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293: DAN SAILLANT from ICE GIANT, PERENNIAL QUEST, & more | Interview
26 Plays6 months ago
Talking with DAN SAILLLANT from:
ICE GIANT [Symphonic Melodic Death Metal] - https://icegiantband.bandcamp.com
PERENNIAL QUEST [Power Metal] - https://perennialquest.bandcamp.com
ANNIHILUS MUNDI [Progressive Death Metal] - https://annihilusmundi.bandcamp.com/
AUTUMN'S ASHES [Gothic/Death/Doom Metal] - https://autumnsashes.bandcamp.com
WAILING PINES PRODUCTIONS - https://www.facebook.com/WailingPinesProductions
#metalpodcast #metalbass #metalkeyboards #metalkeys #melodicdeathmetal #symphonicdeathmetal #heavymetal #doommetal #powermetal #progressivedeathmetal #deathmetal #metalinterview #dansaillant #icegiant #perennialquest #annihilusmundi #autumnsashes #wailingpinesproductions
PODCAST THEM DOWN - https://linktr.ee/pctd
https://patreon.com/podcastthemdown
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Transcript
Introduction and Band Links
00:00:01
Speaker
pale middle nation it is my chin that I shall call me Kim and this is podcasting down and being joined by Doug and as I mentioned before Dan Solon now I would have said from x-band but he's from like 9 bands so totally not to pick this up
00:00:21
Speaker
This is one of them. This is Ice Giant. And it's grandevolvemachineiceguy.bandcamp.com. Did I get that right? Something like that, yeah. Something like that. Wait for me. Bandcamp.bandcamp, one of those.
00:00:38
Speaker
perfect we'll figure it out and we'll put it in there so you are correct me if i'm wrong the basest of ice giant perennial quests or do you please but yes i know it autumn sashes annihilus mundi
Whale Pines Productions and Band Practices
00:00:54
Speaker
And you've recently started whaling Pines Productions. What did I miss? That's all the stuff that is super active at the moment. There's a couple of other things that are cooking that are not public yet. There's a couple that I've like been in in the past that aren't active anymore, but those are the current ones. Yes. See, I'm not the only one who's in too many bands.
00:01:15
Speaker
The difference is this guy goes on tour all the time and all these bands like timely release stuff in a timely manner. So yeah, so this is this is why I wanted to have you on because.
00:01:32
Speaker
I like the way my bands functions, Burning Shadows, Eyes and More, recently Vacated Graves, Fade to Black, is that we don't practice that much and we can work independently and that way, but that's not how it used to be, like 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we'd have to get together every week. And I was in a band for a while that had to get together twice a week, which is a huge chunk of time, so.
00:02:02
Speaker
Um, I want to find out how you, how you do it and, uh, go through each of these bands. Cause they all, they're all different. It's not a particularly fun answer because it's the exact same thing that you just said. Most of them don't practice pretty regularly. Um, so the, the issue with ice giant is that, uh, three of us live in Boston and one of us lives in Southern
Challenges in Band Logistics
00:02:29
Speaker
Maryland. Um, so we.
00:02:31
Speaker
just regularly due to that. But that that is a semi recent development like post pandemic, because there was, you know, pandemic type. Let me guess. So normally, I'd guess the basis is making things difficult. But I know that's not the case. Preventing practice, probably the drummer said the drummer.
00:02:49
Speaker
It is not. It is the second guitarist. Yeah. Second lead guitarist. I don't know. They, the two guitars we have live and we have Eddie and Eddie's the one that lives in Maryland. Um, and they both do vocals and they both do leads and they both do rhythms. So like calling one first and one second is a little bit of a stretch kind of thing, but, uh, it's the growly one. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. The growly boy.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, so that's Ice Giant. We only are able really to practice when we have shows coming because then Eddie has to either come up here or we'll go to him or we'll meet somewhere else depending on where the show starts. And that's pretty much that. The only band that I'm in that does actually practice regularly is Perennial Quests.
00:03:36
Speaker
And we practice weekly. Sometimes biweekly, if there's a show and we're stressed about it or for like a premiering new song or something like that, like next week is probably going to be one of those. We have a gig and we're playing not one, but two new songs. And that's probably going to result in a like a weekend practice or something. We're usually a weeknight kind of band.
00:03:59
Speaker
And Perennial Quest is seven people, right? Yes, it is. Imagine how many times all of us have ever been in the same room, the numbers probably even lower than you think. Yeah, that's a nice and more problem. But we're down to six people now, well, unofficially.
Booking Shows and Music Scenes
00:04:19
Speaker
I think, officially, we're still seven people.
00:04:23
Speaker
You know, like you have, I don't know, five of them that can show up in any one time. And then one of them has a car break down and can't come. And then one of them just has undisclosed things or one of them's got work or, you know, stuff like that. It always happens. But luckily also with that many people, you know, you can still get stuff done. It's not like wasted effort.
00:04:44
Speaker
I see Perennial Quest, uh, toured last summer and yeah, so you hit Raleigh and then Atlanta and then Richmond and then you skipped right over Maryland. What the hell? We tried, we tried. That's, I've had so much difficulty booking in Maryland because a lot of the, well with Perennial Quest, it's mainly our guitarist, Andrew, that does a lot of the booking.
00:05:07
Speaker
Um, but that was right when I was starting to get into it. Um, and I don't know what it was, but I just had so much difficulty booking in Maryland. Um, I don't know. Don't know why it's just one of those, one of those areas. Like some, sometimes, I don't know. Maybe it's just that I don't really know. I'm not from there. I'm from hundreds of miles away. So I don't really know what the scene is like. That's probably why.
00:05:29
Speaker
Well, I get the impression that, uh, Boston scene is more active as his Richmond, but, uh, you know, I guess it depends how you want to look at it. I want to wish it was more than it was. There's definitely no shortage of incredible musicians. I mean, we have Berkeley. It's just that the, it's just so expensive to operate and live up here that there's a lot of venues closing, especially in the wake of the pandemic. Like we had, um,
00:05:55
Speaker
uh, like a destination touring spot for like, uh, years. I don't know if you've heard of great Scott, but, um, that has been gone since the early pandemic. Um, and it's been in like development hell trying to build that one back up. Um, what else? Close wonder bar closed. Uh, I've heard of that one. Yeah. There used to be like six or seven, like in the city and now there's two. All right. And then, uh, I was gonna,
00:06:22
Speaker
I did want to get a confirmation or rebuttal from you on Metal Archives, which we all know is the...
Band Genres and Comparisons
00:06:31
Speaker
you know, the most accurate information. All right. So, so we'll go through each band. So ice giant is set. It says early heavy slash power metal now symphonic melodic death metal, which is not what angry metal guy called you. Yeah. So, uh, that, I think this is a rare circumstance where metal archives is correct. Um, so our, our first alga, if rare, very rare, believe me. Um,
00:07:00
Speaker
Ice Giant's first album, I was not in the band when this came out, it was in 2017, it was self-titled. We took it off most of the major streaming services, but you can still get it on Bandcamp and it's on YouTube in a couple of places. It is rough, we'll say. It's a first album, it was recorded basically in a basement.
00:07:24
Speaker
Forgivable to an extent that it sounds kind of like that, but it's definitely in the US power metal kind of vein and then the new stuff Angry metal guy gave us a not super positive review Mainly because he could not figure out what genre we were and he was like is this power metal is this death metal? We don't really know what this is and he wants to know we've talked about Doug and I've talked about this He wants to know what box to judge you by
00:07:51
Speaker
It's an unfit in a box. Right. And if you fit in three bucks, but also I think he also said it's like symphonic progressive metal. That sounds like a box to me. I mean, like, I think it's pretty accurate. Okay. Let's see. Uh, next autumn's no, no, no. Perennial quest. Sorry. I I'm getting ahead of myself. Power metal.
00:08:15
Speaker
Period. Sure. We have been described. If you look through the reviews, the Metal Archives reviews on Perennial Quest, a lot of them are just like, yeah, if you like Dragon Force, you'll like this. And that is definitely true. We're Dragon Force Junior in a lot of ways. So whatever you'd call Dragon Force, I think you would probably call us that. Power Metal. I usually call us Power Thrash, but either way.
00:08:44
Speaker
Or, or would that be American power metals? Flashy power metals. I'm looking at this band photo and it looks like there's, um, uh, three guitarists. There are three guitars. Is that the, uh, the black and white one standing together? Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's the only one that we have since the, uh, the newest lineup, um, formed. I joined in 2021, I think. Um, and I believe that's when that photo was taken.
00:09:14
Speaker
That's, uh, it's, uh, I've always wanted to do three guitars, but I feel like it'd be hard to write for them to be interesting all the time. And, but you also have, you play keyboards, obviously. So.
00:09:30
Speaker
How well
Band Setups and Projects
00:09:33
Speaker
utilized are those three guitarists and which one would you get rid of? No. Well, Dave, you're fired. Most of the guitar work, our main guy, Andrew, he's the one in the aviators in that photo. Actually, we probably all have aviators in that photo.
00:09:53
Speaker
Yes, you do. OK, so that is not helpful at all. So he's the one he might have. Actually, let me just look up the photo so I know who I'm looking at. Andrew is the main guy that writes a lot of the music and he's like Dragon Force is like one of his favorite bands and he is a guitarist primarily. And he has this crazy ability to
00:10:19
Speaker
Uh, sorry, I'm multitasking now because I'm typing perennial quest. Oh, believe me. I don't listen to, uh, what these guys say because I'm busy looking over here. Okay. So Andrew is the, uh, the one with the, well, I know it's orange, but it's black and white photo. So you don't know what's orange. Um, which one?
00:10:43
Speaker
He's the one in the Judas Priest shirt with the dog tag around his neck. So that's Andrew. He's the main writer and it's been like this project is kind of his brainchild. He has this crazy ability to
00:10:59
Speaker
Write the three guitar parts such that there's like lead one lead two and rhythm But that's not assigned to a particular player. They all rotate through that in any given song. Oh nice and the other guitarists who is on Andrews So it's Andrew then next to him in the back is Tony our singer and then next to him is Sam the other guitarist He used to play keys in the band and then he switched to guitar and that was when I ended up joining
00:11:28
Speaker
All right, so how long until you switch to guitar also? Well, as soon as I get good at guitar, which there's a lot of people you would probably rather hire them, including most children and teenagers. Let's talk about the composition of a band for your supposed to have the singer miles in front of all these worthless musicians behind him. So why did you choose to buck that trend here?
00:11:53
Speaker
Well, uh, if you listen, if you listen to the music, um, the vocals are like in there and then we decide, you know, what would be really fun? Um, with this great song with a great verse. And of course, if we had like six minutes of guitar solos, um, so there's a, you know, we, uh,
00:12:12
Speaker
You know, we took a lot of photos that day. Um, that was, that's, uh, that photo is taken in our rehearsal space. Um, so, uh, you know, we took a bunch of photos. That one was pretty nice. Um, and also Tony's super tall. He's like a foot taller than the rest of us. So we were just like, Hey, don't block the rest of us. Short people. That's smart. Which, Hey Doug, which, uh, perennial quest did you
00:12:35
Speaker
Check out. I assume it's the October 2020 release. Actually, it was the demo, which is almost full length.
00:12:46
Speaker
And demo with a nine minute song on there. That's my kind of demo. That is a hotly debated topic within the band, whether or not we count that as an album or not. I am on the album end personally, because I think that it's recorded pretty decently. It's clearly first album and it wasn't cut to a click as far as I'm aware. But, you know, it's like 45 minutes long or something like that. Yeah.
00:13:11
Speaker
That's an album. So I agree. I agree. The lowest the the excuse you can use for any album is if is it longer than Slayer's rain and blood because that's like 27 minutes. Oh, you know, if it's shorter than that, it's definitely an EP, but it's longer than that. It's probably an album, I would say. I agree. I'm going to click this and I'm going to send it to Andrew and I'm going to tell him to go fuck himself.
00:13:39
Speaker
That's right. You know, that's our guarantee. Oh, it says Boston's premier power metal of the most fast, shreddy and epic proportions. That's that's what what it says on band camp. So I'll agree with that. All right. Let's move on to autumn's ashes. That's according to middle archives. Gothic slash death slash do metal.
00:14:08
Speaker
I believe that's accurate. I think, so Autumn's Ashes is a two-person project primarily. It's me and my friend Rick Lowell. And he is the Gothic Doom guy of the band. And I believe that is the exact phrase that he has used to describe us repeatedly. So I don't know if that's a, he gave that to metal archives thing or if that's a petitioned metal archives to give us that. And he's just been calling us that or what, but
00:14:36
Speaker
Yeah, so that is an interesting band that has a lot of history. It started in 2017, 18, something like that. And it was initially Rick's brainchild because he was a drummer primarily for a bunch of different bands, Sorrow Seed, Black Soul Seraphim.
00:14:59
Speaker
like other Gothic Doom metal bands. And he had all of these songs that he had written and didn't really know what to do with because either they didn't fit the other bands or they were just a little bit too long or they were like rejected from whatever album or something like that. So he had all these songs and he was like, man, what do I do with these songs? And then we met through variety of circumstances involving one of my now inactive bands.
00:15:26
Speaker
in Rhode Island and we found out that we lived like five minutes apart at the time which is crazy and then he moved to another state and then I also moved to another state and now we live like 20 minutes apart again which is crazy and you know he had all these songs and was like yo you want to just like do it and I was like yeah sure
00:15:49
Speaker
The Autumn's Ashes latest EP, you googly, I mean, eulogy, 31 minutes and four seconds. I think it might be an album. I think I do generally call it an album. The only reason that I'm a little bit hesitant on that one is because there's only three songs on it that matter. And then there's two interludes. There's the Doom.
00:16:13
Speaker
There's there's why you can call a dude. Yeah, there's a six minute, a nine and a half minute and an eleven and a half minute. Nice. And yeah.
00:16:22
Speaker
you do everything in Annihilus Mundi progressive death metal. Yes. So that one is, um, that started as a bedroom project for me, uh, when I went to college, um, because when I was in high school, I had a close group of friends and we had a band and that band is technically still active, but I don't think it's on, uh, metal archives cause we haven't put out like anything at all. And we haven't played in like six or seven years at this point. Um,
00:16:51
Speaker
So, is it active? I don't know, we'll see. We're writing, we're writing something. So, I don't know. But yeah, when I went to college, just the crowd that I was involved in was like completely and totally different. And there weren't really any, you know, wacky death metal people that I could just, you know, play around with. Little did I, I went to Boston College. I should have just taken a train to Berkeley and found a bunch of people, but I didn't have the fourth site for that.
00:17:19
Speaker
So I sat down and I was like, well, I'm going to have to make death metal somehow. So I guess I'm going to buy a guitar and interface and I'm going to definitely legally acquire a bunch of recording software and, you know, write a bunch of stuff. And lo and behold, I did.
00:17:36
Speaker
Yeah, so I was just noticing everything's like released in 2020 because that's when everyone suddenly had time to finish their recordings. Were you on all these recordings? Well, obviously you're on Ghost of Humanity by Ice Giant.
Recording and Cover Songs
00:17:52
Speaker
I'm actually not, fun fact. That was recorded in 2019, believe it or not. Oh, yeah. Okay. And I was, uh, uh, Peter Dorena, um, is the bass player on the album. You probably know him from Seven Spires, primarily. And he's like just unbelievably talented. Everything keeps coming back to Seven Spires and it's very odd. Cause
00:18:18
Speaker
For me, it just kind of came out of nowhere. But now I'm getting seven spires at every like three days.
00:18:28
Speaker
Well, it's like the opposite here because like this was their scene initially cause they all met at Berkeley and they were active in the Boston area for years and years and years. I played with them in like 20, 17 or 18 is my guess. Um, and you know, I had, I had heard of them purely by reputation just because they were local to hear for so long. Um, and, and I saw them play and I was like, whoa, these people are like crazy good. And then they started like releasing stuff and then sure enough, everything they released, it was 2020 and that nothing happened. And,
00:18:58
Speaker
Now, here they are nationally touring. They're in Europe touring Europe right now. Yeah. And I think they're going to tour with the Lords of the Trident in Japan. Yes, they are. And that's what going to be absolutely awesome. So you're the latest ice. I assume Ice Giant is the main one, if not Ice Giant and Perennial Quest. Yeah, I would say most recent release is the the Spirit Crusher.
00:19:28
Speaker
uh, cover. So it's just a single, it's out on, uh, the Spotify. Yes. Yeah. We, uh, we did not put that on band camp just cause I was a little bit worried about getting a cease and desist from like actually selling it. But, um, we, uh, we put it on Spotify and all that through distro kit and that gives you a cover license to stream it. Um, so there's no worries there. Um, we, I find it very difficult to believe that we would get a cease and desist for putting it on band camp, but still, you know,
00:19:57
Speaker
They're like, we want our five cents in royalties. My dollar that will get 35% of it taken out by band camp sales, unless it's band camp Friday, which I don't know if that'll last, but I really liked the cover art.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's that's brilliant because I like you see it little and you go like it immediately reminds me of Sound of Perseverance. Exactly what I was going for. So I actually photoshopped that together. That's a bunch of stock images of a mountain that I chopped up in about a thousand different ways and layered on top of each other and then colored red. Last I checked your Spotify, that was the top, the top track on there. So which I find frustrating because like
00:20:43
Speaker
people like I play in a Metallica tribute band that's like infinitely more successful with much less effort because everyone knows Metallica you know it's like oh here's the same thing I already know I'll check it out you know and it's just I guess it's just human nature but it's still frustrating when you're in um
00:21:04
Speaker
Original bands and you're real proud of your work. I mean, we, you know, we put it out knowing that that was probably going to happen. Um, and, uh, um, it's, you know, we, we, you know, we, we like covers. We do covers all the time. We've done a couple of covers as a band, uh, live, um, not recorded, um, but live we've done a few. Um, the reason that we did spirit crusher was multiple folds. Um,
00:21:29
Speaker
Primarily, yes, because it's a song that pretty much everybody knows. It's also probably not super hotly debated that it's a death metal song, and if people are going to still be confused by what genre we are, then, you know, maybe that'll push people in a little certain direction.
00:21:49
Speaker
And then there was also the logistics side of things where that was something that I produced. The album, I didn't play on, I didn't mix that, I didn't do any of the mastering. But the intent is we have a bunch of songs that we're releasing over the course of this year. And then for whatever the next album ends up being, our goal is to self-produce that. And I wanted something that was
00:22:18
Speaker
that i didn't have to do a ton of like actual writing on so that then i could just do the orchestrations pretty freely without having to worry about everything else so the the the mix the master the orchestrations and all of that it was basically like a dry run for me to figure out how to do that in this band's context i treat one of my bands as the experimental
00:22:40
Speaker
thing like that. So that would be the Zombie Metal Band, RPG. That's where I'll try new software. That's where I make all my mistakes. And whether you notice them or not, it informs what I do on everything else.
00:23:01
Speaker
That is primarily what Annihilus Mundi has been to me for many years. But that band, the result of me trying so many different things with Annihilus Mundi, like composition
Album Release Strategies
00:23:13
Speaker
and software and all of that resulted in me writing a 78 minute album that I have been trying to finish for I think like four years at this point. So I just had to be like, okay, stop.
00:23:27
Speaker
stopped with the experimentation in this band you've already taken on too much let's do something else and then we did 78 minutes that sounds like two albums to me that sounds like two albums there it is
00:23:39
Speaker
Doug, did you have anything you wanted to add before I ask about equipment and your eyes glaze over? Yeah, maybe to both of you. And I'm sure the answer is it depends. But is an album turning into just batching out three years worth of music at this point in two years? Yeah, exactly. Well, for me, so I'm old. So I prefer albums in physical formats.
00:24:08
Speaker
You know, so I like, I mean, I meant to get it off my shelf, but I have ice giant CD, you know, uh, that was the only CD I bought that night. No, no offense to the, to the other band on the tour. Love you. But yeah, like I, I listened to things in albums, but I've heard multiple
00:24:34
Speaker
In multiple places, it's better to release things piecemeal because then you always have something to promote because we're living... Oh, this is a perfect segue, actually. We're living in this post-dystopian hellhole where you always have to be promoting something on social media.
00:24:55
Speaker
And I know you have gripes about that. So so I'll let you answer and then you can gripe about social media. And like, I totally agree with everything I think you're going to say. Oh, yeah, because you see my Facebook and you know that half of my Facebook is complaining about Facebook.
00:25:13
Speaker
Exactly. But yeah, man, I don't know. I'm the same way. I really I like listening to albums. I don't even listen to singles anymore. Like I know if an album is coming out, if it's something that I'm really excited for, then I'll listen to the first single just as kind of like a palette warm up, I guess. And then I won't listen to any more. And then I'll wait for it to drop. And then I'll listen to the whole album. The recent job.
00:25:37
Speaker
I've only listened to like 30 seconds of the new Judas Priest before it came out. I think that's exactly the case actually. I listened to Panic Attack, which is the first song and I think it was the first single. And I was like, yep, this sounds great. I'm gonna just wait for the rest of it. And sure enough, the rest of it is great. I wish I'd done that because I'm sick of Panic Attack and Trial by Fire, even though they're great songs and they don't feel like they're part of the album yet.
00:26:05
Speaker
I mean, the singles have always been a thing, right? And I could say metal's more album-oriented than other genres. But yeah, releasing four songs over six months and sort of watching an album build itself in Apple Music is just really weird. You know, pretty much what I grew up with.
00:26:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's that is definitely you know, that's the thing that's becoming very common sleep token recently did that and They released I think six singles off of that album and it was just the first six tracks of the album So they announced it and I want to say November I know this would have been like a year and a half ago like they announced it and they dropped the first song and then a month and a half later they dropped the second one and then so on and so on until there were six out and then they dropped the whole thing and
00:26:51
Speaker
And recently Alluvial did that with their newest EP. It's a four-track EP and they released single, single, single, and then the fourth single was the EP release. And, you know, it clearly works because in the age of the social media algorithm in which you always have to be feeding it for it to throw you any bones at all whatsoever, you know, you got to keep releasing songs.
00:27:15
Speaker
And as we witnessed with, as we, Ice Giant is a band witness with Spirit Crusher, you know, you drop a song and then all of a sudden the numbers go, you know, it's the more, the more you release stuff in an era, especially where like post COVID post COVID, but you know, um, where touring is.
00:27:37
Speaker
all over the place, like every single week, you're getting tour announcement, tour announcement, tour announcement, tour announcement, constantly. It's too much. KK's Priest is playing tonight in Baltimore. And just with all the tours coming through and real Judas Priest tickets costing $200 to see them in DC because of resellers. I was like, I can't swing $50 to see
00:28:06
Speaker
KK Spreece and I think Seven Spires by the way. And it's a disaster for like smaller bands touring too because there's just so many big tours being announced at any given moment. Yeah but how would you know about that?
Live Shows and Touring Logistics
00:28:23
Speaker
What do you think my last six months has been trying to book with a thing that a couple things for a couple different bands? Which is exactly what I'm doing in Wailing Pines Productions, by the way, the booking shows. You know, just book booking is hard and it's necessary for bands to do to grow because you have to play to you have to play to introduce yourself to new audiences. You know, the algorithm can only take you so far.
00:28:49
Speaker
because you know the algorithm can show you to as many people as possible but it can't make them listen to you the only time where you can quote make somebody listen to you and I put make in quotes because you can play one note and everybody could walk out but
00:29:06
Speaker
is live shows, and that's also where most of the money is made because streaming doesn't pay anything. In Bandcamp digital sales, they're definitely helpful, but every Bandcamp Friday, what do you see? Hey, it's Bandcamp Friday. Hey, it's Bandcamp Friday. Hey, it's Bandcamp Friday. Hey, it's Bandcamp Friday from every single band on your feed, and everybody's trying to jump at the same audiences.
00:29:26
Speaker
You know, Bandcamp Friday is useful, but you know, it doesn't compare to like selling six shirts at a single show, you know, like, and then all of a sudden you're in the triple digits for the show and it's great. So shows are required, but also simultaneously dropping stuff regularly is I think required also in the modern age because you need both the algorithm and the forced introduction at live shows.
00:29:53
Speaker
Looks like you did a long weekend recently with Ice Giant. We did, yes. So I've played two of these venues, O'Brien's and with recently Vacated Graves. And I played the Kingsland with Isenmoor. So the last time I played in Portland, Maine,
00:30:21
Speaker
We, it was our, the first show of the tour from Maryland. So we drove 12 hours. They paid us $11 because we had to split the take from the door. Obviously $22 with the band that came from Bangor.
00:30:39
Speaker
Oh, like what? I'm a 40 minute drive at most. Exactly. So I'm hoping you had a better time in Portland than I did. We, you know, we had we had a better time than that, luckily. But, you know, it was it was a relatively small show. So that that venue quote is actually a brewery. And oh, yeah, I had never been to Portland, let alone played it until this weekend, which is all is allagash is in Portland, too, by the way.
00:31:08
Speaker
Oh, I didn't know that actually show up and play there. Next time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Next time. Yeah. So they, they're, they're an interesting spot. Cause we, we were, uh, we, um, it's primarily a hardcore venue, I think. Um, so we had, uh,
00:31:28
Speaker
It was us and elements was touring with us and elements i don't know if you check this out what that says yes they are i'm on i'm on. Yeah they're a wacky wacky band they are there from connecticut so i've known them for years cuz they're they're all around the same scene everything in new england's an hour away from everything else in new england.
00:31:47
Speaker
So I've known them for years and I listened to their stuff for years. It is wild. And it is Animorphs themed. So they have like an endorsement from the author and they like trademarks the name of the band. That's amazing.
00:32:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's like crazy. They went like hard into the theme and they have like like a light show and like fog and they weren't allowed to use foggers at most of the shows just because indoor venues and files and stuff like that. But like, you know, they have like a light show and they have like banners and all the super complicated playback and vocoder mics and like it's it's wild, wild stuff. It's like cynic 2.0. It's so they were awesome. So it was us them a motorhead type band, which is a poly on.
00:32:36
Speaker
And then a straight up hardcore band. So it was so weird to see like, yeah, yeah, people mashing for the hardcore band and then people standing like for elements and then, um, because I did not know what to make of it. And then people mashing like crazy for the motor head tight band and then people staring at us, not knowing what to make of us. So like, you know, it's, it's not just angry metal guy that doesn't know what we are. It's okay.
00:33:01
Speaker
I don't think it's that hard to figure out. I don't either, but apparently a bunch of people do. So I don't know. But yeah, that was a fun show. The brewery was really good. If you ever get up in that area, I would highly recommend the beers are incredible. They only have two. They're both loggers. It's a pale. That sounds like my kind of place. They call it pale and dark and they're both crazy. So recommend the Kingsland. That show destroyed our budget.
00:33:30
Speaker
Because we had to cross the bridge a couple times because we were coming from the West. So I'm hoping for the tolls. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hoping it was better for you. So the the finances of these tours like are how in the red are you when you get back?
00:33:54
Speaker
especially from your longer tour. Yeah, so the longer it depends all on what the band needs, what we can get away with not having and how much we have to put in for upfront. So for this this past weekender, we just used our own cars because New York is like about a
00:34:14
Speaker
four-ish hour drive from us, so we didn't need to put anything up front for that. When we toured last year, which is when we played together in September, we had to rent a car for that because it was all the way from Boston to Georgia.
00:34:32
Speaker
and we ended up sharing a lot of gear with Scorch Moon and they owned or I think they borrowed a trailer that was owned by somebody else so they kept a lot of the big stuff in the trailer and we just rented a minivan and kept all of our personal stuff and like our guitars and heads and stuff like that in there and that surprisingly was not all that expensive considering it was a weak rental it was I think it was like 800 bucks
00:35:00
Speaker
Um, and I think we just about broke even maybe a little bit over, um, which was nice. Um, perennial quest on the other hand, uh, seven people, seven people then. So we had to rent a 15 seater sprinter.
00:35:18
Speaker
for our five days. Sounds like you have eight seats free, you know. Uh, yep. We did indeed have eight seats free cause we also had a three, four by twelves, all of our heads. Uh, we play in three different tunings live. So each of the three guitars and three guitars. Uh, and then we had my whole keys rig and then we had the drum set. Uh, and then all of our personal bags and other, I had, I could dig up photos of it eventually, but like that was Tetris thing that every night was crazy.
00:35:46
Speaker
We also need seven hours to set up. We actually, I was, I was actually shocked. We did really well with the setups on that tour. Cause like you would, you would look at our setup and think, Oh my God, these people must take like 30 minutes for changeover. And we have before, and I was really mad about it, but, um, somehow we got it down to like 10 minutes, um, uh, like within the first like two days or so of that tour, don't know how we did it, but we did it. So credit.
00:36:16
Speaker
But that van rental was a lot of money and we were very in the red from just the van rental alone.
00:36:31
Speaker
you know, that, and that was a case where like we kind of had no choice. Um, we probably could have rented two cheaper minivans and saved a bunch of money, but then we would have had to have two people driving. And in the case where we're driving overnight, then that doubles up the amount of people that don't get any sleep, um, which is, you know, not, not great. Um, so that's what Eisenhower did. We had two drivers and, uh, we took a car and a minivan.
00:36:57
Speaker
And one of those cars was a Tesla. So he had to keep stopping to charge. I went in the minivan. I've always wondered like how it like, well, I've always wondered if it is even possible to tour an electric vehicle just because, you know, like in, in like probably like cities, there's probably a bunch of spots like like Boston, there's a million and a half charging spots. But like what happens when you get into like the middle of like rural Arkansas or something like that? You're just fucked.
00:37:26
Speaker
So, yeah, we stayed in the Northeast, so it wasn't that big of a problem. But when we went from our show before the Kingsland was in Pittsburgh, which, you know, who, yeah, who set up this routing? Some idiot. But like the minivan, we took like I-76 and went straight across Pennsylvania.
00:37:52
Speaker
The Tesla had to go on 70, which they had to go out of their way because that's where the superchargers are. So it can be done. It just takes longer and you have to plan for it. And once you're out of the Northeast, you're probably fucked.
00:38:08
Speaker
I had a question for both you guys again, but Dan, starting with you, it seems to me, not having set up tours and only really in the context of what I know from Tim Spence, your path financially or even to the people you play is fairly tightly bound and out of your control by and large.
00:38:28
Speaker
What actual levers of influence do you have to either get people to your show or generate any revenue? Let me step in. I don't know. All right, you go ahead. Yeah, so I don't know either. But the only way that I have really found that it consistently works is a ton more logistics works upfront, where
00:38:51
Speaker
Uh, normally when booking you, if you're like an independent band and you're deciding your own tour route, um, then you can do exactly that. You can decide where you want to go. Um, it is a, we learned this the hard way with perennial quest. Uh, don't schedule like four nine hour drives in a row. That was really dumb.
00:39:08
Speaker
Um, we didn't know any better. We hadn't done it before. I don't know why we thought that was a good idea in the first place, but, um, it's a lot of upfront logistics planning of figuring out, okay, how long do we want to drive on this particular day? Where do we want to go? Where do we want to hit? Where do we want to end up and figuring out what the most convenient routing is? Um, so the way that I usually do it is I'll pick cities. I'll check how far apart they are from each other. And if it's like five ish hours, um, uh, of a drive, then I'll say like, that's reasonable.
00:39:38
Speaker
Um, and then finding the venues is the next step, um, which sometimes might be easy. Sometimes might be hard. If you're in a huge place like New York, you can throw a rock and there's probably 75 venues in the, in the arc of the, the rock. But if you're in a place like, stop throwing rocks in my venue, I might knock down the terrible delicate structure and we'll be one last venue. But, um,
00:40:05
Speaker
There's a, you know, if you're in, if you're in a place like say Pittsburgh, for example, you know, it's, it's still a relatively large city, but, and there is definitely still a scene there and there's a bunch of venues, but there's probably not as many as New York. So actually finding the venues is the next step figuring out, okay, which one's book metal shows, which ones have in-house promoters, which ones hire people. And the, the only way that you can really leverage people being at the shows in scenes that you're not directly a part of is by hoping that the promoter does their job.
00:40:37
Speaker
What instead of just the promoter have to do their job? Usually they get a percentage of the entire show sometimes you might get a purely altruistic beautiful person like Who's a good example of that? the the the main guy from
00:40:56
Speaker
Promoterhead Entertainment, that's what I'm thinking of. They work out of Western Mass. It's a group of three or four, and they're just hardcore supporters of the scene. Sometimes, you might get an altruist. Most of the time, they don't want to do a ton of work for no money, which is entirely valid. They'll get anywhere from 5% to 15% of the total gross of ticket sales.
00:41:19
Speaker
And what are you getting? Is there a minimum plus some percentage of the cut if the show does well? That depends mainly on if you have draw in the area, if it's an area that you've never been to.
00:41:34
Speaker
then you don't really have any established means of saying like, hey, we can guarantee X amount of people are going to come to the show. So you don't necessarily have the leverage to say, hey, we can guarantee this many at this ticket price. We can guarantee that amount of money. So that is the amount of money that you are guaranteed to pay us.
00:41:55
Speaker
But, you know, when you get to a point of like Metallica or something like huge band like that, when you're like, OK, you know that you're going to sell thousands and thousands of tickets, then, you know, Metallica can say basically whatever they want. You know, I'm sure they're guarantees like a million dollars at least. I know Fade to Black, the Metallica tribute, our guarantee is a fraction of that million dollars. I can guarantee that. I'm sure it is.
00:42:23
Speaker
For the Baltimore show that Ice Giant played, what they did was we got contacted. Hey, do you want to open the show, basically? And the promoter that contacted us always puts on good shows. So immediately we were like, OK, it's going to be a good show.
00:42:46
Speaker
So it was easy to promote, but the problem is getting through to people who don't know that this promoter always puts on good shows. So we did our own promotion, not come see us. It was come see the show. And that show had the additional hurdle of being on a Monday night.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah, and it was surprisingly well attended for a Monday. It was. I was actually very pleasantly surprised. Do you have discretion over your merch pricing? At this level, yes. So most venues that are operating at the level that we're playing at aren't going to take merch cuts.
Merchandise Strategies
00:43:24
Speaker
There's some people might disagree with this, but generally I think that price matching is not something that's required at smaller venues like this either, like larger shows where you might want to have the opener bands increase the price of their merch to match the headliners, but at a smaller level where we're playing dives and stuff like that, it doesn't really matter all that much. What are you selling shirts for now in Ice Giant?
00:43:50
Speaker
because I'm asking because the the unit cost has gone up over the years but it seems like people are still trying to charge the same amount but I'm worried it's it's it has to go up
00:44:05
Speaker
You know, yeah, definitely. I think we're charging 35. I think that's a full color. It is. Yeah. It's a full screen printed full color thing, right? Yeah. We have, we have two different designs. One is the album art, which is your lovely, beautiful background. Um, and then we had another separate design commissioned based on the lyrics to the,
00:44:25
Speaker
lovely, beautiful song that you played in the opening, Grand Evil's Machine. But that one I think has like four colors compared to the album art, which is like 40 or something insane like that. And we were lucky to get a pretty good deal on screen printing for both designs. And the unit price was like shockingly low. I was expecting like 25 bucks a shirt. I think we ended up paying like 13 or something like that.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's impressive. Was that two-sided too? The album art shirt is one-sided, the other one is two-sided, but it's the same colors on both sides. So, I mean, we, you know, we lucked out big time on that.
00:45:08
Speaker
I think it might be thirty because I know we wanted we wanted to make back roughly what we sold. Make back twice roughly what we spent on each shirt which is how we priced them and I think that means they're thirty but I could be wrong on the bank and I know how is the accurate prices whatever that is. Our annual quest is is the we use the exact same manufacturer so I think we're priced about the same as my guess.
00:45:34
Speaker
All right. It is ice giant band and camp.com. Glad we solved that. Oh hell yes. Yeah. Bundles. Oh shit. Hey, can I borrow some money? Uh, Doug, I think get some of these. Just be careful. Uh, we don't have the album art shirts in large anymore. We sold out of those. We have to print more. Um, that is not a problem for me.
00:46:00
Speaker
Uh, what kind of gear are you using now?
Dan's Bass Equipment and Inspirations
00:46:04
Speaker
So your primary, are you primarily a bassist or keyboardist? I know you as a. Yeah, that's another base is my main thing. I've been playing technically, technically I've been playing keys longer than bass, but I also had like a nine or 10 year gap. Like I started, it was the first keys was the first instrument that I started playing. And I was in like elementary school. Um, and then I got disinterested and I stopped in middle school and I didn't pick it up again until after college.
00:46:30
Speaker
See, I wish I was forced to learn piano. I don't want to practice. I want to have the muscle memory already. I wouldn't say forced necessarily, but definitely my parents were like, hey, Dan, you should learn an instrument. And I was like, yeah, whatever. And then they were like, no, we're putting you in piano lessons. And I am so grateful for that to this day. It's unbelievable how valuable it is because now, like any time,
00:46:57
Speaker
Even though I've been playing bass for many years longer than piano, anytime I'm trying to think of how to visualize a melody, I think of the piano keys first, just because it was that tactile first introduction to the instrument. You're rigged. So you are using... Was it a six-string bass? I'm trying to remember now. Yes, it is. What's your main daily driver?
00:47:19
Speaker
Oh, he's going to go and get it. I love this. That would be this guy. Oh, yeah. I remember it now. Yeah. Yeah. So this is relatively new model. It's the same, not exactly the same, but it's pretty close specs to what Dingwall does, where they have the multiscale and the lowest string is a 37 inch. On a Dingwall, the top string is a 34 inch. On this one, it's a 35. So it's slightly less of a wide fan.
00:47:48
Speaker
But you don't really notice the difference when the 37 is there. I got this over a year and a half ago, I want to say.
00:47:59
Speaker
purely just because I wanted something with more even tension than fun fact the other one's coming the other one's coming this this is my this has been my main child for a long long long time that's just a normal six string that's an Ibanez yes you can yeah you can get this at any guitar center which is exactly what I did let's say
00:48:23
Speaker
SR 506 34 inch Bartolini's, you know standard standard type stuff and I didn't want to
00:48:32
Speaker
I didn't want to replace that bass necessarily, but Ice Giant plays exclusively in E flat and seven string E flat specifically. So I needed the low B flat as well. And the, you know, I wanted a bass that was able to like live in that tuning. And since it's down tuned a little bit, I figured, all right, why don't I try a multiscale? Those are so popular nowadays. And I did. And sure enough, oh man, I really love that bass.
00:49:00
Speaker
for your amp. Do you have anything interesting in your signal chain? I only bring this up because my bass signal chain is way more complicated than my guitar signal chain because basically what I do is I split the signal. I started doing this on recordings.
00:49:25
Speaker
And then I finally do it live. I split it, I distort it, and then I blend it back together. And I do it all on a helix. And then I plug it into whatever. So do you have any interesting base chains? Because that's where the most improvement can be made, I think.
00:49:45
Speaker
Yes, definitely. So on that tour was the first time that I ever did this live, but I started using a Kemper, which is, man, I still like, I tried the Helix. I had a Helix LT and I had it for I think like three weeks and I just could not get exactly what I wanted out of it. So I ended up exchanging it for a Kemper stage.
00:50:08
Speaker
and it's just like it is just an absolutely gorgeous gorgeous piece of work it's at my feet right now but it's like velcro down and there's all the wires so i don't want to pull it out but i mean i love the helix uh not a sponsor but but i would love a Kemper so Kemper is you know i'm not a Kemper sponsor either but hey
00:50:27
Speaker
give me money at one. I want to promote your thing. But yeah, the Kemper is, um, I started, um, my, my dream tone that I've been trying to emulate for years and years and years and years is a job for a cowboy son eater album. Um, it's the, uh, the same basis. He also plays a nuclear power trio. Um, Nick Snick, I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I think it's Shinsie Elos. Um,
00:50:50
Speaker
Oh man. God tier incredible bass player. And he just has this particular, he does, he's like the only bassist that I'm aware of nowadays that like is fully a clean player. Like he doesn't distort anything. He just, something about the way he plays, something about the gear chain that he's been using, it's just sounds so good. There's a lot of consonants right in a row in that guy's name.
00:51:16
Speaker
Yes, there is. I'm sure I pronounced that wrong, but he's he's just so crazy good. And the nice thing about the Kemper is that it lets you emulate existing gear very, very easily. So sure enough, I go down the Google rabbit hole and I'm like, OK, what is the use for this? What is used for that? And I've been slowly kind of morphing my signal chain to try and copy basically what he's doing. And then sure enough, they just released a plug in shins base, which
00:51:46
Speaker
literally just samples and I'm like, okay, well, just put me out of a job now. Fine. Just plug in blood, replace me with a plugin. I only have like one more thing. Wailing pines. Uh, is that, um, are you working with anyone? Are you looking to work with
Future Plans for Whale Pines Productions
00:52:09
Speaker
anyone? Like,
00:52:10
Speaker
So, you call it mixing, mastering, tracking, session performance, and booking services, which I listed straight off your page.
00:52:23
Speaker
Yeah. That's all stuff you're doing for yourself already, right? Exactly. So now you're for hire. Yes. My goal with that as a quote company, it's not really a company yet, but I'm hoping to, first of all, make it a company. And second of all, do everything I'm already doing for other people also, and then hopefully make money off of it.
00:52:47
Speaker
Yeah, because it's, you know, audio production is something that like I love. I've been doing it since like 2015 or something like that. And, you know, I don't, I don't have a enormous resume yet because 2015 sounds like recent, but it's nine years ago.
00:53:13
Speaker
It's something that I love. It's something that I've been doing, um, for like years and years and years. And I like to think that all of those years and years and years of practice shown well, uh, pretty well through the spirit crusher cover. And I have a couple of other things that are dropping over the course of the next year or so. Um, and I, you know,
00:53:37
Speaker
I'll work with anybody, really. So I know you don't want to... I know you don't want to announce things before they're ready to be announced, but how many of your bands should people follow?
00:53:53
Speaker
For stuff coming up in the next year or so. What percentage of them? Definitely Autumn's Ashes. Probably two times over if I have my way. And I don't know about Perennial Quests this year, but next year definitely. And same thing with Annihilus Mundi. So I think over the course of the next two years, all of them.
00:54:17
Speaker
So all of them. Got it. Yes. But definitely this year, Ice Giant, imminently, there is more stuff coming within the next month, I want to say. Awesome. Well, I think that about wraps it up.
00:54:33
Speaker
Follow Ice Giant. Oh man, I closed my list. Follow Ice Giant, Berenio Quest, Autumn's Ashes, and the Latin one. Nihilus Mundi. And if you need...
00:54:48
Speaker
any sort of booking production services, that would be whaling pines. I'm four for five. That's a B. That's a B where that's a pass. These get degrees. So to see. So I don't think these do. So I do not say it's a good thing I didn't miss two of them. So until next time, Metal Nation, all the links are in the description. Bug this guy, get all his
00:55:15
Speaker
Uh, uh, get all his CDs, buy all his merch, and, uh, all ancillary ancillary, all related projects. And that's all I got.