#gonna be turning this into merch soon hopefully!! gonna be using a different method than usual so i can get all them colours in hehe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

blurry-fics · 5 years

Text

I Could Use a Love Song

Pairing: Tyler Joseph x Reader

Warnings: Angst

Word Count: 1899

Request: Not gonna lie, I dropped what I was doing when I saw your post about requests. Could I maybe see a Tyler x Reader where the reader is having a really bad day and all of her usual methods to feel better aren’t working, so Tyler jumps in with something maybe unconventional to help out? I was listening to I Could Use A Love Song by Maren Morris when thinking about this, if that helps! Thanks :) - @ohprettyweeper

Author’s Note: Good news, I finally managed to get some writing done amidst everything that’s happening! I decided to do this as a little surprise/bonus post since I know a lot of people are invested in Holding On To You right now, but I wanted to start getting people’s requests posted as well! Also, for anyone who hasn’t heard it and because it pertains to the fic, here’s a link to Tyler playing Build Me Up Buttercup (from the Beyond the Video for House of Gold)!

You drummed your fingers along your collarbone as you stared up at the ceiling. Your chest was rising and falling steadily as you carefully measured your breaths, hoping that it would somehow wipe away the cloud that seemed to be hanging over your mind. It had been twenty minutes of this same pattern and you had yet to feel any different.

“That’s it,” you muttered as you pushed yourself up from the couch. “I’m going on a drive.”

Your keys were still sitting in a jumbled heap from where you had tossed them down after arriving home from running errands yesterday. You quickly scooped them up, grabbed a jacket from the hall closet, and walked out the front door.

There was frost on the window as you climbed into the car, only adding another layer to the frustration that you were feeling. Still, you stuck the key in the ignition and turned the air on full blast, hoping that it wouldn’t be long before you could actually see out the windshield.

While the window defrosted, you scrolled through your phone and found some music that might help you feel a little better. You eventually settled on a song that you and Tyler always sang together; it never failed to bring up good memories when you listened to it. The window was finally beginning to clear up, so you pulled out of the driveway and out onto the street. Hopefully Tyler would be home by the time that you returned.

You absentmindedly drummed your fingers along the steering wheel as you drove through the streets of Columbus. The beauty of the city never failed to amaze you, despite the fact that you and Tyler had been living here for close to five years now. Going on the same drive through the city streets never seemed to get old.

Unfortunately, driving didn’t have the same appeal today. The music just seemed like dull background noise as you looked at the same buildings that you drove past almost daily. There was nothing particularly special about this drive that you were on, and you were beginning to wonder why this had ever worked as a way to cheer you up in the first place.

With a sigh, you pulled into a nearby parking lot and turned around. There was no point in wasting gas if it wasn’t going to help you feel any better, right?

You pulled into the driveway and shut the car off. There had to be some other way for you to cheer yourself up; at this point, you were willing to try anything that would cheer you up for even a few minutes. It didn’t help that Tyler had still yet to get home from his meetings, meaning that you would still be stuck trying to cheer yourself up.

You tossed your jacket back into the closet and immediately headed upstairs. There was only one more thing that you could think of that might finally get you out of this slump. If that didn’t work, then you would have to accept your bad mood and wait for it to go away. That, or hopefully Tyler would be home soon with some ideas to make you feel better.

You grabbed the basket of bath bombs from under the sink while the tub filled with warm water. Tyler was always sure to keep plenty of bath soaks and scented candles in the bathroom for you to use whenever you needed them. He knew that it was one of the few things that always seemed you calm you down or cheer you up, especially when he was away on tour and unable to physically be there for you.

You decided on a fruity scented one and tossed it unceremoniously into the tub. It began to fizzle and spread colors throughout the water. You stood frozen for a moment, mesmerized by the patterns, until you realized that the water needed to be shut off before the entire tub overflowed.

The water was warm as you stepped into it, but not too hot that it was unbearable. Your muscles instantly began to relax as they became submerged, and for a moment you forgot about all the thoughts that had been swirling in your head all morning. It wasn’t long before they all came rushing back, once again plaguing your mind.

You ended up spending close to half an hour soaking in the tub, just listening to music and scrolling casually through your phone. The water eventually started to grow cold and you decided it was long past time you get out of the bath. It had been nice to soak in the warm water for awhile, although your mood didn’t seem to have improved at all.

As soon as you dried off, you pulled on one of Tyler’s shirts and headed downstairs. You had just reached the bottom of the stairs when you heard someone unlocking the front door. Panic washed over you for a moment before you realized it was probably only Tyler arriving home from his meetings.

The door swung open, revealing Tyler carrying a multitude of bags on his arms. You quickly rushed over and took some of them from him, which he seemed thankful for.

“Hey,” he smiled.

“What’s all this?” you asked.

He shook his head, “Merch prototypes, paperwork, concert stuff to review. You name it, it’s probably in here.”

You followed Tyler into the office where he began to stack all of the bags into the corner.

“But the meetings were good?” you asked as you handed him a bag.

“Yeah, we got a lot of stuff done. You know me, though. I would have rather spent the morning here with you.”

He turned around and gave you a quick kiss. A smile crossed your face for a moment, but it was quick to fade away. Tyler didn’t seem to notice.

“How has your morning been?” he asked as he walked out of the office. You followed him.

“Um, it’s been ok, I guess.”

Tyler stopped walking and turned to face you. His eyebrows were furrowed.

“You know I don’t believe that for a second.”

You sighed. There was no way Tyler would let you just brush this entire situation off.

“My morning has been awful, and it seems like no matter what I try to do to feel better, I always end up in the same spot.”

“You tried your favorite movie?”

“Yeah.”

“And you went on a drive?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you take a bath?”

“Ty, trust me, I tried everything.”

He sighed and rubbed a hand along the back of his neck, “There has to be something we can do to help you feel better. Do you want me to grab my uke?”

“I don’t think it’s going to help,” you shrugged. “Nothing else has worked.”

“Then we’ll find a way to make it work.”

“We really don’t have to. I can just ride this out. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.”

“Absolutely not,” Tyler said, taking hold of your hand. “I don’t want to see you spend the rest of today miserable.”

You allowed Tyler to pull you towards the music room, as reluctant about this entire plan as you were. He sat you down in a chair and then crossed the room to grab his ukulele from its spot. Just being with Tyler had already made you feel a little better, but you were still far from feeling ok.

“Alright, we need to make this special,” Tyler muttered, more to himself than anything.

He was wandering around the room, obviously lost in thought as he tuned his ukulele. You watched him as you absentmindedly swayed from side to side in the chair.

“I’ve got it,” he smiled after a few minutes of contemplation. “Come on.”

You sighed as you got out of the chair and followed Tyler back into the living room. He stopped right in the middle of the room.

“What are we doing?” you asked.

“Put your hands on my shoulders.”

“What?”

“Put your hands on my shoulders. You know, like when we slow dance.”

“Why?”

“It’s all part of the plan.”

“Ok,” you said, although you still weren’t really sure what was going on.

Tyler began to strum on his ukulele and you instantly recognized the opening chords of the song. It was the song that had been playing when you first met and, coincidentally, one of your favorite songs. Tyler began to sway a little as he played his uke, prompting you to do the same.

It was hard not to laugh as you thought of how dorky the two of you must look from an outside perspective. Tyler noticed this, but he just continued to play the song with a smile on his face. You began to loosen up a little and sway a bit more.

“There’s that smile that I love,” Tyler said once he finished the song.

“Who knew that slow dancing in the living room would be so effective?”

“Me,” he grinned before giving you another kiss. “Do you want me to play another song?”

“I would love that.”

“Ty!” you laughed as he went jumping over the back of the couch.

“What?” he grinned as he landed somewhat gracefully.

“Be careful!”

“Sorry, I just got really into it,” he laughed.

You and Tyler had spent the last two hours singing and dancing to any song that you could think of. The worries that had plagued your mind throughout the morning were long gone, now replaced with song lyrics and watching Tyler’s stunts in the living room.

“We should probably make dinner soon,” you said with a glance at the clock. “I’m getting hungry… and tired.”

Tyler stuck out his bottom lip, “Can I play you one more song?”

“One more,” you said, although you would willingly listen to him play music for as long as he would let you.

“Ok, come over here and sit.”

You took a seat on the couch across from Tyler.

“I don’t know if this really qualifies as a love song, but I still want to play it for you,” he said.

You sat and listened intently as Tyler played Build Me Up Buttercup for you. It was impossible to keep the smile off of your face as he smiled like an idiot throughout the entire performance. He bit his lip as he played the final chord and looked up at you.

“I love you, buttercup,” he smiled.

“I love you too, darling,” you giggled.

He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to your lips. You should have known that Tyler would be able to cheer you up in an instant, no matter how bad you had been feeling.

“Let me go put this away and then we can start dinner,” he said.

“Ok.”

“So, are you feeling any better?” Tyler asked as he returned from putting his uke away.

“Much better, thanks to you,” you smiled.

“That’s what I like to hear,” he said.

You stood up and joined Tyler in the kitchen. He immediately wrapped an arm around you and pulled you into his side as some form of a hug.

“Thank you so much, Ty.”

“I would do anything just to see you smile.”

You leaned against his shoulder and smiled, wondering how you had gotten lucky enough to find someone who loved you so much.

80 notes · View notes

sellinout · 6 years

Text

TRANSCRIPT for EPISODE 1

Hello,

I’ve started on the process of transcribing to text the entirety of each episode. This should have been ready for launch, but better late than never.

[music]

TIM WILLIAMS: If it would’ve been money I would’ve kept going. But all that stress and everything, like the years of really trying to make that work, it was never really up to me how good or bad it did.

MIKE MOSCHETTO: Just one of many lessons learned the hard way from today’s guest, Tim Williams of Our Lady and Ritual Apparel. I’m Mike Moschetto, and this is Sellin’ Out.

[music post: “I’m a casino that pays nothing when you win / please put your money in”]

MIKE: Hey! Thank you so much for joining me – I’m Mike Moschetto you’re listening to Sellin’ Out: a spaghetti western about music and money that takes place in a town that just ain’t big enough for the two of ‘em.

No, it’s my podcast! It’s the first episode of the podcast and I do think because of that it will be helpful for me to spend a little bit of time setting it up, lest you think it’s just another “band dudes talkin’ about band stuff” show, and...you know it’s gonna be some of that from time to time I’m sure, but ideally the conversations that you’re gonna hear today and going forward are meant to discuss the economics of creative endeavors. And when I say “economics,” your eyes have probably glazed over by now but if you haven’t already hit +15, I don’t mean that I’m gonna restrict this to matters pecuniary because that would get old pretty fast. No, what I mean by “economics” is incentives; I’m talking about motivation, the sacrifices people make to pursue their art and sustainability – or I guess the lack thereof.

For my own part I tend to take sort of a fatalistic attitude toward my quote-unquote “music career” which I guess should be fairly obvious by my turn toward podcasting...but I often vacillate between this sad resignation that the scene I grew up in is in some state of decline, and a more optimistic tone and vicarious joy in the successes of my friends and just general admiration at the lengths people will go to follow their passions and hopefully you’ll hear that range. Maybe not every episode but over the arc of the entire show. So if you’re interested in art and music and you want to hear this frank and inglorious conversations about how pursuits are bought and sold, you’ll find those here...warts and all.

So now finally I’m pleased to introduce my guest for today: Tim Williams. Tim is a graphic designer and, pursuant to our conversation today, was the vocalist, guitarist and primary songwriter of the Springfield, IL-based band Our Lady. Now Our Lady hasn’t been an active band in a few years but I still can’t recommend their music highly enough. You’ll hear some of it peppered throughout the show. They’re one of the best bands I’ve ever had the pleasure of touring with and Tim is one of the best friends I’ve made through this whole music thing, so I thought it only appropriate to have him as my first guest. Talking to Tim I was reminded of a lot of things that exemplify DIY touring, at least in my experience and the things that made me want to start this show and talk about these issues – not just the downs, and there are kind of a lot of downs with Tim’s story, but also the ups, like, you know, landing on your feet after your band ends. And since Our Lady disbanded band in 2016, Tim and his now-wife Molli started Ritual Apparel, which is a fitness and specifically powerlifting-oriented apparel company and lifestyle brand. So we chatted about that move from focusing on your band to focusing on your brand and whether that’s a distinction without a difference. We chatted about freelance life and DIY and stagnation and lots more, so without further preamble, here’s Tim.

[music]

MIKE: I wanna start with the first time that I kinda ran into you, not literally but by reputation at least, and this would’ve been when Aviator was on tour in 2013, beginning of 2013 – we played at a punk house in Huntington, WV and we ended up staying at a different punk house in town, and either you had just been through or you were coming through soon again or something. But the folks that put us up were saying, “Oh, have you guys seen Our Lady? They’re fuckin’ incredible,” yada yada yada...and then it would be another year or so before we ended up seeing that for ourselves, and another year before we did that ten-day run together. But it sounds like by that point in the beginning of 2013 you guys had already been making the rounds and leaving quite an impression on people. So what I’m wondering is, was Our Lady really active from the jump or did you kinda start slow and ramp up?

TIM: It was definitely a slow burn. We started off and it was just like me writing acoustic songs in my apartment…

MIKE: And how old were you? Where were you in your life at that point?

TIM: Maybe 19?

MIKE: Oh man.

TIM: Yeah, so I was just writing songs and we would get together with our friends and just kinda get drunk and learn these songs. And they were really bad songs...like, really bad songs. I’d never written songs before. I’d been a vocalist in metal and hardcore bands up until that point.

MIKE: Okay, so this wasn’t your first band, but was this the first band that you really pushed and went out on the road and tried?

TIM: It wasn’t the first band I’d been on the road with, actually. I’d been on the road with a band called Scavenger before that was like, a tech metal band and I just did vocals.

MIKE: Nasty. [laughs]

TIM: Yeah… [laughs] It was my first thing that I really, really cared about. Like I inevitably quit Scavenger just because it was too much of a...they lived in a different town, I always had to get rides, they expected a lot of out me. They were really going for it at the time. I’d just gotten out of military school not long ago and I was really concerned with girls and drinking and doing, you know, just dirtbag stuff. So I was coming out of that phase of wanting to do those things, and I started writing these songs and it just kind of fell into place. And then I got a really solid group of people and a version of Our Lady did its first tour, maybe 2 or so years before we actually started doing the version of Our Lady that you know.

MIKE: Okay, and what’s the difference between those versions? OBviously you said you were writing on acoustic, was that still the case at that point?

TIM: Yeah, it was definitely all acoustic. It was more of a folk-punk thing. A band hit us up on MySpace – this is how long this was ago – and they were like, “Hey, we’re doing this tour...do you guys wanna come?” And we were like, “Yeah!” It was a band called The Almanac Shouters.

MIKE: That sounds really folk-punk.

TIM: Like WAY more folk-punk than we were. We were kind of like...loud emo, loud acoustic emo.

MIKE: “Emo” as totally a blanket term, obviously...kind of an “E-word,” we’ll say.

TIM: Yeah.

MIKE: So Our Lady starts as just you and then kind of balloons up to being 4 pieces, 5 pieces...after a couple of years you hit the road, and so how are you running things internally? Are you handling all the financials, is everyone kind of putting in for expenses? Or because it’s your “baby,” are you shouldering most of that burden?

TIM: In the beginning it was definitely like I said, just me writing songs. And then Molli came into the picture as teh first solid person in the lineup, and this is even before her and I were together. She was just really into the idea of being a girl in a band, which at that time was not as common as it is now. I kind of drove us to make a lot of big decisions – to go on tour, to buy amps and stuff like that when we first started playing what is a semblance of what we are now. We went through a lot of members in the beginning before we toured or anyone knew who we were, just trying to figure it out. And as it came down to when we were really, really going, Molli was the logistics side. She did financials and handled all that. I was everything that involved the art, so I wrote all the songs, wrote all the lyrics, kept up on all the social media, did the merchandise, worked out the record stuff with labels and brokered all of that stuff. So while Molli handled a lot of the actual action of doing this I set forth the plans for doing these things.

MIKE: I’m glad you brought up doing the merch and all this other stuff. Now, relative to putting more and more effort into Our Lady, when did you start doing graphic design? Or have the two always gone hand-in-hand? What came first?

TIM: I’ve always been interested in art, but more so in music. At the time that Our Lady started touring I’d probably been playing guitar for a solid three years. Graphic design stuff really came super gradual. We started out paying artists to do stuff and as we started to do more and more we realized that we weren’t going to be able to feasibly afford it with the budget we were working with, so I started to do more and more and more, and I also always played around on Photoshop, so the two simultaneously grew.

MIKE: I’m glad you put it that way, because I was gonna say that I imagine there’s some artistic freedom in not only being able to take your musical vision a step further and translate it into a visual medium and define the aesthetic better than anyone else can, but also not having to pay to outsource for merch designs, tour admats and album layouts to other people. I know you’ve worked with other designers but it does free up some capital to put into the really costly things like recording maybe, or saving for a van.

TIM: Or buying your own merch. It was honestly less about the fiscal decision, it was more about your first point which is being able to recreate what I see as the vision. Although as this went on and the band got more and more and more and more serious, it ended up being a basis for arguments in the band. Like arguing over methodical differences between design A and design B, how it relates to the concept of whatever we were trying to accomplish. And when usually you’d be mad at a designer or you’d be unhappy with something the designer does, the band had to talk to me.

MIKE: Right – you can kind of compartmentalize it maybe and keep it professional, but when everything is in-house there’s more of a personality conflict. It comes back to you more directly and it’s easier to get frustrated.

TIM: Yeah, and I think that’s actually my biggest flaw in the band, is taking a lot of criticism from the bandmates. Because I did so much of the art stuff on my own, I think at some points it would hurt my wimpy little feelings that they didn’t like something.

MIKE: From doing the recording of my own bands, believe me. When I feel like nailed something...

TIM: Absolutely, like you’ll come in and you’re super excited about it and they’ve got 10 edits that they want. As it goes on, as with your recording you obviously got better at recording. Well, same with me and design. I started to be a good designer and when they would say they didn’t like stuff, I would be like, “How about you just trust the guy that knows what he’s doing?” MIKE: “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, pal.”

TIM: Yeah, but also that’s unfair.

MIKE: It is, because it comes down to how much agency you want to give your bandmates.

TIM: I always wanted everyone to be really involved because the people who weren’t involved with the band were always the people who ended up leaving.

MIKE: It’s like I said, the amount of agency they have to make decisions and to see themselves in the final product. And speaking of doing a number of things at once, I just recalled now that you were also running a DIY label for a little bit in this span of time? TIM: Yeah, I was. My friend Ada who’s from Kansas City and I had started a DIY label. I ended up backing out of it because Ada had some really big ideas for it and I was still very much doing the band stuff, and she wasn’t anymore. So I didn’t really have the financial backing to make a lot of these big ideas happen.

MIKE: A label especially, that’s tough. You didn’t put out any of your own Our Lady stuff on Guard, did you?

TIM: Yeah actually, the split 7” between Estates and Our Lady.

MIKE: That’s right! For some reason I thought you kept them separate, but I knew there was a reason I was bringing up, other than you just wear a lot of hats.

[music]

MIKE: I think about this a lot with jack-of-all-trades kind of DIY folks: obviously utilizing the skill sets within your own pool of bandmates has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is keeping expenses down, but do you suspect that approach might accelerate burnout and maybe shorten a band’s lifespan? Or is it all totally circumstantial? Obviously there’s no control group…

TIM: I don’t think there’s a right answer. I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally flop because of it, and then other times I see bands go all-out in the beginning and they totally get huge. So that one all-out push is really all they need. I think it really comes down to the idea and also what’s happening in music - how much you should push right now.

MIKE: Obviously this is just a little theory I’m developing in real-time but it seems to me that if one isn’t spreading oneself so thin, maybe it’s a little easier to roll with the punches, which I want to get to now if you don’t mind talking about those punches, because it seems like the universe took a big shit on you toward the very end. Would you be okay talking about that?

TIM: Yeah, of course.

MIKE: So the last record that you put out, ‘Lure’ – which is excellent by the way – things didn’t really shake out the way that I think you were hoping.

TIM: No. [laughs]

MIKE: So what exactly transpired?

TIM: I spent a year writing that record. I had a serial killer wall in my bedroom where I was weaving it all together. I had a concept that I really wanted to get across in an order that I saw it panning out. I had this whole grand plan, right? And I just spent a year driving myself insane over this record. Bob from Mayfly was really adamant about wanting us to do a 12”. I didn’t really want to do a 12” just yet, because as far as the rest of the world was concerned, we were a band with an EP and a split 7” and to jump onto doing a 12” with Mayfly didn’t seem like, at the time, the best route to go. But I also realized that volume of music was something that we lacked, so I put my whole head into it, my everything into it. And the rest of the band did too. Kyle and I worked tirelessly at get rhythms – really interesting rhythms – onto the record. We spent a year really grinding for it in a really, particularly terrible recording situation because it was 110º degrees throughout the week of recording.

MIKE: Oh my god. [laughs]

TIM: And the place we were recording didn’t have air. Well it did have air, but we couldn’t run it because it showed up in the recording.

MIKE: But you spent all this time – was part of that fleshing out a release plan? Like, “gonna hit the road big time and tour on this record for a bit?”

TIM: That was the plan. Up until then it had been a few solid years of touring all the time.

MIKE: What is all the time? Some bands really do tour like 6 months out of the year...when we toured it felt like all the time but realistically it was like...2 months out of the year and it was every 3 months we’d go out. What was the frequency at the most?

TIM: At its highest point it was 2 weeks on 2 weeks off.

MIKE: Holy moly.

TIM: That was in the very beginning, like when we first started touring. And then the lowest it ever got was probably while we were recording the record. I think we did one tour that whole year. You know what? Actually I think we did two still. We spent this whole year doing this. We did have really big plans...a big reason we decided to go with Mayfly was that they offered to pay for a lot of promo stuff and do all this press for it. Essentially ever since the record left our hands it was just plagued with problems. The test presses came back bad, there was like...a sound or something, and it was a big deal...I don’t know, I don’t even remember exactly what was the problem. And then the release date ended up getting pushed way back, which screwed up all of our tour plans. We had to cancel a tour; we had to cancel a release show. And this isn’t why we broke up necessarily…

MIKE: But it couldn’t have helped.

TIM: No [laughs] it really didn’t. And like at this point we are road-worn. All of us are living in damn near squalor to make this band happen, you know what I mean? Living on the end of the rope constantly, just no money for anything ever. It was all about doing the band, getting on tour, recording this record...there was nothing else. All that stress after all that happened just kind of imploded.

MIKE: I can only imagine. I’m familiar with the rhythm of basically working while you’re not touring, going out, blowing all of it and having to come back and recoup. So on that subject, what are you doing during Our Lady - I know you’re obviously doing graphic design on the side as part of your income, but what else are you doing to supplement that band capital?

TIM: Honestly, I was on the hustle the entire time. I sold and constantly promoted Our Lady merch. When we weren’t on tour I was working on booking the tours or writing the record and just constantly going through every avenue I can to get graphic design work because I didn’t have time to manage the band, manage booking tours, manage writing the songs and everything that I was doing while holding down a job.

MIKE: So you’re totally freelance.

TIM: Yeah, except I did work part time at a coffeehouse.

MIKE: Obviously anything freelance like that is feast or famine, and then any job that you hold down in the meantime, I assume the pay wasn’t...amazing.

TIM: Yeah, terrible.

MIKE: This is a huge thing in DIY, but the other side, the advantage of these low-paying fly-by-night jobs is that they’re pretty flexible with you being able to take time off generally. Obviously they could have other boots on the ground while you’re gone…

TIM: They are. You literally are looking for a job where you’re not special, so it’s like the exact opposite thing that everyone in the world’s looking for. Really though, the reward for it is getting to go on tour.

MIKE: Oh yeah. For the time that you’re doing it, it’s so worth it.

TIM: I only thought this towards the end, like maybe the last two years but I denied it for the better half of that...I think that it stopped being a reward for me. I think that I started dreading going on tour.

MIKE: In what sense?

TIM: I kind of unwantingly had obtained this odd...leader role, and I never wanted that role. I felt myself tasked constantly to keep everyone in the band happy with what was going on. And at this point I think I was a little traumatized from losing members, so knowing that Our Lady was a moving vessel, that I wanted to keep going, I would constantly stress myself about how everyone was feeling and if they were feeling included enough and if we were also spending an adequate amount of time doing fun things as a band, you know?

MIKE: Yeah, no I do.

TIM: I know, you play that role too!

MIKE: Yeah, I think I’ve gotten better at delegating...for what it’s worth now...but I’ve been that guy, and it’s funny that you should say that too because it sounded like you had Molli doing some of the grunt work and crunching numbers and things like that. Did she pick up the slack when you were feeling down in the dumps about it?

TIM: Molli being in the band is the only thing that really made it go so long. She kind of made all the stuff really happen as far as figuring out how we were gonna have enough money as a band to do this or that, and I and the rest of the band were more like, “We should do this!” And she’d be like, “Okay, well we need to figure out how we can actually accomplish that task instead of talking about it.” And she’s just a great bookkeeper and she’s really good with numbers and she’s really good at being really organized. And also it helped because we were in a relationship, but then again sometimes that was a flaw too. If she got into it with another band member it felt personal to me, and it shouldn’t have.

MIKE: It’s a tightrope there for sure.

TIM: and there’s no correct way to walk that.

MIKE: From seeing other bands in a similar situation of having two people in the band in a relationship, I have to say the way that you guys carried yourselves was far and away better than most of the other ones I’ve observed in working with bands in the studio and being on the road, so...you’ve got agood thing goin on there obviously.

TIM: We had kind of developed this thing that we weren’t in a relationship on tour, we were just business partners.

MIKE: Interesting...because then you go home and you live to gether and you have your normal life.

TIM: And I also think that was a big part of the tiredness of tour. I felt like especially toward the end Molli and I spent more time together as business partners than we did being in an actual long-term relationship.

MIKE: So all of this combined, is htat what kind of prompts the decision to end Our Lady?

TIM: You know, Our Lady was a hellride, all the way through. And I say that in a non-sarcastic way, it really really was. We did a really good job of making it not seem like that on the surface…

MIKE: I guess so.

TIM: ...but there were problems constantly. A lot of financial, a lot of member stuff...just shit happened to us. We were one of those bands, it was like always something was happening to us. A few of my personal friends would make jokes about how Our Lady was cursed, because so much stuff would just happen. I think we maybe had like...two or three tours in total where something didn’t go wrong with the van…

MIKE: Even the one that we did!

TIM: Yeah, that first day something major went wrong with our brand new van! But we got really used to dealing with that chaos, so in the end it happened at a practice. And Kyle kind of threw it on the table...I don’t remember what we came to in the conversation but he was just like, “it’s done.” I was like, “I agree, it’s done.” And I remember feeling really sad at first, then Molli went on a long drive out in the country after that and then I realized how much stress I’d put on myself...how much expectation I’d put into this thing, and how it was never really up to me how good or bad it did. All that stress and everything, the years of really trying to make it work, it never really was on me. People when I go to shows now will be like, wary about talking to me about Our Lady. And I’m like, “you don’t understand, I don’t care. I’m in such a better place now.” I’m not upset about it, I’m not mad, I don’t regret what I did. It was an experience I wouldn’t trade anything for, and I learned almost all of my skills from doing that.

[music]

MIKE: I agree with the sentiment that I wouldn’t trade it for anything but is there anything you think could be done, maybe not specific to your band but what would you say is the biggest impediment to the sustainability of it.

TIM: Oh, I’m wringing my hands right now because I have so much to say about this...DIY is a very, very fast-paced moving vessel. Things get phased out ultra-quick. In under a year, you’ll see genres of music and you’ll start thinking they sound corny because no one’s doing them anymore. Venues that really base themselves off a certain vibe or sound, they fail - that’s just how DIY is. If you don’t see it for that, maybe take a step back and look at it because it changes constantly. Another thing is, tons of people will go out of their way to support bands where their “like” on Facebook or their, you know, share on Facebook or their “like” on Instagram is a drop in a very large bucket, but they won’t go out of their way to do the same for a band who’s really trying. There used to be this joke - Kyle at the time had a lot of Instagram followers on his personal account.

MIKE: He did, didn’t he?

TIM: Yes, but now I have way more which is no big deal...just throwing that out there. [laughs] Anyway, the joke was that if he posted a selfie, over 100 likes every time. If he posted anything about Our Lady...25.

MIKE: Oh yeah, and it’s hard to know if that’s algorithmic, if that just isn’t getting out because something is looking at the raw data of the image and saying “oh, this isn’t a human face, this is a bunch of text on some clever flyer,” you know what I mean? Or if it’s localized, like “we’re playing a show in Champaign tonight!”

TIM: Sometimes it’s that factor, the localization factor, absolutely. Not everyone’s gonna see or give a shit about that, but they still should! There’s still a band from your town somewhere very fucking far away from you, trying to do shit that’s gonna bring shit back to your scene, it’s gonna bring better bands back to your scene. If you see a show flyer on Instagram and you’re involved in DIY culture, you should probably be liking that shit because you’re a supporter of DIY music. You’re a supporter of your friend’s band.

MIKE: Do you think it’s hard to overcome the signal to noise ratio? I feel like just from when we started to now there are so many more bands, and so many more bands that are able and trying to tour? So people’s attention can’t go as far as it maybe once did?

TIM: From the outside perspective of still having a foot in the door with DIY and keeping up with it through the internet, DIY music in general is kind of coming to a point where it’s not...needed anymore. The platform is shrinking. A lot of it has to do with the specific nature of people’s tastes in the age of Spotify, Apple Music...we’re able to be force-fed only the things we like all the time. Going out to a show and seeing five different bands instead of only seeing the one band that you like is becoming obsolete. Also it’s because mainstream media dipped their pinky into emo because they realized they could make some money off of it. But DIY has kind of reverted from that and it’s now made itself to where mainstream media is almost never going to do that again. I think that the “band” thing is kind of dying.

MIKE: Oh yeah, I think about that. I don’t know if there’s any way to really quantify that, but it seems harder to start one and it seems harder to get off the ground and make it what you want to be.

TIM: I think that the success ratio is just far less.

MIKE: It was never that high.

TIM: No, but always there’s been a band or a musician who’s playing a guitar or has a backing band that has been big. Like, really big. Really, really big. And we don’t really have that right now, aside from maybe Ed Sheeran. The new way to become a successful band is not through DIY.

MIKE: Define “successful” for me though. I hate to put it on the nose like that, but is it a self-sustaining thing or do you go home and work a job but you don’t have to worry about the next run?

TIM: I’m defining success on a high level-

MIKE: Like a professional musician type thing.

TIM: Exactly, where your job is to be in the band and do the band solely. That is it, that is your 100% job, 365 days a year. Like how Slipknot is. Ed Sheeran, another good example - any pop star, anything like that because all of those people used to be bands, and now they’re pop stars. Do you see what I’m saying by that? It’s a little bit of a muddy way to express what I’m saying.

MIKE: Right, they used to be “bands” as in they used to be performing on some circuit where they’re making the same rounds until they got some big break.

TIM: Absolutely. We used to have your Green Days and stuff - we still have a lot of bands from that generation when things were happening, when bands were getting signed to major labels and it was getting pumped out like that…

MIKE: Maybe on my fingers and toes I can count bands that operate in something analogous to our world that can call themselves “professional musicians,” and it’s not even everyone in the band either. Maybe the singer doesn’t have a full time job, like his full time job is the band. His or her full time job is doing things to advance their own career, but that is such a small percentage.

TIM: Yeah, and it’s also still nowhere near the level of success that we’re talking about.

MIKE: No, you’re living - probably like you alluded to - “in squalor” in a lot of ways. We did a tour with Lume, who you obviously know well and toured with them as well - they do a lot of things to really keep costs down, like they don’t stay in hotels - they sleep in their own van. They have a stove in their van and do meal prep on the road, which is crazy because I think a lot of guys look at touring as being reprieve from their normal lives and the thing through which they realize their own humanity, right? So maybe they treat every two-week tour up to a certain point like a vacation...they spend, they have a little fun with it, but those guys (Lume) really go all-in and try to make it happen in a way.

TIM: They put themselves in a position where they can keep doing it because they still love to do it. Talking to Lume, it’s...so refreshing. Because they haven’t been doing it long enough to be really jaded, and I will full-out admit that touring jaded me and the way that I felt about it. Lume is coming into a really hard world though, and they will get there. But as of right now talking to them and the way they put themselves in that position, they’re handling it as smart as they possibly can. They’re gonna be more successful than the band standing next to them just on the tact with which they approach the situation.

MIKE: They do love it, and that’s huge because it’s one of those things where if you don’t - if you have any reservations - it’s a house of cards, man. The slightest perturbation, or really a series of them all in a row, domino effect, can just grind things to a halt for everyone.

TIM: I’ve been on tour with a lot of bands and seen a lot of bands play. You start talking to people in bands...they don’t actually like doing this anymore. They’re just doing this because it’s what they know how to do.

MIKE: Yeah, I mean there’s a certain thought process to it, it’s so pervasive. It’s the only thing that seems natural, but I’ve always felt like for me, it’s in the act of creation - writing songs and the negotiation process of putting a tune together and having a finished song and being like, “oh fuck yeah, that’s awesome” - vs. having to go out and perform night after night after night and try to put yourself...because the music that you and I make, and I would say is at least ideally emblematic of DIY, is very personal. It’s from the heart. You want to put yourself in that same frame of mind to perform it but it’s exhausting physically and emotionally, and a strain on the wallet of all things.

TIM: Like you said, it’s just taxing all around. I would hate to sit around and blame my failings on my financial situation because that’s not what it was. If it would’ve been money, I would’ve kept going.

MIKE: So looking to the future of DIY as it pertains to emotional hardcore bands or “emo” or “indie” or whatever, who takes up the task of continuing to make that music for the people who still...you know, if it becomes an even more unprofitable venture, does it continue to shrink? Or will there always be some kind of hangers-on?

TIM: I think there will always be hangers-on, but I also think DIY shoots itself in its foot with its involvement in political discourse.

MIKE: Everything is right now though.

TIM: Yes, and DIY music has always been more or less a political thing. The problem is that people with very little difference in political views are fighting each other. I think that kills the DIY scene in general. DIY will always exist, but I definitely think as of now it will continue to climb, but I’m also not an authority and shit happens.

MIKE: Oh neither am I, I just think for all the ways that it does shoot itself in the foot and make things difficult for both artists and for fans, it also is very adaptive. So at the beginning there probably weren’t as many house venues. When one closes another might open up, even if it’s six months or a year later, if enough people want it. It’s cyclical.

TIM: Yes, it is, but it’s so different now. The age of Facebook, Instagram and all this stuff...it changes things so much. DIY is not a dictation of fashion anymore, and that’s a really weird thing to accept as a person who’s running a clothing line. Fashion exists as its own entity and people adopt things from fashion into DIY when it used to be kind of the opposite.

MIKE: So you’re saying it’s importing more cultural or subcultural influence than it’s exporting? It’s not creating the culture, it’s synergizing it into something else?

TIM: Exactly. DIY has always been really cyclical, and for the longest time now we’ve been in a repeat phase. I’m sure something new and great will pop up in the next five years…

MIKE: Until that gets chewed up and spit out. That seems to be culture as a whole; the thing that’s new is the approach or the aesthetic, and we’re just wrapping all of our old cultural hallmarks in it. There’s probably a lot of throughlines between emo when it came out in the late ‘90s and the emo they’re making now, the “emo revival.” But there’s so much character in a something like Cap’n Jazz vs. something that’s meant to be derivative of that purposefully.

TIM: And we see the same themes in movies and stuff that we see in music as well. That’s kind of what culture in general does, as we’ve discussed.

[music]

MIKE: So at this point I’ll give you a chance to plug Ritual, which is your newest venture that seems to have been the silver lining that comes out of all of the unpleasantness surrounding Our Lady. Do you think that on a subconscious level you’ve been able to apply any of what you’ve learned from that experience, whether it’s design or ordering merch and knowin what people want - even the promotional side of it, like marketing - to what you and Molli are doing with Ritual.

TIM: Yeah, a ton of shit, especially in the beginning. It was kind of like repainting the same picture with less colors.

MIKE: Like, rather than having merchandise be an ancillary product to help support the music, that is THE main output.

TIM: Exactly. When I first start doing it, I was like, “Oh this is gonna be a piece of cake...it’s like one aspect of the thing I did for six years.” And it’s totally not. It’s a super hard thing to keep up with because I would say I ran out of the stuff I learned from the band in the first month.

MIKE: Wow.

TIM: That’s when I reached the topping point of “okay, that’s what I know...what do I do now?” But also I think that has to do with the fact that Ritual started off more successful than any other band thing that I’d ever tried to do.

MIKE: If you applied everything that you could in that first month, it seems like what you were talking about earlier, that initial “push” to get to the next level and make things perpetual motion, self-sustaining situation - kind of panned out better than you expected?

TIM: Absolutely. Definitely going into it knowing the stuff with the band helped to get people stoked for something. I think like, two weeks or so before we actually had any clothes I had started an Instagram and a Facebook, and I was posting little snippets of imagery being like, “Yo, this is coming.” This has also been an idea in the back of my mind for a long time because for about the last two years of Our Lady I got really into lifting and progressively more into powerlifting. It had become a bigger part of my mind. Actually, one of the more hilarious things that was said at the end of Our Lady was being like, “Hey, well at least I can focus on [lifting] now.” It was funny to me and Molli because it was such an unconscious shift in what we wanted to focus on. We didn’t expect to feel that way when Our Lady ended but...definitely not trying to seem in any type of arrogance or hyping up what I’m doing with Ritual, but the reason I say it was more successful than anything the band ever did is not because of some sort of financial goal that I had, because that didn’t exist. It’s more of what I expected to take to run something like that, vs. what it actually ended up taking. When we launched a bunch of people actually ordered...you know when you put new merch up for the band like “hey we got new merch!” and nothing happens? Maybe a few orders, like 2-3 over three days? Unless you’re a gigantic band, then of course your stuff probably sells a little better.

MIKE: I’m sure it’s actually still, just scaled up, the same effect.

TIM: Looking back, we sold our merch for a ridiculously cheap price. We were making like $2-3 maybe off of those shirts, when we paid $10 to get them. That was just bad business, we didn’t know any better. When Ritual started it was really odd because Molli and I planned it out really well. We had a lot of conversations about what we wanted to do, how much money we expected to earn back from it, which is a conversation we were never able to have in Our Lady. It just kind of started, and now it’s something...it’s something, you know? I find myself stressed out all the time that I can’t keep up with it. The biggest problem for Ritual is that I can’t keep shit on my shelves, I can’t keep product on my shelves.

MIKE: It’s a good problem to have. It’s no less stressful, but it’s a good sign I guess.

TIM: You know, people say that, but that’s because they don’t have that problem. No, it is a good problem, but it is pretty much a constant stress.

MIKE: A good problem is still a problem.

TIM: Exactly, and it is growing. There are tons of people who have married themselves to this idea that we put out, and that was purposeful to a certain extent, but this reaction...we never expected that. People who I don’t even know, who aren’t directly involved with the company, have quotes on their Instagram profiles and will tag us and I have no idea who they are. They’re not athletes or reps of ours.

MIKE: That’s another thing too, is that you have athletes you endorse or who are repping your brand. Is there a parallel here? Whether you’re sponsoring a meet or you have an athlete on your roster, is that like how some bands have a hookup through Ernie Ball or some other weird brand that maybe even isn’t musical?

TIM: Yeah, definitely comparable to that because really what a sponsorship is for us right now is you get free shit or heavily, heavily-discounted shit from us, and you know that in the future we will be paying for your competition fees.

MIKE: So that’s significant.

TIM: Yeah, but these are not big expenses. In the future that’s something I really want to do because I believe in the sport and I believe in the people that I’ve endorsed.

MIKE: And it seems like it’s growing.

TIM: Honestly it’s Crossfit. Thanks Crossfit, because you made all strength sports really popular.

[music]

MIKE: So that’s it for episode 1! If you enjoyed anything you heard and you want to support Tim’s endeavors I’ll have links and info in the description box of this episode. If you want to support this show, you can find out how to do that at patreon.com/sellinoutpodcast - I’m gonna have bonus content on there and I wanna hear from you about what that would be, so you can reach me at [email protected] or on Twitter @SellinOutAD. You can also leave a nice rating and review on Apple Podcasts or just tell your weirdo friend, and thanks! Theme music by Such Gold, the song is called “No Cab Fare.” Cover photo by Nick DiNatale. I’m Mike Moschetto, talk to you next time on Sellin’ Out.

#podcast #transcript #tim williams #our lady #ritual apparel #mayfly records #guard records #estates #crossfit #such gold #patreon

0 notes