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Hell of a Ride Live at Kingdom
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Come Party.
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Behind the Song: All Your Love
All your love is the second track on the record. Close to a year ago, Matt showed me a demo of the song that sounds quite different than the final version. Originally the current pre-chorus part (“All your love I’m never giving up on…”) was the chorus and the verses were completely different.
DEMO ONE:
We both knew we liked parts of the song, but weren’t quite sold. We sat on the scratch demo for a while and let the tune incubate.
A few months went by and Matt had started to think that the verse vocals could be stronger. One night we sat down to casually jam on the tune. I stumbled across the current chorus hook and suggested adding it as an instrumental section. He knew it was catchy, and suggested making it a vocal hook rather than an instrumental hook. The big “All your loooooveee” chorus was born.
We were both stoked on the hook and intertwined it throughout the second demo. I added some bass lines and Matt re-wrote the verses. We both felt like the wordier verses complimented the soaring chorus nicely.
DEMO TWO:
When we went in to the studio to record the tune, our producers had a few ideas to help improve the flow of the jam. We cut the first pre-chorus in half and jumped to the bridge section a bar sooner. Initially I was reluctant to the changes. After hearing a tune one way for a while it’s easy for any changes to sound jarring. This wasn’t the first time that I had encountered this problem, so I kept my mouth shut and sat on the changes for a few days. Ultimately I think the subtle differences added a lot.
STUDIO VERSION:
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Behind the Song: Hell of a Ride
Hell of a Ride is the first song we completed for the record. Matt did the initial demo for it – a garage band loop with an acoustic guitar and a vocal over it.
DEMO ONE:
He sent it to me, and I was actually leaving to travel out to Utah. I have a little portable studio I take with me whenever I travel. It’s my laptop, a little 25 key midi keyboard, my acoustic guitar, and the interface. I kept having Matt’s original demo going through my head and the lead just started to stick with me. After letting it brew in my head for a few days I sat down and banged out a second version of the tune. I did whole thing in a few hours.
DEMO TWO:
When we first started talking to JK and Dan about recording together we told them we wanted to do six songs. They said “let’s do one song and see what you all think.” We went with Hell of a Ride. We got the final mix back and said “Let’s do more songs this sounds fucking awesome.”
STUDIO VERSION:
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Hell of a Ride Official Music Video
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Hell of a Ride Official Lyric Video
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The Record Label.
A friend from home is in an up and coming band. He recently reached out to me to get my thoughts on if his band should sign a deal with a label. Here is my response:
Hey dude,
Thanks for reaching out, and i’m sorry it has taken me a few days to get back to you. I think you asked a very smart question. I certainly don’t have all the answers but I’ll give you my opinion. Labels have gotten a bad reputation from bands who have been “screwed over” by their label. Although there are some labels who are shady (Victory Records) the majority are not inherently bad. They are businesses, and like any business they are trying to make money.
Think about how a label works in the most basic terms. A band has their shit together but doesn’t have the funding or connections to take the next step. The label swoops in and says “hey guys, we’ll pay for you to record a full length and we’ll buy you on to a sweet tour. We’ll drop $15,000 on you. We’ll take 25% of your merch money/guarantees, and we’ll keep all album royalties. Once we make $20,000 back, we’ll still take the 25%, but you get the album royalties. Lets sign a 5 year contract.”
Is this a good deal? Probably not. The label is essentially giving you a loan on which you’re paying over 30% interest, plus 25% of merch for 5 years. How quickly do you think it will take the band to sell $20k in songs. If it’s less than a year, why not take out a loan from the bank and pay only 15% interest. If it’s more than 5 years, the band won’t make a dime off the record and being broke is detrimental for a band.
I’ve seen bands let their label drop $100,000 on their record, and then get pissed that they’re broke and haven’t made a dime off the record. They essentially took out a loan that they can’t pay back. It’s all business.
So what exactly am I saying? Your band is a business, run it like one. Don’t get starstruck by big names and numbers to the point where you sign off to something that will screw you. Not every label is out to screw you, but every label is out to make money. Know every intricacy of a deal before you sign it and only sign a deal that will benefit both you and the label.
Your band is a business. RUN IT LIKE ONE.
Stay strong; rock on.
Nick.
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Vlog #1
