Thursday, March 29, 2012
Music Big Condos and Broken Teeth: Celebrating 5 Years of DIY Institution Death By Audio
Posted by Bill Pearis on Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:31 AM
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How did you end up at Death by Audio?
EW: I'm from St. Petersburg, Florida, originally and moved here in 2000 to go to college which wasn't really for me. Had a girlfriend and a dead-end job and started seeing Todd's shows pop up on the radar with a few bands I already liked and then you'd go and see other bands. That made me end up at Tommy's Tavern all the time, seeing shows. I hated my job and then my girlfriend left me to move to Boston for grad school. She told me 'Iíve gotta do something and you're just stagnant and work at a shitty job.' Which I was.
'Look at me now baby!'
EW: Yeah, I'm on IMDB!
You are?
EW: For Todd P Goes to Austin. Anyway, I worked at this call center for tourists who wanted Broadway tickets. So that was my day job and when I got out at 7PM, I'd run over and work the door or do sound at shows. That company laid me off, which was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
MC: It's funny how that happens. I got fired from a restaurant and that's what facilitated all this happening. Get fired—it's the best thing that'll ever happen to you. Get on unemployment and follow your dreams.
EW: It's not like I'm making tons of money now. I made five bucks on last night's show because you need to pay the staff and the dude who came from Japan to play here. But I saw this awesome show, so it was okay. I still get off on that. It's amazing how many bands from Japan, Australia, New Zealand... countries that fund the arts. Once one band plays here, they tell their friends in bands. And they tell them about the pedals. That gets a lot of people here too. Some crazy noise dude has one of the pedals and the kids who look up to him want one too. But they're twice as much to ship to Australia, so when they tour they play the space they come look at the pedals. You pay them like $60 bucks and then they go back and spend $600 on pedals. And Iím like 'Oh I guess you really didn't need this money I just gave you, you've got a crazy grant from your government.'
'Oh, we've got pedal money.'
EW: But it's still cool they came halfway around the world to play in this room because you heard about it. That's what I'm into. Iím so much more excited about touring bands but there are so many more local bands. That's the trouble. I mean, it's not trouble to get out of town acts, but there are so many 'hey we've been a band for 45 minutes and I've decided to send you an email and if you don't get back to me in two days I'm just gonna resend this same email without anything new.' I wanna be like, 'Dude, you're one of 30 people that sent me this same form letter today. I want to help new bands but there's only so many slots and, who knows, in two weeks you might not be a band anymore.' That said, I'm much more likely to talk to those people than a band I've never heard of that has a manager already. Or some dude from Bacardi called me. He got my number. I told him I don't do any business over the phone and he's all, 'Your space would be perfect for this Bacardi event.' I said, 'Do you even know what you're talking about? Why would an all-ages space be perfect for Bacardi?' Of course, he's like 'Oh, we couldn't do all ages.' Then we can't work together! That's the end. This guy just wants to promote his drink and that's not what I want to do. Sure it'd be nice to worry about money less, but to worry about what that means for us is so much more of a headache to me.
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