Featured Artist – Darkest Grace

Darkest Grace is an indie metal band in Seattle, on the grind, building a name for themselves everyway they can.  If you’re following this blog, you know one of the most frequent questions I receive is, “how do we open for a national act coming through town?”  This is a hurdle every young bands has difficulty overcoming.  Darkest Grace has and I’d like for them to share with you what it took to FINALY make it happen.  Maybe you can take something from their experience….

Guys, how long had you performed in Seattle before the opportunity to open for a nation act appeared?
We played around Seattle for nearly two years, slowly building up both our confidence and reputation in the area.

Who was the act and how was the show?  Give us some details about it.
The band was Soilwork from Sweden.  The show was great and finally tapped our band into the true Seattle metal scene which we were having trouble getting into with purely local shows.  It’s hard for local metal bands to find a scene and seattle, but getting on national shows really helped us break through.  We now have several die-hard Darkest Grace fans who show up to almost every show, and get engaged in our online presence.

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Featured Artist – NYLE

I recently posted Nyle’s video for “Let The Beat Build” and if you read the post you know how much I enjoyed the video!  I had to feature Nyle and get some background on how they pulled it off…and as expected..time, energy, planning, and talent.  If you missed the video, I highly recommend checking it out before reading any further!!  Here’s the inside scoop….

Nyle, I was turned on to your video “Let The Beat Build” by our A&R Scout Kiran and have probably watched it 50 times!  I sincerely love the creativity, passion, and what appears to be the unadulterated love of music and performance.  I gotta get into your head a bit and know what it took to make such an original piece.  So let’s dig in…

What’s so impressive is that both the video and audio is recorded simultaneously – LIVE!  How long did it take to plan and choreograph the shoot prior to hittin’ the studio and doing your first run-through?
Plan? Ha! The 32 of us were just sitting around one day and Chadd the director was like “Do guys want to make a music video, so we just did the whole thing that day.” Nah, actually the whole project from start to finish took around 3 months. Alot of it was just planning and booking equipment, the Director of Photography had to see the space and map out the lighting. We were assisted by 194 Recordings  (school run label) who coordinated all the people. … Continue Reading

Featured Artist – Adams Dagger

As promised, we’re going to start featuring independent artists that are out there hustling for themselves! There ARE success stories and I want to share them. We can learn from one another..so let’s share information!

First up, Adams Dagger. They recently toured the entire US from southern California to NYC and back. Self booked, no agent, and actually came home with money in hand! I hit up the band’s drummer, Mick, and asked him to share some insight as to how they turned this tour into an indie success!  Here’s the story…

Mick, Adams Dagger did something most signed bands can’t do – come home from a national tour with money in your pocket! Let’s focus on how you did that. First, how long was the tour?

The tour was 20 days. We played 16 shows during that time.

Before leaving, did you budget tour expenses like hotels, per diems, and gas? If so, what exactly did you include in your budget?

The only thing initially budgeted was gas expenses. I knew that from the guarantees we had we would “almost” cover gas for the entire tour. There were no per diems. The first time out was every man for himself. We weren’t planning on staying in hotels much at all, just sleeping in the van mostly or staying with friends or family. … Continue Reading