Tony Scott: 0:13

Welcome to The Jay Franze Show, a behind-the-curtain look at the entertainment industry, with insights you can't pay for and stories you've never heard. Now here's your host, jay Francie.

Jay Franze: 0:42

Well, hello, hello, hello and welcome to the show. I am Jay Francie and this is your Backstage Pass to the Music Industry. This week we get to talk with a Western Country Rock trio. We get to talk with Huckleberry Road. We'll talk to them about their unique style, their single Ray-Bans, and we'll talk about the recording process. Now, these guys are a force to be reckoned with and I can't wait to talk with them tonight. So if you would like to join in, comment or fire off any questions, please head over to jayfranze. com. Now let's get started. All right guys. Well, let's go ahead and jump in.

Jay Franze: 1:24

I know your music is quite unique and it's definitely got a different flavor to it, so can you start by just telling us what that flavor is to you?

Robert James Clark: 1:32

well, twan and I kind of grew up playing metallica songs and you know, stevie ray vaughn and all that. We had a bunch of rock bands and um, somewhere I got exposed to, you know, just writing a couple nice chords on a guitar and trying to piece a story together. But we're still rockers, you know. So we kind of go an americana route to riot it, but then we turn on our guitars and start trying to produce the sounds over it and the lines are so blurry when it comes to country music.

Anthony Vairetta: 2:06

Now it's, you know, I mean, since forever rock and roll has played a big part in every part of music and that all stems from the blues. It all stems like, I mean, even Hank Williams sang the blues, and it's just. We love playing country music but we also love playing on guitars loud and fast, and it's just, it fits and it's working out for us. You know the style of songwriting as as your songwriting evolves and you start finding your own sound, you start melding in all of your influences. Because when you set out and you say I'm going to play this, it doesn't really work that way because you have all these influences that you've always had. And when you really start honing your craft and really getting into it, honing your songwriting, all of your influences really start to come in. And you know, robert's a song smith, he's a, he's a songwriter, he likes telling stories, and that's where it really plays into it. It's it's not the, the cookie cutter, bubblegum stuff. We like to tell a story.

Anthony Vairetta: 3:14

Yeah, you know we want you to join us on the story and on the ride and we're always looking for new music and really the turning point for us was when we started finding bands you know, like the Steelwoods, and then you discover people like Sergal Simpson and you really, you really get into the song, the storytelling, well and somehow they found themselves their own character.

Robert James Clark: 3:41

But it seems to be coming out of our music now starting to sound more like us do you feel like that is something that's coming out because of who you are?

Jay Franze: 3:52

Do you think there's a conscious decision to go down that path?

Robert James Clark: 3:56

I think it's like Twan said, where no matter what you're trying to do, all of your influences are going to come out of you, and that I guess all of those things become more you Like. I'll do a little Stevie run here, but I also like my arpeggios and some minor stuff which is totally metal. It is what it is.

Jay Franze: 4:18

I notice there's a lot of feel like that to it. I mean it's also very melodic and it's got a hard edge to it. I think that's kind of what makes it unique and makes it powerful and it grabs you. But let's go down some of your songs. Let's talk about Ray-Bans.

Robert James Clark: 4:37

There's a lot of things about that song that make me drawn to it. But what was the inspiration behind it? You know, I it was kind of like, uh, based off of one of my first relationships, just because I don't know, man, when things fall badly, I think every guy looks at the horizon over the mountain and thinks I could just go there, I can just go. And so it's just trying to really think about it, like all right, everything broke out and I'm going, I'm going to go there, and so it's like I'm walking on the highway, I'm hitchhiking, some dude pulls up. It's like I don't care how beat up the truck is, man, I'm getting in the back, like let's go. I just feel like every guy feels that when, when, first falling apart on you.

Jay Franze: 5:24

Just get me out of here yeah get me out of here so, when you come up with that inspiration and you want to start writing the song, what's the approach you take to the songwriting process?

Robert James Clark: 5:38

You know, especially for all three of us, it takes an idea. Just a simple phrase can just smack me right in the head and open up all these possibilities. Ray-bans it was just one of those things where I was like I got my ray-bans on, huh well, if I'm throwing them on in some form of you know some dramatic fashion, what's going on and what am I doing? All right, it's, it's uh. The process is more of like a just a thought or a phrase, or you know, sometimes somebody will just say a thing where it's like huh, I like that. You know, a guy told me after I served a politician one time you know he goes, you know I knew that son of a and he had it coming. But you know, sometimes you're the bear and sometimes you're the berry.

Jay Franze: 6:26

I was like, well, right off and right song so in that particular case you're coming up with this inspiration. You know this image in your head, so does that mean lyrics come first for you?

Robert James Clark: 6:41

yeah, um, it's lyrics first. I won't get too sidetracked on you I was about to.

Anthony Vairetta: 6:48

All day long. Robert and I like if he comes up with a line, he'll text it to me. We've actually written two or three songs back and forth just via text messages.

Jay Franze: 7:00

So what's that? Just send an idea, a line to him, and then you follow up with another one.

Anthony Vairetta: 7:05

Yeah, and then the whole text feed, because we'll both be at work or we won't be together and he'll send me something, and then I'll send something, and then we go through it and by the time we get to the band room there's a basis for something you know and then we can. We can sit and work on it and stuff changes and whatever.

Robert James Clark: 7:24

But you got like something thrown against the wall to start trying to shape and for ray bands.

Dillon Secklin: 7:29

That was written years ago.

Robert James Clark: 7:31

Yeah, yeah, I wrote that in my underwear sitting in my living room there's an image I won't get out of my head tonight and. I went and sat down and I wrote the song in like 20 minutes yeah, and when that song was actually written, we were about to shelf it.

Anthony Vairetta: 7:49

And we've done this with two or three songs. We did that with Ray Bans, we did that with Broken Down. We've done this with two or three songs. We did that with ray bands, we did that with broken down. We've done it with miles on my heart. We write it and then it just something isn't quite clicking, and then you know, you play it and play it and play it, and play it, and play it, and play it, and then you revise it and revise it and you're just like ah, this isn't working. And then one day you play it and you're like oh yeah, yeah, that it's, it's.

Anthony Vairetta: 8:14

It's one of those things it's, you know, and especially Ray Bans. Ray Bans didn't. We wrote it and we didn't record it for like two years.

Jay Franze: 8:25

So it took two years.

Anthony Vairetta: 8:26

It took two years for that one to come to fruition. And then, when we did the tracking and we released it, we released it as a single and I think we released that one in 2016 or 17 I think so yeah, and then we released it as a single.

Anthony Vairetta: 8:47

We were ramping up and we were getting ready to do a whole album and then we, you know, we had to go through some lineup changes and then we were focused on trying to get on the road and trying to get everything together to put together a full album, but we kept Ray Bans out. I mean that song, that song alone. Then it was really eye-opening for us. I mean it hit 20,000 views on social media for the video.

Anthony Vairetta: 9:21

And we had to drive out to the middle of nowhere, in the middle of Black Rock Desert out where they do Burning. Man. We had to be there at like 5 in the morning. It's like 28 degrees and we're out there in snap button shirts doing this video Flush in our face isn't heat, no, it's cold when you see the video.

Anthony Vairetta: 9:42

It was real cold, but we kept pushing the song, kept pushing the song. And it's relatable because everybody's been through that situation. Relatable because everybody's been through that situation, whether you're a man, whether you're a woman, that that when you go through that type of relationship and you're just like you know what I'm done, I'm out, yeah, I'll see you I try to tell my wife that every day, but she just doesn't let me go yeah, well, and it's crazy too.

Anthony Vairetta: 10:08

It's crazy too because we originally released it, we re-released it on the full album and the single itself is still climbing faster than it was on the album and we're like, how does that even work? I mean, I'm not mad at it no but it's.

Anthony Vairetta: 10:29

It's like we were in billings montana and, with the way they had this stage set up, they had a pond in between the stage and the big grassy area where everybody was sitting and we were. We recorded that song in like 2016, 2017. And now here we are in 2021. We're out on the road and at the fair that we were playing at, we had a runner and his name was Nick and he took care of us. He drove us all over town, He'd pick us up, he, you know, he know anything we needed, he would take care of it and he was always messing with us. He's a hilarious dude.

Anthony Vairetta: 11:11

So we can't see anything past the pond, you know, because of the lights and everything. And we hear somebody screaming for Ray-Bans and Robert gets on the microphone and he goes shut up, Nick. It wasn't Nick. It was this dude that found out that he'd been listening to us since we released Ray Bans. He came across us on Chris Stapleton's radio station and we had no idea. So this dude is screaming for Ray Bans and we'd already played it. We ended up playing it again because he would just not stop.

Robert James Clark: 11:46

We're like okay, you know what?

Anthony Vairetta: 11:47

Here you go, man, here you go. So we played it again and after the show, this guy walks up with his whole family, right, don't even know. I mean, we're in the middle of Montana, that's a long way from home, right, and he comes up to us and he goes dude, thank you so much for playing Ray Bans. I was screaming my head off about it and we're like what he goes? I've been listening to you guys since you released that song and I found out that you guys were in Billings so I had to be here and we're like wow how does that make you feel?

Anthony Vairetta: 12:22

it was amazing it. It was a little overwhelming to know that the music is starting to reach out and it was pretty cool that that song struck him and it had him start to follow us to where here we are, hours and hours away from home. It's little things like that. They grow as you get more reach, like oh yeah, we've been listening to you for a while and it's like all right, great. And the fact that that song has that much trajectory, I mean we can never not play it again, which is fine by me, because the outro solo on that song is like Freebird for me and I just have a blast with it.

Jay Franze: 13:05

I mean, you also bring in extra instrumentation on that song. You had a fiddle player on that song as well. How did all that come about?

Anthony Vairetta: 13:12

Yeah, where was he from? Branson? Branson, missouri.

Robert James Clark: 13:16

Branson.

Anthony Vairetta: 13:16

Missouri. We found him online and hired him to do. He did steel on my guitar and he also did the fiddle on ray-bans. And this guy I mean, it was like a 24-hour turnaround too, this guy's a monster like 70 bucks.

Robert James Clark: 13:30

And he sent the track over and I was like, hey, can you maybe also play with the guitar solo a little? And he was like, yeah, let me see what I can do. He sent it over, dude. It was like right on it. Yeah, okay, yeah it was.

Anthony Vairetta: 13:43

It was wild dude, it was like right on it, yeah, okay, yeah. It was wild, it was wild.

Robert James Clark: 13:48

He's like we're keeping this, Of course.

Anthony Vairetta: 13:51

And for so long. It's one of those things especially when you're creating an album and you're creating an experience, you want your sound to be as big as possible. We're always from the train of thought of if we can't play it live, it doesn't belong on the song well, that would make sense.

Jay Franze: 14:11

It makes sense for uh, for a band but it's.

Anthony Vairetta: 14:14

It's one of those things you want your sound to be. You want to be as big as possible and you want to move air and you want it to. You know, move people while they're listening to it.

Robert James Clark: 14:26

Yeah, Dylan did a lot to add to that for us. He put the leash around Anthony in my neck and got our asses on a click track. Once that got put in place, we started being able to add things. What are you adding into the set we do?

Dillon Secklin: 14:44

play with backing tracks, so we don't have a bass player. So that's the first thing you know. We have bass coming out there and that's mainly Robert who recorded a lot of those bass tracks. There's some outsourcing that we've done. I think Ray Banz was Dave Kellers who was in so Shota, their previous band.

Dillon Secklin: 15:03

That particular song's got a lot of growl in the bass yeah, yeah, that song is pretty intense and we uh, we throw some, some tambourine in there and we have to have that violin track. We don't have a live violin player. Rihanna carter is a local player and she's amazing and we've used her on broken down she. She's busy, just as we are, so it's hard to make that happen. So we still throw that track in and we still play it. It just fits.

Robert James Clark: 15:31

Helps us bring in those instruments. He's thrown some 808 booms in to really get people being like whoa, especially if we're on a cool stage.

Dillon Secklin: 15:40

Yeah, I saw ZZ Top about six months ago and they had so many unnecessary 808s in their set and I was like, okay, I'm going to do this to our set Just because people respond to it. It's such a big bass boom.

Anthony Vairetta: 15:58

Well, it's just as the experience, the crowd experience, especially because we're all on in-ear monitors, right. And so the first time that we incorporate because we didn't have, we didn't have the back the, the violin tracks for a long time, but you finally were like you know what, let's just do it, why not? You know, I mean make it more of a full show.

Robert James Clark: 16:23

Yeah, we're kind of realizing.

Jay Franze: 16:24

It kind of adds a little bit of polish about what their experience is.

Robert James Clark: 16:29

It doesn't matter outside of that If it's coming out of the front of the speakers and it's giving that big sound.

Anthony Vairetta: 16:37

And the first time I had my ears in and I started playing that guitar solo and I heard the fiddle come in and harmonize with me in real time, I was just like I giggled like a little schoolgirl, you know. I was like, okay, this is what they get.

Robert James Clark: 16:53

I get it, you know.

Anthony Vairetta: 16:55

I hope that that song just keeps climbing.

Jay Franze: 16:58

No, I mean, like I said, I love it. But, dylan, you mentioned the tracks and you mentioned having some percussion in there, which, in this particular song, it's tambourine. Yeah, are you playing that as part of a track on the song?

Dillon Secklin: 17:12

yeah, for the tambourine, and I think there's shaker in there too.

Jay Franze: 17:15

It's all flown in as tracks so even the part where it trails out, because during the song itself you've got that particular rhythm with it, but then then it also has a trail, so do you capture that trail as part of the track?

Dillon Secklin: 17:28

Yep, the trail is in the ending one too, because the solo ends all kind of ethereal and all. So we let that kind of fade out and that tambo's in there too.

Jay Franze: 17:39

What about the hits? Like the hits at the end, Do you put the 808 in there?

Dillon Secklin: 17:47

The 808 is not in.

Anthony Vairetta: 17:48

Ray-Bans? I don't think. No, we have it sprinkled throughout the rest of the set.

Robert James Clark: 17:50

It starts the set. Yeah, it could be. Okay you might have just added another one to the set. We're throwing an 808 in there.

Jay Franze: 17:58

I just want to make sure we get it in there. I don't need credit, not yet anyway. No, that's pretty cool. I mean those hits at the end of that song are powerful. It rounds off that feeling and it gives it the polish that we keep talking about. But the song, like you mentioned earlier, having the rock influence, it's got a melodic feel to it and it's got harmonies in the background, vocals. I mean it does come together. So was there any influence, like like musical influence, going into that song?

Robert James Clark: 18:28

not intentionally.

Anthony Vairetta: 18:30

We were just wanting to make it rock hard yeah, pretty much like when uh six minute guitar solo, yeah, pretty much and you know, when we uh, we first wrote it, that we first wrote it that the outro solo wasn't in there, and when we were recording it we're like, well, let's put an outro solo on this, and just the drive and the rhythm and everything. It was like this is like the outro solo to Freebird and I'm just gonna go off the rails on this and I'm just gonna go down that road and they just let it keep recording, you know, and I'm just gonna, I'm gonna go down that road and they just let it keep recording, you know and I was like just kept going going until somebody wrangles a leash, and I'm just gonna keep going well, let's talk about that for a second.

Jay Franze: 19:15

Let's talk about the studio process. Where did you record it?

Anthony Vairetta: 19:19

we did ray bands and my guitar at a little studio with a friend of ours, colin christian. He had a studio here in town it was called the Cottage. The Cottage, that's right. Yeah, because before that it was Wires and Noise right, that's his production service, just the studio he was using. But yeah, it was called the Cottage and it was a little house in the middle of town and we had heard of him because he had recorded a bunch of friends of ours and Dylan was like, hey, we need to lay these songs down and we didn't know where we wanted to go. And he was like, let me hit up Colin, and Colin's an exceptional engineer. He really is, he is. He's taught us a lot, and so we went over there for the weekend. He's a pain in in the ass. I just have to add that, yeah, but anybody that drives you to be better is going to be a pain in the ass. Yeah, I don't hate him.

Robert James Clark: 20:11

No, he's a pain in the ass, but it was.

Anthony Vairetta: 20:14

You know, when you go to the studio you have engineers that are super lax. They won't put you on a click track, they just whatever you record is what you get Right, and Colin was not that way. Colin expected you to come in on top of your game. Colin expected you to do it right.

Dillon Secklin: 20:37

Recording with him makes you a better musician.

Jay Franze: 20:39

Yeah, Well, that's what it's all about.

Robert James Clark: 20:41

Right, I would tell you you're a piece of shit.

Jay Franze: 20:43

That's true, that is true. So who produced it then? Did you?

Robert James Clark: 20:51

guys produce it with him.

Anthony Vairetta: 20:51

Yes, yeah, yeah, we all worked on those two tracks, and then we sent it off to san francisco to be mastered oh really, who mastered it?

Robert James Clark: 21:00

okay, it's been too many years now.

Dillon Secklin: 21:02

That was 2017. Colin did a remaster for the entire album. When that song ended up back on the album, when it was released as just a single, I'm not sure what we ended up doing yeah, I have them in my email somewhere.

Robert James Clark: 21:13

I just haven't talked to them in six, seven years it's been a while yeah, I just don't remember. We do a different process now. We got everything in the basement and we sent everything to Billy Decker in Nashville.

Jay Franze: 21:24

Oh yeah, here he's such a cool person. He's done, broken down miles and quiet anymore. Those are all Billy Decker mixes. Nice, oh, very cool. I don't know Billy well, but I do know Billy, our guy. You just mentioned real quickly that you have a studio now of your own. So what does that studio consist of?

Dillon Secklin: 21:47

Yeah, so we use the same X-Air, which is the interface and mixer that we use live. That same preamp system is what we're using for our recording. We've got a Slate microphone that's pretty top tier. That Colin actually left us. Whether he knew he did that or not, I'm not sure.

Anthony Vairetta: 22:07

But we have it and um it's been awesome.

Dillon Secklin: 22:10

and for drum mics, we just we have some basic synthesizers and we've got a beta 52, and for guitars, we used to do three or four different mics on there as well as a DI all at once, and now we actually use the Blackstar amps, which are amp pedals.

Jay Franze: 22:30

Right.

Anthony Vairetta: 22:31

Since we switched over to Blackstar. Both of us have always been an amp purist. I toured with a Twin Reverb for years and that took a dump on me while we were on tour and so I had to buy another amp and I bought this little tiny Blackstar. I was like, oh, this thing sounds huge. This is amazing. Little 10 watt amplifier. I couldn't believe it. And then Blackstar came out with these amp pedals, and I've always been a real purist when it comes to tone. I've always been a real purist when it comes to tone. But these pedals are so user-friendly and they sound amazing. It just made our life easier being able to go in and just plug directly into the interface, because now we can record anywhere.

Jay Franze: 23:21

Right.

Anthony Vairetta: 23:28

And the IRs are so advanced now. The same tone that you get on the album now is the same tone you get live. It's there. It's like consistency.

Dillon Secklin: 23:33

Yeah, it's, this is what you get it's clean too, for the stage stuff too. It's just nice, yeah it cleans up the stage. Look, and it's consistent across. You know the uh, the recording and the live scenarios, so it's been nice.

Jay Franze: 23:47

I think that's just it. Consistency is key. You've talked about the microphones and the gear and all, but what about the recording system itself? Are you using software?

Dillon Secklin: 23:56

Yeah, we're just using Logic Pro. We also use that live too. Our live scenario and our recording scenario are pretty similar now.

Jay Franze: 24:04

Does that mean your tracks are being played from Logic?

Dillon Secklin: 24:07

Yeah, the tracks are being all played from Logic, absolutely.

Jay Franze: 24:10

Have you ever experienced any sort of failure with it?

Dillon Secklin: 24:13

No, never, never, and everything is re-rendered out. There's a limiter on the master and that's it. There's nothing else being played in real time. Everything else has just already been remixed and rendered. That way, I'm not having to fly too much data.

Jay Franze: 24:29

Well describe that scenario for me. Is it a laptop that's playing it next to you?

Dillon Secklin: 24:34

Yep, I've got a laptop open and it's just a fourth-inch cable that goes out of the laptop and it splits left and right Left is our click track and right are the tracks. And then I've got an iPad that I use for our mixes, but it's also got the entire set. That there's a failure which, knock on wood, we've never had. But any time we have a longer than 45 or an hour set, typically there's breaks involved. So if there's any type of weird scenario, there's time to troubleshoot.

Jay Franze: 25:04

Oh yeah, well, that's pretty cool. So if there's any type of weird scenario, there's time to troubleshoot. Oh yeah, well, that's pretty cool. So you're saying you do the mix on your iPad, which I've seen a lot of people doing these days, so your mixing console uses the iPad as a remote.

Dillon Secklin: 25:16

Yes, we've got a router that's attached to our mixer, and then we all have the in-ears that are all mixed from that iPad. In a perfect world, we could all have the in-ears that are all mixed from that uh, that ipad in a perfect world, we could all have our own ipads and be mixing it, but I I do it for everybody and typically we're fairly happy with the mix keep that ipad back there.

Anthony Vairetta: 25:37

There's one thing that's always. That's always thrown me off yeah, because when you see somebody that has an ipad on the mic stand, yeah, I mean granted, yes, you can use it for mixing. Because when you see somebody that has an iPad on the mic stand yeah. I mean, granted, yes, you can use it for mixing, but when you see somebody that's pulling up song lyrics or the drums you expect to see, yeah exactly, exactly.

Dillon Secklin: 25:55

But when you're a singer, or it's attached to the mic stand or whatever.

Anthony Vairetta: 25:58

The guitar player when they've got like iPads up there and they're sifting through it. It's almost like, well, you didn't do your homework.

Jay Franze: 26:05

Right, you're looking for lyrics or a chord chart or something.

Anthony Vairetta: 26:08

Exactly, yeah, granted, there are some scenarios, especially with a lot of Nashville cats that are doing six or seven projects. Sure, then I get that For what we're trying to build?

Dillon Secklin: 26:21

we're not, yeah, and we have our own mics now, so every show is the same. Gain staging Everything's pretty much the same, so the in-ear mix bearing any type of sub-delay sometimes that will happen to us or a little slap back from a metal building or something every now and again, but it's consistent every show now, so that's been awesome.

Anthony Vairetta: 26:42

Yeah, we've really cultivated all of that to where everything is consistent every time, any time that we can use our own microphones and use our own snake and use our own, you know, because you'll get places to where they're like oh no, we have a snake, no, no, no. Here this is like Festivals and stuff.

Jay Franze: 27:00

Yeah, it's like here's we have our own gear.

Anthony Vairetta: 27:03

Yeah, yeah, it's like here's the gear, yeah, well, and then it you'll get. You'll get sound guys that are like well, I insist on using my microphones. Well, I understand that, but if we use ours, you don't have to break them out. You can focus on using them for another band, but it's a consistent thing. It's one of those things where we have made our whole setup easy enough to where we just hand you the tails, you plug them into your snake and that's it.

Dillon Secklin: 27:34

And, honestly, it's the one or two bad sound guys that have forced our hand in that scenario, because not all sound guys are created equally no, no, not at all. So we had to go. You know what we need some consistency.

Anthony Vairetta: 27:48

You know, we were in San Diego and we were brought over to the stage. The stage manager was like hey, this is Huckleberry Road, you're going to be working with so-and-so. She asked him did you get the boys a stage plot? He goes I don't need a stage plot, I just met him, I know everything I need to know about him and he just had the biggest nuclear meltdown on stage when we're plugging stuff into our snake. I never got a stage plot. Yeah, he was just screaming at us meltdown on stage when we're plugging stuff into our snake and it's, it's, it's just one of those things and that we can. You can do anything to stay consistent with your, with your sound, on your own end. Then you don't have those hiccups.

Robert James Clark: 28:43

Well, I didn't know you had an acoustic guitar. As much as you can help it. Yeah, we still get railroaded every now and then.

Anthony Vairetta: 28:48

Oh yeah, no, we get sandbagged a lot and that's never going to go away. It happens still. But it's one of those things. It's like if we can make things consistent, because you run into a lot of sound engineers to where we're like, all you need to take is the tails and they're like oh, Well, and we're not ready to tour with a sound guy.

Robert James Clark: 29:10

Right, we're close, but not quite.

Dillon Secklin: 29:13

Yeah, we're not even paying a bass player.

Robert James Clark: 29:14

Yeah, there's in the iPad.

Anthony Vairetta: 29:25

But we're getting to those, those, that next stage. But anything that you can do to make it convenient for everybody and streamlined and faster makes everybody happy in the long run sure?

Jay Franze: 29:32

no, absolutely. You mentioned it again, not having a bass player. You briefly touched on it earlier, but the bass is part of your tracks, so therefore you have to have tracks on every song you're doing. Yeah, it's not a pick and choose song, it's every song has to have a track to it so you can have the bass with it. Yep, so when you're in the studio I know you said occasionally you have a hired gun, but you're also playing that yourselves.

Robert James Clark: 29:56

I believe, robert, you said you were playing the bass on that- yeah, I come in and fart around with Dylan on his drums and see if I can't get it to kind of breathe. With the way the drums are written to it. He fixes a lot of it, but he just lets me know when it's not where I think it is, which is good.

Jay Franze: 30:16

I think that's something we talk about, about that. The difference, I think what makes you guys unique, is that you're not working in nashville and you're not working with a team of people that are typically following a system, a cookie cutter way of recording. Yep, it's the three of you guys. You come up with ideas and you would shed them and you create them yourselves and you're recording them yourselves, and I know you said you're recording into Logic. So when you send those tracks to Billy, who typically works in Pro Tools, are you sending him just the WAV files?

Dillon Secklin: 30:49

Yep, just WAVs.

Jay Franze: 30:50

So you're just sending him the tracks literally by themselves. He imports them and mixes them himself.

Dillon Secklin: 30:57

Yeah, and I've since downloaded his templates and stuff and implemented a lot of his plug-ins on everything. I make like a little demo mix, but it's nowhere close to his man. He's so good.

Jay Franze: 31:10

There's something about hiring somebody who specializes in something as well. So the creative process, like you said, you're woodshedding and you're coming up with the stuff on your own, but then you bring in somebody who specializes in mixing and you get a different level of a project.

Anthony Vairetta: 31:24

So that's absolutely it's made a big difference working with billy, big time he is. He, he's super easy to work with, super nice. He really brings that next level, that next level up and especially even with like tracks that were recorded, he'll go in and when he mixes them you're like I didn't do that, that was it, was that I, I blacked out.

Robert James Clark: 31:50

I don't know, I don't understand that I don't think gave him any notes on the last one. We were like, okay, great, there's nothing to say, no revisions.

Jay Franze: 31:58

Yeah, nailed it what have you guys learned along the way that's helped you grow as engineers?

Robert James Clark: 32:07

clean it up. Yeah, you know, we realized that we were. We're too nice to each other. Yeah, and we might come in and and give a performance. That's on the click, as it should be, and it's, you know, in key and there's no obvious screw-ups, but it's dead. Oh, can I say that I'm sorry you just did, it works you know, and so we kind of realized all right, we have to be looking for actual performance tracks that are going to be permanent and we have to stop allowing anything that isn't worth keeping.

Anthony Vairetta: 32:44

Yeah, you know, and that's the hardest thing to hold yourself to, because you don't want to be mean to each other but you know, once you get into that, you get into it and the three of us will fight and fight and fight, and fight and fight. But it's only for the sheer fact that we want to put out the best products possible, the best product that we can put out, and we're not going to let each other be lax on it.

Dillon Secklin: 33:10

We're opinionated and pretty passionate.

Jay Franze: 33:13

Well, that's exactly what it is. It's passion, yeah, it's passion.

Anthony Vairetta: 33:18

And I'm not telling robert, hey, your guitar's out of tune to be a jerk. I'm telling you, hey, your guitar's out of tune, fix it, because this is permanent and we need to put out the best thing humanly possible or he will just ride me and ride me and ride me about a guitar part or a solo or especially my harmonies. I'll come in, you know, flat and dead and he's like come on, man, you gotta suck it up, you gotta go, we gotta do this, we gotta do this. And I will just go in doing it, kicking and screaming until it clicks and you're like I need to suck it up and do it. Yeah, you can't put out something that you're like I need to suck it up and do it.

Robert James Clark: 33:59

You can't put out something that you're going yeah, I get it it works if it doesn't have a sound quality or a production that is at least close to what people are used to hearing where they consume music. You don't have a chance. I mean so much music these days you might bust an acoustic track out.

Anthony Vairetta: 34:21

We already know that we're fighting an uphill battle well, you have to be in the ballpark yeah

Anthony Vairetta: 34:26

exactly, at least be close well that's been the biggest thing is accountability. Exactly in 2020, in 2020, when everything shut down, our whole tour schedule got ripped away from us. For the whole year we had nothing to do and a lot of bands that we knew were just like, ah, we don't know what's gonna happen, we're just gonna stop playing. And we didn't know. We didn't know anything. You know, we had basic knowledge of recording, but we spent that whole year really tight.

Anthony Vairetta: 34:59

Dylan, we just dove down the rabbit hole to get us to a point to where we were recording stuff that was to a higher standard, getting close to industry standard. No, we look at past couple years. Now we're getting into working with Billy to where now it's cleaned up and it's polished and it's becoming industry. You know industry. You, when you hear it, when you hear a song on the radio, it has a certain level of production right, a certain level of clarity and, unless you like, are putting out the same level. It's you know, and we spent that whole year really honing in on everything. It has to be believable.

Robert James Clark: 35:42

And we can't forget, Colin went with us on tour in 2021. And we recorded a good chunk of the album out on the road, yeah in hotel rooms. And we learned quite a bit going through the process with him.

Dillon Secklin: 35:56

Yeah, there's a lot of credit for Colin, for sure.

Anthony Vairetta: 35:58

Yeah, colin was a great guy. He really did teach us a lot and he taught us how to really stay on top of it.

Jay Franze: 36:06

Was he doing live sound at that time as well?

Dillon Secklin: 36:09

No, he was playing bass for us. Oh, okay, he came out on the road and was playing bass for us before we ended up on bass tracks.

Anthony Vairetta: 36:15

He made up a rig, a portable rig, and we would just set up hotel rooms and you know it was a lot of plugins, like all the guitars were a lot of plugins, but it was. They're so advanced now that it's. It's one of those things you can record anywhere.

Robert James Clark: 36:32

Yeah, that was our first big tour too. Yeah, 35 days.

Anthony Vairetta: 36:35

Yeah, we were out for no. We were out for no we were out for.

Robert James Clark: 36:40

It was 35 days when we went to Montana and all those spots.

Jay Franze: 36:43

Do you have any memorable performances from that time? Oh yeah.

Anthony Vairetta: 36:49

So there was a lot of kick-you-in-the-pants shows but you're going to get that anywhere but I mean one of them that was on that run itself sticks out in my mind. We were in Sydney, montana, montana. Yep, sydney, this little tiny town in the middle of montana, and they had us in the rodeo arena. They set up a big stage and everything, and nobody knows who we are. A free show for the community. Yeah, it was a free, free show at the fair. It was a Wednesday night and we're getting on stage or getting ready to play and all of a sudden the grandstands just filled up and we're like, oh, okay, and I mean it was just packed and a judge made us steaks oh yeah, the the judge from the town.

Anthony Vairetta: 37:37

he was barbecuing for us backstage Of course One of the best things I've ever had in my life, and he was like hey, hey, hey, before you guys leave tonight, you better come back and get dessert. We come back to our trailer. And he had homemade brownies and ice cream so good.

Dillon Secklin: 37:53

It was. Sydney was special, for sure.

Dillon Secklin: 37:56

That was a good one. And sometimes on those longer runs too, especially the fairs, we're grateful to play them every time, but we want to be on an opening slot for a big act or something like that. We're at a beer garden, you know, but sometimes we end up at like a noon or a two o'clock stage and it's great and again we're grateful to be there but the crowd isn't responsive. You watch this guy do the best solo he's ever done and then a guy eating a corn dog just wipes his mouth and then walks away and you're like cool, yeah, it's humbling it's not glorious, but it is a very large.

Robert James Clark: 38:26

It's an intrinsic part on what makes everything work.

Anthony Vairetta: 38:29

You know you got to be willing to shovel some shit, of course, absolutely we were playing a show up in yakima washington with Josh Ward and the promoter really really dropped the ball and Josh was like hey, man, I don't want you to think that this is a reflection on me. He's like I'm happy to have you guys here. Please, like hang out with me. I'm really appreciative of you guys being here. And he's like I understand if you guys don't want to play the show, but I'm going to play the show because I don't care if it's five or 5,000 people up there. I'm going to give them the show that they came here to see. That one stuck with me and it all hit us like a lightning bolt.

Dillon Secklin: 39:12

That was an important lesson for all of us.

Anthony Vairetta: 39:14

We were like it hit us like a lightning bolt and we're like, well, we're not leaving. Either we're going to do it, let's go.

Robert James Clark: 39:19

Yeah, and we thought we were only playing like three people and it turned out that Josh Ward came in a little bit and listened to some of the set and you know just, he's going to be a good friend in the future.

Jay Franze: 39:31

Well, you never know who one of those three people are.

Anthony Vairetta: 39:35

Yeah absolutely, yeah, exactly you, you get up and no matter what you get up and you give them, you give them the best show humanly possible, does it? Like josh said, it doesn't matter if there's five people out there or five thousand, you get up there and you play your heart out every single time. Yep, and that's what we we've always done. But it was really.

Robert James Clark: 39:56

It was like a lightning bolt to the soul and it was like energizing for us yeah, there's something special that happens when you're like screw it, we're gonna, we're gonna rock the hell out of this place. Maybe we'll shake the building to the ground.

Jay Franze: 40:11

We're here, let's go tell me more about the, the dynamic that you three have when you're out on the road man, it could go anyway.

Robert James Clark: 40:22

You know, I've learned about myself that I lose my mind in about 14 days.

Anthony Vairetta: 40:28

All right, yeah, uh, you know, dylan and I for the past three years, just up until recently. It's like we have no problem being roommates. You're always kind of buzzing around each other. It's really learning each other's quirks and each other's mannerisms. We'll get up. We get up every day and try and work out or go on a run or try and keep your mind occupied hard for me to do that on the road it's, yeah, it's hard, it's hard and a lot of it comes down to keeping yourself occupied, because, being on the road, you know you're going to play a show.

Anthony Vairetta: 41:09

You go and you play the show and you're only on stage for 45 minutes an hour two hours because you're always expected to be somewhere. Right? Yeah, hurry up and wait. Yeah, there's a lot of hurry up and wait and it's one of those things it's like, but there's a lot of time spent behind the windshield, hours and hours and hours. You know we're all in the same podcast. We're all in the same kind of kind of music. It's really just learning about each other and learning how to coexist and we've never had any like knock down, drag out arguments.

Anthony Vairetta: 41:43

There are times where, you know, one of us is very irritable and there are times when all three of us are very irritable. Just recently, like on our, our last tour season. Like I noticed about dylan anytime he didn't want to hang out, we'd watch videos on our phones. Anytime he doesn't want to hang out, he'd put his earbuds on our phones. Anytime he doesn't want to hang out, he'd put his earbuds in and watch TV. I'd be like cool, you're enjoying you time. I'm going to go do my thing. You spend so much time together, you've got to find little things to occupy yourself and to recharge.

Robert James Clark: 42:14

Yeah exactly.

Dillon Secklin: 42:16

We're all best friends, but you also need your own type of space we really do well on the road for for three adult baby grown men we do pretty well, they just can't bunk with me, that's okay. No, because you keep your room like a terrarium. He won't turn the atv on in his room. He runs the shower for 48 hours. The wall's all steamy Paint starts coming off the walls. It's a nightmare.

Robert James Clark: 42:45

It's like 100% humidity. It's a terrarium. He's a lizard. Man Keeps the voice. Man.

Jay Franze: 42:53

What kind of vehicle are you guys driving around in?

Dillon Secklin: 42:56

We're taking a Dodge Ram a a 1500 and we've got a trailer. So truck and trailer, not a van, a bus, just truck and trailer for the last three, four years four years.

Anthony Vairetta: 43:09

Yeah, well, I mean it's. It's one of those things we focus so much on putting all of our funds into building our brand. You know that the truck works, we drive a lot of miles in it, and sure we don't have a bus, sure we don't have a van. We got a fixer still.

Anthony Vairetta: 43:27

Yeah, I mean we dump a bunch of money into it and it gets us from point A to point B and it is pretty funny, it's comical. Sometimes we show up to these festivals and you know it's like tour bus, tour bus, tour bus, tour bus, dodge Ram.

Robert James Clark: 43:43

We pulled up next to Chip Morris' rig. The guy's got a CrossFit gym in the back of his bus and we've got a trailer I bought for $250 and put a new axle on it.

Jay Franze: 43:54

Right. Well, so if you guys are in a Dodge Ram, then how do you guys get rest when you're moving? Well, so if you guys are in a Dodge Ram, then how?

Dillon Secklin: 44:02

do you guys get rest when you're moving? Well, nine times out of ten when we play these fair gigs, it's just worked out into our contract where we get hotel rooms, so oftentimes the travel days are broken up, we're not having to go for overnight, or weird shifts yeah, we have had some suicide trips, yeah they're rough early.

Anthony Vairetta: 44:23

We just got done with one, yeah, but um, nine times out of ten.

Anthony Vairetta: 44:28

Our room and board is taken care of, so all we got to do is get there right and then there's stuff you know, like neck pillows and stuff like sleeping in a truck, no matter what is going to suck, but you grab sleep whenever you can, Whenever you can. Yep, Luckily they're both over six foot and I'm not, so I can actually lay down in the back seat and be quasi-comfortable. I did try to sleep in the truck bed one time, but because the exhaust runs underneath the bed, it was so hot in there and we were driving through Vegas in the middle of summer, so it made it even worse. No, no, but you know, you just get rest when you can and you it's.

Jay Franze: 45:11

You get rest. You don't want to be put in the hospital.

Anthony Vairetta: 45:14

Right, yeah, but it was. Yeah. I haven't done that, since it was pretty rough, but it's nice when our stuff is taken care of. When we were on that long run, anytime we had a day off, we'd go camping, which was another adventure. We had a bad adventure in North Dakota.

Dillon Secklin: 45:34

Tricking the lake. The bugs got us. We just at home in Nevada, camping is is great. There's no, I mean there's bugs, but there's not. They're not attacking you, these bugs. These bugs were aggressive.

Robert James Clark: 45:47

They were immune to bug spray. I got a picture of my whole head like eaten by freaking horse flies and well and then biggest bugs I've ever seen and, and then you get cool things.

Anthony Vairetta: 46:00

We were driving back through Wyoming and Jackson Hole we had like two or three days off, and Jackson Hole is so expensive One bed hotel it was like 500 bucks. And so we're like well, we looked up this ranch and they had covered wagons for rent for $150. And so we stayed in a covered wagon on a ranch for three days.

Dillon Secklin: 46:25

There was two sets of bunk beds in there and a Cali King.

Anthony Vairetta: 46:28

And a heater, and a heater and it was powered.

Dillon Secklin: 46:31

It was fantastic.

Robert James Clark: 46:33

That was fun, you had Wi-Fi.

Jay Franze: 46:35

And there's no bed bugs.

Robert James Clark: 46:37

No bed bugs. No bed bugs. Those are scary little creatures.

Jay Franze: 46:43

All right, guys, when we do this thing here, we call Unsung Heroes, where we take a minute to shine the light on somebody who works behind the scenes or somebody who may have supported you along the way. Do you have anybody you'd like to shine a little light on?

Robert James Clark: 46:55

You know, like going back into the past, I had a music teacher, Carlin Hagen. He was a part of my life from like third grade until I graduated high school. Taught me how to read music. He always tried to get me to sing and I wouldn't do it. I wasn't a singer yet Anthony was the singer when we met. We've been playing guitar together for like 22 years and I won't steal it, but his dad's a big part too. I'm sure he'll have more to say about it. But yeah, mr hagan and doug sheehy were a big part of my life.

Anthony Vairetta: 47:25

they they shaped and educated me and helped me get inspired about music and hungry, you know anyway, yeah no, like like robert was saying, my dad put a guitar in my hands when I was four years old and I remember we were living in Lodi, california, and that music teacher told my dad that I would never learn correctly and I'd be better off if I played right-handed. He wouldn't teach me because I was left-handed. And my dad looked him straight in the face and he goes all right, well, you don't get a student, then I'm gonna teach him. I mean, there was some, a few more choice words as we left, but you know, my dad, my dad was the one that gave me my first jimmy hendrix final.

Anthony Vairetta: 48:13

You know, he fueled the fire to where. It's like I don't want to do anything else, this is what I want to do, you know, and it's it's. He's really. He's really my biggest hero when it comes to anything, when it comes to music very nice, dylan sir um, definitely my family, um, but there was a, a kid by the name of travis lloyd.

Dillon Secklin: 48:35

He was a drummer for our church growing up and he wanted to play guitar and sing, so he taught me enough of the drums where he could play guitar and sing, so I have to give that to him for sure.

Jay Franze: 48:48

A big thanks to Robert, Anthony and Dylan for taking the time to share their stories with us, and thank you for taking the time to hang with me here. I really do appreciate it. If you know anyone that would enjoy hearing their story, please be sure to pass me here. I really do appreciate it. If you know anyone that would enjoy hearing their story, please be sure to pass this along. You can do that and find the links to everything mentioned over at jayfranze. com/ episode 90. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next week.

Tony Scott: 49:16

Thanks for listening to The Jay Franzi show. Make sure you visit us at jayfranze. com. Follow, connect and say hello.