Matt Connarton Unleashed 7-11-26 hour 3

0:00 Speaker 1: Hey, hey, mister, won't you tell me your name? I have nothing and I'll give you the same.

0:12 Speaker 2: Hey, hey, mister, won't you.

0:15 Speaker 3: Tell me your name?

0:18 Speaker 1: I am no one and I expect the same.

0:22 Speaker 4: You're not alone.

0:25 Speaker 3: You're not alone. You're not alone.

0:31 Speaker 2: In the siege you.

0:33 Speaker 4: So you're not alone. You're not alone. You're not alone in the siege you.

0:44 Speaker 1: So, Hey, hey, sister, why are you looking away? I have nothing and I'll give you the same. Hey, hey, sister, why are you walking away? I am no one and I a mac the same.

1:10 Speaker 5: You're not alone.

1:13 Speaker 3: You're not alone.

1:16 Speaker 1: You're not alone in licen you.

1:20 Speaker 5: So you're not alone.

1:25 Speaker 1: You're not alone.

1:28 Speaker 3: Your mod lo.

1:31 Speaker 6: Is the s so.

1:36 Speaker 4: Hate to be bund.

1:39 Speaker 7: Haye to me, come.

1:42 Speaker 1: Hay to be the one to tell you what you call?

1:48 Speaker 6: Hey to me, w.

1:51 Speaker 1: Hey to me?

1:52 Speaker 7: Come pay to be the one to.

1:57 Speaker 4: Tell you what time?

2:48 Speaker 3: He tell me?

2:49 Speaker 4: Come he tell me, come.

2:54 Speaker 3: He to me.

2:55 Speaker 7: I don't want to tell you what to call? Hey to me, bow, pay to me, cold, pay to me. Don't want to tell you what you know?

3:12 Speaker 1: Hey, hey, mister, won't you tell me your name? I have nothing and I'll give you the same. Hey, Ray, mister, won't you tell me your name? I am no mo and I have had the same You're not lost, you're not lost, You're not a lord, mister.

3:44 Speaker 3: S so.

3:46 Speaker 4: You're not love, You're not alone, You're not love.

3:55 Speaker 1: And look me so, hey, mister, won't you tell me your name?

4:07 Speaker 2: I really like that a lot. The band is called I, the track is nothing, and let's see who we've got on the line from the band, Let's see al Are you there?

4:17 Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm here.

4:17 Speaker 2: Hey, welcome? And do you have anyone else with you? Or is it just you?

4:22 Speaker 3: No, it's just me today and no one else wanted to get up.

4:24 Speaker 2: I got you. Yeah, it's early there, right because you're on the West coast.

4:28 Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's eight o'clock over here.

4:30 Speaker 2: That is understandable. Yeah. I don't want to get up at eight o'clock either, but I totally get it. I totally get it.

4:36 Speaker 3: I'm the only one. I'm the only one who's used to getting up early. So I just I got this one.

4:40 Speaker 2: I got you. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you're with us. I really like that song a lot, and and absolutely I have questions about it too, because obviously, as you're listening to it, you know, even if someone doesn't know anything about the background of the song and what inspired it and and all of that, it's it's obvious that there's there's a message there. And I wanted to ask you about that first and kind of start there because I think it's an important song and I think that, you know, you can reach people through music in ways that you can't reach them from just trying to explain to someone, for example, why they should care about something, what's going on that they should be concerned with.

5:19 Speaker 2: But you can reach people through a song like that. So can you kind of talk to us about that, about what the song is about and what inspired you to write it?

5:28 Speaker 3: Sure? What inspired me was kind of a funny story. I was walking out of the ninety ninth cent store. We have those. I'm not sure if you have them where you're at. They're just basically like discount stores.

5:39 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we have them too.

5:41 Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay, I was walking out of one and a guy came up to me and asked me for spare change, and, trying to be funny, I said, dude, I just walked out of the nine nineth cent store. What makes you think I have any change?

5:56 Speaker 2: Yeah?

5:56 Speaker 3: And you know, we both kind of had to laugh about it, and I just told them, man, you're fishing in the wrong pond. You need to go to like a legit supermarket, maybe you know, you have better luck. And that kind of got me thinking how someone's asking for change at a nine nine cent story which really shows you like you know, and then myself, you know, getting groceries there. I honestly didn't have any change for him. So it just remember realized how close we all are to just being in each other's position, so to say.

6:29 Speaker 3: And so, you know, that's what kind of got me thinking about it. Writing the lyrics and the line I have nothing and I'll give you the same, that was literally what happened. And so that that started it. And I wrote the lyrics first. You know, just I'm not a good storyteller. I wish I was. I wish I could just like make up a story about you know whatever and then turn it into a great song. I'm not, so I tend to write about experience or things that you know, fears or things I've been through or whatever.

7:04 Speaker 3: So that was this is exactly what nothing is. And we in LA there's a big homeless issue. Yeah, a lot of and you see a lot of it is mental illness issues, a lot of it is just can't afford to, you know, to live in a house. It's either you know, some people have jobs, but they can't afford to rent, so they live in their cars. You know. So that's what's pretty much of those songs about and how it's it's really shocking when you really think about it, you put yourself in their shoes, and how quickly the roles could be reversed.

7:36 Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's it's interesting that you put it that way because I was having a conversation with someone very recently in fact, about how, you know, I look at my own life and you know, I'm an entrepreneur and I've taken a lot of risks, and it's actually shocking to me when I think back of how many times I've been on the edge, like really on the edge of maybe ending up homeless or ending up not not knowing how I was going to eat. And you're right when you say that, you know, people take for granted.

8:06 Speaker 2: It's very easy to take for granted if you know, if you've had a relatively smooth ride, shall we say, right that that everything's always that is always going to be that way. But but so many people in this country are are closer to the edge than maybe they even want to realize.

8:23 Speaker 3: You know.

8:23 Speaker 2: They always say don't look down because it'll scare you, right, but but you know they talk about how most people don't have enough money to handle an expensive emergency. You know, it's we're all closer to that then than I think a lot of not all of us, but a lot of us are closer to that then than people realize or want to think about.

8:42 Speaker 3: Right. I think someone heard someone say once you're or like one or two paychecks away from being homeless at all times?

8:48 Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah.

8:49 Speaker 3: A lot of us, you know, a lot of us don't have you know, the big savings or the investments. You know, a lot of us don't live that way, you know.

8:57 Speaker 2: Right.

8:57 Speaker 3: So it's like you said, it's a fine line sometimes.

9:01 Speaker 2: Yeah, And where you are, that area certainly is known for that. I think. I think all the major cities in California really are known for having a terrible homeless problem. And it's it's but it's it's terrible everywhere. Absolutely. But I also think too, what's very relatable about the song is I think everyone has experienced that too, where you know you're you're not in that position, but you're not exactly you know, thriving either, And maybe you're walking yeah, you know, maybe you're walking out of the dollar store, you know, or any kind of store, and somebody's asking you for change and you're like, nah, things are tough all over, man, I don't I don't have anything to give you.

9:36 Speaker 2: I'm you know, I'm barely making it, you know.

9:39 Speaker 3: Right right.

9:40 Speaker 2: I think that's very relatable. What's the response been to the song? Like, like, do people do people kind of hone in on the message? Do they get the message when they listen to it?

9:50 Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's fifty to fifty. Some people just like the groove of it, you know. Some people just like it because it says like that kind of like heavy guitar kind of metal thing to it, you know, So it really depends. Then we have some people who actually have come up to us after gigs and said like, oh, you know, and they tell us their story. Oh that was me once the first time we played it. I try to be clever and I got like a I found a pizza box outside and I cut the pizza box and I wrote you know, we'll work for food, you know, just you know, And I stood there holding it, trying to be you know a little a little dramatic during the gig, Sure, and I just threw it.

10:26 Speaker 3: I just threw it away up. I just chucked it, you know. And after the show, some guy came up with it and said like, I'm gonna hold this because that song really spoke to me. I'm going to keep this. Could you guys sign it? And it was so strange. We're just like, yeah, sure, and you know, and he told us similar story. I was homeless and I was addicted and I held these signs in the corner. I just happened to be here with friends. So they didn't even come to see us. They were just happened to be there.

10:50 Speaker 3: And so it's it's mixed. You know, people like it for different reasons. But there are some people who actually do listen to the lyrics and other people just like to shake their ass and listen to a groove.

11:02 Speaker 2: Sure. Sure, I also like, you know, the kind of the empathy behind it, because that's that's something that I think lacks is lacking for a lot of people. When they again, you know, if you've always had a smooth ride and you don't know any better. You might not know that there could be a cliff somewhere. You know, a lot of people they like to look down on homeless people or unhoused I guess is the term that we use now, and it's you know, something that a lot of people don't realize is there's a large I don't know the numbers offhand, but there's estimated to be a large percentage of homeless people who are actually veterans, who are people who are not not to get political with it, but it is worth pointing out people who are let down by this country and are terribly broken system in terms of taking care of our veterans who have fallen through the cracks.

11:48 Speaker 2: And so, you know, I always tell people because there are people of a certain political persuasion who tend to be the ones who are most likely to go out of their way to disparage homeless people or unhoused people. And I always like to point out, you know, when you do that, you might be treating a veteran that way. You know, So you know, the people who like to.

12:05 Speaker 3: You're able to make the money you're making is because they put their life on the line at one point or.

12:09 Speaker 2: Another exactly exactly one hundred percent, and you know, and we just let them, We just let them fall through the cracks. We should mention the video too, right, there's a music video for nothing.

12:20 Speaker 3: Yes, that's how it kind of got Originally we released that song before we signed with Soday Records, we just kind of released our own songs. Yeah, so we had like an EP of four songs that we released on our own, and that was one of the songs. So what we decided to do is we started releasing songs under sody so they give it to push the songs deserve. So we can't re release the songs as singles again because we're already put out there, but we were able to put them out as videos, so it kind of refreshes the song and then gives the label an opportunity to push the song as you know, as a video and the song itself and not just a single.

12:57 Speaker 3: So that's our little, a little loop hope we've found to be able to push songs were recorded earlier.

13:03 Speaker 2: That's a great strategy. How long ago was nothing actually recorded? Originally?

13:10 Speaker 3: About three maybe four years ago?

13:12 Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, it's got you know, the sound though in the vibe of it are pretty timeless. It's not like you know what I mean, which is which is good. It's got kind of a I feel I feel like it's got kind of a grunge vibe to it. In terms of the production. I don't know if that's what you were going for, but that's that's sort of what I hear when I listen to it.

13:32 Speaker 3: Yeah, we get that a lot. And it's funny. Paul the guitarist, the guy who we got the band together, he likes to embrace that grunge sound. And me coming up in that time, I hated that word grunge because I figured, like, it's just it's just rock man, It's just it's that's a U labeled someone put on it to sell, to sell flannels, you know. But but it's funny when we we we were asked about it. The way I explain it is we're not kids, we're older, you know. So we grew up in the nineties listening to take it back, we grew up as kids listening to the same bands that the guys did in the nineties.

14:12 Speaker 3: So we grew up with the Sabbath and you know, Zeppelin and Deep Purple and you know bands the Pixies, the bands like that from the seventies, So that's what influenced us to write our music. It just so happened that the guys from Seattle also heard those bands, so therefore our sound is similar. But we never like said, oh, we need to sound like Allison Chains and when you sound like Sound Garden. We always wanted to sound like Black Sabbath. Oh, we wanted to sound like Lloyd So we kind of have the same influences.

14:43 Speaker 3: So yeah, our music would have been you know, if we would have been out there more in the nineties, our music would have fit in perfectly. But yeah, but it's not on purpose, like let's be gruns. Just we just want to be Black Sabbath and Kings. That's all we want to be. And because it just kind of lands that way, Kings.

15:00 Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and I can hear that, and that it didn't occur to me until you said it, but I can hear that. I love King Zax, as you might be able to tell from my reaction. And I'm a bass player, so Doug Pinnock is one of my heroes.

15:15 Speaker 3: We just we just supported them at the Whiskey a couple of weeks ago. Oh my god, really, yeah, yeah, it was great. We've been trying to get on that gig for years every time they come to town, and this time we found the right promoter. We we cooked us up and we're able to to support them at the Whiskey. It was it was one of those they say not to meet your heroes, but yeah, that's wrong. We got to meet the guys and they were great and they were cool to us, and it was cool to play with the Kings X fans.

15:40 Speaker 3: Yeah that we know, like, okay, they're they're they're probably gonna appreciate what we're doing. And we had a great rapport with them, and you know, we you know, we sold merch and CDs and you know, we got a bunch of new fans out of it because you know, they listen, they love Kings X as much as we do. And make sure, you know, King Zach should have been huge. They should have been like the biggest band in the world. Because it wasn't for them, a lot of this ninety stuff wouldn't exist, you know, agreed, But so when they play a club, everyone there is a hardcore King Zax fan so it was like it was one of our like we gotta get on that gig.

16:19 Speaker 3: So, yeah, we only agree on two bands when we got together. You know, you know, you do the whole who are you influenced? When I first met Paul, Yeah, we only agreed on two bands, King z X and Black Sabbath No Kill, you know. Yeah, so that's that's the way it worked out for us.

16:32 Speaker 2: Those are those are great choice of Sabbath is also one of my favorites. But yeah, I met King Zax a long time ago. Well she's like literally decades and I got to interview Doug Pinnock. I think he might have been the first musician I ever actually sat down and interviewed now that I'm thinking about it, and uh, what an amazing guy. I mean, just so so gracious. I wasn't the only one there participating in the interview, but he gave us a lot of time and and uh yeah it was it was just just really incredible.

17:05 Speaker 2: But yeah, but I but I can hear all that in that's in that song that you know, King Zax and Sabbath, you know, with the guitar tone and everything just just just really really good. It's funny too, because you know, you don't like the term grunge, and I totally get it. I I I reflect back now on that time, and it's like grunge kind of became the catch all term for you know, anything that came out of Seattle. And if you you know, if you think about the bands that were big at that time that got labeled as grunge, they all sound very different like Alison Chains doesn't sound anything like Pearl Jam, which doesn't sound anything like Nirvana, you know, and all these bands got put in this box.

17:41 Speaker 3: Uh right, That's always my argument. But you know, it's like it's always our argument. I lose because you know, it's it just it grunge is a thing now like new wave or you know, like hair metal. It just kind of became a thing and it's a it's a real term now, you know. But I did my best to fight it off, but I guess I lost.

17:59 Speaker 2: That It's huge right now in the UK. We have a lot of guests from the UK and apparently grunge is very much the big thing over there right now. Oh really, Well, yeah, surprised me. Surprised me, but but but yeah, absolutely, now, So tell me about the history of the band because I did I originally form in the nineties. Am I understanding that correctly?

18:23 Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, we were kids. Paul and I first started out in the nineties. We had a short run just doing like local There was a small scene in East La Montabello area and we played there for a few years with two other different bass player and drummer, and we you know, we did our run and you know, nothing, nothing happened for us, and then eventually we just kind of like you know, went our ways. I got married, had kids, just you know, Paul, he's always been a musician. Like right now, he's in Chicago.

18:54 Speaker 3: Uh, he plays bass for Vinnieppissi. Oh wow, his Sabbath band. So he tours with with Vinny Nice as a bass player, but he's actually guitarist. But like you know, bass player gigs are waysier to get the guitarist gigs. Oh.

19:07 Speaker 2: Absolutely.

19:08 Speaker 3: So he's always been a musician. He's always played covers and tribute bands his whole life's And then I would say a good fifteen years past and then we just kind of run into each other again and we just started talking and we said, like, let's let's start writing again. You know, there's no expectation. That's just right, just to you know, do something. You know, I just want I just wanted to reconnect with him, and I knew that's pretty much the only way we're going to reconnect.

19:34 Speaker 6: And then.

19:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, so we started putting music out and we got contacted by Sam from Sodey who was interested in signing us. Which is funny because when you're a kid, that's all you want to do, right, you just want to get signed, and you know you're thinking about like back in the days, you get signed, you get a bonus, you get the road, and you know it's different. Now, we weren't even looking for that. It just kind of happened. We're just like very grateful, like, oh cool, he wants to sign us and put on his label and distribute to us.

20:02 Speaker 3: So it kind of happened backwards for us, but we're very grateful. So yeah, we started early and then took a break and started up again. Yeah.

20:09 Speaker 2: I always laugh about the miss misconceptions and misperceptions people have about how I don't think this is largely the case anymore, but there certainly was a time when people assumed that, you know, if you got signed, it meant that you were. Now you were flying on a private jet out to LA and hanging out with supermodels and staying at the Playboy mansion and now and driving a Lamborghini and all that.

20:32 Speaker 3: And it's not the eighties and Motley Crue anymore, right, right, And.

20:37 Speaker 2: And let's be honest, it wasn't even that way for Motley Crue until they started to really sell some records and sell some tickets. You know, it's not it's not you know, people think, oh, you know, you get signed and you're suddenly rich. It's like no, and you have to explain things like recruitment and all of this. It's, uh, the economics of it are much tougher than people realize.

20:56 Speaker 3: You have. There's still a lot of work to do. Absolutely, you signing that that contract?

21:00 Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Now, So when when you guys kind of put the project away the first time, was it was it always kind of in the back of your mind that you might revisit it someday or or at the time, did you feel like, I'm done with this, moving on getting married, focusing on that.

21:18 Speaker 3: You know, I can't speak for Paula. For myself, yes, not just specifically this band, but just being creative. See I have bipolar disorder. Okay, I didn't know until I was you know, almost thirty. So being able to be creative and to be able to like, you know, just purge whatever's in my brain and put into into music or just you know, writing it down poetry or just journaling has always helped me. And I left that thinking, Okay, that's the past. Now I'm just gonna you know, you know, be married and raise kids and you know, have you know, not be a musician anymore.

21:54 Speaker 3: But it bit me in the ass because it just it that creativity was wasn't there purposely, I purposely put it away, and it just it really just didn't work with me. It kind of and it made me a monster at times. So so yeah, I did think about it and I did miss it, but I really didn't realize that was the key to my sanity. Yeah, because that makes any sense. So yeah, so soon as they has the opportunity, like during that time, I did like a couple of cover projects, like, Hey, we're gonna do a party, you want to play some cover songs?

22:24 Speaker 3: Stuff like that, And that's when I realized, like, okay, you know, I still I still I missed this, I missed the rehearsals and the guys and the songs and yeah, so yeah, for myself, yeah, it was always in the back of my head. I just didn't realize how much I needed it until you know, all hell broke loose R I realized there's something missing in my life and that was it.

22:42 Speaker 2: Well, especially too, where you're someone who and again you know, we talked about the song nothing You're you're someone who clearly has something to say that you need to express. So I can see where it makes sense to me how you explain that, how you realize that that was missing from your life and you needed to get that back.

23:02 Speaker 2: So what's the with the current lineup of the band? Is it? Is it the same? Is it the same four of you or.

23:08 Speaker 3: No, No, it's just Paul and I are the originals. And then we David the drummer is actually Paul's nephew who at the time when we were getting back together, he didn't have any any project at the time, so he just kind of sat in with us and it just kind of clicked. So we just kind of said, well, guess guess what they're playing with us too, you know what I mean? Because he's a lot younger than us. He's like in this this late twenties or maybe that might be thirty by.

23:33 Speaker 2: Now, okay.

23:34 Speaker 3: And then Pauli the bass player. He's someone that Paul's known for a long time and played in a lot of bands with back in the day. So we just recruited him and same thing. We said, Hey, we're doing this show. We just need someone to sit in with us. He learned the songs and we just kept saying, hey, we have another one. You want to do it, Yeah, you got another one, and now he just we just kind of tricked them into just hanging around. So yeah, it's nice.

23:57 Speaker 2: Nice when it comes together organically like that, you know, instead of yeah, instead of saying, okay, we're gonna we're gonna hold all these auditions and do all this stuff.

24:05 Speaker 3: But then we just spend hours talking about some auditions. We try to have their their nightmares and they're hilarious at the same time. It's rough. Yeah, it's rough, not just the plane, but like you know what we say, like the guys who get all the gigs because rule number one, don't be an a hole. And you'd be surprised how many guys you meet who are auditioning and they're just like arrogant or a hole or you know, and not to mention whether they could play or not. But it's a right, yeah, there's there's there's there's some stories there with the audition.

24:37 Speaker 3: So luckily we didn't have to We did it for a bit until we realized it's just start tricking guys into playing with us.

24:43 Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. Maybe some of the guys who are auditioning, maybe they thought they were going to get the private chat and hang out at the Playboy mansion and all that.

24:51 Speaker 3: It could be.

24:55 Speaker 2: So does the the early material, because obviously you guys have have a history. Does the early material survive or or are you focused on on writing and recording just new stuff or how does that work.

25:08 Speaker 3: We brought with us believe two two, maybe three songs that we recorded that we played. Three songs that we played back then. The other ones we just you know, they we either they either morphed into something else or you know, Paul used them with other projects, you know, as far as the ideas. Yeah, but three songs we brought with us that we we felt still kind of had you know, enough you know, fit with what we're doing now. Okay, really isn't much different, but yeah, yeah.

25:39 Speaker 2: And then what is the plan for these? I mean, are you going to continue to release singles or will these coalesce into a an EP or an album or what what's kind of your your strategy?

25:51 Speaker 3: Yes, so our next release is the thirteenth of August, and that'll be our new single Circle, but it'll be released in an album because we haven't enough. We released a bunch of singles now, so we're gonna combine them into an album. Okay, So it'll be the album's going to drop on the thirteenth and it will have the new singles Circle on it.

26:12 Speaker 2: Oh wonderful. And you did send us that one, which we're going to play at the end of our conversation so our listeners can get a sneak peek. Has this been played anywhere on the radio before?

26:23 Speaker 3: So we've played it. We've played it live a couple of times, or actually just once. We just played it once at the king Zex because we had to do some rewrites on it, so the way it is, the way we recorded it. We only played it at the King Sex Show.

26:36 Speaker 6: Oh.

26:37 Speaker 3: Has been played anywhere?

26:38 Speaker 2: Oh? Wow? So this will be a world radio premiere. I love it. I love it.

26:42 Speaker 3: We there you go. I like that. Oh we put that on our on our website. Oh, world radio premiere.

26:49 Speaker 2: Please do please do no. We we love to get to do those. That's great. That's I'm very honored that you sent us, sent us that then I didn't realize that it wasn't coming out until August. That's that's fantastic And it's a great track. Really like it a lot. You absolutely, absolutely so. I haven't asked you the most obvious question, yet, where does the name come from? I?

27:09 Speaker 3: Okay, So when we were coming up with band names, I came up like you know, and but we wanted to do it in a way that said, in this big scheme of life, we're not that important. You know, we think we are, but we're not that important. So when you read or write the word I, it's always capital because you're talking about yourself. So we figure like we're he's gonna make it, you know, oh, lowercase I, and you know, just to at least for our entertainment. It tells us like we're not that important, right, you know, we're in there's bigger things to worry about than us, So we just went with a lowercase.

27:47 Speaker 2: I okay, okay, interesting and I like the is so and it is lowercase. And then I see the image of the uh is your official go the eye in front of the hand is that uh?

28:04 Speaker 3: No, the original logo is just the eye. Okay, the hand is that's my wife's hand? She uh yes, we uh if you have a minute. She she had some cancer scares with her she has she had a rare uh tumor in her kidney called a feel We call it a feeld, but I forget what the full name is.

28:24 Speaker 2: Okay.

28:24 Speaker 3: So there was times where you know, where we didn't know if we were going to have her around and you know, uh if she had her surgery it was during COVID, So I the day I dropped her off at the hospital, I couldn't go inside with her. And and then she had a fifty to fifty chance on the table, So I didn't know if that was the last time I was ever going to see her, you know. So it was a lot of stress. So luckily she know, she she made it through and stuff. So I just had this thing where I wanted to get her hand tattooed on me.

28:53 Speaker 6: Somewhere.

28:53 Speaker 3: So I had her put you know, through the whole paint on a piece of paper and oh wow, something just kind of clicked, and I'm like, I'm put the eye right in the middle of it and use it as a logo. And actually when we play our gigs, I have a shirt that has her hand with the eye on it and stuff like that too. So so it's the official logo is just the eye, but the hand's been very popular, so we're probably gonna roll with that for a while.

29:15 Speaker 2: Yeah. I like it. No, it's a cool image and thank you for sharing the story behind it. And so, so how is she now at this point? Is she good?

29:22 Speaker 3: Yeah, she's good. I mean it's still it's one of those the the tumor being on her on her adrenal gland. I mean, I said, Kiddy, apologize. Her adrenal gland wrecked havoc in her body, ye, because it was constantly releasing adrenaline. So they removed the tumor and the adrenal gland. So now she's joining on one adrenal gland. Okay, So you know, so it's been a couple of years, but it's still like, you know, her body's getting used to having only one adrenal gland. So some days good days, bad days, and the bad day is usually like fatigue.

29:53 Speaker 3: But yeah, she's she's she's still.

29:55 Speaker 2: Good, good, good, glad to glad to hear that. Yeah, yeah, that's a that's a a very a very scary thing. Now the the track circle will will there be a video for this as well eventually.

30:08 Speaker 3: Yeah, we're we're we haven't thought, we haven't talked about it yet and uh, but it's that video. It should be fun because the whole song revolves around a Plato's cave. I don't know if you're familiar with that one, so it's kind of a yeah, it's a you know, Plato has a lot of Plato's cave is the whole theory of they you're stuck in a cave and your captors put like a little like to say, like a like a little symbol of a of a horse or like a soldier, and then they put a fire behind it, so it makes a shadow on the wall of a soldier and and things you fear.

30:46 Speaker 3: So you're stuck in this cave because of these shadows, not realizing if you just turn around, you don't realize it's not a real soldier. It's just a little stand with the reflection on it. Yeah, so that's the whole. That's the whole Plato's cave, I think so. So I'm thinking that should be a pretty fun video to make. You know, uh, play Doo's not around anymore, so I don't think we'll get sued.

31:06 Speaker 2: But right right, yeah, it's probably okay to to use his intellectual property. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I love the concept. That's that's really cool. That's really cool.

31:18 Speaker 3: Yeah, that should be a fun one to make.

31:20 Speaker 2: And then what's the obviously you know you mentioned Paul is very busy obviously, but I mean, what what is the live situation like going forward? Do you have more shows coming up? Are you gonna be touring or do you have to wait for him to get back or how does that work?

31:33 Speaker 3: Well, he's only gone for like a week at a time, so that you know, yeah, then he doesn't just go on the road for you know, yeah, he goes off for a week. That's that's a okay. The shows, we have nothing schedule now, Like I said, we just put all our eggs into the Kings X show. We were just like really hyped up about that one. So right now we have nothing, nothing said. We're going back in the studio two uh next week to work on two more singles to put out. We try to be we try to be very busy, you know, so he keeps us focused.

32:05 Speaker 6: Yeah.

32:05 Speaker 3: We ask Sam from the label like, hey, give us five dates next year, and he will give us five dates. So we know, like there's our carrot. That's what we got to do. So our main focus is you know, delivering songs or videos to the label, and in between we go like, hey, let's do a gig. So we have a few places we play often, but right now we have you know, there's nothing on the books right now. Okay. If when there, when there is, it'll be all over our socials and our website for sure.

32:33 Speaker 2: Okay, okay, outstanding, and we'll, like I said, we'll let you go in a moment and we'll hit that track circle. But where al where is the best place for people to go online to keep up with everything that the band I is doing?

32:46 Speaker 7: Uh?

32:47 Speaker 3: If you want like a one chop stop, it's our website which is ibandofficial one dot com okay, and and that that has all the links to all our socials ig, our Facebook, our our YouTube. We have a lot of videos on YouTube live and also you know regular videos on there. Yeah, so that's like the go there and you can find everything. But also if you just want to go straight to our ig that's I band official one at ig And if you like Facebook, it's a band official on Facebook.

33:21 Speaker 2: Okay, okay, outstanding, Well, Algernados from the band I, thank you so much for joining us. We're going to hit that track circle and h and oh, and I encourage everyone to check out after the show, go to YouTube check out the video for nothing. It's it's really cool and it's it's an important subject. So I really like that song a lot too. But Al, thank you so much for joining us today, and we'll definitely do it again in the future as you're releasing new music. We'd love to have you back. And I really like the band a lot, so we will.

33:50 Speaker 2: We will definitely do this again.

33:52 Speaker 3: Great, thank you, Thank you for having me.

33:54 Speaker 2: This was fun, all right, Al, thank you, take care, bye bye bye bye. All right. That is Algronados from the band I and right now, because this isn't coming out until August, sometime in August, but we you'll hear it here First the world radio premiere of the new track from I. This is called Circle.

34:12 Speaker 6: You are listening to wumin h World premiere.

35:05 Speaker 1: Oh say not decern go.

35:14 Speaker 5: Oh my jo got decide.

35:24 Speaker 3: I mister s.

35:29 Speaker 5: I do my n that good time. Wretch.

35:39 Speaker 6: Ain't a woman.

35:44 Speaker 5: I'm not a dome fuck gr oh cha shop.

36:09 Speaker 1: All the chair up the row.

36:18 Speaker 3: Drops the maid of kick your head, I go.

36:22 Speaker 5: This takes the ratice, skip them, the watte.

36:58 Speaker 3: Dropping lace. Hey you had a gold pige No where to escape, no where to escape?

37:08 Speaker 7: Can't you hear me?

37:10 Speaker 1: Now?

37:13 Speaker 5: Can't you hear me?

37:15 Speaker 3: Now?

37:20 Speaker 6: Do you hear me?

37:24 Speaker 7: Now?

37:28 Speaker 5: I can come bad in my.

37:33 Speaker 3: Can that happen?

37:34 Speaker 5: Right to read more about this? All the side of the turn, all the sun God go.

38:03 Speaker 3: You here? Can you here? There is?

38:14 Speaker 2: That is the world radio premiere of the upcoming single Circles and the band is I. And thank you again to Al Gernados for joining us today on the show. Really enjoyed talking with him and he actually he just paid me a very nice compliment on WhatsApp, So Al, if you're still listening, and I appreciate that too, he said, he enjoyed it. So welcome everybody. This is Matt Connorton Unleashed and we are live from the studios of wm NH ninety five point three FM and Glorious Manchester, New Hampshire.

38:42 Speaker 2: And of course you can stream the show from anywhere. Go to Matt connorton dot com slash unleashed for a full list an updated menu of a live streaming options if you will, And of course you don't forget our new site, Matt Connorton unleashed dot com, which has the full archive of the show and it is searchable, so if you're looking for a specific guest or a specific day, you can find that there. So let's see. Well it's been quite a show so far. But I think we do have a little bit of time left. We should maybe do some quick music industry news.

39:15 Speaker 2: I did not know that this was going on, but you know, artists suing record labels is not a terribly unusual thing, it would seem. And usually when we talk about one of these stories, it's usually a universal music group that is being sued, but this time it was not. This time it was Sony Sony Music. You know, it's funny because when Al was on the show, we were talking about talking a lot about the nineties. Well, there's a nineties band called Lit who had a song, you might remember, a pop punk song called My Own Worst Enemy, and they have just settled a streaming royalty lawsuit with Sony Music.

39:54 Speaker 2: You know again, artists suing labels over royalties is not a new thing, and that predates the Internet, that predates streaming. It is not unusual for an artist or an accountant who works for an artist, and so on and so forth. The business manager who might work for an artist to at some point in time say hey, I think we're missing some money. I don't think you know this. My client here has been has been selling millions of records and they're only getting a small pittance. And the legal department looked at the contract and apparently there should be a lot more money than what is currently going to my client, et cetera.

40:37 Speaker 2: So maybe we need to sue the label over that. It's not a new story now. The taking that and applying it to the era of streaming, which we're in, that part is somewhat new, although not really that new in twenty twenty six. Streaming has been around for a couple decades now. But but these stories continue. But I didn't know that this one was going on. I didn't know that was suing Sony Music. It says here and again. This is from Music Businessworldwide dot com, which, if you're a regular listener, you know, one of my absolute favorite sites for music industry news.

41:12 Speaker 2: It says, LIT, the band behind pop punk hit My Own Worst Enemy, settles Sony Music streaming royalty lawsuit. LIT, the rock band behind the nineteen ninety nine single My Own Worst Enemy, has settled its lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment over streaming royalties. Never liked that song, by the way, not that I don't like Litt. They're fine. I just don't like that song. The band and the major label reached a settlement in principle, according to a July seven court filing reviewed by Music Business Worldwide.

41:46 Speaker 2: Neither Litt nor Sony has disclosed the terms, and a written agreement is still being finalized. US just record John P. Cronin closed the case on Tuesday after being notified of the deal, which was first reported by Billboard. The members of LIT sued Sony in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in March over their streaming royalties. The complaint was brought by frontman aj Popoff, guitarist Jeremy pop Off. I assume they're brothers, bassist Kevin unless Popoff is a common name, which it's not, bassist Jeremy Baldez, and the estate of late drummer Alan Schellenberger.

42:26 Speaker 2: As Music Business Worldwide reported at the time, Sony, which acquired RCA Records years after the label signed the band in nineteen ninety eight, had been paying the musicians a fourteen percent US royalty rate on streams. Quick note here before we go any further, that's another thing that happens a lot, consolidation. Right, one record label buys another record label. Now, all of a sudden, some of the artists who were on the record label that got bought, they're not getting their money. Or you know, there's a turn that I learned a couple of years ago that is common in the well.

43:04 Speaker 2: It describes a practice common in the music business spaghetti accounting, which is where the accounting is done in such a way that it makes it it makes it very more convoluted than it necessarily needs to be, which makes it hard to do. Forensic accounting, which is when you try to figure out where the money is going, and why some of the money isn't going where it should be, and or why not enough of the money is going where it should be going, et cetera. But this is a thing when when one record label buys another, if you're on the record label, it's being purchased again.

43:32 Speaker 2: This is something where if you're that artist, you want your legal team, you want your management whomever is keeping an eye on this, you want them in there making sure that you're getting everything that you have coming to.

43:48 Speaker 3: It.

43:48 Speaker 2: Says here. The band argued the nineteen to ninety eight RCA contract entitled it to fifty percent of net receipts whenever a master is lie since treating an on demand stream as a master use license rather than a sale, so master being the master recording of the song, which is obviously what gets distributed to these streaming platforms because the streaming platforms. Obviously you want the platform to have the highest possible quality file of your music if you're an artist on a platform. Right, But according to the band argues or their legal team argues, according to their RCA contract, they're titled to fifty percent of net receipts when the master is licensed.

44:35 Speaker 2: So in this case, the master is licensed to a streaming platform, so fifty percent of that revenue that's generated by that track on that platform. So continuing on again this article for Music Business Worldwide. In a in a parenthetical, the band's nineteen to ninety eight contract gave an example of such a license. Quote RCA's license to another person of the right to embody a master recording on a website in a so called streaming format, which is not subject to the digital download of that master recording by a viewer.

45:11 Speaker 2: Unquote. When the nineteen ninety eight deal was signed, Napster had not yet launched, and streaming services such as Rhapsody did not arrive until the early two thousands. Litt claimed the language entitled it to more than eight hundred thousand dollars in unpaid streaming royalties. The band's attorney, Chris Vaeos, in the complaint said, quote

45:41 Speaker 2: Sony's failure and or refusal to account properly to plaintiffs for streaming royalties received from licenses from third party DSP's digital service providers under the nineteen ninety eight agreement. As damaged plaintiffs in excess of eight hundred thousand dollars in unpaid royalties as reflected on royalty statements rendered from January one, twenty twenty one, through December thirty one, twenty twenty six. Unquote. The complaint also alleged that Sony used the wrong formula for video streaming royalties and that it never applied the escalated rate it's deal called for.

46:16 Speaker 2: Once A Place in the Sun, which is the album that that song was on, reached gold and platinum status. That's you know, the song Mound Worst Enemy that's from the album A Place in the Sun. Reduced royalty reporting had also lowered the band's pension contributions and affected its health insurance eligibility through SAG after the complaint said. According to the complaint, the band had tried to renegotiate since twenty twenty three, but Sony offered a half hearted defense of the rate before it stopped responding.

46:53 Speaker 2: Vos said in March, quote, this is something that we were helped. We were hoping we could resolve before having to file a lawsuit unquote. A lawyer for Sony later said in a May court filing that the band had begun settlement talks after suing. According to Billboard, MBW, Music Business Worldwide has reached out to Sony and its management team at Shelter Music Group for a comment. The case landed as Sony faces other royalty claims in the same New York court. Again, as I said, this is a common story, and they use these labels, use spaghetti accounting to make it very difficult to figure out exactly what's going on, what is not happening, that should be happening, and so forth.

47:35 Speaker 2: They make it very complicated for a reason, for the same reason anybody who makes their accounting very complicated does so to you know, it's and it's not even necessarily. I don't know that they're trying to hide stuff, but they're certainly trying to make it so it's not easy to find. I guess that is an effect hiding something.

47:55 Speaker 3: But.

47:57 Speaker 2: They don't want you to figure out how you know, Universal Music Group we talked about this on the show. Universal Music Group, and again not to conflate them with Sony, but they've been sued a bunch. They weren't I don't know whatever happened to it, but we talked about it on the show. Limp Biscuit was suing Universal Music Group because apparently UMG, if you're an artist on UMG, you are provided with a portal. So it almost sounds like, you know, like if you're if you have a bank a bank account, and you know, use your portal to check your banking information, your your bounds and whatever.

48:33 Speaker 2: You log into the portal. Right, UMG actually has a portal for their artists, their signed artists, where they can log in and check what's going on with their royalties, how much they're owed, or how much they might owe in recruitment, which is another subject. We won't take that side three right now, but you can check all that through this portal. But apparently the portals don't always work. You know, Olympus gets accountant was trying to or accounting firm was trying to sign into the portal at one point, and they didn't have the right password and they tried to create a new password, but the portal wouldn't let them, so they had to come.

49:17 Speaker 2: I mean, really, this is wild, right that this goes on. And then so they try to contact somebody at Universal Music Group to up so they could update their passwords so they could get into the portal, but no one was getting back to them. This is how these labels treat their artists. It's just a fact. This is how these artists are treated. And you can say, well, I don't really care how somebody who's rich and famous is treated by their record label. What's the matter. They're rich and famous, so what talk about your first world problems?

49:54 Speaker 2: I get that, But but it doesn't just happen to artists who are already rich and famous. You know, the guys from Lit, they had that one huge hit. I don't remember if they had any others. If they did, I'm not remembering them, which makes me think. And I have a pretty good memory for that, but I don't always remember everything, so maybe they did. I don't remember, like I remember them being really big off of that song for a short period of time. But I can tell you this, Being really big off of one song for a short period of time does not make you rich.

50:26 Speaker 2: It helps, it doesn't make you rich. Being really big over a prolonged period of time might make you rich. But if you have one hit song and one platinum album, you're not, you know, I mean, unless you take really good care of your money and you invest in all that. But but just based on that alone, that income alone. You're not wealthy for the rest of your life based on that. So you know, no one should be treated this way by a record label. This is why there's so much antipathy toward the major labels, the major label system.

50:59 Speaker 2: When you ever hear anyone say something nice about Universal Music Group or Sony or Warner Brothers or any of these label when do you ever hear anybody say, you know, they really you know, if you're signed to that label, they really treat you, right, they really take care of the artists. That's gone. I mean now, even if they do sign you, they want you to already be a ready made package, which that part I understand. They want you to already be at the very least Internet famous before they're going to make you really famous, right or try to.

51:33 Speaker 2: But it's a terrible system. I mean, they really abuse, they really abuse their artists. Okay, So getting back to the article, because there's an example here of what I'm talking about, And again this is from Music Business Worldwide dot com. It says here Jermaine dupri And is so so deaf Companies sued Sony for more than eighteen million dollars on Monday, July sixth, alleging unpaid and under report royalties on records by Criss Cross, Escape Usher and Mariah Carey eighteen million dollars. And now I understand just because they're suing for that, that doesn't mean that that is accurate and that they are actually owed that much money.

52:17 Speaker 2: But it wouldn't shock me especially Well, let's look at that phrase, alleging unpaid and underreported royalties. That's part of how and again that plays into the spaghetti accounting under reported. In other words, some royalties are reported, but some are not. Why would you do that? Well, if you report enough royalties and you pay out enough in royalties, maybe no one gets suspicious. Maybe no one starts asking questions. Maybe no one says, let's look at the books and figure out if we're actually getting all that we're supposed to.

52:51 Speaker 2: Because we probably are because we're getting money. But what if you're actually owed more money, so you know they're not just gonna forget to pay you, they're gonna pay you something. They might just not pay you everything that you're owed. Because as long as they pay you something, maybe you won't start snooping around. Because if you hire a forensic accounting firm, and you start snooping around, you're gonna find out that you're owed a lot more than what they are telling you that you're owed.

53:19 Speaker 2: So that suit is for eighteen million dollars. It says here that suit is active, and Sony has said the parties were attempting to resolve the accounting dispute before Dupree went to court. Sony has settled similar claims before the company reached a settlement in twenty eighteen with Nineteen Recordings, the record label behind American Idol alumni, including Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, which had accused Sony of underpaid streaming royalties by accounting for streams as sales rather than licenses.

53:50 Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, Sony agreed to pay twelve point seven million to settle a class action brought by the estate of nineteen fifty singer Rick Nelson over royalties on foreign streaming revenue. Such disputes have become more common as legacy artists challenge how labels calculate streaming royalties under contracts signed before Spotify. Litt continues to tour, with dates booked across twenty twenty six My Own Worst Enemy has drawn more than five hundred and eighty million streams on Spotify. According to the band's complaint, It spent even really eleven weeks at number one on Billboard's Alternative Airplay chart.

54:31 Speaker 2: The band's nineteen to ninety nine album A Place in the Sun was certified platinum in the US. LIT releases most recent album Tastes Like Gold in twenty twenty two. The dismissal gives the party's forty five days to restore the case if the written settlement is not completed. Yeah, and again, they probably need that money. The band probably needs that money. One platinum album, one big hit song that does not make you rich. You're not set for life based on that. I promise you You're not like you know we were.

55:01 Speaker 2: We kind of were talking about that a little bit with Al from the band I when we were talking during our conversation about you know, people have misconceptions and misperceptions about how this all worked. They think you get signed and now you're you're famous and you're rich, and you know you can be you can be very famous and be broke. It happened to TLC when they release their album Crazy Sexy Cool in the late nineties. They were triple platinum and they were broke because of the way their record deal was structured.

55:28 Speaker 2: They had no money and they'd sold three million copies of that album on the strength of singles like Creep and Waterfalls and all that. I mean, it's it's the math that the system is all. Look, this is true in life in general, right, The system is always against you. You got to fight for every little crumb because the system is always trying to screw you in some way. In this case, it happens to be the major system of these record companies, but they're always trying to screw somebody over and they'll do whatever whatever they they can get away with.

56:13 Speaker 2: Okay, really quickly, because Spotify did come up. We're almost out of time. I want to hit this really fast though. This is from Digital Music Digital Music News dot Com again, another one of my favorite sites for this stuff. Spotify has invested more than one billion dollars on podcasting. I think most of that money went to Joe Rogan. So why can't it be YouTube? This is interesting to me. And by the way, you can find this show on Spotify. We uploaded to Spotify. It's on YouTube et cetera. But it's but I'm not making any you know.

56:43 Speaker 2: I mean, Spotify hasn't given me a big contract. They didn't back up bring Struck up to my home like they did Joe Rogan. But anyway, but I'm not bitter. YouTube continues to steamroll Spotify in the podcasting game, despite the latter's billion dollar investment in the medium over the last few years. By the way, off the top of my head, my gout reaction, people really like the video component rather than just listening to audio more and more so all the time Spotify, it's just audio YouTube. You can watch the video, it says.

57:10 Speaker 2: Your YouTube has unsurprisingly been the dominating force in the video content space for years, but it's also the leader in the podcast space in a major way. New data from Edison Research shows the Google owned platform has now overtaken Spotify in the UK as the most popular space for video podcast consumption. According to the data, twenty nine percent of weekly British podcast listeners age fifteen plus chose YouTube as the service they most use to consume podcasts, notably twenty eight percent to Spotify.

57:46 Speaker 2: So it's still fairly neck connected. By the way, all the podcasts I listen to I just go to YouTube. That's that's my you know, so I get it, says here. However, the new still comes as a significant blow to Spotify, which has been investing millions in its podcasting and video infrastructure over the past several years. That includes a partnership with Netflix and buying a podcasting platforms like the Ringer Grimlet, media anchor par Cast, and the advertising publishing infrastructure network Megaphone.

58:16 Speaker 2: Spotify has also secured exclusivity deals with big names in the podcasting space, which have included Joe Rogan, I'm not going to get in all the numbers, Alex Cooper, Prince Harry, and Megan Markle. I guess if you're an anglophile, you want that content.

58:34 Speaker 3: I guess.

58:34 Speaker 2: But Spotify founder and then CEO Daniel Eck noted that the company's expensive deals were a drag on margins, which led to a pivot and strategy and resulted in cost cutting and a slew of canceled shows and layoffs That also put the kiash on Spotify's strategy of cutting exclusive deals with big name podcasters. By late twenty twenty four, YouTube was already the go to destination for podcasts, at least for the majority of Americans, according to Edison. In October of that year, Edison reported that thirty one percent of weekly podcast listeners aged thirteen and up chose YouTube as the service they most listened to for podcasts.

59:15 Speaker 2: Edison noted quote a few years ago, YouTube might have seemed like an unlikely platform for podcasts, but as the world of podcasting evolves, many podcasters have embraced video podcasting, recording their shows in both audio and video formats. Not only can podcast consumers listen to episodes, but they can also watch video versions of their favorite shows. As video and audio content continue to overlap, creators and listeners are benefiting from more dynamic and engaging experiences. Just a little more here, it says, despite injecting over a billion dollars into podcasting, Spotify remains out of disadvantages.

59:52 Speaker 2: Podcasting continues to evolve into a video forward format.