If you like your tunes slow and ominous with a touch of the blues, Sun Crow is the band for you. This Seattle outfit shared some thoughts with Metalhead Money about what really matters in an underground band's *quest* to be heard...
Tell our readers all about your band! Where are you from and when did you get started? What is your music like?
We are based in Seattle, under the low gray skies of the Pacific Northwest. We’ve been around a few years, though we are still new to a lot of ears. What is our music like? It is like a late night in a small room where the heavy rock is loud and throbbing slow and low, with waves of feedback crashing against fuzzed bass and a thunder of hard hitting drums, there’s someone yelling and you can’t remember what time it is or where you are supposed to be. It all seems familiar, but you can’t place it. The heavy groove is haunted and keeps on going on. We have our debut album Quest for Oblivion out now on Ripple Music, we feel that captures the vibe of that pretty well.
What are your goals for your band?
To record and perform music that expresses what we are projecting internally. We have a pretty expansive array of tunes circling in the air looking for landing opportunities. There’s a long story in there we are working towards realizing. We definitely plan to get further out from the Northwest for more live work.
What do you do for a living?
We are screenworkers and a haircutter. Keyboards and scissors. It’s a great combination.
How do you balance your work and personal life with the band?
There is only balance. We lose it. There is a crash, then we get back up and go at it again. Dance badly, dance often, but dance we must.
What do you consider to be the best investment you've made, music-wise?
Each other. Friendship. These special relationships we make with one another in sound connect everything else in life. There isn’t much around music that is financially sensible in the short term, until you realize the value of the people you have connected with. That’s the big long term dividend.
What's the worst or least helpful thing you've ever spent money on as a musician/band?
There are all kinds of things that don’t work out as intended, pieces of gear that don’t deliver, or recordings that end up discarded that had a lot of resources dumped into them. Software that you never really use. We could get into the weeds there, but time is often what’s most vulnerable. If you look at it like an experiment with something to teach you, it’s just part of the expense of education. Sharing what you learn makes shortcuts for others.
What kind of merch sells the best for your band? And what do you purchase most often as a music listener?
T-shirts and physical music (LP/CD). We all buy the same them. I’m still a fan of CDs, Todd is total LP, and we all do buy some digital still… we are insane. Functional, but we probably need counseling.
Can you share some tour budgeting tips?
We honestly have more to learn here than we have to tell anyone else about how it’s supposed to go. Keep expenses low and eyes on your cash flow. You can’t always avoid catastrophe, but try. That can really put pain in a short run. Leave nothing unattended. Always do the “idiot check” at the end of the night, do it twice. Check your fluids and your pressure, keep the phones charged.
Which online music or social media platforms are most helpful to your band?
BandCamp definitely. Facebook/Instagram seem to be doing pretty well, but who knows what’s around the corner? It’s only a matter of time before the services become more like media, and vice versa.
What does "making it" mean to you, and what do you think a band needs to make it in 2021?
Well, people used to say “making it” as a euphemism for having sex. It’s kind of funny, because if you think you know what it is, someone is going to come along and show you a way of doing it you never thought of on your own. Variety is the spice of life, as they say… To make it, I guess you have to be open to seeing what people are sharing with you and be able to accept it for what it is and have fun with whatever you are doing with it. Then throw in some existential doom, turn the volume knob... The COVID-19 pandemic injured a lot of people beyond those that caught the virus. Many venues and bands didn’t survive it. Probably the biggest thing a band can do in 2021, is to arrive into 2022 as a stronger and better sounding group than the one that entered 2021. Project what you want to hear and see, across all the platforms, in any venue. In your creative moments, be uncompromising in your passion for making music, and share it. If you are making music together, you have made it.
Connect with Sun Crow and Ripple Music below:
SUN CROW LINKS
RIPPLE MUSIC LINKS
Band photo courtesy of Purple Sage PR.
To learn more about budgeting, band finances, and more, order Money Hacks for Metalheads and Old Millennials in paperback and ebook formats: https://amzn.to/3lCsFdq
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