Velvet Road - Normies Beware
A podcast about a band of misfits called Velvet Road, nothing is off limits. And all are welcome at our table but Normies Beware; profanity will be provided.
Velvet Road - Normies Beware
The Resonance of Loss and the Celebration of Live Sound
The raspy notes of a cold may have introduced this episode, but the warmth of shared memories soon takes center stage as we unwrap the emotional layers behind "Heaven Won't Wait" and "Come Back Home." It's not just about the melodies we've crafted, but the poignant tribute these songs pay to dear friends we've lost this year. Their stories, interwoven with ours, stir the soul, and the responses from their families remind us of music's power to heal and connect. The discussion then turns to the thrills of live performance, teasing our acoustic set at Lazy Palm and the joy of private events that await us, promising an authentic experience for everyone involved.
As we chart the course of our creative journey, the episode delves into the lively debates that drive our songwriting, showcasing the delicate balance between poetic expression and melodic flow. With Maelle's collaboration shining through our new track "Perception," separate from the Velvet Road project, we give you a taste of the freshness infused into our evolving sound. Brace yourself for a behind-the-scenes tour of our musical world, where the harmony of lyrics, chords, and the human element come together to forge unforgettable moments.
Well, hello, we're back. Episode 5, season 1 of the Velvet Road Podcast, and here we go. Here we go again. Right, kiddo, here we are. I'm sounding a little sick. That was very low-key. You got your phone sex voice going on, don't?
Speaker 2:you, I do. That's what this is, hi. Thanks for calling in this hotline, okay.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. All right, we're going to keep it PG for now. Again, we're glad to be back and we've got a number of things to talk about today. We do Again. Let's start out with some of the original music that's going on. We have two things, two songs now that are currently released.
Speaker 2:right, yeah, two, okay, come Back.
Speaker 1:Home. Yep, heaven Won't Wait. That's right, they're both out there. That's the one that Dr Dawn wrote. They're both out there on all the platforms.
Speaker 2:All the platforms.
Speaker 1:They're there. They're there for ready for streaming.
Speaker 2:I even made a little video for Heaven Won't Wait.
Speaker 1:It's up on YouTube for Velvet Road.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's doing well too. Not too terrible, Not too terrible. So, yeah, that's been quite the fun adventure. So there's some stories behind. Heaven Won't Wait, and I think we should talk about the creativity of the song and the process.
Speaker 1:Oh, sure, Well, it was Well it was finished.
Speaker 2:It's finished it was finished, and then we went back to the drawing board.
Speaker 1:It was finished, it's finished, it was finished. And then we went back to the drawing board. It was finished and I said, okay.
Speaker 2:And then we kind of went meh, I think the exact words were, it's fine, which is millennial talk for. It's not great?
Speaker 1:It's not great. And so what did we do?
Speaker 2:So I said we should redo it.
Speaker 1:And then there a dr don pushback with.
Speaker 2:No, I'm done. I'm done, okay, whatever yeah so we went back to the drawing board changing up a hair and I think now and I mean it's now and it's such a much better creative situation- yeah, what we did?
Speaker 1:we moved it to a minor key. We did, which is for those of you who don't really know the difference a minor key is more of a sad key.
Speaker 2:Sad key.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we took out some parts and I think it's a much better flow, much better song and the music fits the mood of the song a lot better, which is what we were looking for.
Speaker 2:And then we upped the tempo.
Speaker 1:A little bit.
Speaker 2:A little bit. We brought that tempo up, which was nice. I think when we originally wrote the song or when you did the song, it was a little slow yeah. And so it was like meh, meh Meh. And so our wonderful producer male, who also does keys and backup harmony for me, uh agreed. She was like yeah, it's a little slow.
Speaker 1:I think we were all just trying to be nice Totally, but it, the product is pretty good Now. The product is great now. Yeah, good we're.
Speaker 2:The product is pretty good now. The product is great now, yeah, and we're super excited about it and I'm excited to put it live on the stage. I think that'll be fun. Yeah, good feedback, a lot of good feedback, and actually who it was written for was some of your friends.
Speaker 1:Right, right. We got a lot of great feedback from them. Yeah, 2023 was a tough year. Lost three good friends Relatively close together. Yeah, relatively close together. So the purpose of writing the song was just to make a little tribute to their lives, and I wanted to send it out to all the widows first before we did anything else. And we did that, and I'm so appreciative of the kind words that they had. They were great words, so, mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned. Anything else is, as they say, huh, gravy on the taters. Oh, jesus, lord, help us.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's because I'm not feeling well, I'm not with it today. I'm like eh.
Speaker 1:Anything else is gravy on the taters, but that's good and your song out there.
Speaker 2:I have Come.
Speaker 1:Back Home.
Speaker 2:It's out and it's doing well and I'm super excited about that. And I'm also in the production of another song called I don't know. It's actually had many names.
Speaker 1:Many names.
Speaker 2:Right now it's Perception. It could change tomorrow to something else. Who knows? Yeah, right now the song's Perception and it's kind of an interesting tale it tells yeah, and so I'm excited about that one. That one is Dr Dawn. You will not be on that song. Nope, no one from Velvet Road will be. So that is just something Mayelle and I have put together and I think it's going to be a really cool song. Yeah, you know, there is something else. That's happening is I will be playing live at Lazy Palm with you, dr Dawn, and who else.
Speaker 1:Ryan.
Speaker 2:Dr Don and who else? Ryan, Ryan, oh jeez.
Speaker 1:Her head's in a bit of a fog today.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, you can tell I am not feeling the greatest guys, my kids, you know they're walking Petri dishes, so they gave me some nasty Ebola. Who knows, I might get sepsis, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I doubt it. I think we're going to be fine.
Speaker 2:Well, anyways, we'll be playing there on the 28th. We're just doing a little acoustics number and that'll be fun, and then we're doing a little private event on the 20th. That'll be fun. Just kind of get us back out there grooving.
Speaker 1:On the 26th.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we have another private event on the 26th. That's with you, dr don. That was something you set up, which is super exciting and then, um, there's a lot for velvet road that I think we have coming down the pipeline.
Speaker 2:We're still out there hunting, looking for those hunting and packing as well as what we do in fact, you know, know, it's interesting Every time we kind of have a new variant of Velvet Road, kind of how we go through this Well, this bar won't work for us now, but this place will. So now we're you know the vibe and everything kind of changes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and going back to the original two work that we're going to be doing, we have another one that's going to start.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Shoot, I totally got off on a tangent about what we're doing and totally forgot about that one, yeah, another one that's going to start called well, right now it's called Purgatory. It's called Purgatory. It's subject to change. You never know it's subject to change. Oh, that's a cool song.
Speaker 1:It's going to be a really cool song. It's really cool and, like Heaven Won't Wait, it's going to feature Velvet Road Players all the way across the board the goal for this song. Here we're going to produce it a little bit differently. We've got the bones of the song and we're just going to get the band together and play it, record it rough and then refine it. But that's the way.
Speaker 2:I'd like to do this song because it's going to be pretty powerful. Yeah, it has a vibe, it's definitely got a cool vibe to it.
Speaker 1:It's got a vibe to it and you know this is kind of cool to you know, get the music out there. And one thing that I think that we really take to heart is the quality of the sound and the, the lyrical, uh pieces of the music and uh just making sure that it's good when you write.
Speaker 2:you tend to be pretty wordy in your lyrics.
Speaker 1:That's not true. That's not true. Um, I put just the right amount of words.
Speaker 2:No, I always say it you're wordy.
Speaker 1:She says I'm wordy. Listen, it's hard to sing all the words you put in there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's and that's why I end up having to say can I change, can I cut this word out?
Speaker 1:Well, we'll agree.
Speaker 2:To disagree.
Speaker 1:That's right. No, no, that's pretty typical. That's really pretty typical of any writing process, because when I write something it's more of a poetic type writing and sometimes that doesn't fit in, but sometimes it fits in really great. Heaven Won't Wait. Didn't require too many variances, but we but uh, but you know, we've made it, we made it fit in for you. She gave me the hairy eyeball and and uh, it was yeah, yeah, it was all good.
Speaker 1:So that's that's coming to you. It's called Purgatory and uh, and whatever your song ends up being. Perception now, but during the next podcast we'll probably have that finalized Maybe.
Speaker 2:I feel like it's changed 700 times. I don't know. Yeah, we'll see. I think that's the fun, that's the creative processes, that's the fun part.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But you know it's fun, you know we're doing a lot going on and I think we'll see kind of what the summer brings. I'm looking forward to summer. Okay, besides the heat, I'm excited we're going to be at a couple bars this summer and then, again. We're still looking for those cool spots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've kind of been off the gig hunting trail for now.
Speaker 2:And we should talk about that yeah because we've had again.
Speaker 1:you know, when you get new members in you kind of have to adjust the set and it takes a while to get it to where we want it, to where we feel good enough to go out and play in public. So we're getting close on that aspect and we'll right now we're we're out looking for jobs in in the June July timeframe indoors.
Speaker 2:I can't even talk today, guys, oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:But uh in July we do have uh the job at uh Sage and Sand and and uh some other private events.
Speaker 2:We're pretty. We're getting pretty booked for October already which is nice. October actually seems, I think, is almost filled.
Speaker 1:Yeah, october's going to be good, you know. The weather starts changing.
Speaker 2:That's when gig season really starts picking up at least here in the Phoenix area for us At least, that's what we've seen because it's just so warm. Everything is you know.
Speaker 1:And you know working with Entertainment Solutions. They're the ones that booked us for the Peoria job. I'm sure that once the music starts back in the parks again in October, september, november, you might find us out in a few of those. Yeah we'll be getting out on a few of those, and those are fun. The Peoria gig I don't know if we talked about that in the last podcast. I don't know if we talked about that in the last podcast.
Speaker 2:I don't think we have.
Speaker 1:But there was probably 1,000 people there. Yeah, and nobody left.
Speaker 1:No one left and they seemed to be having a lot of fun and that was a great gig for us and just Just had fun. It was just, you know, the arrangement was great. Peoria did a great job of, you know, the sound and the stage and everything was very professional. And, boy, that certainly is nice from a performer standpoint when you don't have to worry about all those things. Right, yeah, all those things. Oh, right, yeah, it's, you know, that's one thing that you know. When you see a band playing out there and then you see a guy in the back of the room, you know, twisting knobs, so on and so forth, I think it's important to recognize that they're also a part of the band Totally. The sound guy, as we call them, you know, is like the IT guy. You know, we have the sound guy and they're, they're back there, you know, listening to the mix. You know, because when you're on a stage it sounds much different oh gosh, yeah, you know, I, I yeah by the third set.
Speaker 1:I can't hear myself, so I always get too loud and and and you know, and and and but if you have somebody at the back of the room that can control that, it's really nice. So we have somebody that runs sound for us on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for the majority of our gigs. Yeah, he does a great job. There are times where we have to run our own sound.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's fine, that's okay, we survive, we survive, we survive, we get through it. We have a great sound guy if we don't have him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, aka, dr Don.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Have you has? Has anybody noticed a trend here? Dr Don is really our, our carrier of all the equipment. So every gig if we have to bring equipment he's in here loading up sometimes I'll jump in and load up with him sometimes yeah, most of the time, most of the time, um set up at the gigs, yeah yeah, he's the one he's doing it.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm the. I'm the youngest guy in the group, so um, and then sound, sound.
Speaker 2:You know, if we don't have a sound guy, he's yeah the one doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I'm running sound for you on the 28th while playing too 26.
Speaker 2:The 28th, oh, the 28th. I keep getting my days mixed up.
Speaker 1:It's okay. You got me to keep track of these things, god.
Speaker 2:I mean literally, like if you look at the hierarchy in our band, Dr Don is literally carrying everybody, which, you know, I try to throw my weight in it there and there.
Speaker 1:You do, you do, but by that, what's my most important job though? What's my most important job now? The singer tamer, the singer tamer, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we have a joke, because I tend to get really spun up before a show, and he's really good at just like telling me to go find a bar stool and sit down, or he'll say OK, and he'll just let me spin and spin until I've spun myself out. But it's OK, that's he.
Speaker 1:It's a good job.
Speaker 2:It's. He's a good, a good manager of the band. That's really what he's turned into. He's the Papa Bear of all of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we hopefully will have somebody to take over that officially one day. Yeah, if anybody's listening that really wants to manage a band, come forward.
Speaker 2:How squirrely we are and how? Oh, we also need somebody to help us make content. Yep, so if you're a social media, manager.
Speaker 1:Oh, social media? Yeah, because that would be great too, because I suck like I struggle hard because it's hard to sing and take content because I'm never in the video. And then you have to post the content, then your frequency of the posting of the content and how do I make the content?
Speaker 2:yeah put oh yes anyway. So if anybody's listening and wants to join the shit show that we are sometimes.
Speaker 1:What was the video you put up yesterday got how many views in one day?
Speaker 2:Not many, it was only 1,500.
Speaker 1:See, here's the thing. To me that's a lot.
Speaker 2:To me the millennial yeah.
Speaker 1:That's 1,500 people that saw that little video in less than 12 hours that maybe watched the first three seconds. That's okay, it counts.
Speaker 2:It counts, that's okay.
Speaker 1:That's the thing about metrics they count.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, anyway. So if anybody's listening and wants to join our shit show come on in, we're open.
Speaker 1:The applications are open.
Speaker 2:Open for business. Yeah, go to our website and click on HR and careers and send us an email.
Speaker 1:So if you're open to that All right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that's probably what we have got for today, as you can see, I'm not feeling the greatest we have rehearsal today.
Speaker 1:We're going to give you a break.
Speaker 2:We're going to give some more vocal rest and hopefully tonight I won't sound like a dying cat.
Speaker 1:That's okay, I probably will.
Speaker 2:So maybe tonight would be the great night for social media to say this is what our singer sounds like when she's sick.
Speaker 1:Okay, do you have anything else to say before we, before we close, you're done, I'm done yeah, the okay okay the singer is the gauntlet has dropped, all right, hey.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you everybody for that. Listened all this ways. I'm not going to give her a geography or math question today. I'm going to give her a geography or math question today. I'm going to give her a break, but next time I'll be sure to include that as part of the podcast. Again, thank you very much. If you've made it this far, we appreciate it and look forward to the next episode and see you at the next gig.
Speaker 2:Yep, see you next time.
Speaker 1:Hasta luego.
