Tony Scott: 0:21

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: 0:48

And we are coming at you live. I am Jay Francie and with me tonight the Amy to my events, my beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason.

Tiffany Mason: 0:59

Good evening Jay.

Jay Franze: 1:01

If you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews and interviews. My beautiful co-host, Miss Tiffany Mason. Good evening, Jay. If you are new to the show, this is your source for the latest news, reviews and interviews, and if you'd like to join in, comment or fire off any questions, you can head over to jayfranze. com. All right, my friend, tonight we do. We have a very special guest. I said it once, I will say it again we have a very special guest.

Tiffany Mason: 1:18

I say, I say, I say, say it again.

Jay Franze: 1:20

We have a rock, an alternative and a metal recording artist Hailing from the great state of Minnesota. We have Gradience, gradience. My friends, how are you?

Gradience: 1:31

Hello.

Tiffany Mason: 1:31

Hey.

Gradience: 1:31

Jay.

Jay Franze: 1:32

Pretty good. It's good to have you guys here. Thank you for joining us tonight.

Gradience: 1:36

Thanks for having us.

Gradience: 1:51

All right. Well, let's just jump in. We mentioned Thanks for having us and is definitely still pretty true to the music we create, because it's no clear-cut boundary between one or many objects, and for us it's no clear-cut boundary between hard rock, metal and kind of the rock we just like to make. How did we get together in the first place? I guess?

Jay Franze: 2:19

I'll do that one.

Gradience: 2:20

Okay, Kenny, it's my turn.

Gradience: 2:20

I wasn't here first.

Gradience: 2:22

Yeah, we started out in college, like many bands Formed in the dorms, we started for a music talent show at MSUM College up in Moorhead, minnesota. We wrote and played the same songs within the same week there and then we were graced with the presence of Darian. After that we kind of kicked off. We realized, hey, we like this stuff, we want to keep doing it.

Jay Franze: 2:45

so we kept playing shows so you say you were graced with his presence? And. I get that. I completely understand. I can feel that already. However, how long was it? Was it right away, like that same week?

Gradience: 2:58

we were jamming together. It was me, Ford and our original drummer. We were jamming together. It was me, Ford and our original drummer. We were just jamming in the dorms and stuff and we saw like a talent show flyer that was happening that first fall semester and we went to do the like talent show work. Yeah, we got this. We're cool.

Gradience: 3:13

That was the fall of 2019. We had the the talent show where basically I met these two and the original drummer. They were doing their set and I had a set immediately after them where I was just doing a solo vocals guitar thing. Afterwards they had asked if I wanted to join them as a bass player and a vocalist. We kind of jammed around a little bit and in the span of a few months come February of 2020, we were doing our first show together.

Jay Franze: 3:47

All right, I need to take a quick little tangent because you mentioned it, you're a bass player and vocalist. How hard is it to play bass and sing at the same time?

Gradience: 3:57

It kind of depends. I've been playing for a while now and so I've always been playing guitar, piano, bass and singing for many years now, and so it's just kind of natural at this point. There's a few songs that we've played where it is a little bit difficult One of the first few songs that we were developing. It was a bit of a challenge, but you just keep playing and you get used to it. It becomes muscle memory at one point, to the part where you're only thinking about the words.

Jay Franze: 4:30

To me. I would struggle with that. It's just like playing drums. I cannot get my limbs to do four separate things. I just can't do it for the life of me.

Tiffany Mason: 4:38

When I was growing up, my dad would always ask us if we could spin one arm in one direction and get the other arm going in the other direction, and it's kind of the same thing. Right, it's something new for you to try, but I feel like it's the same thing. It must be very challenging to acquire both, to be able to do both.

Jay Franze: 4:56

Too tough for me, for sure. Alright, you mentioned these songs that you put together right away. You wrote within a couple days and played them in the show. Any of those songs still around in your sets today?

Gradience: 5:06

Yeah, there is one that we played at our first show that we still bring out. It was our first single. It was called Darkest Hour. That's one of the first songs we wrote that we still play.

Gradience: 5:19

It's gone through a bit of a metamorphosis, but the first show that we played it at, it was very bare bones, very just basic, and we kind of fleshed it out over a couple of years until we eventually released it on our first album, the Call, in 2022. But we took a couple years after we first did it to refine it a bit more. That one and and every now and then if we have to do super long sets, we'll bring out a few of the other ones from the first album yeah, that would make sense to fill up the time.

Jay Franze: 5:52

For sure, deep cuts right yeah, deep cuts all right? Well, let's take that a step further. I mean, when you guys first formed, did you have a musical genre in mind?

Gradience: 6:04

I guess just rock, At least the yeah. We were all fans of different versions of rock and metal. I didn't think we were going to form and start playing country or pop.

Gradience: 6:16

Right.

Jay Franze: 6:19

So your influences? You have reference to people in the past, so whose influences are those?

Gradience: 6:27

Everybody looks at me.

Jay Franze: 6:30

It's all Ford's fault. Okay, we get it.

Gradience: 6:34

I like some heavier stuff, like more on the hardcore slash, I guess more modern stuff Like who, like who, make me think of band names on the spot.

Jay Franze: 6:43

Royal Blood. Royal Blood is a big one.

Gradience: 6:45

I really like those guys.

Tiffany Mason: 6:47

Thank God, your friends know you Chevelle.

Gradience: 6:51

Chevelle Arctic Monkeys.

Gradience: 6:52

Yeah, yeah.

Gradience: 6:54

So also like I grew up with, like the big ones Def Leppard, guns N' Roses but I kind of moved away from that after I started. It's all our fault.

Gradience: 7:04

Yeah, and then him.

Gradience: 7:07

So when I met them I'd often tell them I'd say, well, my biggest influence and it still is is the Beatles, and I was a huge Beatles fan growing up and that was where, like because I was already doing my own solo stuff when I met them and all of that was kind of heavily beatles influenced. Since then I've taken a lot of other influences, all the way from like stuff like daft punk, tame and paula, all the way to queens of the stone age is my latest obsession and we'll get, like you know, metallica, orica or any sort of modern. A lot of the stuff they like have rubbed off on me too. So like Royal Blood, arctic Monkeys, all of that, and John is probably the most. I'm weird.

Gradience: 7:55

I started out loving 70s hard rock, so like UFO and early Ozzy, with like Randy Rhoads and stuff like that, just before I met everyone is when I started getting into like thrash, so Megadeth, metallica and that evolved into like a little bit of Pantera and heavier stuff. And then, like Darien said, like their music started rubbing off on me so I started listening to Chevelle. Darien said, like their music started rubbing off on me so I started listening to Chevelle Tool and just all sorts of stuff. But I was very based in like in the 70s based.

Tiffany Mason: 8:29

I'm surprised to hear such you know old artists I mean quote-unquote old who introduced you to that music my dad.

Gradience: 8:39

For for me um yeah, as my dad and I we'd often listen to, we've got a radio station in the Twin Cities called Cool 108.

Tiffany Mason: 8:48

And when.

Gradience: 8:49

I was growing up they played a lot of 60s and 70s music. Now it's more like 80s and 90s, but I would listen to that every night. I'd even sleep with it on, and that's kind of how I learned a lot of the songs from the 60s Super familiar with a lot of those, especially like Motown and all of that stuff. But I kind of went on my own path and really delved down the rabbit hole of the Beatles and all of their cohort and other people of the time and that kind of went along with. Uh, once I met these guys it was more like what they like and then kind of finding my way through through that as well sure, and then you Trevor.

Gradience: 9:30

I've been kind of all over the map because I grew up with a lot of, uh, classic rock both my parents were very into, like Ozzy Osbourne and Tom Petty Tom Petty's still one of my uh like all-time favorites and then as I got older I got into more punk stuff, Green Day and a lot of the other classic ones. And then got a little bit older and got really into the heavier metalcore and deathcore stuff. And then as I've gotten into my 20s I've kind of calmed down from that and I've settled into more of an alternative rock. I still enjoy heavier stuff every now and then, but lately it's a lot of Green Day. The Offspring Ford recently introduced me to Dinosaur Pilup, who I like a lot. I've kind of gone through a lot of any style of rock or metal and kind of settled into the alternative rock stuff. It's kind of my main influence right now.

Gradience: 10:14

You're mellowing already.

Jay Franze: 10:16

Yeah, so soon.

Gradience: 10:17

I've known you a long long time I've known you a long, long time. I didn't know you liked Tom Petty as much as you say you do Really, I didn't know that.

Gradience: 10:25

Yeah.

Gradience: 10:26

We're learning stuff too.

Tiffany Mason: 10:28

Keep that secret in the closet?

Gradience: 10:30

No, tom Petty is good, tom Petty is good.

Jay Franze: 10:33

All right, Darian, I have a question.

Gradience: 10:35

Yes.

Jay Franze: 10:35

The Beatles.

Gradience: 10:43

What is it about the Beatles that you seem to be drawn to that has captivated you? Yeah, you know, that's you know. I don't exactly know why. I mean it's just so early on in my life.

Jay Franze: 10:50

I which era of the Beatles well.

Gradience: 10:54

I most vividly remember first hearing the Abbey Road album. But I got really obsessed with the Beatlemania era, like the earlier years, and a lot of it was like the harmonies were great, the energy was great, the, the songs were fun, innocent, like simple for the time. Just the musicianship I really enjoyed and that's how I learned, basically how I taught myself how to play guitar and piano and bass and sing and play at the same time. So it was a lot of those. A lot of what they did is what I tried to emulate and that's basically made me the musician I am today.

Tiffany Mason: 11:34

Do you think they would be surprised to know that their Beatle influence has turned into this gradients of rock and metal?

Gradience: 11:45

Probably probably. I think that could be said for a lot of groups. I mean, I saw a video clip of Paul McCartney and Ozzy meeting for the first time and Ozzy was saying, like Black Sabbath wouldn't exist without the Beatles, I owe so much to you and it's like who would have thought like the between those two?

Jay Franze: 12:06

Did you pay any attention to that show over the weekend?

Gradience: 12:10

Yeah, we were actually talking about it. We were going to do the pay-per-view to watch, because we weren't able to watch it when it was live. But then we realized it was 10 hours long, so we just kind of looked up some highlights. Great shows, great shows going on it was great, but we only had until 7 am this morning to watch it.

Jay Franze: 12:30

Did you see Ozzy's performances?

Gradience: 12:33

I've seen clips on Facebook, but we're hoping for there's probably going to be an official streaming release or a DVD or something, so hopefully it won't be the last time we're able to see it.

Tiffany Mason: 12:47

Jay, for all of our listeners. What are you referring to?

Jay Franze: 12:50

Black Sabbath. We talked about it last Wednesday, as a matter of fact, black Sabbath's final appearance, final show, and then a bunch of, as we say supergroups got together to perform the Sabbath songs as well as others. Oh cool, including Hailstorm.

Tiffany Mason: 13:07

Oh, wow Cool.

Jay Franze: 13:09

Hailstorm's one of my favorites guys, so it was cool to see that. So, and then one of the other ones you mentioned was one of my daughter's favorites. I can't let it go by without mentioning the Arctic Monkeys. How does the Arctic Monkeys fit in with all the rest of the things you mentioned?

Gradience: 13:23

I think it's Gradients.

Gradience: 13:25

Unless you want to say it's far spectrum unless you want to say far spectrum, unless you want to say say anything. I had a. I had an arctic monkey's phase where that was like the predominantly what I listened to for for a few months I guess. But it's one of those things where it's like when a band is together and they're so good at what they do, it's like, yeah, you can't not listen to that.

Jay Franze: 13:46

That's kind of what drew me to I went to see them in tenn, took my daughter and her friend and we went to see them play and it was a great show. Everything was great about it, but it's just not the style of music I can get into for a long period of time. That's right. That's right.

Gradience: 14:01

And even they've evolved so much. Their earlier stuff is a lot more upbeat, fast-paced. And then you look at their most recent couple of albums and it's very mellow, jazzy. It's very different from how they started. We take more inspiration from that earlier stuff and more off-the-beaten-path stuff than more recent albums that they've released.

Jay Franze: 14:27

All right. Well, let's go ahead and jump into your music the reason why we're all here tonight. So I want to talk about your writing and your production. So let's start with your writing. What's your writing process like?

Gradience: 14:39

Our writing process is all over the place. Sometimes I'll come up with a riff, I'll hold on to it and next time we meet I'll just start playing it midway through a rehearsal and see if people like join along. Sometimes Darian will disappear into his room at like three in the morning after a rehearsal and come back the next morning he's like hey guys, I wrote three full songs Like what do you think? Ok, so it's very random, whatever hits us and when it hits us. But I think the best songs we have are the ones when someone brings just a portion or a riff and then we all kind of write it in our jam space, like we were just writing a song before this, like we were just jamming.

Jay Franze: 15:21

So do I get credit for that?

Gradience: 15:23

Maybe the only problem is like I hit record in like the intro riff, like by the time we were done jamming, it's like wait, what was that? And I went and looked and it wasn't recording. Classic, oh no.

Jay Franze: 15:35

Gone forever, and this is why we go back to the Beatles, where we write everything that's memorable, so that we can never forget. That's why their songs are so simple is they wrote them because they had no other way to remember them. They had to be able to remember all those songs. So you guys take an eclectic approach to writing, so each one of you either come up with an idea or Darian has to be a superstar going into it.

Gradience: 15:57

There's some times where we'll just be all jamming and we'll be done with rehearsal and then we'll just kind of jam on something. Some of the time not as often as you'd hope something cool comes out of it and something sticks, and then we'll take that core bit and then one of us will flesh it out a little bit and then sometimes like the song comeback.

Gradience: 16:23

Pretty much all of that was done by ford. I did a lot of our song twisted and darian did which one of like the main Honor Roll.

Gradience: 16:32

Honor.

Gradience: 16:32

Roll Chaos Brigade.

Tiffany Mason: 16:35

Which one did you write again, darian?

Gradience: 16:38

All of them which?

Jay Franze: 16:39

album did you write, we got it. Someone's an overachiever. That's awesome to be able to do that. So there is no separate. I write lyrics, you write music piece.

Gradience: 16:52

We all just get in there and collaborate in whatever comes to mind at that time yeah, I think like the music part of it is definitely a lot more of a collaborative effort. I guess I I prefer to to write lyrics. I usually have like subject matters in mind or just kind of a direction, and I usually will flesh out lyrics kind of in one fell swoop.

Jay Franze: 17:17

Do you find, as, being a vocalist, it's easier for you to do that, so you can relate to it.

Gradience: 17:22

Yeah, definitely, most definitely. I take lyrics very personally, I guess Not necessarily autobiographical Hard word to say, I guess Trust us, we know. But I don't know, I feel more connected to it when I guess it's my quill to the paper.

Tiffany Mason: 17:51

Okay, I have a question for everybody for all these rock songs. Okay, now, I'm a little suburban wife, okay, a suburban mom, so hard rock is not my preferred genre. You will not see me driving down the street jamming out to some heavy metal music. So you said that the lyrics are really important to you, and I feel like the lyrics are very important to me as well, if I was to someday become a hard heavy metal rock fan. How do people learn the words that the songs? Because they're not always being shouted, but they're definitely. You know, I feel like they're equal level with, like, the guitars and the drums, and right there, everything kind of meshes together. So how do you guys get to know the meanings of songs? How do you think that your audience gets to know the meanings of these songs? Do you have to look them up? Because, right like back in the 80s, we couldn't look them up. So how do how do people relate to the music? Or how do they find out what the song is about?

Gradience: 18:55

So well, at least when back when Cars had CD players.

Tiffany Mason: 18:57

Right In our day, jay.

Gradience: 18:59

Actually actually.

Gradience: 19:01

When they had 8-tracks. Another big part about with the Beals connection for me anyway is that I would end up with a CD collection and I'd love to open up the CDs and pull out the little booklets and read the liner notes, and they often had lyrics in them. Nowadays, online a lot of platforms have the lyrics. I know we put our lyrics on. When we distribute the song We'll add our lyrics so it comes up on Spotify and Apple Music. But then when it comes down on Spotify and Apple Music, but then when it comes down like it's even a production decision to try and make the lyrics, the vocals, as clear as possible you know, and also with our style, I mean it's.

Gradience: 19:43

I'm definitely not one of those like heavy, heavy, like gutturals or anything like that. You won't catch me doing that. I'm very much traditional. Like we're singing, we're not we're not going like the oh you know, I can't.

Gradience: 20:01

I'm not really big on that, so a lot of it's like the production and just making it as available as possible we do have a lyric book, like in our cds too, like with our newest album, one of the things I'm like oh, I want, I want a lyric book so people can like read them I love that you advocated for that, john. Yeah, just because there are quite a few people that we meet that are like, ah, like I don't go on my phone, smartphones, like I'm not gonna look you.

Tiffany Mason: 20:28

I want your physical merch.

Gradience: 20:31

They're old school. That's why we have a lyric book and it's cool. You have the CD and then you can kind of interact with it by following along and stuff like that.

Tiffany Mason: 20:42

Absolutely Any song I can sing along with. So even if it is a little bit harder rock or whatever I just want to sing along. So I appreciate that you guys are doing that.

Jay Franze: 20:52

So let's go ahead and take it a step further now. So we talked about your writing process. Now do you do any sort of demo before you just go straight to recording it, or do you go straight to recording it?

Gradience: 21:05

Yeah, I think every song that we have I think we've got demos for whether it's something that any of us do independently have an idea we'll record it on our own computers and then we'll pitch it to everybody else.

Jay Franze: 21:21

That's kind of how it's been Like a guitar, vocal style vocal style.

Gradience: 21:31

Yeah, yeah, like guitar, vocal or just guitar and instrumental. Like it kind of varies in levels of how intense the the production of the demos are. Like when ford sent us comeback, it was kind of almost a full production without the vocals, but he had the lyrics and um, like john and I, we've sent songs where they just had guitars only, no drums, no vocals, and it's kind of a mix of all that, but pretty much always it's gonna be like guitars, guitar and maybe a light melody with like our songs sometimes and in the mirror, like those are ones we wrote like all together.

Gradience: 22:05

So we really made sure when we do demos that like our rehearsal will hook up everything. It'll make sure we get one, one or two really good takes of it and then darian will go and mix it down so we can listen to it all together for the first time yeah, some.

Gradience: 22:21

Sometimes. It's interesting because it came, uh, as just kind of a. We were kind of in between a rehearsing and we were just kind of just jamming on a couple of notes and it became like a minute long jam, but it didn't really go anywhere. Well, I took that clip and I edited it down, so we had like a verse section and then I kind of copy pasted and then took the section that was more or less the chorus. I took that and I basically restructured it to have a full song structure and then I put vocals over it and I said, okay, this is the idea, let's polish this down. And then that's kind of how how that song kind of got put together more or less.

Gradience: 23:09

Some chopping and screwing. Well, that's a good point.

Jay Franze: 23:12

I want to tag on to that just a bit. Do you then build off that rough piece, or do you scrap it and start a new session and build from there?

Gradience: 23:22

I'd say a bit of both. Sometimes it's like, oh yeah, these two sections are really good, but we totally need a new intro. But then sometimes it's like, oh yeah, let's just play this, but like nice and consistently and maybe add a few layers to it yeah, I like an example I can think of is uh, this, the song of our new album in the mirror.

Gradience: 23:46

I had the the verse section and I had the riff and everything and we did that, we did like a chorus section, and then I had pitched an idea for the bridge. Well, that was completely different and awful. It was slow and completely took the energy away from the song and we kinda sat on it for a bit, scrapped it and then totally switched up the bridge and it basically made the song whole. And that's just a situation where it's like we took an idea that wasn't working, scrapped it and replaced it with something else, Basically took the middle out of the song and put a new one back in.

Gradience: 24:26

Sometimes those demos are like vetting process, so like if there's a demo out there and I'm able to listen to it in my car for like three days in a row, and I find like wow, I don't really like this very much. Like sometimes it takes that amount of time to figure out if you like something or not, or if that's going to stick.

Gradience: 24:43

A lot of time in the moment like something seems really cool, but then you step back and listen to it and then you're like eh or oh, there's a better thing, let's do that instead.

Gradience: 24:52

I think we've had a few songs where we took the demo, listened to it, went and added parts, and then the parts we added were really cool but we weren't vibing with the original demo, but the parts we added, so then they became their own song.

Tiffany Mason: 25:08

My daughter introduced me to a song and I was like I don't like this song, and then she just kept playing it, kept playing it, kept playing it and I was like, oh, I like this song now. And then the same thing in the reverse way, right when you're like this is awesome, Then you're listening. You're like wait a minute, Maybe we'll change a part of it.

Jay Franze: 25:26

So talk to me about the recording process. Are you guys tracking your own stuff? Then? Yep, so what software are you using?

Gradience: 25:34

I use Logic Pro, all right.

Tiffany Mason: 25:37

Solid choice.

Gradience: 25:38

Logic Pro, along with the Universal Audio interface.

Jay Franze: 25:43

What's the IO situation like? How many ins and outs do you have?

Gradience: 25:46

So I typically use the X4, which is going to be your four preamps, unison preamps and then I think it's got four lineouts. But then for drum tracking I've got an Apollo X8, which will add another four, and I've got the Audient 8P, which we'll add another 8 preamp, so we could track drums. But when we were recording drums for the last couple songs on the album we tracked them all at the same time but we ended up redoing the guitars. But for tracking drums I went a little bit overboard with what I had done with the other ones and I had added a couple of additional room mics that I'd used facing away from the kit to get the reflections, just to add a little bit of a depth and different tonality to the drums, which I think, in my humble opinion, I think sounded really good. I think it turned out some of my favorite drum recordings, honestly.

Jay Franze: 26:49

That's pretty cool. So you say sometimes you record with the guitars. So when you're doing that, are you doing them as line inputs? How are you doing the guitars?

Gradience: 26:58

Both of their amps have a direct line out. John uses a head rush unit so we can just go straight from that and, as much as he hates it, ford's got a Fender Mustang, which is a little bit older. Solid state digital amp Sounds pretty good most of the sometimes, but it's got. It's got a. It's got an external out, so it's it's good for being able to go direct and not have to worry about too much bleed if we don't want any of the bleed.

Gradience: 27:29

Right and we go in and like re-record those.

Gradience: 27:32

Yeah, those DI tracks Get stuff linked up, but I have used the raw DI to just sprinkle in, add some depth to choruses and things like that.

Tiffany Mason: 27:41

Trevor, are you just the beauty? Are they the brains? And you're just the beauty.

Gradience: 27:46

So far, yes, I'm still relatively.

Gradience: 27:49

I joined the band last fall, last winter, and it was actually, on the topic of the demos, it was kind of cool because the whole album was written and I got to have the demos to learn all the songs and then, hearing the masters for the first time, you kind of hear what parts have changed or whatnot. So it was cool. I kind of got to hear the songs for the first time, like twice, basically sure. So so far we've been we've, I think for as long as I've been playing with the band we've had a decent amount of songs like written already since I've joined. So it's been I've been excited to kind of get in there and you know, experience that for the first time. But when it comes to like the yeah, the recording, it's all dar Darren and these guys that handle it.

Gradience: 28:28

Yeah, trevor had the arduous task of trying to learn all the drum parts for this new album. When he was coming in it was already everything had been laid down already by our fantastic drummer Tom, who's up in Fargo doing some other projects. But I'd be remiss if we didn't give him his credit for doing the marvelous drum work on the album, which Trevor has done a wonderful job at learning all of those parts.

Jay Franze: 28:57

Now, Trevor, do you like that? Does it bother you to learn somebody else's parts?

Gradience: 29:01

No, I actually it helped a lot because I've always this is the first band I've played in and the way I've always learned songs. I've been playing drums since I was like 13, but it was like you just put on headphones and then you just play along to whatever you hear. So like I think it actually kind of helped ease me into it having to learn someone else's parts instead of having to you know if the album wasn't recorded yet and I was like, alright, we need you to write drums for these 12 songs. It's like I would rather. I like kind of easing into it. And then now that it kind of helped also learn the style of the band, then I can kind of add my own taste on top of that. But yeah, I really enjoy both the recordings and their old drummer, tom. His style, I think, really kind of fit well with it and yeah, I enjoyed it a lot.

Tiffany Mason: 29:41

Do you feel like your style of drumming differs that much from Tom's style?

Gradience: 29:46

He's a little bit more of the heavier thrash type. I feel like I'm more of the I would say punk, where it's not super fancy, but more about the energy. I try to keep it simple for the most part and then choose my moments kind of wisely.

Jay Franze: 30:01

Do you think that works well with that old 70s-type style?

Gradience: 30:05

As long as you kind of fit to the song, I think I think I'm good at adapting to whatever the mood of the song is, which is drums. A lot of times Something I didn't really realize until I started playing drums was even a slightly different hi-hat pattern or whatever can totally change the feel of the song. So a lot of times when I'm writing these parts whether it's an older style song or a heavier one, you kind of got to try out different things, maybe on a crash cymbal or just doing a snare roll. You kind of find what fits the vibe and the mood of the song.

Jay Franze: 30:35

Well, I think, if you're talking about bands I mean even like the Arctic Monkeys or some of that earlier feel, or the Beatles you're talking about simplicity and you're building around simplicity. You mentioned Tool as well, which is completely on the other end of the spectrum.

Gradience: 30:50

Yeah.

Jay Franze: 30:50

So do you find yourself ever wanting to go down the route of tool?

Gradience: 30:56

Not to that degree I've definitely, since joining the band, I've been inspired to sit down there and practice and learn a lot more. It's been a long time since I practiced technique in different stickings and whatnot, so it kind of made me step the game up and like I don't think I'm ever gonna get as crazy as like Danny Carey. I'm, yeah, trying to learn some more intricate like stickings and fills and, uh, some like rudiments too. Which is what I always liked about Travis Barker was he does a lot of the like, you know, like marching kind of rudiments in there. Yeah, I gotta find the place for it, but I think that could be really effective. You know, going forward as of like lately.

Gradience: 31:32

Uh, the foo fighters come to mind as oh yeah as probably a band where, where we all came together and we were like they're kind of doing the, the thing that we like. Yeah, them and dinosaur pileup dinosaur pileup's a big one.

Gradience: 31:47

Dinosaur pileup has kind of more of a hip-hop feel in a lot of their songs versing and stuff which we don't really do, but every other part of the song. They're one of the bands we fit in well genre-wise or turnstile with some of our stuff. They're a newer band and they're really good. There's so many. There's so many bands that we're discovering now.

Jay Franze: 32:12

Let's change gears a little bit. Let's talk about your live performances, because you guys definitely come with a lot of energy right? First of all, who's booking your gigs?

Gradience: 32:23

Us, we are.

Jay Franze: 32:25

So, with that said, you guys are obviously a a band, a fairly new band. Are you wearing multiple hats? Who does what in the band?

Gradience: 32:33

between john and I. We do a lot of the like social media stuff. You know I've done a lot of the cold calls and emails, a lot of unopened emails, unresponded to emails. Yeah, it's. It's mostly when john and I work in the social media game and just trying to reach out to new bands and and we've gotten a fair amount of shows just from other bands who find us and they're like hey, you want to do the show with us? You know, you guys seem cool. We've been fortunate to have a few other bands reach out to us while we also are reaching out to bands.

Tiffany Mason: 33:13

I saw you got a pretty sweet gig coming up on the 26th at the Red Carpet in St Cloud, Minnesota. Whoop, whoop.

Gradience: 33:22

Yeah, and we also like a couple days ago we just had a band reach out to us to play there this Saturday because another band had dropped the show. So we're going to be playing there the 12th and the 26th.

Tiffany Mason: 33:34

Oh my gosh. Well, everybody who is listening. That is my friend from Waite Park, sartell, st Cloud. You guys got to go check them out. Red Carpet this Saturday.

Gradience: 33:45

Yep this Saturday.

Tiffany Mason: 33:46

And the 26th and the 26th so yeah, head over while the weather's still beautiful and you can be out and about, out and about.

Jay Franze: 34:00

Don't encourage me, mercy me. So what are you looking forward to most about the show?

Gradience: 34:07

For me, like I love every show, cause I really love like performing. You're up there and then all of a sudden you wake up the next day and you're like whoa, what just happened? But when you remember like the feeling of being up there, it's really cool because we put a lot of energy like into our performance, because we want everyone to have fun and like to go to a show. I'm very much a believer of like when I go to shows it could be the best sounding show. But if every every band member is just standing there looking at their fretboards or just standing still and they move maybe five feet throughout the whole show, it kind of kills the mood for me. Like I want to see people jumping over things and I don't know going through a fire loop or something.

Jay Franze: 34:53

That reminds me of the Cars. I don't know if you're familiar with the. Cars. But they just stood in one spot One of the best-sounding bands ever but they never moved, never.

Tiffany Mason: 35:03

Right, well, I always am impressed with rock and heavy metal. It takes a lot of energy to bounce around the stage like that and still play the song and still sound good. You know, I mean I've been to a couple long story, but I've been to a couple that they're completely distorted. You can tell everything's off because they're too busy trying to like put on a show.

Gradience: 35:33

So, john, I appreciate you know that you're saying you want a great, great show, but I think you guys are also keeping in mind that the music is great as well. Yeah, it's more so like practicing and rehearsing enough to like you, gotta, we gotta get our set like locked in to where we're not even thinking about what we're playing I think Basically making it so that the playing part of it is muscle memory and that we can focus on having fun but also the showmanship part of it.

Jay Franze: 35:55

Yeah, that's going to come with hundreds and hundreds of shows.

Tiffany Mason: 35:59

Yep who gets the most nervous?

Gradience: 36:03

Hmm, hmm, I don't know. Horner just seems too much. Sorry for it, it was like a too much.

Gradience: 36:08

Sorry, horner, it was like three heads were flanking.

Tiffany Mason: 36:12

Because, john and Darian, you seem extremely extroverted so I have to imagine that you guys are just drawing the energy off the crowd. But I got to think in four people someone's getting nervous.

Gradience: 36:23

I really used to be like I had some stage fright and then played a few shows and that was gone. I don't know what happened, but it was fantastic.

Tiffany Mason: 36:31

I'm happy we're proud of you Well, do you all find that you have the jitters, maybe just even a little bit. But you hit that first note or two and you're like all right, now, we're in it, we're going yeah.

Gradience: 36:40

I always find that it depends on the show. I mean, growing up I had terrible stage fright. I did not want to go on stage, but over time, I think a lot of it is feeling confident in your abilities to perform or to do what you do and it kind of helps put the stage fright away. Now, that said, like I was saying, it depends on the show Playing a different venue can definitely bring in some post-show jitters, or even the size of the crowd or the size of the venue.

Gradience: 37:13

I know we played Sturgis and just that being such a big deal for us at the time, there was definitely some pre-show jitters, especially because we were towards the end of the lineup, so already seeing the other great bands that were performing, the nerves, the nerves were in, and I was sick at the time on top of that, so I wasn't in good vocal health. So I was just like, oh man, I hope I can pull through, like I was chugging honey and drinking water and trying to find a doctor, trying to find a doctor, and you know it's just the, the, all those things that can work its way into just being, you know, pre-show anxiety and a little bit of stage fright, but you know, it's just once you start performing it it kind of melts away, more or less I think to me it just displays the passion.

Tiffany Mason: 38:05

You know how much it meant to you guys, and I'm sure it still means a lot, but you know you're getting more familiar. I would, guys and I'm sure it still means a lot, but you know you're getting more familiar I would say that's a big deal and it meant a lot and you know you were hoping great things would come out of it. Exposure and leads on other events, so that makes sense.

Gradience: 38:20

I was a little worried about Trevor for the first few shows, because he was like, yeah, I've never, played in a band before.

Gradience: 38:26

Yeah, I had never my first show. It was this thing. It wasn't so much the day, it was the night before. I got super nervous as soon as you started playing. It instantly just went away, and I think a large part of it too is. At any level it's natural to be nervous, no matter how small or big the show is. But it's all about how you react to that and feel that into the performance, because I played a lot of sports growing up so I'm kind of used to like the high-pressure situation. So it's like you've got to kind of turn those nerves like into adrenaline and then just into energy and then, you know, put on a good show. I've gotten really comfortable with it now.

Jay Franze: 39:00

All right. Well, let's take it a step further. You mentioned the social media and putting all that stuff together.

Gradience: 39:10

Is that your core way right now of developing your fan base? Social media has definitely been a big focus, definitely of the last year. We recently, well last summer, we made the move from basically Fargo down to the Twin Cities area, which was a pretty big deal for us, just because, you know, I grew up up here, trevor grew up in the Twin Cities, but these two hadn't, and for the last five years the three of us had been up in Fargo and we had kind of made a fan base up there, but not so much really anywhere else, and so we realized that the social media is kind of the best way to reach out to the rest of the world. Basically, uh, so we've really focused a lot of time, effort and a bit of money, uh, into developing our social media presence what do you feel is your strength when it comes to marketing yourselves?

Gradience: 40:08

probably at shows, honestly yeah, I'll say, our strongest point is shows yeah, because that's the point.

Gradience: 40:13

Like you can be, you can be direct with people. You can meet them and greet them and say hi and get to know them as people like hey, I think you're cool and I think you'd like our music when you're playing a show in a new venue or maybe you're opening for somebody and you're in front of a new crowd, are you pushing your social media?

Jay Franze: 40:33

Do you mention it from the stage?

Gradience: 40:35

Yeah, a lot of times I'll make sure, or we'll make sure, to mention our social media handles, not really try to shove it down people's throats. Handles, not really try to shove it down people's throats. You know, I think we've all had experiences where a band takes it a little too far and is a little too incessant on it. But you know, in between, if we're doing an hour-long set, maybe I'll shout it out a couple times, maybe I should do it more. But I, you know, kind of go with the flow and deem what seems reasonable. I'm not going to shout it out several times if there's still only 10 people in the room. If I say it once towards the end, I think they'll get the idea, or by then maybe they're too plastered to understand.

Gradience: 41:21

We try not to do those ones if we can help it.

Gradience: 41:26

So if we get a good show with a good number of people and you know there's people, new people coming in and out all the time, you know you want to make sure that those people know what's up and make sure they know who you are, especially if it's like a new town?

Gradience: 41:39

Because we do. We use our social media heavily to post like what shows are coming up and when. Media heavily to post like what shows are coming up and when. So if we're playing a new venue in a new town or like to new people because it still kind of feels like we are new, because whenever we do show, people like oh, we've never heard of you before it's like yeah, follow us on social media, so the next time we play you can, if you like us, you can come back out. It's just a way of like making sure people see when we're coming back, if they, if they like us are you guys jokesters at all?

Jay Franze: 42:11

oh?

Gradience: 42:11

yeah, oh yeah, I did just the other night. The three of us live together, like we all.

Gradience: 42:17

We've been living together for four, three years, and once again, trevor's the outcast I'm just saying okay, when is trevor moving in?

Gradience: 42:28

well, trevor is ahead of all of us. He's got his own house. But I've known trevor since since we were kids. I, I grew up with trevor for a very long time. We kind of went our separate ways in high school and you know, and post, post high school and all that. But when we realized we were going to end up needing a new drummer, I had remembered that, like when we were growing up, he started taking interest in playing the drums and I'd asked him if he would be interested in potentially doing doing stuff with us and darian what if he would have stunk?

Tiffany Mason: 43:02

yeah I mean, you had had a break from him for a while and here you are, like, join the band.

Gradience: 43:07

I don't even know if you're good anymore, but come on but the thing was that when, when growing up like before we had kind of went our separate ways, like I started to notice that he was like he was picking up on, like he had his own drum kit and like he was starting to actually like play and learn, and it was around the same time like both of us were really starting into music. Like I started playing guitar, he was playing drums and I didn't really know how far long he had gotten, but just reaching out to see if he was still like doing because I know I, like you, were posting every now and then on Facebook.

Gradience: 43:39

Yeah, you would post like stuff.

Gradience: 43:40

So it was like it's like I kind of had an idea that he at least knew what he was doing.

Gradience: 43:44

Yeah, it was funny for me too, because I've followed for years on like social media, a lot of the guys that do like the home recording stuff and playing local shows, so a lot of it. I had a good idea of what it entailed, but I just had never like done it myself. So yeah they kind of took me in and have been showing me the ropes on all of that type of stuff I love that so much yeah, and, and just just so like we all went to college together, the three of us.

Jay Franze: 44:09

Wait, whoa. What did we go to college for?

Gradience: 44:13

I was curious about that in the beginning, Pujay. Well, so yeah, all three of us we have the same degree, the Bachelor of Science in, basically, audio production is what it boils down to. It's got a different name but it's convoluted and it no longer exists anymore where we came from. It's something else now, but basically audio production.

Gradience: 44:37

And live sound and performance.

Gradience: 44:39

I had a minor in basically music vocal performance.

Jay Franze: 44:43

So this is why you guys have your own rehearsal space and the reason why you're recording your own projects.

Gradience: 44:50

Basically, yeah, if I hadn't gone to school for audio, like I wouldn't have taken upon myself to try and record us, you know all those years ago and you know it really helps living together because we can just kind of grab each other and be like, hey, let's record something or let's practice this, this. And that was kind of the whole idea about, uh, moving into a house together.

Gradience: 45:13

sorry, we didn't include that that was one of the things that really kind of attracted me to these guys as a band, even like before I was in, because I was following them on like social media right now, but like the fact that it's a very organic, like recording all their own stuff legitimately and like just jamming together instead of just writing everything in Pro Tools and then be like hey, learn this, hey, learn this. It's like no, we're all just jamming in a room together and vibing off of it. I really like that aspect of it.

Tiffany Mason: 45:39

Trevor, how far is your house from theirs?

Gradience: 45:43

30 minutes. It's in a spot, though, that, like, if traffic's bad, like I've tried to get over here during rush hour before and it'll take like an hour of just sitting there, but uh, it's not too far away thanks, 494 yeah I was gonna say something's never changed usually it's at night too, so that helps yeah, right.

Jay Franze: 46:05

I mentioned earlier you guys being pranksters. Tell me what's one of the craziest things you guys have done to each other.

Gradience: 46:11

Oh, craziest, oh, uh-oh.

Jay Franze: 46:12

Uh-oh.

Gradience: 46:15

Ford speaking up.

Tiffany Mason: 46:16

Yeah, yeah, always the quiet one.

Gradience: 46:18

We had a bunch of leftover carpet. It's the same one, yeah it's the same one.

Gradience: 46:21

It was the one I was going to say A bunch of leftover carpet and we had.

Gradience: 46:26

These two guys lived downstairs in our last place so we carpeted their entire bathroom, like around the toilet, in the tub. We carpeted everything Like covered the whole thing, cut it out around the toilet and everything.

Gradience: 46:41

The best part is I was there and I witnessed it because he was gone, so I was there to document the process.

Gradience: 46:46

Yeah, they cut the carpet in Like it was perfectly fitted carpet into the bathroom around the toilet. And I came back from like a college trip to the cities for like where I was working and I really had to use the bathroom because I was like driving a van for like 12 hours. So I got back, went into the bathroom and like as I was going downstairs, they were waiting for me and I just heard a bunch of giggles.

Gradience: 47:12

I'm like what Such a stupid prank? Why 'd you carpet the bathroom? You wasted two hours on this.

Gradience: 47:16

The amount of time we took too. Yeah, that was kind of it. It was really a prank on us for doing all that work.

Tiffany Mason: 47:21

I mean, it sounds to me like you guys have a plan B, Like that was the most fan doesn't work out, you're putting some carpet on hire us, we're, we're open.

Gradience: 47:29

I mean, he did actual carpentry. So yeah, I did like the removal process mostly or just little things around the house too, like last night he left a full pizza out on the counter, and so sorry to dox you, but there's a long story short.

Gradience: 47:47

It was his second pizza, but he left it out. So I I took it and I I put it on a chair and there we, we have this stuffed animal and I put it in the lap of the stuffed animal and I put it in front of his door. So when he opened it, he would. He would see it just simple, harmless, or like he had some takeout or something, and it was on the kitchen counter and I moved it to the couch, hidden in plain sight, and I just watched to see how long it would take for him to find it.

Gradience: 48:19

You're making me lose my mind over here.

Gradience: 48:21

A very long-running one where, like at our campus, they'd give out you know like a bag that had Vaseline and condoms and stuff in it. So like we had this like little portable Vaseline thing or like this like lube thing.

Tiffany Mason: 48:35

Yeah, it was lube and we would hide it. You can call it Vaseline if it makes you feel better.

Gradience: 48:42

It was just like a little tube of it. So what we would do is we'd hide it in the other person's room. Eventually, one day, we put it in the back of Ford's guitar.

Gradience: 48:51

Yeah.

Gradience: 48:55

And then at a show where he took out the back plate of his guitar to adjust some springs or change his strings or something, and he found it after like six months. Yeah, that was something. I think it ended up in.

Gradience: 49:07

It ended up in in one of my guitar. It ended up in one of my guitar pedals that I asked Ford to dissect for me, which he didn't do a good job at hiding it because he was he was giggling the whole time but I found it and I hid it underneath his computer monitor. That eventually got taken back to his parents' house.

Jay Franze: 49:30

So your parents found your loot, got it.

Gradience: 49:33

Then we had this similar thing, but with this little thing of peanut butter from the cafeteria.

Gradience: 49:37

That was found. That was nasty.

Gradience: 49:40

Darian and I hid it in Ford's pedalboard case in our last house two years ago and he found it about a week ago and it had been opened.

Gradience: 49:50

Yeah, we didn't open it, it just ended up open all right, let me ask you this.

Jay Franze: 49:56

We do this thing here. We call unsung heroes. We take a moment to shine light on somebody who's worked behind the scenes or somebody who may have supported you along the way. You guys have anybody you'd like to shine a little light on.

Gradience: 50:05

Oh, most definitely, Most definitely A big shout out to our photographer, videographer and just overall great friend, emma Christensen. She has been an incredible help for just helping out with all of our music videos and she's been working tirelessly all through last year and she's been documenting, like photos and taking videos Pretty much all of our shows for the last couple years. Now we just got finished with probably a last music video for a while, for our song on a roll, which that was the first video that we did. We did it outside of our, our house and we did like location filming and rented out a space for two days and had a crew casting call sorts of stuff and she took it head on and we owe a great deal to to her expertise in filmmaking and photography what was that like for you?

Gradience: 51:06

it was great. I mean, I it was. It was definitely uh, it was a passion project, more or less. It was. It was kind of my idea to do it and we were. We rented out a boxing ring, basically, and I was doing some boxing lessons to prepare for the, for the shoot, and, uh, I did that for a month.

Gradience: 51:25

Yeah, that's commitment. You learned how to box. That was cool.

Gradience: 51:29

And then the filming process. It was a lot of heavy lifting because I mean, it was basically putting on we call them capstone projects in the undergrad program with a small film crew and it was just a big undertaking which wouldn't have been possible without Emma to be able to help out with that.

Jay Franze: 51:49

Well, thank you, Emma.

Tiffany Mason: 51:51

I imagine Emma went to school with y'all as well.

Gradience: 51:53

Yep, she was a film major.

Jay Franze: 51:56

Now, that's a school to go to. You get your whole team right there at the school Pretty much. Yeah, that's awesome, all right. Well, we have done it. We've reached the top of the hour, which doesn't mean we have reached the end of the show. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend, if you have not. Miss Tiffany.

Tiffany Mason: 52:12

Tell two.

Jay Franze: 52:13

Tell two you can reach out to all of us. All of us, I said it, all of us. There's a lot of us tonight. All of us. You can reach out Jfranzycom. We'll be happy to answer any questions or keep this conversation going. Guys, my friends got any final words for us?

Gradience: 52:30

Go listen to our new album, Come what May.

Jay Franze: 52:33

All right, folks On that note have a good night.

Tony Scott: 52:38

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