Why You Need to Earn the Audience’s Time (Joey Vesely of Trace Remains)
Joey Vesely of post hardcore band Trace Remains talks about growing up in the Pittsburgh DIY scene and the challenge of getting people’s attention without losing what makes the band authentic. We also discuss their new single and music video “Breathing Air”.
Key Takeaways
Authentic content is hard because there is no perfect formula. The best approach is often to keep testing ideas while making sure they still connect back to the core project.
Burnout is real, especially when one person is handling the creative work, marketing, content, logistics, and promotion. Joey finds energy in the moments that remind him why he started, like shows, studio time, and video shoots.
Don’t settle too early. Sometimes the best version of a song, campaign, or creative idea comes after pushing a little further than feels comfortable.
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Transcript:
Mike: Hey Joey, how’s it going?
Joey: Hey, Mike. It’s going great. How are you doing today?
Mike: I’m doing fantastic, thanks for asking. We were talking about the weather just before, and how it’s unusually cool here in Phoenix, Arizona.
It’s interesting because with you, you were talking before about pretty much growing up in Pittsburgh. Something that really resonated with me when I was reading your bio was the lyrics to a lot of your songs. I saw an overall theme about resolution, and I found that interesting. I wanted to know what resolution actually means to you in an overall sense.
Joey: Yeah. Thank you again for having me on, and it’s a great question.
I think for me, resolution means I’ve learned during challenging times to focus on the things I can control the most. I’ve had a lot of experiences where I got really hung up on things that were affecting me that were out of my control.
You can get stuck there. Maybe there’s not as much growth in those moments because you can’t see past a variable that is beyond you.
So I think resolution has become, whatever the challenge might be, trying to find a way to make it about the thing in front of me. Even if it’s an obstacle that feels particularly hard, there’s some lesson or some room for growth in there.
It’s about the thing that is in front of me, in the moment, today, and not getting too hung up on what brought me here or maybe triggered the obstacle.
It’s figuring out: how do I navigate this and get my life tools sharp enough that I can find a way to not be reliant on the other party to help me find resolution? Or if it was the loss of somebody I loved, it’s not even a relationship. There’s maybe a difference between making peace and finding peace, and I think resolution is somewhere in there for me.
It’s about growth and finding lessons through the times of life. In a nutshell, that’s probably what it comes down to for me.
Mike: That’s a great perspective to have. It’s a really hard one to have, but it’s a great perspective, understanding that you don’t have control over a situation and it’s how you react to it.
Also, like you said, there’s the difference between making and finding peace. I think it’s important to have that mentality because what you do, when you’re working on your craft, is literally a team effort. You have a band, so it’s a team effort.
Understanding that there is going to be conflict, and there are going to be situations you cannot control, whether it’s a show, a recording studio, writing, rehearsals, or whatever the case is, being able to find resolution to whatever conflict comes up is important.
Joey: Yeah, definitely. Whether it’s in interpersonal relationships and things that you can learn from in terms of how to relate to people, or air traffic control to keep the ship moving, it is a team. It really is.
And not just the band itself, but all the folks around the band that help make things go in some way or another.
It’s always an approximation across all those ranges, whether it’s where the art lands or the music lands, and how the communication around where things landed goes.
Maybe even back to lyrics for a second, because one thing I thought about in terms of resolution is a song we have coming up on the EP, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a little bit. It’s something like a terminal disease or something unforeseen that either you or somebody you love is dealing with. All of a sudden, life hits you fast in a way that you didn’t anticipate when you woke up.
To maybe put a bow on the resolution piece, it’s feeling like I’m waking up every day and having a sense of presence. That doesn’t mean I’m Pollyanna-ish about it, like I’m artificially happy every day. Far from it.
But I’m trying to find a way to be thankful for the things that have come my way or could potentially come my way still. That lends itself back to having a sense of control, not in a way where you need to control something because you’re insecure, but asking: how can I find silver linings through a challenging time?
Or even through a time in the band where nobody’s happy right now. Trying to find a way through that, while also understanding that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns.
Even the way diplomacy goes, you have to have thick skin for it sometimes. I’m sure that piece will dovetail into some of the challenges within the industry right now too. But there’s a lot of stuff there.
Mike: Absolutely.
Now I’m curious, is Trace Remains the first project you’ve ever been in? Or were you in other projects prior to the band?
Joey: No, I’ve been in a lot of bands prior to this. Going back to being a young baby, really, playing in bands in high school and stuff.
My first serious band was a band called Picadori from Pittsburgh. We were very much involved in the first wave of the Mr. Roboto Project, which is sort of a legendary DIY venue in Pittsburgh at this point. It’s been around 25 years, at least, in some form or fashion.
I’ve been part of the underground scene in Pittsburgh since I first discovered it when I was in high school, and that was like finding a secret kingdom.
I grew up about an hour south of the city. Quite frankly, Pittsburgh could have been New York City. It could have been downtown Manhattan for all I cared. It was so different from where I came from that just the rhythm of the city alone, and all the culture around that, let alone the underground and the subculture, was a revelation for me.
Learning about the scene, then ultimately moving here and being able to form a band and start participating in it that way, that was my very first experience with a lot of things DIY. Putting out records, doing shows, doing tours, meeting people, finding your tribe, really.
Over the years, there have been different iterations of projects, kind of always in the same vein musically. From Picadori, it always sort of spawned out from there and had its own natural evolution and arc. If you ever listen to that stuff, I think you’ll hear a clear through line all the way to Trace Remains.
It was Picadori, and then a band called Allies. Right around when the internet was taking off, one of the same guys I co-founded Picadori with and I continued on with Allies. Then we were like, “Wait, this is a bad name for a band.” You put Allies in the search engine and you’re not finding anything there with that.
Mike: You don’t realize that.
Joey: So it’s like, “All right, this isn’t going to work.” Then that band ended up folding, and that ultimately evolved into Trace Remains, which formed in roughly 2017.
There have been various iterations of rock and roll, alternative rock, and post-hardcore type projects that I’ve been in. Trace Remains is just the latest and hopefully greatest evolution of it so far.
Mike: Were you super into going to shows as a kid? In high school and things like that too? I’m curious how you discovered the DIY scene in Pittsburgh. Was it because you wanted to get into being in a band, or did it just kind of happen?
Joey: No, man. When I was in junior high, I got exposed to a couple records that blew my mind.
I went to Catholic school, so keep in mind that this further blew my mind when I first heard the Dead Milkmen and Minor Threat. Then when I heard Nirvana for the first time, it was like, “Whoa.”
I started figuring out, where does this music come from?
There still is, to this day, a music store in downtown Pittsburgh that is sort of a music and comic store called Eide’s Entertainment. I remember one time my dad took me there to shop for comic books, and I saw they had all these records. Then they had fanzines.
It was like, whoa. In print. Maximum Rocknroll, Heartattack, Punk Planet, and all this stuff. It was like a map. There’s something here. It really opened up a secret world to me.
I was always a very avid and voracious reader growing up because I grew up out in the country, and a lot of times all I could do was be in a book. Whether it was reading about records, scenes, or bands, I wanted to be as knowledgeable about things as I could so that if I showed up, it was like, “Oh yeah, I know all this stuff already,” even though secretly you’re like, “Whoa,” just trying to figure it out in real time.
It started from there, with a love of music and a love of the ideas. Growing up, I always felt like an outcast, probably like a lot of us do who find our way into this stuff. Punk rock, that subculture, and the Pittsburgh underground really became a home for me.
When I moved here, it was a really natural transition. I was able to get more and more involved through the bands that were active and learn more about the ins and outs of the different sub-scenes within the scene.
Pittsburgh has a deep math rock history and a deep crust punk history, and that was the angle I came in on, the crust punk angle. Then I learned about indie rock and all this other stuff, and you’re like, “Whoa, there are all these other layers to it.”
That’s really how I got into it. A love of bands, a love of music, a love of the ideas, and a love of the culture.
Ultimately, I think it was a love of the idea that is at the foundation of DIY for me. I’ve always loved the rebelliousness of punk rock, but I think hardcore and DIY were more about, yes, we can throw the brick through the window and perhaps there’s a place for that. But ultimately, let’s set up a system that’s separate and just do our thing. Let’s not concern ourselves with something we can’t control.
What can we control? We can find basements. We can find random places to play. We can figure out ways to put out records.
That was very compelling to me because it felt like something you could actually do. It became addictive, just learning about it.
I became very passionate about the scene in general and started putting out records within the scene. I was very influenced by Dischord Records when I discovered Fugazi and the Dischord model. They only released records within Washington, DC, so I did a similar thing where I would just release Pittsburgh records and try to foster community that way.
I’ve always kind of been in it for love of the game, I guess, in some ways. I don’t know if I answered your question. I went on a ramble a bit.
Mike: No, that was great. I really appreciate that you mentioned how, even at an early age, you were very adamant about learning as much as you possibly could about lots of different subjects. Then also seeing what others had done in the scene and going, “Okay, yeah, that was actually smart,” and focusing on a specific area.
You mentioned dropping records in your neighborhood, essentially, which I think is a smart move. You’re focusing on what’s local, which is obviously the people who are going to want to see you perform.
If they’re digging your music and getting to know you, then it’s an easy sell to say, “Hey, we’re playing at this venue next week. You should check us out.” That’s more immediate and more front-facing than saying, “Maybe we’ll come and tour in your city in a year.”
I think that’s still true today. You do have the capability of reaching people across the entire globe, but there’s also something to be said about, in addition to that, not as a replacement, focusing on your local music scene.
The Phoenix music scene here is fantastic. You build so many connections and relationships with other bands. Not to mention, you are coming back to similar crowds, and that’s how you build your fan base.
Joey: Sure. For me too, it was less about, “Oh, I’m starting a record label,” and more about, how can I contribute to the community and help foster that?
I figured out how to put out records. The other bands within the community were coming up through the ranks and really honing their craft. It was a way to give them a platform.
Then, yeah, you deepen ties in other cities because they’re going and touring.
A lot of that still exists, but the internet and the ability to reach everybody instantaneously shifted the mechanics of how things are now.
When I was starting out, some of it with the record label stuff was that too. Like you said, it’s a way to meet people and facilitate networks and get music out there for people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to before streaming was really a thing.
Mike: Yeah, that’s true. I started an independent record label. I’ve run a label for about 18 years, so I remember that time very well. This was pre-streaming. This was Myspace era. This was Napster time, when people were downloading music in not-so-kosher ways.
But there were a lot of artists, including artists I represented, where we were like, “Well, if this is such a powerful tool right now for distribution, why not take advantage of it? Let’s use this as a platform to get the music out there, find fans, and then use that to get them to come to shows, buy merch, and do all those things.”
Joey: Sure. Absolutely. And to build legitimacy too. Like, “Hey, it’s worth paying attention to. We’re building something here. We’re investing in an infrastructure that hopefully you will find worth your valuable time as well.”
That’s the way I’ve tried to look at it too. What’s the offer? Not in a salesy way, but people’s time is so precious.
Mike: That’s exactly right. It’s about people’s time.
Why should people invest their time into listening to what you’re creating? Or even just paying attention to what you’re creating?
That’s the number one thing. Before merchandise, before anything else, it has to start there. Why are they investing their time to be entertained or moved by the art you’re creating?
It’s hard, I get it, because some people are thinking about the monetary aspect. “How am I going to make money from this?” They’re thinking about all these other ways of saying, “Buy my CD, buy my vinyl, go stream here.” All of that is going to move the needle, but it has to start there first.
Why should I be paying attention to you specifically when there is an infinite supply of art being created right now?
Joey: Yeah, absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. That’s totally right.
I’m sure it’s a natural segue into talking about the industry today in many ways, because I think that’s one of the things that’s hard to navigate as an artist or a creator. You have to step outside of yourself in terms of how attached you are to something and accept that sometimes it just isn’t compelling enough. That’s not a personal thing. Sometimes it’s a timing thing too.
There are so many elements to it.
I remember first playing in bands when the cheapest way to get your music out there, because streaming wasn’t a thing and Myspace was just coming, was CDs. Vinyl was expensive. Cassettes weren’t having a revival. They were sort of a waste of money. It wasn’t a format people used.
Now cassettes and vinyl have become more of a collectible thing. But the CD was the cheapest way to get it out there. People still had CD players in cars consistently.
I remember thinking, wow, just the fact that the cost of CDs was relatively low meant the barrier to entry was low. There were so many bands when I was trying to start out just from that perspective.
Now you remove the physical need to get anything out there and it’s just, “Oh, I can pay a distribution fee.” Or in the case of Myspace or SoundCloud, which have both kind of fallen by the wayside, “I can upload it for free.” TikTok, Instagram, I can upload a snippet for free. If I want somebody to stream it, I still have to pay for distribution.
But the barrier to entry from an economic perspective is so low. Then the saturation level of people every day has become so much higher at a rate where it’s like, how could you expect anybody to have a filter for quality and attention?
It’s so hard. Then all these other ancillary elements have become more important than maybe they were in the past. Not that marketing or promotion were ever not important. I think they always have been. It’s just, how have the mechanics shifted? Where is the main game being played, and how do you participate in a way where you’re offering something in those lanes?
That’s a tricky balance because then it always comes back to: what is your band? What is your brand? To get a little too markety about it.
What feels authentic to you? I think that’s an overused word, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
In 2026, I think that’s one of the main challenges. Every day, 365 days a year, you have an opportunity to market yourself in some way, to connect, or to find people in some way. But how do you convey that in a manner that feels right for what you’re trying to do?
I don’t even mean non-cringey, because I think all that stuff has a role. It’s more about how you pick each of those little tactics that add up to what you’re trying to get across.
To me, that’s one of the things that’s really hard, at least for myself. Figuring out ways to craft that feel real to you and authentic to the world you’re trying to build, and seeing if people are interested.
Going back to the point about time and attention, I guess. Different TED Talk there.
Mike: No, but I’m curious though. How do you navigate through that? How do you make sure you’re getting people’s attention, but at the same time being authentic to who you are as an artist?
Joey: Honestly, Mike, it’s really hard. Every day I think about this stuff. Every day I’m trying to evaluate it.
Working on this band is basically a full-time job for me. A big part of it is, especially as the EP is getting ready to come out, how do we craft content that feels like it’s not what we’ve done in the past that maybe didn’t resonate, but also isn’t taking something that’s too boilerplate?
How do you find that emotional, authentic connection? It’s hard.
I think some of it comes down to trying not to be afraid to try things. I’ve been guilty of this a lot, where you just overthink it.
Keep trying stuff. Put it together. Keep trying new things. Learn as much as you can yourself. That’s probably an overstated piece of advice too.
I’ve had to try to get a little dangerous with CapCut and Final Cut Pro. Just enough to try to work with it. I have great people who help me on the video side, and I’m thankful for that. But they get busy, and they can’t always help. So I’ve tried to find enough where it’s like, give me enough B-roll, and I can learn enough to be dangerous.
I don’t have a great answer to that yet. I think it has been suboptimal for us and, quite frankly, maybe in some respects, an impediment to growth.
But it’s funny, I was just reading an article the other day, I think in Pigeons & Planes, which is an online webzine that has come back. They did a piece about a burgeoning scene in Chicago that really started with high school kids at the tail end of COVID.
A lot of the ethos now is based around not advertising the show. It’s sort of taking this “ask a punk” idea to the nth degree. You’re on Discords, or it’s not even on social media. It’s sort of a rejection of all that stuff.
I think you have to be of a certain community to pull that off in a certain time and place. It’s easier when you’re more plugged in socially in a way where those things are easy to hear about more organically.
But the longer you’re around and the older you get, that stuff is a little harder to navigate. So it’s like, how do you use the tools that are more at your disposal? I don’t have a great answer because I’m still trying to figure it out in real time.
If you or your audience have great content ideas, send them my way.
Mike: I really like what you said on a couple levels.
I do want to make a comment about that article because that’s fascinating. There’s something to be said about it. We’re constantly being pitched to on social media, and they’re taking the side of, “Hey, we’re only telling the people who legitimately want to see us perform.”
Those are the people who are going to go to their Discord channels and chat with them. These are the people who actively want to be involved with the band, actively want to engage with the band, and actively want to know what they have going on.
Those are the people who really should know about it.
Technically, would they also be following them on social media? Yes. But I like the idea that they’re just pitching to the core fans. I’m not even going to call them superfans. I’m just saying the core fans who will show up.
There’s something to be said about the exclusivity.
Joey: That’s the word I was going to use. It’s unintentional exclusivity.
It’s almost like a hyped show, tickets, or people going crazy for sneakers. Scarcity becomes the main tactic of the marketing, which is not what they’re going for in that scene. I think it’s more like an old school DIY rejection of what they’re bombarded with.
For those kids, I didn’t grow up on a phone. I was able to see this transition in society from analog to digital, which has been a fascinating observation and time to participate in life as a human.
But for other people, all they’ve ever known is being plugged in and everything being accessible. I get the inherent punk rockness to that, where it’s like, “No, forget about it.” The inability to find it is what makes it cool.
I think that is a very specific moment in time community. That could be a spark to find a way to grow. Maybe it’s the wrong way to say you can build hype through that, but if the right people see it, it becomes word of mouth. Scarcity becomes its own driver.
“Oh, how do I even find out about this? How do I not know about this? I can’t even get in, and I can’t even find out.”
That creates its own type of tension. They don’t realize it, but it’s actually quite brilliant if you can find a way to be a part of it.
Mike: Absolutely. It comes down to scarcity. It comes down to getting people to pay attention to what you’re doing.
I agree with you that it’s actually a brilliant move.
Going back to developing content, I also admire the fact that you took it upon yourself to try different things and see what works and what doesn’t work. That’s part of the process.
Do you have an example of something you did that worked really well? And do you have an example of something you thought would work really well that actually didn’t? It doesn’t have to be content. It could be any kind of promotion or marketing.
Joey: It’s interesting. This is probably just because of audience reach, but any time you’re working with somebody and you do a collaboration together, I’ve always found that Venn diagram is really interesting.
I forget what they call it. There’s something like the rule of the third follower. The first person to raise their hand is taking a risk. The first person to follow them, which is the second person, is kind of taking a risk. But that third person is like, “Oh, there are two people with their hands up. I have to participate in this conversation.”
Today, I always refer to it as the attention economy. It’s this weird flip where, because people are so bombarded with stuff, the barrier to even feeling compelled to engage is interesting.
I’ve found that any time there’s a balance between the content being produced enough that it looks really cool, but a couple of my friends are part of this too, then it looks even cooler. You’re sort of building a community around one post. It might only ever really exist around that one post.
For us, a lot of times, when we’re teasing a music video, or there’s a cool little teaser that’s a snippet from the video nobody has seen yet, and you’re pulling the curtain back a little bit, that stuff tends to do well.
Any time something actually gets released and there’s collaboration around it, and you’re spreading the word, sometimes those posts will be deeper in narrative. It’s interesting. I don’t think every post needs to be long or journalistic or dear diary, but I’ve found that moments where you’re opening up the kimono just a little bit, when you’re trying to celebrate or offer something new to the world, there’s an air of vulnerability there sometimes.
People maybe don’t totally engage with comments or likes, but you’ll notice they looked at it a lot, viewed it, or maybe sent it along to somebody.
A behind-the-scenes shot, an action shot from a video with some of the actors, something where it’s like, “Whoa, what’s that?” It’s not just the band rocking out again.
We have a lot of cool shots like that, so people can see it and it’s not a dime a dozen. Any time you feel like you’re doing something new, even if it’s like, “Oh, nobody has seen this person involved with this project yet,” then they’re curious about what you have going on.
Those always seem to do pretty well.
Then there are ones I thought would do better. For the last record, we did a recreation of that old, I think it’s Memorex or maybe Maxell, tapes ad where the guy is sitting in the chair and the high fidelity comes across, and the chair moves. We recreated that for the record.
The opening scene is the butler dropping a needle on our record, and the sound of the record comes out and blows the guy away. We did a whole thing about it.
I thought people would find that cooler than they did. Then it’s that thing where you ask, was it too cool and people didn’t like it that way?
I never know where the line is between, “Oh man, that worked,” and “That fell flat.”
Sometimes it’s totally random. You could have a little carousel sweep from your show where you’re like, “Here are some really awesome pics,” and it just falls like an anvil.
I think it goes back to 365 days a year to offer something. If you can find a way to not be spammy, that’s the sweet spot. But dude, I haven’t figured out any pattern, which is why I just keep trying stuff if we come up with cool ideas.
For me, the biggest impediment is coming up with an idea I feel like I can actually execute that fits the vibe of the band.
The stuff I wish I could get better at is almost like this stuff, where I’m talking to the screen, but in a way that is authentic to me. Or maybe that’s the wrong word, but within the world of talking about a song’s subject matter.
How can I talk about “Breathing Air” in such a way that is more like this production quality, where I’m in front of a webcam or something, but it’s still seven seconds or 10 seconds of something? I don’t know. That’s hard. I haven’t cracked that one open.
Mike: You’re not the only one. So many of us, including myself, are still figuring it out. It’s just really hard to do.
Often, once you figure out what is working, just because you do it over and over again doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to continuously work.
Joey: No. It could shift on you again. Absolutely.
Mike: The other thing I’ve discovered is that there are artists who find the thing that works, but it may have nothing to do with music at all. Then the people following them are in it for whatever that thing is, and not the music.
That’s what you have to be careful about. It’s fun to do skits. It’s fun to experiment and try different things, but the core of it still has to be what you’re trying to convey and release, which in this case is music.
There has to be some sort of tie-in back into the project itself, the music itself, or the performance itself. Because if it’s something completely different, then when you say, “Check out my new single,” people are like, “No, we don’t care. We want the thing we know you for.”
Joey: A hundred percent. I love the AI slop cat videos. I have two cats, and I love the AI cat stuff. When that comes across my feed, I’m like, “Yeah, I love this.”
I thought, could I make a Trace Remains AI cat slop video? I could. And I’d probably attract all kinds of people who like AI cat slop like me, but they’re not going to stick around because they want to hear “Breathing Air.”
So you’re totally right. It becomes not even about looking desperate. It just doesn’t fit.
That’s where I think sometimes it becomes about slow and steady, and trying not to overthink it too much. I’ve had to work on this a lot myself, not being too attached to outcomes or chasing outcomes or expectations.
Just being thankful. “Okay, that show was really rad. I love the place this video is landing. I feel really thankful for all the people who were involved in it.” Then trying to put that out there and find ways to package it.
Over time, hopefully you pick up more ideas.
For this EP, we’re going to try some of the old school band-related tactics. We have three videos, one of which came out. “Zero Hour” is the first single that came out a couple months ago, and we have a video that came out around that. There was a little B-roll stuff around that that we used to promote, and we’ll do the same thing with the other videos.
I think we’re also mixing it up with a little more well-produced band content. Maybe we’re in a warehouse with a swinging light and we do that shoot. Now let’s go outside and maybe take me and do the shoot in the field or in the parking lot.
I’m not being creative with these ideas, but hopefully you get where I’m going. Find different locations. Maybe some more lyric videos. Find ways where this location could exist within the world of the band, but it’s not terribly overthought.
You don’t even have to listen to the music. You could just read the words. A lot of people scroll on silent. I know I do sometimes. So let’s lean into that. How can we keep the visual hook interesting enough?
Then what is that? Is that a lyric? Is it an announcement about something?
I don’t have that all planned out yet, but I’m working with some folks on my team to get as detailed as we can as we move through each of these songs and through the long tail of promotion for the EP, all the way through the end of the summer, into the fall, and beyond, really.
It never stops.
I think I’ve heard this somewhere more than once: it might be played out to you, but chances are, for the vast majority of the world, they’ve never even heard it, even if it’s five years old.
If you can find ways, find ways to keep doing it. That’s something I’ve had to get used to. Don’t get too caught up in the fatigue of, “Oh, I’m spamming people.” Yes and no, depending on what it is.
With TikTok, I think the algorithms treat it differently than Instagram. I haven’t been as good there. That’s an area of improvement for the latter half of 2026 for me, for sure.
The way you curate on Instagram for your actual band page could be much different than the sort of maybe lesser thought-out stuff that still plays a role, but you could put out on TikTok five or six days a week and not worry about it as much.
One thing too, Mike, some people on the cutting edge of marketing, playing in all those sandboxes of user-generated campaigns and what Chaotic Good did with Geese and other bands, which isn’t new to them. They kind of got hammered for that, but I feel like it was kind of unfair.
There’s stuff that isn’t bot-related, but they’ll set up two or three fan pages, which are almost like fenced versions of your band page. It’s less worried about people who are really following you yet. It’s more about, “Okay, I can in a low-pressure way throw more stuff out on this page,” and maybe it’s getting fed into the discover page or search page, or somebody’s feed, or suggested for you.
That could also be a tactic. We haven’t tried that yet.
I like to make metaphors a lot. I feel like there are all these piers you can fish off of, and you never quite know if you’re going to catch fish at all. And if you do, is it a catfish? Is it a dolphin? Well, I don’t want to catch dolphins. What are you catching? What are you getting?
There are so many areas to explore. When you’re sort of the one-stop shop within the project, which so many of us are, again, I feel lucky to have some people who do help me, but a lot of creators don’t. A lot of musicians don’t. That’s where it becomes exhausting.
Burnout really sets in because you’re just like, “Oh my goodness.” It’s like Groundhog Day, the movie with Bill Murray. “What? I’m doing this again?” But that’s just part of it. Just keep going. Build the plane as we’re flying it.
Mike: How do you make sure you try to prevent as much burnout as possible for yourself? You mentioned having a team, which is always fantastic to make sure the load is not entirely on you. Is there anything else you do to help yourself mitigate that?
Joey: I do get burnt out. I’m not going to lie.
But I think some of it is finding your way to the moments that fill you up.
Any time we work on a music video, I love it. It’s super fun. I love working with all the film folks, the director, the director of photography, all the actors. Everybody involved in the stuff we’ve been doing lately is just so rad to watch.
Other creators working, costume designers, set designers, it’s really cool. Any time I get a handful of days to be part of that, I feel blessed because it’s a reminder of why I do it. You feel empowered when you’re around other creatives who are helping you bring something to life that is just a vision and an idea.
Those moments are really important.
Getting into the studio where you’re laying down your new songs. The pre-production process and demoing process can be very laborious, but it is very much part of it, and it’s a part I really love. When you finally get to the studio and see how it’s coming alive, those are filling-up-the-tank moments.
But perhaps the biggest of all is when you get to a live show that really delivers. Those can fill you up for a long time, man. Those can fill the tank up for quite a while.
I try to have enough of those types of things metered out throughout the quarters of the year, where it’s like, “All right, let me just get to this.”
But no, burnout is very real. It’s every day.
Speaking personally, outside of what I do day-to-day for the band, I make sure I try to get enough sleep. If I can get seven hours, and eight is great, I feel pretty good. My attitude is in a good place, and I feel rested.
I try to exercise four or five days a week if I can, and that really keeps me going. It’s a routine too. I have a small group of people I do that with, and that has been an accountability thing.
I call it my version of going to church. Growing up Catholic, I’m not a churchgoer anymore in my adult life, really. But I’ve always appreciated the routine and the discipline involved in that sort of spiritual discipline, even though I don’t mean that in a religious way from a working-out perspective.
I think there’s something to consistency and routine that you can find outside of your craft, your work, and your career. For a lot of us, the music or what we’re working on is our career. That’s what we’re all in on.
Having those things is important to mitigate and minimize burnout. But I think anybody who tells you they’ve been doing this for any stretch of time and doesn’t get burnout, imposter syndrome, or that feeling of, “I’m just straight up done because I don’t think I can overcome another obstacle because this is so Sisyphusian,” I think they’d be lying to you if they told you it doesn’t exist.
Mike: Yes, I can very much attest to that. Absolutely.
I do want to talk about your single “Breathing Air,” which is awesome, by the way. I absolutely love it. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Joey: Thank you. Oh, thanks. Awesome.
“Breathing Air” comes out June, what is the date? Oh gosh, I’m so bad about this.
Mike: No, it’s coming out soon.
Joey: Yeah, June 9th it comes out.
Mike: June 9th. So this episode will probably come out when it’s out.
Joey: Sick. Okay. Yeah, so it’s out now.
This is a song that came together quickly. I wrote the skeleton of this song last summer, I guess. We had three songs that were in the bag that we were originally just going to release as three songs, and they were all part of this six-song EP.
Then some of the folks on the team were like, “Hey, we’re putting some weight behind promotional efforts and stuff. Can you put more meat on the bone? How hard would that be?”
I was like, “I think we can probably do that.”
So heading into last winter, we were trying to spin up the best material we could at the time. I had that piece of music and that song pretty much fleshed out, and I brought it to the band. It went through their filter.
Then our recording engineer and producer, Dave Haidak, who I’ve worked on all the Trace Remains stuff with, got his fingerprints on it. It just came to life from there.
We went through our typical process, really, and it found a natural home as the second single. I think it checked a lot of boxes for us.
I don’t have any tattoos, but if I could maybe get one, it would be 333. Three minutes and 33 seconds is sort of the magic number a lot of times with songs, music, singles, attention spans, and pop rock, if that’s the world you’re playing in.
Even though we’re alternative rock and post-hardcore, at the end of the day, to me, a lot of it is pop rock. We’re trying to earworm people and keep them focused.
That really felt like it checked all those boxes. It was a pretty ferocious song too. The video was killer. I’ll have to send that to you, Mike, so you can see a rough cut of it because I think you’ll appreciate that.
That’s how it came together. I don’t know if that really answers your question, but I’m super stoked on it. Of all the singles we’ve dropped, maybe everybody says their latest thing is the thing they’re most proud of, but I’m really proud of it and excited to see what people think about it.
I think it rips pretty hard. Like I said, man, three minutes and 24 seconds, I think the song is. It rips.
Mike: It’s so funny, right? We still have that mentality. It’s the radio mentality, getting it around that three-minute mark, but it just happens to work.
I think we’re all accustomed to having songs that length. Also, I think it helps discipline you. Coming back to your mention about discipline, it helps you go, “Okay, let’s trim the fat. Where can we get this to make sure we’re hitting those marks so that we’re really keeping people interested and engaged throughout the entire song?”
Joey: Yeah. It goes back to the time thing again.
I really believe in life, and maybe this goes back to the beginning of our conversation with resolution, that time and health are our most precious assets. These are themes that run through the music.
I don’t ever presume that I’m owed anything, or that people should listen to anything I put out there, or anything I have to say. Why should you?
I always look at it as a gift. If there’s an audience there, how can I be judicious with their time and put the hardest amount of work I can into the art to curate it to such a degree that it feels ready for that type of consumption?
Like, “Hey, I feel like I’ve earned your three minutes and 24 seconds.” Because I don’t deserve it.
Hopefully in this instance, you as the listener feel like I’ve earned it. You feel glad to give me that time.
I take that charge very seriously as a musician and as an artist. Whether it’s earworms or working really hard on songs, I think that takes a long time in your creative development to feel comfortable with and to feel like you’ve gotten good at.
I know at least it did for me. I did not feel like I was great at that out of the gate.
Some of that is working on letting your ego go. Number one, I think that’s a big one. Finding the line between maintaining, “Okay, I’m essentially the creative director of the band, so I’m in that role for a reason,” but it’s also great to have other people feel comfortable offering their opinion on what they think because it’s going to make this better. It’s going to elevate it.
Becoming comfortable working with producers, engineers, and the right team members to elevate the Trace Remains music is a lesson I’ve had to learn over the course of being in bands, working with people, and writing songs.
It’s not easy. Trying to write good songs is really freaking hard, and it takes a long time. Sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle, but most of the time you don’t. Most people don’t.
That’s why you see with all the greats, “Oh, this was recorded over the span of a year.” Yeah, they had the budget from a major label, so that was part of the beauty of that. They could do it. By the budget, it was an advance, so they had to pay it back, but still.
A lot of the old school punk rockers and the Steve Albinis of the world are like, “Let’s step in. Let’s get the document. Let’s get it live.” There is a time and place and beauty in that aesthetic too, and I’ve done a lot of that.
We still work that way to this day on elements when we record with scratch tracking and stuff. We maintain some of the energy of that.
But I think being judicious, being focused, and being curated are good tenets to have within the rhythms of the everyday work of how you make decisions about your craft.
Mike: Absolutely. I’m very excited for everyone else to hear the single as well.
You mentioned before “Zero Hour,” the EP that’s coming up, so I’m very excited about that. How many songs are going to be on it? Are you still figuring that out?
Joey: No, we’ve got it locked and loaded. We’ve got six songs.
“Zero Hour” is the lead-off single. “Breathing Air” is the second single. There’s a song called “Please Disregard,” which will be the third single.
It comes out in mid-July. I think it’s July 14th or something. It’s right in the middle of the month, the EP comes out.
Yeah, it’s coming up really fast. We’ll have a third video that drops that week, and the EP will come out.
I think we’ll have it available on vinyl and cassette. I haven’t done cassettes. I’m going to do a really small run. I have a manufacturer that can do 50 of them for me, so I thought that would be kind of cool.
I’m excited for it. We haven’t released music in almost two years outside of the “Zero Hour” single, so I’m super excited to see what the world thinks of it.
It’s that moment again to be like, “Okay, here it is. That’s it.”
Mike: Here it is. See how it goes.
I’m very excited. I can’t wait to hear the rest of the songs off the EP.
We can start wrapping things up here. I do have a couple fun questions for you.
The first question I have for you is: what was the very first concert you ever went to?
Joey: Very first concert. Oh God. This is funny. I’ll show my age a little bit here, I guess.
My very first concert was Bon Jovi.
Mike: Nice.
Joey: I begged my parents to take me. They came through Pittsburgh on a tour, and it was just an absolute revelation to me. Not because Bon Jovi’s music is particularly amazing at this point in my life, but the six-year-old version of me, or about five or six years old, watching Bon Jovi change all those costumes and come down rappelling into the center of the crowd, I was like, “Whoa, man. Being on stage playing rock and roll is awesome.”
So I loved that. That was my very first concert.
Mike: That’s super cool.
Do you have a go-to artist that you’re listening to right now that you want to do a quick shout-out for?
Joey: Oh man, that’s such a great question.
I really love this band from Michigan, Detroit, I think. They’re called Greet Death. I think they’re on Deathwish Records maybe. They’re a little heavier, shoegazy, and a little dirtier.
They had this amazing song that came out last year called “Country Girl” that I think is just great. It’s an awesome example of an earworm and something that gets stuck in your head.
Also, I haven’t listened to this band in a long time, but Modest Mouse dropped a single recently. It was awesome, like “Third Side of the Moon” or something. I don’t know if you’ve heard that song. I was like, “Oh man, this is kind of old school Modest Mouse.” It was really awesome.
I also love a lot of electronic music, so I’m a big Four Tet fan. Four Tet dropped a couple of remixes from some other people that remixed some of his songs. “Baby” and I think “Love Child,” maybe. I forget what the song was.
I have sort of eclectic taste. If you pulled up my phone and looked at my Spotify or Apple Music, you’d probably find that, or maybe a Fleetwood Mac song or two recently.
I discovered this. Max, the director of the “Zero Hour” video and the director of the next couple videos too, including “Breathing Air,” and I were wrapping filming one day. We were driving back in his truck, and he put on Spotify. This Fleetwood Mac song came on called “Sara,” which I could not believe I had never heard.
You know Stevie Nicks right away. I said, “That’s Fleetwood Mac. What song is it?”
I love that song. That song has been in my head incessantly for the last month. So yeah, I’m all over the place, Mike.
Mike: That’s cool. I dig that.
It’s funny, I think a lot of us are all over the place now. Same way, if you look at my playlist, I have playlists for all different kinds of moods. I hate to be a little bit, but I have one called 2000s Nostalgia, and it’s a complete blend of rock but also electronic music too because that was big back then in the early 2000s.
Joey: I’m going to turn it back on you real quick. What’s at the top of your playlist right now? What could you leave me with in that regard?
Mike: I’m really into this artist called LØLØ. She’s awesome. She’s very alt. I would say pseudo-emo, maybe not emo, but very alt style.
One of my favorite bands right now is called Stand Atlantic. They’re another alternative band. I really like rock music, so those are kind of my ones.
But again, I have my guilty pleasure songs and things like that too. Sometimes I’ll jam out to that. Sometimes I’ll be in the mood and I’m listening to all my alt music and rocking hard, and sometimes I’m just rocking to Backstreet Boys and going hard on Backstreet Boys.
Joey: Listen, I love it. I love that. Backstreet Boys, Roxette, Madonna, all kinds of stuff that’s out of left field, I love as well.
Stand Atlantic and LØLØ?
Mike: Yeah, Stand Atlantic and LØLØ.
I’ll also do a quick shout-out. Definitely somebody who should be on your radar. Her name is MADiSON ViOLETT, and she’s a baby artist. She just got started, but she was actually a guest on the show not too long ago.
She’s doing fantastically well. I’m not sure which episode is going to come out first, yours or hers, but she’s awesome too. I’ll give a shout-out to her.
We’ll start wrapping things up here. One last question for you. If you were only able to give one piece of advice to a fellow musician, what would that one piece of advice be?
Joey: Great question. Oh man, single piece of advice.
I would say probably don’t settle.
Don’t sit on it forever, but don’t settle either. That goes back to the burnout thing. Push through the wall a little harder, even when you think maybe you’ve hit it. That might be where you find the best version of that piece of music.
It’s easy with the tools today to say, “Oh, that’s done,” and pencils are down. It’s much harder to say, “Let me dig into this to the point where after this, I don’t ever want to hear this ever again.”
But a lot of times that’s when I know something is done for me. I go from wanting to listen to it every single moment of the day to, “This stinks. I hate it, and nobody will ever like it.” That’s when you probably know you’re done.
Mike: I love that so much. It’s so true. That’s actually one of my favorite pieces of advice I’ve heard in a long time, so that’s great.
Thank you so much again for being on the show.
Joey: Dude, likewise, man. Thank you.
Mike: We’ll make sure everyone takes a listen to the single “Breathing Air.” I can’t wait to hear everything else that’s coming up ahead for you guys. Congratulations again.
Joey: Thanks, Mike. I appreciate you, man. I’m very grateful for the conversation. Thank you for the kind words. Thank you for the shout-outs and the recommendations, and for being a cool vibe, man. I appreciate it a lot.