Where can we find you right now and what are you up to?
Our base of operations is in central Texas, about an hour north of Austin. There are people working on the music in Ohio, Nevada, and northern Texas, but the bulk of the writing and recording is in central Texas. Since we are scattered, we aren't in a situation where we can perform live, but we have been working on writing remotely and sending each other recordings to play along with.
Tell us a bit about your influences.
We are all 80s and 90s kids, with a range of tastes. We listen to classic rock and modern rock, soft rock and hard rock. A lot of our songs are shaped by the alternative and grunge movement of the mid-90s, including much of the Christian rock and metal scene that grew out of that. You might hear a little Godsmack, Offspring, Rancid, Stavesacre, Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, Deftones, Blindside, Social Distortion, White Zombie, Candlebox, Project 86, Cranberries, Alice In Chains, Temple of the Dog, Tragedy Ann, Smashing Pumpkins, Silverchair, Bush, Verve Pipe, Grammatrain, Live, Fuel, Everclear, Dogwood, 7 Mary 3, Lit, Stone Temple Pilots... It sounds all over the place, but it's never been just one influence at a time. We have combined Pantera, Gravity Kills, Dave Brubeck, and Chicago influences into a song and ended up with something that, obviously, sounds like none of them.
How did you start?
Back in 2005, I was invited to join a band whose bassist had decided to go solo. I had been in other bands with the frontman going back to about 1999, so it was an easy transition for everyone. Over the next few years, various internal and external stressors led to us going through a series of changes to the lineup from 2007 to about 2010, when a few former members of After the Mourning put together another band, and I joined them for about a year. During that time, I did an internship at the recording studio where we had been making (and scrapping) our recordings for the last few years. I decided to work on After the Mourning as a solo side project while performing and recording with that other band.
What obstacles does an emerging artist have to face in our time?
Changes in your personal life that can affect your music's trajectory include moving to a new area, changing careers, and having a child. All of those major life changes can suck up the time you would usually be able to spend on your music, at least for a period of adjustment, until you find your new normal. When the band seems to be going strong, I think the biggest obstacles are the same as any market: Supply and Demand. There are a bazillion new bands forming every day, and there are fewer and fewer venues that want to promote a band nobody has heard of. A new band has to find and grow an audience in an environment that can seem oversaturated with new bands. You can't be discouraged when you aren't "discovered" immediately. You have to keep putting your music in as many ears as possible.
What worked for you marketing-wise? What advice or tips would you give to new artists?
Collaborate with other artists. Don't act like rock stars; act like people who love music. Make friends with other bands, go to their shows, and interact with them on social media. Make a playlist that includes all these bands who you've befriended, and share it with your fans. It's a good example of a rising tide raising all the boats. Not every band will show you appreciation, but a few of them will start putting you on their playlists and sharing your music with their fans, and that gets your music into some ears who may have never heard it otherwise. As far as paid advertising, I have a long list of marketing companies that I will be comparing, and my plan is to try a different company on each release until I find a good fit. I get emails from them all the time, and some companies are better at replying to questions than others, and those programmed responses are a huge turn-off for me. I want to have a real person working with me when it comes to my music. Once I find that real person, they'll get my endorsement. For now, I'm just trying a little of everything.
What are your goals? Where do you see yourself in five years?
Once everyone's kids are old enough, we want to do a series of short regional tours. It would be perfect for us, in the careers we have, to take a week or two at a time and play a bunch of cities up each coast, and maybe spend a couple of weeks in Europe and South America. We also seem to have a small following in Australia, and we have several bands there that we love listening to. We also need to try out the festival scene. It is always a great time going to a festival and watching bands perform on multiple stages all day. It doesn't even matter which stage we're on, we just want to be a part of that crowd. In the meantime, being scattered across the country, we are recording two albums right now, with different band members working on each one. We are definitely going to have a respectable discography to pull from when we start touring.
Tell us about your latest or upcoming release.
Back in 2010-2011, I kept After the Mourning as a side project while playing bass in another band and interning at the recording studio. I scrapped most of the lyrics I wrote as a teenager and focused on what I still thought was worth keeping. In the beginning of the process, I was recording a little over thirty songs. Then inspiration hit hard, and I ended up recording almost fifty songs, and maybe a dozen instrumentals. In 2012, I decided I had to organize the music I had into four albums and finish them before I could start working on anything new. After releasing the first album in 2013, my life went through a series of changes for the next several years, and the rest of the songs were progressing slowly and sporadically until earlier this year. Now, musicians in Texas, Nevada, and Ohio are simultaneously writing and recording their parts for the second and third albums. The engineer is very close to having a final mix of a batch of songs from the second album, and we will start releasing those gradually until the rest of the album is ready. In other words, you'll be hearing a lot of "new" music that was written between 1997 and 2011 for the next three albums. If you still listen to rock from that era, you will find something you enjoy in each of After the Mourning's albums.
@afterthemourning