole industry.
I think people's podcasts now are not podcasts. Their their playlists are I don't know, because your radio stations different.
You play top 40 stuff and there are fans that listen to whatever you play.
So there are still people who are influenced by what they that you choose for them to hear.
But I know a lot of people are like you and I.
They would rather have 40 acts like this Bonnaroo list than, you know, whatever.
I understand. But you but somebody still curated it for them. Right.
Oh, yeah. And somebody still curated the Spotify playlist and still created their their Pandora.
But it's just a different mindset. It is a different mindset.
But that's why. And again, maybe that's why I love Bonnaroo so much is because I'm stuck in this world of something's been chosen for me for so long or I have chosen for so long.
Bonnaroo is there. And what I love about them so much is it gave it gave the type of music that I really loved a platform and let that platform be its own entity and allowed you to survive and make a living just in that realm, just in that.
It's like like somebody like Courtney Barnett. I mean, I like that story.
I like the Ron Gallo story. I like the Jurassic five stories, people who are not going to get any sort of love in any sort of mainstream fashion can make a very, very good living.
I'll go even smaller just by doing festivals like I got Bahamas.
Sure. I would have never, never run across Bahamas. Yeah.
While you were talking, I was just thinking the last couple of episodes that we've done watching you react to Bonnaroo let and then this, you know, when we stumble across an act where they been, you know, that is a different thing.
And that to me is what's a lot of fun.
Yeah. Well, let's let's wrap this up. This is a long one today, but it's a good one. Let's say I've got one more. You've got one more. Let's let's wrap it up with these two.
I've got item a getting closer.
I like item a a lot. So, um, root see Americana. Is that what you call it? Yeah. Yeah. Chris. Stephanie. Gene. I have a tough time calling anything Americana.
It's a very strange description of an artist. Don't you think? I always liked y'all country. Yep. Nobody says that anymore.
I feel them getting closer.
I like item a a lot. It's like shovels and rope if they had any energy whatsoever. Once shovels and rope wake up from their nap. That's item a. The harmonies are so good though. So, so good. I like shovels and rope.
And to me, the item a is is really your wheelhouse. That's about where Barry Courter lives most of the time. Right?
I don't know that I have a most of the time. Really? No kidding. No, no, no. See, if I were to find a artist that I would identify most with Barry, it'd probably be something like that. Yeah. I don't know why. I'm not disagreeing. But no. Interesting.
I know you don't believe me, but I probably listen to, you know, a bass nectar more than you want to believe. Interesting. That is it. Well, if I, if you would believe me, I know it would be hard to believe. But if you would listen to me, I probably listen to something like Pinky Pinky more often than I'm willing to admit.
My baby comes in the shadow.
He follows me around.
I leave him in the night sky.
But it's a day time now.
My baby won't
leave me alone.
He comes through the window.
You won't let me go.
And call me ignorant cowboy.
An all female garage punk band? I'm all in on that. Yeah. That is not what I picked. That sounds like Frankie and Annette's Rebellious Children. Hey, I'll take it. That sounds right down my alley.
Hey, The What Podcast appreciates you. You want to win some Bonnaroo tickets to drop us a line? TheWhatPodcast.com. We got to do the drawing here, I think, in the next week or two. Next week. We haven't done this. This is going to be completely out of the box next week. And I don't know how it's going to work. And frankly, I don't really care. But next week, we're going to try something completely different. Something completely different, but still maintain our Bonnaroo roots and talk about something that is essential Bonnaroo. Quintessential Bonnaroo. The thing that gets overlooked the most.
The vendors. I want to talk to some of the vendors and some of the food, some of the beer, some of the people that sell some stuff, some products, maybe even we can find a shakedown street person from years past. I'd like to talk to them next week on The What Podcast. You got any suggestions? You got ideas? Drop us a line. TheWhatPodcast.com or TheWhat underscore podcast on Twitter or Instagram. We'll talk to you next week.
