Ep. 32: Building An Audience From Scratch with Clayton Ryan

Welcome to Secrets from the Scene, a show for local musicians who want to improve their music, grow their audience, and learn about Minnesota's music scene. If you're interested in talking about all things music related and meeting interesting people from our local community, you're in the right place. Welcome to Secrets from the Scene. My name is Stephen Helving and I'm your host. I'm a local producer here in the Twin Cities. And on today's episode, I've got local artist Clayton Ryan. Clayton is a recent transplant here to Minnesota to the Twin Cities. He moved here last Thanksgiving and has already made an impressive splash in the scene. He's managed to build an audience and a lot of momentum around his career. So we're going to talk about that today because I think he's done a really great job of building an audience from scratch. When you do that, there can be such momentum that can then fuel a lot of other things to push your career forward fast if you build that audience with intention like Clayton has. So without further ado, please welcome Clayton Ryan. [Music] Thanks for having me. This is exciting. It's a cool place. Thanks, man. It's fun to meet. We had a couple of mutual friends already and I'm excited to hear the new record that you're working on with Isaac Levy. I'm sure that's going to be amazing. Yeah, I've enjoyed every second of working with with all that that team and probably listening to those tracks way too often. I'm going to get sick of him before we even put the thing out, but it's exciting. Good. I'm happy to hear that. So you're coming off of a show. You just did it right like bull sold out. It was kind of to promote or to release your latest single. The first single off this upcoming record. And you've only been here a few months, ultimately. And there's a lot of people that haven't sold out a show ever. So, you know, that's partly why I wanted to connect with you and talk about how you've managed to sort of start from scratch here. You're originally from South Dakota. You've spent some time in L.A. I'm going to let you dive into your own background here. But you have a really great perspective and understanding of how to connect with your fans, how to find your fans. So let's get into that. But first give some background on the stuff you were doing prior to moving to Minnesota. Yeah. I mean, the vast majority of musicians. I spent the first couple of years of this just playing bar gigs, playing wherever I could. Trying to play out of the state, playing the region, that sort of thing, doing three-hour gigs. And then my first serious dive into the music industry was around 20, 20 when I joined the Brandon Jones band. And he's an artist up in the South Dakota. And we were doing three to four nights a week doing a lot of like rodeos and street dances and playing hockey-tongued dance halls all around the west. And it was super fun. I was a bass player for him and we were writing songs together. And that was my first taste of real touring, you know, the long drives, the long shows. Open in for some awesome artists like Flatland Cavalry and Coetzel and all this. And it really taught me a lot about the work that goes into this. And we had our production team of like a sound engineer and light engineer, but we all tore down. Like we all set those things up every Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So that was kind of what I'd say, the grassroots or the weightlifting of the music industry I first did. And I had a couple other bands out in South Dakota. Playing around as a bassist and guitar player and a songwriter before I ended up doing sync music with one of my college buddies out in Los Angeles. And we started doing a catalog and library music for universal music production. And I kind of became like the Western slash country writer for UMPG for a bit. And I'm still doing a whole lot with them. I tried my hand at brand management or at band management before I realized like I just wanted to do all those things for myself. Because I could at least control the things that I could do, you know, booking agent. I tried it my hand at all that stuff. And eventually I realized despite being a Swiss Army knife, I'm just going to be the blade right now. I just want to do the songwriting, the artist thing. So that's kind of where I'm at currently as of what is it, 2024. That's correct. Yeah, so you moved to L.A. to pursue the sync thing. You were there for five-ish months. That four and a half, five months in, yeah, beginning of 2023. But have a nice connection there. So you still can do sync, I think, as a side note, one of the most important things about being successful in sync is having a connection in sync. So that worked. Why move back here? What was that reasoning? Yeah, well, it was far from a professional move by any chance. I moved back to South Dakota in August after a pretty bad breakup. And it's sort of factory reset my entire understanding of music and what it meant to me. And so a lot of things I'll talk about today are things I've discovered only in the last seven months. But have become super transferable for anywhere I could go. And it honestly going through that, you know, while seeing my career climb like this and then having this like restart really helped establish what all this means to me and what the audience and what the fans and friends mean to me. I don't like the word fans, it's family, it's friends. These are all people that have got me here. And so this is definitely all stuff I've honed in over the last year. It's not something I've been working on for too long. But I think that's what makes it interesting. You've had a lot of experiences like you had mentioned, you've played the bars. You've done all the things that people do when they get started. You've gotten some cool experiences with, you know, the being in somebody else's band getting to be on some bigger shows, that sort of thing. But now, as you're doing it for yourself, you've taken what you've learned and started to apply some new ideas and it's been working. So we want to get into that. Let's start at what I presume is sort of the top, which is figuring out who you are and what you're doing so that you so that people can also find you. Yeah, absolutely. I'll preface this by saying a lot of these things I learned from my friend Gabriel Larson, who's a little bit of been a mentor in the marketing aspect of things. And he goes by the name Gabriel LeBull as an artist and he does his awesome like western Spanish arena rock. And he kind of sent me in the direction of finding out what what you stand for and what what your music represents. And it's super simple stuff that all of us can do. It's not any analytics or any of that. It's just who am I playing music for? Who would like these songs? What's the message? Is it political? Is it social? Is it just historical? Am I just a, you know, a current events pop songwriter just you figure out what message you want to send as like your first thing. The immediate thing is who do I want to be showing up to my shows? Who am I playing for? What do they mean to me? And then from there you can dive into the more fun. I think these are the fun things you get to do as a band like what are the band colors? What does the logo look like? Do we dress a certain way? All those fun things. I mean, you think about, you know, a good example up here. Prince, like the first thing you think of is the color purple. Like you can almost make a color your your brand image. But the big thing is determining up front. Who are we doing this for? Why am I doing this? And don't forget that for the rest of your career ever. Because then there will be times that that is challenged by the nature of this work. And as long as you remind yourself over and over about that, I think that's one of the super important parts of starting to build a fanbase. Because without that cornerstone, there's no sense in going any further down the path. Agreed. Now, I think a lot of people already inherently understand that they get that. We've hammered that concept a million times. But it's another thing to know what it is for you. So how did you figure it out? Who is your audience? What do you stand for? And how did you come to that conclusion? Yeah, you know, for the longest time, I really honed into the fact that I have been a blue collar worker for most of my life, like to get through school. I was a janitor. I worked on the railroad for a summer. I was a bartender, all sorts of things. My last job was like crime scene cleanup. I've done it all, man. And it was, I think I sunk a little bit too much into that for to the point where I was I was wearing my work uniforms to gigs. Like just going straight from work to gig wearing like my steel toe boots with holes in the front and like my my work shirts, which is cool. It's relatable. But I started realizing that part of the thing that we do as artists is you want to represent something that not everyone gets to do. You want to be something that maybe other people wish they could do or maybe they will do after seeing you. And one artist that actually made me think that way was seeing Paul Cauthen play live because he's just he's like just this dude with a big beard and kind of like a goofball by nature. But then he just goes on stage and has this electrifying like atmosphere to what he's doing. And you're like that guy is the star of his own life as sort of thing. And and for me, what that translates into is I want to be someone that's honest and vulnerable. And honestly, if I could simplify it, I want to make people cry because maybe they don't feel like they can cry about something, especially dudes. Like dudes don't get a lot of chances to cry. I think in society and like I love like I love crying. It's one of my favorite things. So getting everyone else to do that by just being super relatable and transparent with the music while also representing something that's well put together. like I my band I like to dress like pretty nicely almost like Charlie Crockett's band looks really nice it's like a sense of class meets a sense of honesty and still retaining that blue collar the roots there you know because like I I still to this day I'm still delivering pianos and what not in the days off just to keep myself afloat but not so much leaning into that as much more so something that maybe motivates people who want to do something more than what they're doing I think I've got an idea and try to summarize a little bit I think that you've identified your brand as having certain values and those values being blue collar work ethic is a big piece of it and it started with a blue collar look but you're shifting that to not necessarily be that to do something that's maybe a little bit more inspirational in the look department but keeping the same values of blue collar with just hard work and honesty and being relatable down to earth being a good term for that how do you go about then outside of the look of communicating that I think for me I like to show glimpses of my life to people through like the social media of what I do but also with the music I try and invite the audience into that as much as possible I don't there's this thing a lot of my friends say is that you can always tell what's going on in my life because I'm probably writing a song about it and I'm probably posting it on the internet and so for me taking my stories and putting them out there to see how people respond and then maybe taking their responses to that and processing that into a song or into something that people want to see on stage like for example just this one song that I've been playing out that's the title track of the album called ghost town it's a breakup song and it's like a devastating song about going back to a town where you met someone and now that you're broken up you've come back and it's like everywhere you go it's reminders of everything and I don't think there's a single soul on the planet that doesn't at least understand what that's like and most people feel that firsthand at some point and so for me identifying that those are things that people want someone else to say because maybe they're going around their life their job thinking that like man this really looks like someone could summarize that so that's where the values are ingrained into the music part of it sure well and the other thing I didn't summarize as part of your brand there is the vulnerability part that's the other part because you had mentioned wanting especially for men to feel like they could cry about these songs perhaps and that makes sense then that if if online you're constantly showing what's going on in your real life between what the songs are about and people know that like that transparency that vulnerability just your day-to-day stuff of how you show up and being present and being vulnerable with what's going on for real yeah and one more thing to summarize to as far as like the music goes like I'm also trying to make music for country fans that aren't like not old country fans are all about the back roads dirt beer trucks like I get it I've written that music and I get what it's for but there's a lot of us too that like we didn't necessarily grow up like that turned to a 11 version of country like I didn't live on a farm but I live in a I grew up in a small town like a couple thousand people you know I didn't have dirt on my boots all the time but like we had you know the rain boots by the door of stuff like that like it's not exactly like the country turned up to 11 like a lot of us just exist in the middle part there my music particularly is somewhere between soul music and country music is like I grew up listening to like Otis Redding but also George Straight but also you know like jazz music but also Willie Nelson and so I trying to find that specific audience of people that maybe aren't into the super pop bro trap country but also not the old school like Jimmy Rogers and all that like somewhere in the middle where you know it's relatable but it's not excessive on either side yeah okay so you've sort of identified your brand because of the of your own life right and the music that interests you the things that you grew up with and you basically found your brand over time and have developed this brand based off of the music that influences you and the music that you make which is what most people start with obviously you try to just describe what your music is doing but then you also incorporated your values the things that you believe in the work that you do all of that the people that you've grown up with you've tried to basically express that from an emotional standpoint from a value standpoint and from a musical standpoint and then you deliver that through songwriting of course but also through content on social media and through a look which you've tried different looks and you've kind of settled on the class year one as you've said now I want to ask one more question about the looks specifically what is it exactly for people can you describe it and how has it if it has changed how people perceive your music in comparison to your older look yeah it used to be the the blue collar you know the steel toe boots and the and that work outfits and then I realized you know for me to it's just as much an escape from daily life to go do my shows and so to put on something a little bit nicer class year and for me it's it's some I don't want to be like stuffy so I've been rocking puffy vests a lot in like turtle necks which I'm wearing neither right now good job on me for the the episode and like I really like the trucker hats but sometimes I'll throw in like a you know a suit jacket and the turtle neck and no hat but oh overall it's this mixture of rustic but class so it's like you see you at least feel like I put in some effort for you the audience I like that yeah I like that I mean again you can do whatever you want it's your brand you get to decide but it kind of reminds me it feels like a little bit of the mixture between the country look and a soul look I appreciate the old the old soul singers might have dressed a little sharper and in that sense so absolutely so that makes sense in terms of even trying to tie it to the mixture of genre that you're going for well you've we've all seen bands when they're starting out and there's just no cohesive look and you know the music is you know that time and when you're making a band you're trying to get the songs right and you're trying to get more gigs and tighten up but it's it's always for me been a fun conversation to sit down with the bands I was either working with or in and figure out like hey guys how do we dress what it like how do we look cohesive because I mean you you want that imagery because it just brings you up to another level and makes things recognizable and it just helps solidify how much on the same page all your members are yeah just looking intentional tension like there was thought behind it does have an impact on the audience okay so we've we've talked about how you found your brand what the brand is what it means and a little bit of how you communicate it right okay so you've got that worked out but you're still in a new town you know you still got to find new people that want to listen to your music what was the next steps for you in terms of building your audience the biggest thing that you could do in any music scene besides play your own shows is go to other shows that is the number one thing every single musician needs to do no matter if you've been in a scene for 10 years or if you're brand new you need to get out and you need to get out with the intention of meeting people and not booking your own gigs and let those things come later because you need friends in this industry and and people can tell the difference between someone that's in it for themselves and just following the right steps and then someone that's here to maybe be a part of something and that's what I felt immediately here in Minneapolis is that a lot of people realize that by building up this scene and being a part of the action you are not only more fulfilled but also things tend to come your way because people realize you're pretty cool to be around and so when I first moved here I immediately was out every night going to open mics going to showcases going to gigs and I still do it when you've despite having a six a.m. job but sociable cider on Mondays was like my home for the longest time and I met so many people there and then going to showcases on Tuesdays going out to gigs Friday Saturday night what I'm trying to say in summary is you have to go out with the intention of being a part of something because it's a very lonely industry if you just intend on being the main character 24/7 and people can tell and you'll start noticing maybe you're not getting calls or people don't want to hang around you and that was my goal when I moved here was I want to make friends and see what I could contribute to this music scene because it's been incredibly receptive for me and people have been so caring and loving and supportive that's how I met up with with Isaac Levy and Bennett V and Michael Shines all the people up at Rock House Productions was just through friends of friends that I mean they're immediately like my best friends up here in a short amount of time and we're all hanging out together and it just so happened that we put together this awesome record like that's just sort of like a side effect of establishing a really good group of people to hang around I know Isaac talked about that on his episode about use have to be a good person and a good hang otherwise no one wants to work with you so that's number one is moving to a city intent on just being a member of the scene from within you can't just climb to the top of the mountain without gathering the gear and gathering people to guide you up there yeah definitely what does that look like for you because a lot of people will go all right I'm just not not social like I'm quiet I'm an introvert you know how did it work for you like what was an average going out to a show like for you were you pretty heavy handed in terms of are are you naturally an extrovert for instance or is it something that you have to work at I definitely had to work at it the first thing you got to do is make a Google calendar of things that are going on in your city like what's going on in Mondays Tuesdays Wednesdays figure that out and become a regular fixture at those places not just for your performances but just to see your friends and touch base and then voila you actually have friends it's it's amazing it's it's cool so but for me it definitely was. especially coming out of Los Angeles and the situation I'd been in, I'd been sort of introverted and almost scared to go out. And so when I moved here, I said, I can't do that again. Like I can't move to another city and be scared to go out and meet people and start over. And when you adopt that mindset that you are there to make friends, 'cause I know for me, when I used to go out to meet people and try and get a gig, like I'd go to a venue like, oh, if I go there, I'll meet this person and that'll get me the connection there. I felt uncomfortable doing that. Like I knew I was out there trying to make a connection and not making friends. It just alters the way you talk to people and you start fumbling your words and people can tell immediately like, you're just sitting here to find out who books the place and then send me an email tomorrow. You don't care about what's going on here tonight. And so you literally have to go in and a new city with the intention that you have to establish friends that are gonna be really fun to play with. You can share songs together. That was one thing I was doing as meeting songwriters and just hanging out with them and swapping songs, maybe trying to write something together and seeing like, you know, well, where could I go try some of these songs out in front of people? And for me too, out in the black hills in South Dakota, you can make so much money as a musician playing the three-hour bar gigs, doing all the street dances and the festivals in the summertime and moved to Los Angeles and you make nothing on a gig. I moved to Minneapolis and you make more than Los Angeles, but you still at times are not making too much for a gig. Like you could make 25 bucks a person, which is kind of nice 'cause when you remove the money equation of the gigging, you kind of reset back to, why do I like doing this? If I'm not making money on it, why am I doing this again? And it makes you think about it. And that was really refreshing when I moved here 'cause I was playing a lot of these gigs for 25, 50 bucks just to go out and meet people and check out the venues and it resets you back into that mode of like, all right, what am I trying to share here in the city? What am I trying to contribute? What am I trying to do for this place to give back to what it's giving to me? - Yeah, okay, so you show up at these events, some of them you're just showing up as a fan, sometimes you're showing up as a performer, it's an open micro showcase of some sort, and whether you're a fan or you're performing, you're connecting with the other artists there, the other people in the audience, you're exchanging your info, you're meeting up, you're doing all of that stuff, all right. So up to this point, you've kind of figured out what kind of music you make, what the values are behind that music, how that intertwines with the song writing and the look and all of that. So far through this networking, you've met people that you eventually wrote with, you know, other producers, other artists, and I'm sure you started to get some fan interest in that sense because you were performing at some of these things, but you know, still probably a long ways to go before you can call it an audience. So what were you doing online on social media to start actually building straight up fans? - Going back to Gabriel Larson, Gabriel LeBoule, it rocked my world when I followed him, and he had about 300 followers, and I followed him and he sent me a voice memo through Instagram messenger thanking me for following him like his voice. And that just blew my mind. I was like, whoa, that's crazy. People, like he's a human being. That's crazy, not just like a profile page. So doing like stuff like that, like I still try and message every person that likes my page, and I miss plenty, just 'cause of the way that gets filtered on that, but trying to do stuff like that, because if that feels uncomfortable, or you feel like it's dumb, then chances are you don't care about them as a fan. You're just glad to see your numbers go up. Trying out experimenting stuff like that. If someone likes your page, send them a message. Thank you so much for following what I do. I appreciate it, you know, people following what I do. It means a lot. If you meet people out at a show and you have stickers, give them a sticker and say, hey, you know, thanks for coming on out. It's small stuff like that is. It's grassroots like branding artist development, where you're making more than just someone to go follow your Instagram page. It's someone that when you have merchandise ready, they're gonna remember the time you gave them something for free and they've been waiting for you to make a shirt. Stuff like that is super important. It is no different than making friends, like it's kind gestures. And even if it kind of feels awkward or maybe assertive at the beginning, you eventually realize like this feels good. It's real and it kind of checks you to make sure that the whole time you're doing all this, that you still are in tune with the people that have gotten you where you're at 'cause you can't play a gig if you have no one that likes you. You know, if you have a single on bandcamp that's coming out, you could invite people to just listen to it beforehand. It's really a whole lot of reaching out to people and it can be kind of off putting it first and it's a more time on the internet, but it's so worth it in the way that people reciprocate that to you. Like, can you owe that to your fans and your people that in this day and age have everything out their fingertips all the time? And if you're just someone starting out in a new city or a band that's really trying to do it, and people give you the time of day, like you owe them at least just to know their name and know where you met them 'cause that sort of stuff as we'll probably talk later helps you down the road. - Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I mean, all of that makes sense. You're doing the little things you're giving because at the beginning, of course, the audience is going to be smaller. So you can do those things. It's probably something you can't keep up forever and ever, but it's a great way to get started and to really energize the people that have found you early on. What were you doing on the music side of that? Because right now, you're working on a full-length record and I know you just released the single. Before that, obviously, it's nice to have it's hard to build fans outside of playing live if you don't have any music online, where you're just doing like phone recordings, where you're doing any of that sort of thing for promotion. How were you getting your music across before the record comment came out? - Yeah, especially what you're asking is from scratch, like if you don't have anything on streaming. I mean, even just putting up a video on YouTube of you and maybe your band playing is already something useful because you can at least show people that you have a sound, that you are intentional, that you have music that you're writing and you can send it to people and definitely send it to all your friends and family up front 'cause those are people that are gonna be there the whole time. I mean, any sort of recording you do or putting on how shows is a good one. I've seen people do that or having private rehearsals where you invite people to come listen and check it out. Album listening parties are really cool. I like doing those when the record hasn't come out yet but having people over to listen to it on some nice speakers and just have a hang is really cool. I'm definitely intending on doing that. As far as playing live, you can go onto your social media before a gig and ask people like, "Hey, what song do you want to hear?" Whether it be a cover song or maybe it's one of the original songs or you post a clip of the song and say, "Who's ready to hear this song at the gig tonight?" It's small stuff like that to invite your audience to say something about what they think about you and also kind of gets maybe the name of the song or some lyrics in their brain already before maybe even have anything going. It's small stuff like that where you're just trying to humanize what you do 'cause most of us are ingesting this as stuff coming through Facebook, Instagram, just the endless scrolling. It's just sound, it's not real, which is why it's so amazing when Gabriel sent me that voice memo. Small stuff to humanize what you do is incredibly important because it breaks up the monotony of people trying to sell something. And people do notice it. I think we might think our brains are melting out of our ears right now, do the phones but there is still some deciphering we can do when we see something that that's real. And trying to capture people like that is important every single day. - I agree. And I think you seem to be very good at leaning in to sort of the personalization of promotion. The, you know, going so far as to be one on one with a lot of it. I know one of the things and we could talk about that next really is that what's really interesting when we first chatted was that you crowdfunded for this record that you're working on now, but you did it without the help of a third party. You just did it one to one direct fundraising with your fans and that's hard. That's really hard. First of all, you know, what was the, why? Why did you want to skip using a platform? And then second of all, where did you begin? - All right, this is Google's the camera right there. Every one of you that has a Facebook page or anything, whether you're starting off right now or you've been doing this for years. Right now, we all have at least like 50 to 150 followers on your Facebook page. Even if you're a brand new band, you make your page immediately 50 to 150 people will like your page. It's friends and family and you're gonna go to your page and you're gonna find that first 50, 150 people. And I think it's usually like, but it's chronologically there. Facebook does it where I think if you scroll down to the bottom, it's like the first person that did it up and you keep track of those people for the rest of your life as a musician because those are the people that saw your page when you had nine followers and they said, you know what? I like Clayton's music. I think he could do it. I'm gonna be his 10th follower. So you're gonna keep track of those people 'cause those are people that are just like I said, they're waiting for a t-shirt. They love your music. They're the kind of people that'll share it with their coworkers. And so when it comes around time to do a record, you could do like what I did or let's do merch for the first part, for example. Everyone wants t-shirts. They always ask like, well, do you have a t-shirt for your band or like a hat? What I do is I make just a Google sheet, a Google form and it's free to use and it's pretty easy to use. You make like a mock up of your shirt, whether you use custom ink or whatever shirt everyone provides a proof. You put it up there, collecting information you need and you just send it to those 50 to 150 people and you do it one on one. You don't just copy paste it for two reasons. One, you owe your fans some personal messages. Like when you send that off to them, let them know like, hey, I remember that first gig we played at this bar. You really like this one song? we did, I want to make sure that you get a chance to get a t-shirt because you've been a fan for so long. And people, they love that. They absolutely love that you thought of them and you remembered something. And the second reason is if you copy paste and you're gonna send that off and make something super special to every person. And eventually try calling them too. That's really fun. I owe a lot of phone calls right now. But what that does is you get to already get people buying your merchandise before you even have to front anything and a shirt costs like what, $12, $15, to make through any sort of service. And if you get 25, 50 people to pay what you're gonna sell the shirt for 25, then you can get a hundred shirts for the price of the 50 that those people bought and you have 50 more to sell. It just helps pay for itself. And so I haven't spent money on merch in years because I've found those 50 to 150 people that they want everything I have because they've just been there from the beginning and they've supported and they believe in it. And by paying the price that you would charge them for the same thing out at the show, you can buy your merchandise upfront without spending a single cent. And it does take a lot of personal messaging and you do have to take the time to do it. But at the same time, you get to connect again one-on-one with people and it just reminds you where you're at because of those people that were there. Sure. And then you can go and blow that way up with like an album fundraiser like what I did. And so I made the same thing just a Google form. And because really what a thing like Kickstarter is, is it's a place that puts all your stuff up for people to know and enter their information and donate. You can do all that on your own and you don't have to pay any cut with Kickstarter. If you don't make your goal, you don't get any of it. So you could work for 30 days and get to $9,000 out of a $10,000 project. And then you don't get any of it. Even if you work your tail off versus this, you get whatever you put into it. And so for me, I offered different tiers of merchandise, everything from just, you know, $30 for a shirt and sticker, vinyl shirt sticker, all the way up to like custom songs, all the way up to, I owe a few people some private shows this year from what they paid for the album. And those are things that you don't even have to pay up front for anything like making a custom song, a private show. Like you don't pay for anything to do that. That's just a skill you can offer to someone and they can pay your record. And by doing that and doing the same process of sending it off to those important people that really care about what you do, you can fund everything that you'd ever want to do. It's genuine and it's real because those are people that would do it anyway. If they just saw you at a show and they heard you were doing a record, they would love to give you money. They'd love to proudly wear your shirt. They'll send their friends your music. And so it's really tapping into those people like your core, super fan group that just love you and reciprocating that back to them. And it works out for everyone because they get to support you. And then you don't have to buy merch. I love that. And all you're doing is using Google Forms essentially or whatever spreadsheet system you want to do to keep track of it. Then were you just accepting payments via like Venmo essentially? Yeah, Venmo, cash app, some people like to write checks, old school, some people will pay cash, you know, and eventually, you know, you do pay taxes, I think, on the Venmo and whatnot. But it's still less than what you're going to be paying going through like Kickstarter. And there's not that risk of losing, you know, of doing all the work and not meeting your goal. And it's super easy for people to fill out because like some of those websites can be somewhat intimidating. It's like, I'm not putting my card information on a website versus if you're sending them something directly, they know, oh, that's Clayton. Like I remember seeing his gig down at the, you know, at the venue there and I'll gladly throw him a couple bucks through Venmo or something like that. And were you just doing this through your social media accounts? Is that how you're keeping track of your fans? Or did you have like a mailing list that you had started? That's the big thing about doing these Google sheets is that it collects emails too. And if you let people know ahead of time that you're collecting their email, which is the right thing to do, you can then send them newsletters and whatnot every time through MailChamp or whatever you use to let them know about new songs. And these are people that are probably for the most part going to be very happy to be the first to know on that list. And so yeah, really tapping into that is crucial if you want to have a sustainable and fortuitous beginning to your career. Because it's really expensive up front to do any of this stuff merchandise recording an album. And which is so worth it to go record in the studio, which is I think something I'm a big supporter of. Sure. Sure. You are too. Yes, I am. Okay. So if you don't mind and you don't need to answer this if you do, but by doing it one on one, you know, approximately how many people did you get to contribute and approximately how much were you able to raise? Absolutely. I was able to, for just the Google form, 50 people paid $7,000. It was everything from doing a $1,000 donation, which means I owe them a private show at some point in the future, along with all the merch all the way down to $30 for a t-shirt and a sticker. And, you know, doing the math I was doing earlier, you're providing enough to pay for your merchandise while also leaving plenty of room to use that for the actual album. Along with doing some just crowdfunding through gigs to just letting people know like, hey, I'm recording this album. You know, if everyone contributes tonight, you know, just throw a couple bucks or something and part of that, too, is I've been on the road a couple weekends with Duce's wild, which is a doing pianos act out of St. Cloud. And those guys are super supportive and they've been really going to bat for me with their crowds and saying like, look, we have this guy opening up for us, just doing his half hour of his tunes. If you like what he's doing and they have me do a song with them. So it's like at the three of us doing it and they say, if you like what you just heard, he's really trying to do it. He's just starting up. And so everyone just go give him a dollar and that's like the most grassroots thing I could think of as just people in a room saying like, I like what he's doing. I'll throw him a couple bucks. It's like busking with a little bit of a suit and tie on it. Right. But it's smart. It's where you've got to start, you know, when you're starting from the beginning, you got to do, you got to take advantage of everything you can. And it can be really hard to get that ball rolling right away. But I think as you've pointed out, if you've got the grit to spend time, one-on-one messaging people that you know have your back, that's one of the best places to start. And if you're at home listening to this going, well, I don't even have enough, I don't have 50 people that even are that close yet, you know, you're really fresh. Then you probably still need to go back to that networking thing where you're just going out and trying to build that network a little bit of people just that know who you are going and maybe playing it more open to mics and getting that stuff started because you probably can't do this right away, you know, you've been making music for a long time. So there's even though this is your debut solo album, you had what, seven, eight years of making and performing, I should say, making and playing music all around the country. So people knew that you were a musician and were supporting you perhaps in other ways. When it comes to a debut solo album, it's, it is building an audience from scratch because you still moved to towns and it's a new project and all of that, but you've got somewhere to begin. So if you feel like you don't have that either, take some more time, take other opportunities that come your way. It's probably not the right time to start a crowdfunding project for instance. However, if you've been playing in some bands and you're looking at the next thing going, yeah, I need to like, I need to take a big step. I need to make a real record or whatever. I need to get more merch. This is a good method for you. Absolutely. And it kind of goes back, you know, what you're saying, if you're just starting out and you don't have that 50 followers or friends, it means you're not getting out enough and you're not making yourself a part of what's going on. And the way I was describing it to someone the other day on the phone, I was saying, you know, you walk into like a Barnes and Noble, they have on the wall like a mural. It's got like Hemingway and Steinbeck and Mark Twainel like in a room like sitting there. You kind of have to picture that that's what's going on right now. Like everyone you meet, just assume that they're going to blow up at what they do and they're really good at it and that you're going to say one day like, wow, we were all hanging out at, you know, at the grumpy's bar over Northeast together and who would have thought a couple years later, we'd all be winning Grammys and all that. You have to assume that about all the people you're meeting and they're good friends with them knowing that you all get to talk about the good old days. I suppose you could call them. Like that's for me what I picture right now. I'm working with all these incredible musicians and everyone is just so kind and giving and I'm really hoping that one day like there's pictures of us in a book that they're like, whoa, I can't believe Clayton Ryan and like Emmy Woods were in a playing a gig at KJs before they closed and all that sort of stuff. Like you have to imagine your life is going to be in a book and everyone around you is a part of that and everyone gets to enjoy that. It makes it more fun. Like I don't rather than just saying like, well, the odds are against us saying like, what if we all do this? Like that's going to be so cool. If we pull it off, we could really do it and that's kind of how I'm trying to live my life. Like it's going to end up in a book and all of us are in the pictures together and people are like, whoa, I can't believe they were there together. It can help keep the the hope and the energy and the momentum alive when you when you're thinking about the larger picture instead of just today, I need to do this task, you know, when you're thinking about the full story as you've put it in the book, everything gets a little bit more exciting. And so it's just it's easier to keep pushing. Yeah. And the today of what I just said does suck. It's a lot of sitting on a computer messaging. It's a lot of putting out videos. It's a lot of just the content nightmare that we all live in. So that the today does often suck. And if you look at the bigger picture, it is and think of it as that novel as that that storybook moment, it's a lot more easy to realize how this this tree is a part of the forest. And I've been trying to get way better at doing that. And just taking in the small moments, all this stuff I've talked about. When you have someone come up to you after a show and talk about a song and I've said this so many different times I'll keep saying it that I used to think it was really silly when someone would say something on the lines of like that song Save my life or like your music really changed me because I thought it's like it's just a song It's not a tangible product or nothing and then this year I really understood what that meant and if someone's saying those things to you or someone Learns your layers to a song or one of your friends covers a song of yours that they like take note of that because There's most of us like that doesn't happen. These are small things that don't happen to a lot of bands like you know Local bands go to a show and people know the lyrics to their songs not too many so People are doing that it means you've done something and hone in on that special moment like at the Bryant like bullhead People sing along to a song that's not out, but they had heard the demos of it and like that was a super magical moment I couldn't believe it like that's the first time that's happened and that's awesome small stuff like that Is what'll keep you going through the daily stuff that sucks. Yeah, like it's the thing We're like wow. I don't want to ever look at a computer screen again And then someone sings your lyrics so like all right, I can do the computer screen if I get more of that. Yeah All right, well, you're doing all the hard work You're doing the things you have to do to build this audience you were able to secure some funding Through your fans through your super fans. You're making a record that's coming out this summer You're starting to play some more shows as we mentioned earlier You just did Bryant like bull and sold that out you're doing all those things right and now you're kind of past Let's call it the very initial phase. You're kind of settling into okay Now we just keep going through the motions keep putting out better content keep growing this audience Which a lot of people are in that face right they've got a record out and they're still going okay But how do I how do I really do this which really comes down to Trying to play bigger and bigger shows getting better opportunities, right and being online as much as you can and growing your fan base Through social media promotion. How do you think about your social media? What are you doing right now? What did you do for instance to get Bryant like ball filled up? It was a whole lot of really boots on the ground stuff I was super proud of of how Alec and I Did this those you see in the Alec episode with coffee break entertainment he cares so much about this city And about the music scene and he at the beginning of the year I said I want to get a management that cares about me and I found that with Alec and like literally him and I walked around Uptown doing old school like posturing and handing out flyers and going to the open mics and talking to our friends I mean, hey if you guys are free this Friday come out doing a little bit of Facebook ads making phone calls seen if people are in town So that's like the fun stuff you get to do to help promote your bigger shows But capturing that sort of thing is has been really nice for me personally as far as growing the brand especially with the album coming on out I'm going to be doing the same thing that I was doing with the album funding To do some music videos and you know, thankfully with with how I've been able to do it There's money set aside to do some some videos and I want to create a storyline about those videos that goes along with the album and So for for anyone out there, that's wondering like how do we market our band or what do we do with this album that's coming out or is out It's almost like you have to create your own story around your album around your music like it like a Marvel Cinematic Universe if you will and so Honing into that kind of gives you a fun project as a band like how can we be something that represents this city like start maybe looking out with like what if people from outside of Minneapolis were looking at this band What would they think of it and what would we represent would we represent the city well would be be a cool fixture of of this area And that's kind of the mindset I'm in right now where I've kind of dialed back to content slightly now at the show at the Bryant leg bulls over Because I want to revamp it to be something that's more intentional and more maybe professionally done rather than just the phone videos and all that because those are good and you can have something that blows up That's just a phone camera video, but Trying to do something that's more consistently professionally done and maybe shows that you are on a higher level that you want to take it to another level Is is super important and that's you know, I'll keep going back to his stuff Gabriel the bull his videos are super recognizable like the logos on there All that stuff another guy that's I really respect is Thomas Dica He was the guy opening for us and I met him a couple months back and his name is on everything like he has his logo on his hat He has a jacket he wears with it. It's it's on everything and so it's like how do you get your logo on the more things? That's a good way to focus your energy is how do we start being more present and more apparent to people to keep promoting an album or to maybe Grow the fan base and shoot for the moon like doing a ticket at show is always really fun because it does whip you into gear Like I was super nervous a week out when we had 20 tickets sold like oh, no, this can't be and that got us out there Posturing more handing out more flyers Shocking more people and sure enough it sold out Obviously all of the you know street team kind of stuff of putting up posters and and going to open mics and talking to your friends Always do that because it's usually quite effective But it's hard to scale right and so that's where social media is always comes into play where I think a lot of people make the mistake If they only do social media and then wonder why no one's at their show because a lot of people don't notice it on Social media you're not you can't be certain that the fans that you would expect to show up even saw that post So that's where the the old school stuff can really help and fill in to make sure that your immediate people are going to be there However, you still got to do social media and you guys ran some ads and you did some stuff When you were talking about thinking of your your overall story like the universe of that the band exists in What does that mean exactly to you and like how do you make content with that in mind when I was a doing Some some management for bands the way I had them figure that stuff out is what are the characteristics that you Wish maybe that you had as as an artist or as a band like would you want to come off in a certain way as a like Like super professional would you want to be like a rowdy punk band? Characteristics like that. How do you turn that up to 10? How do you turn that up to 11? What does that look like and a good way to answer that question to was if you were having a show at Red Rocks It's like going to be filmed and all that what would that what would that look like? What would the stage be set up like? What would you be wearing what would be on the background behind you with the be props that sort of stuff? What what symbols of your band would be there and then you start figuring out How do I incorporate those into the videos? Do I do do we do this super ambiguous series of videos that doesn't necessarily explain if There's a new song coming along or maybe an album and just have a logo on there that you think of a symbol of sort It's almost like you have to make it cryptic at times too is that's one way to do it for me though Trying to make a story I wouldn't say a storyline per say of my career, but definitely trying to tie all the social media to sort of fit within a certain universe whether that's filming like it's old school with like film camera or maybe it's in black and white all the stuff You're doing it's they're super simple things you can do to make something be Canon with with what you have going on maybe it's like You you are only wearing a certain color of outfit for the whole duration of an album or the the shows you're doing to promote it stuff like that that Can be seen both on the screen and in real life when people see the band It's kind of thinking about that, you know like prince is another great example, you know, you think of Color purple think of purple rain concept down you think of the guitar like all that sort of stuff like iconic stuff like that That can be seen on screen off screen Is super important for maintaining interest and it keeps you from getting bored because there's always that low left Or alms out and you're sitting there like what do we do next? You know, it's it's out. I would say it Sort of ties back to what I was saying about picturing yourself in a book, but imagine it more of like a movie And if you could make your music fit within like a movie or a Netflix show just to use, you know, that terms of the time That's the way I think about it. How could I make this be intriguing with a thread that runs through it? But I'm still planning a lot of that with this album But I have all these music videos planned and it's gonna be released almost like a four-part series And I've done that before too. This actually is a good thing that Seems way less ambiguous than what I've been spewing for the last 30 seconds But I had a friend of mine We picked four songs and we went to four different locations in the black hills And we just did a live video where I played the song in front of a couple microphones And then I had a little short interview about what that each song meant and why I was in a certain location I did one at an old railroad engine house because I used to work on the railroad and the song was about working on the railroad And so he mixed in the shots of me doing the live performance with shots of like the train and then like there's a little interview up front We did one where I was talking about you know growing up being in the woods my friends and all that where we had a morning bonfire And I cooked breakfast over the fire in a cast iron pan. He interviewed me with that Didn't I did a short song? It's super simple stuff that if you just know one friend with a camera It doesn't have to be that crazy. You can have You know everyone these days can buy a scarlet interface and put it plug it into your laptop and go record in the woods or something And it doesn't have to be anything intricate but stuff like that too where you just kind of You make your own interviews rather than waiting for someone to ask you to come do have you Western AF or have you do? Yeah, gems on VHS any of those things you just make them yourself It doesn't take much to do that. So you kind of almost make your own press Yeah, well, you're making you're making content that reflects your brand Obviously your music reflects your brand, but you're telling you're adding storyline. You're adding these interviews. You're adding imagery and places and and backgrounds that have meaning that reinforce what this brand is. And all of that becomes easier when you kind of can start. That's why this whole interview started with what is your brand and you being able to talk about the values that matter to you. Then it's easier to decide, well, where should we shoot this? And what should we talk about? And how should this look? Does it make sense for those things that you had defined earlier? Does it make sense for the genres you pick? Does it make sense for the look you pick? Does it make sense for the values you picked? Brands can be made out of more than just those things, but generally they all have some level of that. And so doing all of that helps you then know what content to make. And then that content generally will attract the right kind of people to your brand. Yeah, I've said that to people to that talk about how much they don't like using social media. And trust me, I'm in the same boat. I hate it. But the thing about social media is that as long as you are very clear with your values, everything you post and it follows along with the storyline you want, then the algorithm presents your stuff to people that like those things. So if you're like writing political songs about, you know, with a certain sway or you're writing songs for like a certain group of people that maybe is underrepresented and you are very apparent with that and about that message, it will send that to those people. And then, you know, it seems like a waste of time beyond the internet all the time. But every fan you make just due to the nature of how the internet works. Someone that hates what you stand for is not going to like your page. Like it's it's going to be someone that if you remember them and you keep track of maybe you're generally where your fan base is located or what kind of people are liking your pages, you can figure out where to go play a show. So you never have to go play a show in a new city where no one's there. And that's what a lot of this stuff if we want to get into like the analyticals and the actual like data stuff. Using all this to kind of figure out who, where and what is how you can make for more effective touring and knowing where to advertise and all that because I think a lot of bands when they start out really want to hit the road like they want to hit the big cities like they want to say we played Chicago like we played Denver all the all these cool places. And I urge every band that's starting out to do it. Just do it. Book a bunch of shows that you've in a place you've never done. And go do it for fun. It'll it's so much fun to be on tour like my first rock and roll band tour in college. We lost money on that tour. Didn't make anything. The first night we played for two people bartender and one of my friends that just happened no we're in town. Then the next two nights were awesome house shows. And we easily lost like 200, 300 bucks driving to Chicago and St. Louis and and and all this. But it was really fun. It was super fun. And you get to find out if you like each other you get to find out how much you really like playing music. So definitely everybody that's starting out that hasn't done it. Go play Omaha. Go play Kansas City. But only do it once or twice. And then once you start doing all these things on social media or using like your analytics through your streaming services, you can find out. Oh, we have 50 fans in Lincoln. How do we get our brand and this the values to those people and get them out to a show. Then you can say I have 40 fans in Lincoln. I can confidently sell at least 30 to 40 tickets. Yeah. And this is all stuff that'll just save you the burnout. Because if you do all the touring without any of the stuff behind it, any of the social media, any of the analyzing who is liking your music, then you're just playing empty rooms across the country, which is more expensive than playing empty rooms in your city that you live in. Well, there comes a point where if you're putting in, let's say eight to 10 hours to do that show between the rehearsals that at a minimum that you need to put in that show. And then showing up and doing the soundcheck and the load in the load out and the show itself. There's a lot of time that goes into pulling off that show. And if there's only a few people at that show, there's an element of that time would be better spent just being on social media and getting probably more than the few people that showed out to your shows as fans if you can make decent content. And it doesn't need to be fantastic. I think it's great that you're doing music videos and that you're aiming to do higher end stuff, but it's not necessary. If you can, great, do that. But as long as you can make content that reflects what matters to you and reflects and represents your music in a way that you like and think is accurate, you can find fans. What you said earlier about, you know, the algorithm wanting to find who likes your stuff, you know, they're in, they're in business of keeping people on their platforms. And the way that that works is if they can predict what it is that you want to actually interact with and watch, the better they can do that, the longer you stay online because you're actually being entertained. So you're absolutely correct in that that's what they're trying to do. They're very much trying to understand how to put every piece of content in front of the right people. Well, what happens sometimes though is that we're not clear about our message. We're not clear who our stuff is for. And if it's unclear to us or to our fans, it's going to be unclear to the algorithm too. And it just means that they're either showing it to the wrong people or they're not showing it to anyone because they don't know what to do with it. And so all of that goes into this building and audience conversation. It a lot of it comes down to branding. But then second to that is the hard work of just reaching out and doing one to one connections with people as long as you have to to get some momentum going. Once momentum starts going, things do organically start to spread on their own, but probably not right away. It takes effort. It takes a lot of effort. And it's okay if these things change over time. You know, the example that we've used with you is like the look like you decided, you know what I am going to, I'm going to pivot and I'm going to do it slightly different type of that happens all the time. It may not be the last look. You might keep refining that. Maybe it gets a little bit more specific or maybe it just completely changes again on a future project. That's okay. The decisions you make at the beginning are just starting points. You can refine. You can rebrand if you need to. You can do all those things. Maybe as your fan base is growing, maybe they're telling you something that hey, we like this part, but not so much this part. Listen to them. The more you're connecting with people, the more that feedback might be valuable for how to pivot or better define what you're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, we're still thinking about those 50 people, because if you haven't remembered them, they're still there. Kind of touching on what you're saying earlier too, just due to the nature of the algorithm and just due to the nature that they want to keep you on their sites. The reason why the one on one is so important. Besides just like reminding you who your fan base is and keeping you humble, keeping you grounded to these real human beings that have supported you. It's also just super important because most sites like you can't just share your song off a Spotify. You can't show your YouTube video. You can't even share your link to your Google form like I like I was using because those sites don't want people leaving the site. That's the thing bands do all the time where they throw up a recording from Spotify and they wonder like it gets two likes and no one checks it out because Facebook doesn't let people see that. They push it down. And it makes sense. They want people to stay on their website. But that's why you have to maintain a one-on-one relationship with your fans because there's plenty of people that's throughout this process where I sent them the recordings or I know sorry I sent them the sheet and they had no idea that I was even doing an album just because I've been either trying to use the link for the site and just everyone has their own tailored algorithm which is everything thrown at them where chances are even that 50-150 people that are your core fan base don't even see your stuff but they might because they interact more often. But you'll be surprised like if you're not getting people to look at your music or watch your video on YouTube or or buy your t-shirt off a bandcamp it's not because people don't care it's just because you have to bring it to them given the nature of what's going on in social media like you have to do your your job of bringing it to the people that would love it. And that's why I've talked to a few people that you know they don't like any of the stuff I've talked about just because it seems uncomfortable like you're asking people for things or seems like you're just using your fans for money but these are people that if they somehow knew about your show they would go out and they'd buy your t-shirt they'd go buy your hat they'd go buy your vinyl record and then they'd go play it at work and it's not you're not using anyone for anything because these are people that want to buy your things but they don't get a chance if they don't even know about it and that's why you just have to make sure that those people are given the chance to help you because they want to and you can't see everything all the time. And you're not going to be for everybody it's okay you know that's the whole point of doing this is that you're you're finding the people that you are for but part of finding them is also finding who you're not. A good brand often will tell you who it's not for like who who shouldn't be a fan of this music. That's a strong brand a lot of people are scared of doing that of ever wanting to offend or push anybody away and I'm not saying you intentionally need to you know say this is not for fans of pop music or this is not for fans of whatever you know I'm not saying that but if you did there's nothing wrong with that if you know for sure that like yeah this crowd is probably not interested in what I do that's okay because by doing that you can strengthen the relationship with the people that you are for an example I've used before and I'll use again is I have artists that do music and foreign language and so they all speak English But all their music is in a foreign language and they could easily do it in English, but they don't, because their niche is not that. And the more that it pushes away the people that can't understand the lyrics, the more it attracts the people that can, it reinforces to their fan base that they're committed to them and them alone, not everybody, them. And in a world where we have a million choices, the more that you can do that, the better. Well, and there's a power in saying, oh, well, you know, there definitely is a power in saying, no, and I guess not for them, because yeah, it does narrow the field a bit. And I, as a pseudo country soul artist, I know that country right now is so broad and wide and country music listeners, at least on the internet are some of the most like petty and particularly angry people I've ever seen comment on any sort of post. And so like, I used to be worried about how my music would translate to someone that likes trap bro country music. And by realizing that I'm definitely probably going to be more along the lines of like Asturgell Simpson or like a Jason Isbell, where like they kind of get to say the things they want. And people, you know, you have the, the other side of that coin, the bro country guys that will fight them on all that, the people that support you. And like what you do, we'll just respect you even more. And I kind of realized that's maybe the direction that I want I want to go where I have my group of fans and friends that love what I do. And they're very adamant about it. And they have their strong convictions about what is or is, you know, a certain kind of music. And there's more value in that than being relatable to millions of people at the expense of not having like your own convictions. Yeah, I'm definitely realizing that like, I think the way that this really hit me too, I was in Los Angeles. And I saw when my favorite bands play in live and the singer just, he said this thing that was amazing, where there's a lot of people that just want to be famous. And they just want their band to be famous, but they don't know what for. It's like that he called it blanket famous. And they don't exactly know what they stand for. They don't know what their music is. And those are people that aren't going to last because if you don't have that intention of knowing who you're for and who you want to represent, then you don't build anything sustainable. Because no one else knows either because no one else knows. Yeah, and that's you get all these, you know, a lot of these TikTok stars and whatnot that found something that worked. But then they go to play a show like I've seen it before where some some guy had a hit song that it blew up on TikTok. And we were opening up for him and he opened up with that song. Everyone was cheering along and then went to the other songs that no one knew and like crowd cleared out like a 4,000 person auditorium. And he was only a second act like down to like 1500. And that's so that's why you have to be more focused on creating the craft for the people that support you that you want in your fan base than worrying about getting everyone on board. Because I can't imagine it might be fun to see a group of trap bro country fans along with my fans interacting in a crowd. It might be fun. Honestly, it could, but I'm not concerned about getting literally everyone. There's a difference between being intentional about who your music's for and then also like pushing people away. You can say, this is exactly who I am and then and then let people decide what they're going to do. You know, some might be like, I also like that because people like lots of different versions of music. And that's okay. Then they can also like that. They may not be your super fans, but they might be more casual, right? And then there's going to be people that don't like it. And then there's going to be people that love it. That's okay. The point is is that if you're defined, you are for someone. If you're undefined, you're for no one in that regard, except people that are probably in your network. Because then they know you personally, and that has definition, but your music, if that's undefined and everything about your online persona is sort of undefined, it's hard to attract people to you. What's in it? You know, what's what's drawing them to that? A lot of musicians just default to, well, it would be how good the music is. But the fact of the matter is there's just plenty of good music out there more than you could ever listen to. And so you need to do a little extra beyond that to make a connection. Yeah. And everything that I've spoken on over the duration of this, this chat all just in my mind boils back down to who are you doing it for? And that includes yourself. Like what, what are you getting out of it? The emotional spiritual healing you're getting out of it? And you have to look for that in every single person that goes to your show. And it could be a room of three people. It's your first gig, but find someone that was watching your song and find someone that was nodding their head and then go talk to that person. If you have stickers, give them a couple stickers or ask them their name. Bands don't do that. Bands like they go do their show and then they pack up, you know, trying cash in on the drink tickets or something. But go take a moment. Don't even tear down your stuff if you're the last band, you know, go talk to people, tear down your stuff later, get out of there and go catch up, sleep another time. Like go talk to people, go offer to buy a drink or just say, Hey, man, thank you for clapping along to that show because we've all played rooms where no one seems to care. And you wonder why they even showed up and you wonder why you're there and the bar wonders why you're there and everyone's just angry. And you have to be able to turn that into an opportunity to build your 11th follower. You have to turn that into an opportunity to build that person that's going to buy a shirt when you do your merch sale later. And it ends up just being so much more fulfilling of an endeavor than just wondering if like going out of that room and saying, wow, no one was there, that's we deserve better. That sucks. Like we're never playing that place again versus stand was really cool to talk to. And I think he he went and followed our Facebook page. I gave him some stickers and found out we, you know, our neighbors grew up together, stuff like that. Like that's what makes this business fulfilling because a majority of it is a lot of me, me, me, me look at me and look at us and looking at a screen and emails. So if you can humanize it at any point in the way, you probably will be much happier in the long run. Well said, man, well said. Well, this has been a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming here today and and talking about building fan bases and branding and all of that two final questions for you before we wrap this up. One is what's up next? Yeah, I got kind of a couple of weeks to just recovery and hanging out, probably get back into songwriting. And then I'm opening up for Canaan Cox at 7th Street entry on April 27th. And that's super exciting. My friend Rachel Berenger is going to be joining me, just doing a duo. And let's see, coming up after that, I have two dates at the Paramount Theater in St. Cloud in May, May 13th and May 24th opening up for its both deuces wild. And the second one is Michael Shines has a new Americana rock band called the Lone Way Home doing that. And then album is coming out called Ghost Town. It'll be coming out on July 18th. We have some plans for the album release show. It's could be at a really cool place. I've always wanted to play. I'm not going to say, yeah, just in case things change as of the date of this podcast, but super stoked about that. Other than that, just plugging away, going to open mics. I'm going, that's where I'm going right after this. Nice. You're never too big. What are your favorite open mics to attend? If you are a new musician in Minneapolis or you've been here for a while and you haven't heard of these, make these like part of your schedule Monday nights. You can go to social bullseider in Northeast. And that's just an amazing, there's like 60 people that play that one. It's a big long marathon. That means there's at least 60 people there to watch you play, along with all their friends. It's super cool. You can get a recording of yourself playing for a couple bucks. JT, that runs that super awesome. And then you can head on over to the terminal bar. It does the same thing on that night. Tuesday nights. I always go to Alex does the showcase at the Roke Music Lounge over in St. Paul, which is super cool place to just see three bands. Do a nice sweet 40 minute set and you get to hang out this intimate place. Really cool opportunity there. And then the Minnesota songwriters showcase, I do try to do every Wednesday or Sunday run by Nick Hensley. That's a pretty cool group to get in with just to see songwriters in action playing for each other and for a small audience. So those are some of my favorite ones. Lately, I've been really enjoying the snap to open like at Green Room. That is so cool, man. I've, there's nothing like that. It's out Dakota. I've been trying, I've been on the list. I haven't gone up yet. Next time. That's so cool. And that's Thursday nights. Yeah. That's Thursday nights. Is it every Thursday or is it mostly unless they have a something else book? Check the calendar at Green Room. But yeah, all those guys are super talented. They were here recently. Cool. The final question, something I've been asking everybody at the end of every episode is, what is your secret to the scene? My secret to the scene is find the people that support you and reciprocate that support tenfold and never forget them at any point because the moment you forget the people that got you where you're at is the moment you have lost why you're doing what you're doing. And if that's the case, put the guitar down, go pick up a lens and buy early application and save room for people that have gratitude. What's that man? Where do you want to point people if they want to check out a show? Like where do they find you online? Absolutely. I've all the social media is man. I got Instagram. I got TikTok threads. I finally got ClaytonRyan.com after years of someone else having it. So that's honestly, if you want to find all those other ones ClaytonRyan.com got the social bar right up top dates to the shows are there. Nice little series of buttons to click where you can hear the music and all that. So that's the one stop shops ClaytonRyan.com. Those links will be in our show notes as well as my own. If you enjoyed the episode or if you got ideas and feedback, hit me up. You can send me an email or a DM also on all the social secrets from the scene. I appreciate you listening tuning in. If you like this, please share it with a friend, like, subscribe, all that stuff. Until next time. (upbeat music)