Matt Connarton Unleashed 12-6-25 hour 1

0:00 Speaker 1: You remember.

0:04 Speaker 2: When you were a king looking out the window sea in the first snowfall in December, running out the front door, racing to catch it on your tongue, but you forgot your jacket because he was so excited.

0:28 Speaker 3: And nothing mattered more than making angels in the snow. Baby, that's ah pure like that boys, fall of snow.

0:49 Speaker 4: Covering everything weindle up season out of season, and it navigates all this time.

1:00 Speaker 1: Leader and ast running toward your the hails a cover

1:18 Speaker 1: and go into the lake. I'm racing to the mountain top with you for that first time.

1:28 Speaker 5: That I can only fight, soaring down the slopes of being in love with you here, Baby, that's a love.

1:42 Speaker 6: That left.

1:47 Speaker 1: You like that forest fall of.

1:50 Speaker 4: Snow covering everything we do.

1:57 Speaker 7: As that have to see?

2:00 Speaker 1: Is that indelegator? Oh this time later and s run in Tonio, Run in Tonio. Maybe what the changing series els.

2:26 Speaker 3: Whatever mountains are standing in avenue.

2:33 Speaker 4: I know we keep gliding off the day, coming back to do it all.

2:40 Speaker 8: Like cacause they need that.

2:52 Speaker 1: That behind that forests.

3:02 Speaker 4: Covering everything we tell.

3:07 Speaker 1: We don't have to see a king? Can a get old? All this time? Lad away and unstay it'll be the read away in.

3:20 Speaker 5: Ust be running Tonio, running Tonio.

3:33 Speaker 9: Cause Baby, good morning, everybody, Welcome, here we go.

4:14 Speaker 10: It is that time again, Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of WMNH ninety five point three FM in glorious Manchester, New Hampshire.

4:25 Speaker 9: Of course, you can stream the show from anywhere.

4:27 Speaker 10: Go to Matt connorton dot com slash live for all your live streaming options, social media links, contact infos, show archives, et cetera, et cetera. For those of you listening live, today is Saturday, December sixth, twenty twenty five, so good to have you with us on this very snowy morning here in Manchester, Newmpshire. I did not expect to wake up to more snow. It snowed obviously a couple of days ago here, but this morning it was snowing again. I was like, oh, wonderful, and the roads were a little slick coming in.

4:55 Speaker 10: They might be better now, I don't know. I mean that was about an hour I get here, about an hour before the show goes live. So if you are listening in your car, please be careful driving out there. Definitely a little slippery coming in, but welcome everybody. Of course, we have an exciting show for you today. The opening track, by the way, that was the brand new single from Katie Dobbins. It's called Our Love Is Like Snow, so very appropriate of course given the weather. So always wonderful to hear a new song from Katie Dobbins.

5:22 Speaker 10: She's been on the show many times and I'm sure we'll have her back on again soon. But she sent us that track and it's just wonderful. She has a beautiful voice. By the way, my dad, Hello to my father if he is listening. He's a big Katie Dobbins fan. Just so happens. But he's also recovering from surgery at Mass General. So Dad, if you're listening, I love you. I wish you a speedy recovery. I'm glad that you've got a path forward with what you've been dealing with. So but yeah, so but I do love the new song, of course, and we'll probably play it again later in the show if you missed it in the second or perhaps even in the third hour today on Matt Connorton Unleashed.

5:59 Speaker 9: And we're going to play We're gonna start with this track.

6:05 Speaker 10: As we move into the interview portion of the show, here brand new track from the Fods called I Get Blamed or I don't know if it's brand new, but it's pretty new. We really love this project around here, the Fods, and we had Rob Critchley from the Fods on with us. I don't know who's a couple months ago. It all becomes a blur, but we had such a fascinating conversation. And but we had a very compressed amount of time to work with when we had Rob on the first time, so you know, we told him. I had Jenny reach out to him right away and say, we got to get you back on and you've got you know, they're constantly making more music anyway, so let's get you back on soon.

6:43 Speaker 10: I want to talk to you some more because it's such an interesting project and the way that they approach it and their methodology in terms of writing and recording and releasing music.

6:52 Speaker 9: So I just heard from Rob a few minutes ago. He's waiting for our call.

6:55 Speaker 10: So I told him we're gonna go ahead and hit this track I Get Blamed, another great track from the Fods. And then when we come back out of the song, we will have a rob on with us via WhatsApp. So check this out. This is called I get blamed and the band is the Fodds.

7:13 Speaker 1: I get blamed for all aten shine.

7:18 Speaker 9: I get blamed for going out, said man.

7:24 Speaker 1: I get blamed when it said show.

7:30 Speaker 9: And get played for being rise.

7:53 Speaker 8: Laughing Donna Delia's ride laughing.

7:57 Speaker 7: Try life shine, you got about you is right?

8:02 Speaker 1: So for now, just day quiet, I'll put you to something.

8:06 Speaker 11: Try to make my life that I've bet you struggle to think of nothing that I'd actually like.

8:22 Speaker 12: Nothing gotta say you here. Nothing in my head.

8:27 Speaker 8: Is clear, nothing that's vulnerable. So for now a fair hanging on.

8:34 Speaker 9: Your very well, waiting for your luck to tell. What is something from your heart or we can't talk about.

8:40 Speaker 8: I get blame for all the sunshine, yet blame for going out and.

8:51 Speaker 1: Again plaid.

8:53 Speaker 8: Sad show, and get blame for me nothing that's yours, he's my nothing. Got a genuy, not things like you want that first play and on my aunty beast. Got your see all I did, you got.

9:28 Speaker 13: Your see you?

9:28 Speaker 12: What's it go?

9:29 Speaker 9: It's all I can do for you to make sure he's not all.

9:33 Speaker 1: I get blamed for all the same shine.

9:37 Speaker 14: I get blamed. I go outside line, I get played Winwood.

9:46 Speaker 3: Show and I get played for me.

10:00 Speaker 8: I can't play side show, I can't playing don't go all time, I can't play.

10:32 Speaker 14: Sign show, and I.

10:37 Speaker 15: Gat play for big.

10:43 Speaker 10: Don't battle on the drum.

10:47 Speaker 12: It. So it's like.

10:53 Speaker 16: I get play at.

10:56 Speaker 1: Anyway, don't see.

11:11 Speaker 9: I love it. That is called I get blamed.

11:14 Speaker 10: The band is the Fodds and we've got Rob Critchley on the line via WhatsApp.

11:19 Speaker 9: Rob, are you there?

11:21 Speaker 12: I'm here, Matt, can you hear me?

11:23 Speaker 9: I can, Yes, Welcome back to the show. It's great to back.

11:28 Speaker 12: So much for having me.

11:29 Speaker 10: Absolutely. I love that track and you had sent that one to us specifically for today.

11:33 Speaker 9: So is that now?

11:34 Speaker 10: I know that's not the but it's not quite the newest single, right because I think you've had a couple since then, correct.

11:40 Speaker 12: But we've been on a bit of a role. Yeah, it's been, as a sort of spoke about last time, like finding people to actually sing for us is one of our biggest challenges. Yeah, and as we've put more music out, people have heard it and as we've approached them a bit more willing to engage with us. So we say, so those guys headphones Jack's I heard about them a long time ago and I just reached out to them and they were like, this is a cool tune, like, but it took us, you know, a good sort of six months to put it down and get everything ready, and they're they're visit, they're gigging, and they've got their own stuff to do.

12:26 Speaker 12: So we you know, you've got to fit fit all these things in around life. So while we're doing I get blamed. We're also doing like two or three others. So we found ourselves in a situation where we had like, you know, I think four pretty much completed songs, and we were like, we don't know what to do with this, you know, like how do how do we even like process it? So we thought, right, let's just you know, when they're done, we'll release and we'll give each one a month and move on to the next one.

13:00 Speaker 12: And it's turned out to be quite it's turned out to be quite a good process because you sort of not that we're massively relevant, but you stay like, you know, producing things, and things keep hitting you know, the outside world, and you know, it builds a little bit of momentum behind it and it's worked out really well for us. So we've got songs up to January. We're going to have a release on nineteenth of December, and also I think it's the twenty second of January. Okay, we've got and then we've got nothing else.

13:35 Speaker 12: So February we're like, okay, we need to write something or we need to like we've got you know, three or three or four other songs, right, it works, but they're not really very mature, you know. Like we've got one out to one singer and he's done something with it and you know it's gotten okay, but like it needs a lot of work, and we've got another one and out to another. We've got a band in New Zealand of all places, looking at one and obviously there's a time difference. You've got a factor in and yeah, you know, and we sent it to them and do it light right, we'll have a look.

14:13 Speaker 12: I know, it's only a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, and I checked in and they were like nothing yet, okay, all right,

14:22 Speaker 12: And it's coming up to Christmas and people get busy, and of course I don't think we'll have anything back from people until January and then like, okay, so the timelines like sort of change a little bit and you're sort of going through all this in your head. Yeah, you really want to put something else out because everything, everything that we've done, like you're getting a little bit of a role and you're saying, Okay, this is this is you know, the way, a good way of releasing things and a good way of you know, the way a band should work.

14:54 Speaker 10: Yeah, I kind I kind of chuckled because I remember when we had you on the first time, you were talking about how there was you had one in since where you would send somebody, you would send a vocalist a song to work on, and like six months went by and they still hadn't gotten back to what they had done, and you finally had to move on. And from what I recall, I don't remember what song it was, but from what I remember you saying, it all worked out for the best because then you found another vocalist who just did a fantastic job on it, and the song came out better than you imagined it anyway.

15:22 Speaker 10: But so it kind of all worked out. But it can be frustrating when you're depending on other people to, you know, to do their part and then get back to you.

15:29 Speaker 12: Right, yeah, that's the one that's going to be released in January. Oh okay, So we found someone who was like really receptive to it and he really wanted to get involved and he wanted to do some music on it, and you know, we went back and forth and he said, let me try something like this, and he's doing quite a lot of the work, which is brilliant. Oh you know, that's you want people to be engaged with it, and it works out so much, so much better. When people are coming back and forth, we really like, we like them to go, can we try this instead of this?

16:05 Speaker 12: Right? Yeah, yeah, let's let's say because that's what our collaboration should be,

16:13 Speaker 12: just sending a song out and words coming back and we go, okay, we'll use those words. Yeah.

16:18 Speaker 10: So would you so yeah, would you say this is would you say this has been your busiest period with the thoughts?

16:24 Speaker 12: Oh for sure, Yeah, for sure. We don't really know anything different, to be honest, because like we're still such I say, we're an immature band, like we've we did the Don't Argue projects and that was just was like regurgitating stuff that we did like twenty five years ago. Sure, we still had to we still had to find people to do that, and that's that's what took the time, right. And then then when we released Shopping and the ineffectual Shopping was an old song. We yeah, all old band didn't want to use so it got released in the two thousands, so late nineties, and when when All wanted to re record other things from that period, like heose he was with a different band and they put out a remote album John Covid, and Shopping didn't make that cut for whatever reason, and so he says, right, let's do it.

17:28 Speaker 12: Let's put a Fox take on it. And we did that. So the song was already there. We just like found a a vocalist, Laura, who did an amazing job. Like I tweaked the words a little bit, he bumped up the music a little bit, and then that was that and then the ineffectuals It was just like so quick because he put the music down and it started off with his words and that's basically all his stuff, so there was really nothing for me to do. And he was like, I don't like this. I don't like these words. Will you change them?

18:05 Speaker 12: So I changed them as we went along. So I was writing as Joe was going back, and Joe would like, you know, sender take it, and I go, his vocals are always amazing, and I go, like, a, stuff's terrible. So we needed to, like, you know, make it better to fit his vocals as we went along. So and Joe just turn things around in a couple of days, like he was incredible to work with. So me and Or were like, we've got to match this. So we had to really really level up our game. And so the willards sort of came out.

18:41 Speaker 12: They don't they don't really mean anything, just like it's one of those things where you can say, oh, he's talking about it, so he's talking about that. I'm not really I'm trying to fit something in together in quite a short amount of time and if it comes out, if it comes out to some someone thinks, so this, this is what he's talking about. That's brilliant. That's that's how I want it. I want it to be interpreted how you want to interpret right, right, just just like good words, and that's how I try and write my words anyway, like stuff that sounds like it belongs together.

19:19 Speaker 12: So so after the ineffectuals were done, we had, like I've got you know, it's basically poetry. So you write poetry and then see what happens. See if there's a a lyric or some sort of guitar or you know, some sort of beat which goes with those lyrics, with those pugems.

19:44 Speaker 3: So these are.

19:47 Speaker 10: I'm sorry, so just to clarify too for a listener. So so these all start with you, like you said, you're you're you're coming up with the words, and that's that's where all of these begin. Right, That's that's like the that's like the one thing that everything that the Fodds does as a collective, that's the one thing that that is the through line.

20:05 Speaker 12: Right, Yeah, it's it's my it will always be my words. Yeah, and in my head. You can try and put them to a beat or a tempo or a and then I put them in like a shared folder. Yeah, and I'll have a look at them and he'll go, oh, I've got this. I've got this line that I wrote on the guitar. See if you can put anything together or what he's doing at the moment with one. Because I've said I've got these lyrics, he says, I've got something in my head. I'm going to try and you know, flesh that out and use these lyrics for it.

20:44 Speaker 12: So they're always a little bit you know, individual, there always a little bit different, but it's basically him and I like trying to balance what each of us has come up with.

20:58 Speaker 1: Right.

21:00 Speaker 10: We should talk a little bit too about how this all works, because for for listeners, especially people listening to the show who maybe didn't hear our previous conversation I think I had said to you. To me, it seems like like the Fods, it's not so much a band, it's a collective, right, because you work with all these different people. So someone who doesn't know that might be confused about Wait a minute. You know, you're sending tracks to this person and waiting for them to get back to you with this, and you've got this other person you're you're working with, So this is I mean, and it's it's worked this way for a while, right, Like you you essentially you work with a lot of different different people.

21:35 Speaker 10: I mean obviously some of the same people too, right, But but but you work with with a lot of people on these tracks, they all start the same way, right, they all start with your.

21:44 Speaker 9: Lyrics, But what happens after that.

21:47 Speaker 10: Each each song kind of kind of has its own its own path, shall we say.

21:52 Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, each one has its own life. Yeah, And that sort of depends on who we choose to to get involved with because everyone works differently. So some people, you know, like to spend the time and take a bit of effort and you know, work work with it how they want to work with it. And some people just want to bang it out and do what they think is right and move on to the next thing. So everyone works differently, So we don't really know if we will send it out to a vocalist and we don't really know what they're going to send back, right, And that that that's half the joy of it, to be honest.

22:39 Speaker 12: Like, there's a there's a song on They Don't Argue EP. It's called Volumes of Silence, and I love it. I think it's a really good song. And we did that, wrote those songs like when we were teenagers at school and I don't I don't really I was out of the music for twenty odd years. I don't really remember writing that song. I don't really remember how it sounded when we put it together in twenty twenty four when we were doing the Don't Argue p I was like to well, I was like, I know this is a good song, but I don't really remember how I mean.

23:17 Speaker 12: He played it and we were like okay, and we built it and we had it good enough to send out to a vocalist. Yeah, we found this guy from the band j h hm, it's called Jeff. He had this like if you sort of think back to you know, I'm from originally from Manchester in the UK, and he had that sort of you know Ian Brown James sort of vibe, you know, like he he sounded like he could have been from that era. We're like, okay, we'll try him. And he came back and he did it so differently than what we thought he would do it really, and we were like, it's amazing, it's brilliant.

24:04 Speaker 12: It's different. That's it's like the whole process. That's like the whole thing. And there's been a couple that come back and go like, what do we do this? It's really it's really not what we wanted. And I really like they've done it in the wrong key or done it like so we have to then make that decision do you do you go back and talk to them and say, right, we know you, we gave you a bit of a free reign here, but we don't also like you to change this a little bit and change this a little bit and building to building that way.

24:38 Speaker 12: And most people are quite they're open to that. They don't mind being told what to do. What was there was one guy is like, I think it should be done like this, probably, don't. You know, You've you've got to be quite diplomatic, and you've got to be quite you know, sensitive to other artists feelings as well, because they they're putting their time, they're putting their time and their energy and not pain. You know, they're not getting any you know, not giving them a thousand dollars every time they some lyrics for us.

25:12 Speaker 12: So it's always a fine balance. And we've got to be happy and they've got to be happy. And like we as we've gone out to artists, we we've sort of made that clear in the in the stuff that we send out to them. We stay right, we'd love you to do this, but if you're not happy, if we're not happy, you know, we you know, we can shake hands and walk away from it. And we've got because now we've got like a little bit of you know, we're on our seven to eight song we're nearly up to you know, doing an album.

25:47 Speaker 12: Yeah, because we've got that behind us. Now we've got a bit more confidence and we've got and we we have the sort of ability to say to them it's it's I would say, not good enough, it's it needs to be different, it needs to go a different way. So it's exciting and these last we're up to seven songs that are complete and we want to put a ten song album out at the end, at the end of Q one, oh excellent. And it's been and it's been something that always wants to do. It's like,

26:27 Speaker 12: you know, it's it's really something that he's passionate about and say, right for him personally, putting an album out after you know, years and years of writing songs and music, it's going to it's going to be really something. I'm really hoping that it's going to be great for him. I just want to make sure that what we put out, you know, in the ten track format, however it's going to look like, is it's what he wants.

26:53 Speaker 10: So I would imagine I would imagine too that there must be a challenge inherent in that. I mean, you know, I know, it's you're not at the stage out of probably thinking about the order of the tracks or anything I would assume, but when you when you do get to that point, because because of the way this project works, and like I said, it's more of a collective than a band. So each song, you know, you've got different vocalists, you've got different you know, each song kind of really takes on its own character because when you're putting an album together, artists try to approach it like, Okay, there has to be you know, regardless of when or how these songs were written or how they were recorded, et cetera, there has to be some sort of cohesion that that kind of binds all these songs together.

27:39 Speaker 10: And I wonder, I mean, are you already thinking about the challenge of that. I mean, obviously there's a through line, right because they all start the same way. They all start with you and your words. So maybe that maybe that's the answer, Maybe that's the through line, But I don't know, I mean, are you are you already thinking about that?

27:56 Speaker 12: At this point we have and we still of throw it out there, and you know, when a when a song gets completed. So we've got like a seven track list at the moment and ours, the two VARs are very different. So what you're saying is that absolutely correct. We can't decide on what track to open with. We've we've pretty much decided what track to close with, and then there's you know, everything that goes on in the middle. And I think we'll probably only know this once the ten tracks have been finished.

28:39 Speaker 12: You know, Well we'll see. I know it's it can be an important thing. And we do want to do physical albums, you know, we we do want to you know, put this as an old fashioned LP, like five songs on one side, five songs on the other. So they've got to be logical from that perspective. Yeah, at the moment, you're absolutely right, they aren't logical. M I'm not saying I'm worried about it, like I'm going to get ten songs on an album and it's going to be we think going to be good.

29:14 Speaker 12: It is a challenge for us, it's it's it's an interesting challenge, the one that we've never had to face before because I don't argue projects. Was just like we know the order because that's the order that we used to play them live when we live every Yeah, so we knew Kickba was going to be in the middle. We're going to know that metal Dog is the opener, and so that's how we did it then because that's what made sense to us. Right this, you know, we've not played one one of these songs, like maybe that will change.

29:48 Speaker 12: I don't know, yeah, but it's it's something that we have thought about. And every time the song, even even if it doesn't complete, you can sort of see where it's going when it's like in in mid flow, we can we can slide this in between these two songs that that could make a difference. So when we get through this, he sends me, what's happen, He says, this is my seventh song order. Yeah, yeah, no, no,

30:19 Speaker 12: So it will be a conversation that we will have in probably February or March.

30:26 Speaker 10: Yeah, something too that I don't think we touched on this the last time when you were on the show before this, But I don't think we talked about distribution, because I'm curious now you don't you don't have the fonds is not on Spotify?

30:40 Speaker 9: Correct, We we were.

30:43 Speaker 12: Having problems with them okay. A few other artists have said the same thing to us. So we were on Spotify okay, and we're doing okay, And I don't know what caused it. I don't know if if you or anyone else out there has been through issues with Spotify, they don't really want to talk to you. They'll talk to your distribution, right, and the distribution will come and talk to us. And every month Spotify would not like what's in huge numbers like two thousand or fifteen hundred or two thousand streams, particularly the ineffectuals.

31:26 Speaker 12: Oh okay, and so you know, we we weren't doing anything with We just put it out there and let it and I was always sending links and sending stuff. But you know, we don't buy and downloads or anything like that. We we try and produce it organically or try and we try to. So after every month, you know, Spotify will go two thousand streams off gone, and we don't go distributing, and they'd say, or you're either getting on playlists that aren't you know, genuine, or the bot run or whatever. And so after six months of this, we were just like, it's just not worth it because you're fighting like a huge conglomerate.

32:19 Speaker 12: Oh yeah, there's there's nothing really could do. So there was just no real point. And when we left Spotify, the Ineffectuals had seven thousand streams. Whi's not bad in itself, It's okay. Yeah, our Spotify rapped came out even though we were off Spotify and I've not been on since since August. Yeah, yeah, they said, and our Spotify rapped, our biggest song of twenty twenty six was the Ineffectuals, which had been streamed thirty three thousand times. Really, so they right, So they have just you know, sort of admitted and I put a post on there and I was a bit angry and maybe, but as I said, like in your vanity parade, that is Spotify raps, you've admitted that we had thirty three thousand genuine streams, and that's what's in our Spotify rap.

33:19 Speaker 12: But when we came off your platform, you called every single month and it was down to seven thousand, and we didn't have any comeback. We couldn't ask the question. Our distributor was scared of Spotify. They don't want to talk to them because we've got so much power and we were like, it doesn't really matter to us. It's great that we were getting stream and it's great that people were listening to it every time. Every time, you know, we we tried to interact with them or we've tried to understand why they were treating us like this, and like basically what had happened is

33:57 Speaker 12: at the start of every month, Spotify would say, oh, you've earned you know, fifty cents from your you're streaming right, but we're going to knock two thousand streams off so you know, down to like ten cents or you owe this money or something like that. It was, it was just brutal. Every month. We were like, oh, what they're going to do this, So we don't really we're not in this for the money, in this for the streams, like hopefully we get people to listen to us, hopefully don't like it. Yeah, but you know, we're at the end of the day, we're really doing it for, you know, to get this album out and to make sure that what we put out continues to be quality.

34:39 Speaker 12: And since we've come off, we're not we're not sitting there like looking at streams and we're not worried about it and it doesn't matter when the first of the month comes around and right, you know, there's nothing there to to do. So I don't know if people I don't really follow it, to be honest, I don't know if people are listening on Apple or Diser or wherever else. Sure on everything else, so you can still get it. But like, of course, yeah, you know, Spotify is just such a they're not going to be bothered at we're not on it.

35:12 Speaker 12: It's going to make zero difference to the right rights. It saves us, just like the the thoughts and people have been very supportive about it and come back and said, like, I wish we could do this, but we need our I think it's you know a lot of people still think that, you know, our song could make it. You know, it could get a one hundred thousand streams, it could get a million streams. Yeah, yeah, like do it, you know, do what's right for you for us. You know, I don't think we're ever going to get a hundred thousand streams or a million streams.

35:46 Speaker 12: You never know, but if they do, they can go to you know, any other platform rather than Spotify. So it's just a little stance. Yeah, it will make no difference, but it's made us feel better.

35:58 Speaker 10: Sure, sure, well it it's difficult because you're in a position where, you know, and this is kind of the position that everybody's in in a sense, is that we're all sort of at the mercy of you know, it comes with big tech. And don't get me wrong, I love I love tech, and I love that we have all these resources that we didn't have when I was growing up and so forth. But you know, you're really at the mercy of these platforms, you know, no matter what you're doing. Like, for example, I wasn't able to stream you know, I like to stream this show to Facebook when I'm live.

36:31 Speaker 10: I wasn't able to do that for a month because I was banned from live streaming and and and they don't like to tell you why.

36:40 Speaker 9: They don't.

36:41 Speaker 10: They like to tell you that you did something wrong and so you're banned from And it was the only thing I was banned from. My account wasn't banned or anything. I just was banned from streaming. They like to tell you that you can't do this anymore for a while, but they don't like to tell you why. You know, it'd be nice to know why. So then I can avoid doing it again. But they don't like to tell you that. But we're all kind of at the mercy of you know, and they don't like to talk to you, just like Spotify doesn't like to talk to you.

37:03 Speaker 10: Facebook doesn't like to talk to you either. I'm amazed that I was able to get as much information as I did. You know, YouTube doesn't like to talk to you unless you're you know, unless you have you know, a million subscribers. But we're all kind of at the mercy of that.

37:19 Speaker 12: Like, there's so many you know, radio shows and podcasts, and they they like to tag bands on there, so the band actually knows that they're going to get played, which is really nice for the band. It's really nice for the for the podcast or for the radio show. Yeah, because I'll get you know, a listener for that hopefully. And if you can't tag something, you just don't know. So even trying to find out, you know, if you do okay on radio, it's not easy. You know, You've got to You've got to really, you know, hunt for stats, and you know, we we sort of I try and use what's called online box Radio and they do a few stats every now and then and they show which radio stations played it.

38:09 Speaker 12: But I'd say probably only twenty five percent of the radio stations actually subscribe to online box, so you're not getting a full picture. And the one thing, the one thing was Spotify, and they did it so cleverly is they show you exactly what is. You know, what's being played, and you can see that you've had like you know, ten streams or one hundred streams, and you know, it gives you a little bit of visibility around what you're actually doing. And I've read I've read something the other day. You know, if you're not getting those streams, it's what stops you making music.

38:48 Speaker 12: And I thot it was really quite poignant that you're not doing it for yourself, you're doing it for other people. And I think you've you've really got to be making music for yourself. And once you get into that mindset, it doesn't really matter what goes on external. You know, you can do whatever you want, and if you want to play gigs, you can play gigs. And if you want to, you know, set a goal for stream and you can do that, or you get on radio. Well, if you're not doing it for yourself first and foremost, then it doesn't really make too much sense to be doing it, because if you can't make yourself happy when you're doing it, it's got to be a joyful experience just making music.

39:26 Speaker 12: And it's one of the things that we talked about when we said, like we'll come off spotif because it was just making things that a little bit too much harder. We've got you know, we've both got day jobs. We spend them all our time, you know, chasing up and figuring out what's going on, and we're just like, you know, want to try and put it out there, yeah and move on and like say, yeah, that was a really good song. We had a great experience with this this guy who sang it with us. We'll try and replicate that and the next time we go and then you know, we go again for another song and the model which we absolutely stumbled upon because we don't know what we're going to be doing and it works well for us.

40:06 Speaker 12: So it's just like it's a good pobby I get from I get home from work, and you know, I sit down for a couple of hours. I could do it all on my phone and I can distribute to radio shows and find different contacts that may be able to help, and I don't know, like people may be getting a bit annoyed with me, but I spent quite a lot spend quite a lot of time like sending emails out and saying, you know, here's here's a song which we think maybe maybe a good fit to your radio station.

40:35 Speaker 9: That's what it takes.

40:36 Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, you know, that's the way we do it.

40:41 Speaker 10: Now I can relate to what you were saying about radio because so one of the things that I do in my business, I'm a college radio promoter. So clients hire me to send their music out to college radio stations and I do all the follow up and the tracking and everything and that. But the tracking is the most challenging part because a lot of these stations don't report to any kind of a service. So the only way I know for sure, you know, is is when the when somebody at the radio station, the music director or the program director confirms directly with me that yes, we we have this track in rotation.

41:14 Speaker 10: Okay, can you give me a spin count? The answer most of the time is no, you know, but when we can, we can tell you if it's in you know, heavy rotation. Or light rotation or whatever. But it's but it's the single most reliable way is just getting that information directly from the station because there's so many.

41:34 Speaker 9: You know, it used to be easier too.

41:35 Speaker 10: There used to be College Music Journal, which technically still exists, but not in its old form, and you know, you could get information through them. But now that you know that went away, they completely changed how they do it. They don't really do what they used to do. And now there's all these different services that you can subscribe to, but it's it's more difficult. Like it's easier in one sense to find services that report whether your music is being played at different stations, but it's hard to find one service that reports all of it.

42:04 Speaker 10: And and then too, you know, and and actually and and some of these radio stations they're just like the big tech companies. They don't want to necessarily talk to you either.

42:16 Speaker 12: That's all of taking a leaf out of Spotify and big techs, you know, stance they have. If big tech won't talk to you, right.

42:26 Speaker 10: Right, why should w E R s in Boston, why should they talk to me either? You know, and they do but you know, but but but you mentioned it too. You have to be persistent, right, And that's that's really what it takes. You have to be persistent.

42:41 Speaker 12: Yeah, you know, we we send an email out for every release, and one of our problems is as well, so we we we've got a list. I don't know how many email addresses are on it. Yeah, I feel guilty. I feel I do feel quite guilty, but I know that it's kind of happen. So we send send this out and it takes like a few hours to send to every radio station. Book. We we don't stick to one genre. Oh and you know, some of our stuff was a little bit heavier, some of it. You know, it's come out as a bit bluesy. You know, there's punkin there.

43:25 Speaker 12: So every time we do a different song,

43:31 Speaker 12: you know you're looking for so, you know, for I get blamed, I was trying to send it out to punk stations if that's such a thing, you know, like a little bit more punky, right, and fanzines and podcasts and all that sort of stuff. And then after I get blamed, we released is very much enough and that is definitely not a punk song, you know. That's that that's a little bit moody and a bit bluesy and a bit ballady, and it's very different for what we what we again sort of set out to do. We know, we wanted to do something a little bit different, and for us, like being different is great.

44:13 Speaker 12: But when we send that song to the punk channel that we sent to last week, like what is this you just sent us? We can't play this? And I'm like, well, I class ourselves as, like in the massive inverted comments, a punk rock band. And if you have a look at the term of punk, it's basically anything, you know, like it's not like sticking to conformity and like playing two courts. You know, like, of course it can be punk can be pretty much anything. And you listen. You listen to a band like the Clash, an original punk band, you know what, the biggest punk band around probably and you know, they do clipso music and they do Middle Eastern and they've done all sorts, and it's just like punk can't be just you know what is stereotypically thought of, like a punk song is like a short two minute blast, right, And so I know that we're sending you a blue song.

45:16 Speaker 12: You know, give it, give it a try. You don't have to play it. You know, and the next one will probably be more punk. Right. But like some people come by and just so you know, un subscribed, delete me from this playlist, you know, or some are quite thanks for this, but I can't play this. That's fine, you don't. You don't need to play everything, you know, everything's a little bit different.

45:38 Speaker 10: I actually I feel I feel like that what you have, I mean, it does all you can put it all in the broader category of indie rock. I feel like, you know, I mean it all fits that certainly.

45:50 Speaker 12: That's exactly what we if we do market that's what we market ourselves as an indie punk rock back. So we're sort of straddling genres, you know, and that's what we want to do, right And going back to your point about the album, we've got like a a blue song and a punk song and then shopping and the ineffectuals which are probably just indie rock. And our latest release, which is a matter of time, has got a lot of synth in. It's got like a synth where at the bottom of it. So I don't even know who to send that to to be honest.

46:33 Speaker 12: Do we send that to Electric because it's got a bit of synth in it. Are they going to like that? Yeah? Or do we send it to the punk people? Like? It's been played on a few rock channels and I'm like that's great. Well, I'm not too sure it is rock, and so I just hope people see it for what it is. It's like, what's trying to be a little bit different and not say do like the same sort of thing every time? And some people really appreciate that, and some people don't like it. Well what it is?

47:09 Speaker 9: We should uh, we should tell people too.

47:11 Speaker 10: Uh you are on band camp, which that's one of my favorite resources for music.

47:16 Speaker 12: It's it's a great place.

47:18 Speaker 10: Everything's on band camp and uh band camp too. Something a lot of people don't realize is that you get a high quality file, a high bit rate file from band Camp that you don't necessarily get. So, for example, if you're just streaming music on YouTube, you know you're better off streaming music on band camp and downloading it from there because you're going to get a much higher quality file.

47:39 Speaker 12: I was shocked the difference. I didn't really listen to band camp. I knew it was out there, and then I I got sent some bank camp stuff and I listened to it and I was like, this is brilliant, and then I put it on a Spotify playlist and it was terrible on Spotify.

48:02 Speaker 1: Yeah.

48:03 Speaker 9: Yeah, so you know, it was really.

48:07 Speaker 12: Eye opening that that bank Camp's quality was so much better.

48:12 Speaker 17: Yeah.

48:12 Speaker 10: Absolutely, that's like I said, that's something that's something people don't realize.

48:17 Speaker 9: Rob the time does go quickly.

48:19 Speaker 10: I want to make sure, so I think we're going to end the segment when we when we wrap up in a couple of minutes with that song A matter of time. I really like that one a lot later in the show too. I might I might circle back and play a couple others if we have time, But I want to make sure because we were talking about, you know, not being on Spotify and where you are. Discoverability is a term that I use a lot. We want to make sure people do know where to find like where's the best places to go for people to find the thods and to keep up with everything that you're doing.

48:50 Speaker 12: And you can. We're on Facebook and we're on Instagram and obviously bank Camp is a good place for us, and we're on everything else apart from Spotify, just Spotify. That is that is I know it goes on for us now and there's there's gonna be some new places. I can't remember what they called off the top of my head because it's all who basically does all the admit this sort of stuff. But there's there's, there's, there's you know, a bunch of new I guess they're trying to disrupt what Spotify and Apple and all these but like there's posts on our Instagram which explained it, and we're saying right now we're not on Spotify, will we'll we'll try these places and the you know, the sort of people who've got been in the same sort of situations have got fed up with big tech.

49:47 Speaker 12: I guess

49:50 Speaker 12: I think that they're run by bands. Let me let me just have a quick look on my Instagram. Yeah, and they were run by bands, and they said that they're gonna and you know, pay a little bit more and look after the band's a bit better. So we'll see what we'll see what happens. Subvert It's cool, what is it? So subvert subvert right, so that this is going to be like a new place. I didn't know about this, so check it out and you know, if if new bands want to get on there and it looks to be quite an interesting place.

50:33 Speaker 12: And what happens, you know, anything that you know gives smaller artists a bigger platform is you know, something that we want to be involved in.

50:43 Speaker 10: Absolutely, And we always need disruptors coming into the frame, you know, and and better to have more options than less, and and and all of it too. And you know, it does get scary when when you've got something like Spotify, that that becomes so dominant and and so important, you know, you know, to the point that as as you talked about earlier, to the point where your own distributor is afraid to even challenge them on anything. You know, that's that's how powerful they are. And that's that's too much.

51:11 Speaker 10: That's that's too much power concentrated in one place.

51:15 Speaker 12: Absolutely, and you say, they're only going to get better. You see the other day Netflix sport.

51:22 Speaker 10: MGM, they bought Warner Brothers. Netflix bought Warner Brothers.

51:26 Speaker 12: Yeah, how big Netflix could be? You know, if that's it's insane. The next thing Netflix, Netflix will probably buy you know, well another story platform, man, can you imagine it by Amazon or something like that get bigger and bigger. So I don't know, it's a strange and interesting place. It is.

51:52 Speaker 9: It absolutely is.

51:53 Speaker 10: Well listen Rob Critchley from the Thoughts. Always wonderful to talk with you. I really enjoy our conversations. We'll definitely do this again in the near future. Obviously you've got uh, you've got more music coming, so there's always more to talk about.

52:08 Speaker 1: Yeah.

52:08 Speaker 18: Absolutely, when we get more and we'll let you know about the album and please we put it in and yeah, that'll be that'll be a good place to uh to talk next.

52:19 Speaker 9: I think absolutely absolutely.

52:21 Speaker 10: That sounds great. That sounds great. Yeah, so we'll we'll talk soon for sure. We're gonna let you go and I'm gonna hit this track a matter of time. Another great another great song from the Fods. Uh, we'll let you get going, but Rob, thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon.

52:34 Speaker 12: Man, I appreciate you. Make look after yourself, all right, I will thank you.

52:38 Speaker 9: Take care bye bye.

52:39 Speaker 12: All right.

52:42 Speaker 10: That is Rob Critchley from the Fods, and I do really enjoy talking with him, and we're gonna play this track a matter of time. If you are listening live on Saturday morning, stick around. Coming up in the second hour, we have Baron Keismo another great band that I'm really look that we'll be there first time on the show. Really looking forward to speaking with them. I'm not sure how many your Witch members are going to be joining us, but they will be joining us via Microsoft teams. Can't wait to talk with them.

53:07 Speaker 10: But in the meantime, this is again another great song.

53:10 Speaker 9: I think this is the newest single. This is a matter of time and the band is the Fodds.

53:30 Speaker 16: Everything is good when in need st be andiver there works well, it's you enemy. Everything's wrong.

53:48 Speaker 12: When I see.

53:50 Speaker 1: Crab fail wrong when.

53:55 Speaker 6: You swall gone by, yes at on tile the silesimewhere all those trashs batlen silesime turn sound.

54:13 Speaker 1: Real.

54:22 Speaker 16: Then an affirm you want the interestiss to breed, Then an effem you need.

54:32 Speaker 12: I just want to see.

54:36 Speaker 11: All that you desire.

54:40 Speaker 1: Then your guy, I'll be back to sire.

54:47 Speaker 14: Lean down on your thigh, some matter on tile.

54:54 Speaker 1: Side, don simewhere all.

54:57 Speaker 9: Those trash batter and side I.

55:00 Speaker 15: Have out on time the time when.

55:04 Speaker 14: In all those time and somebod time un time not of time and read to las sis anout in time out of the time a time.

55:18 Speaker 13: When nothing that shot want, Well, we got of your houses.

55:35 Speaker 11: Everything that I always.

55:39 Speaker 1: Is in your command.

55:43 Speaker 11: It's nothing he change that girl on you. It's get near the stars.

55:53 Speaker 16: For your treas to join trus n on the Times.

56:02 Speaker 15: Way All goes Crashing Style, Silen Way, I'll go Style.

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