Today we’d like to introduce you to The Industry.
Hi The, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
All four members of our band were associated with the Music Industry Studies program at USC, some majors and some minors, where we were all introduced to one another. In early 2023, we got together for the first time, bonded over our similar tastes, started learning each other’s songs and writing new ones, and began rehearsing to put together a set list. Our first performance was a house show in Columbia for around 20-30 people. Since then we’ve played shows at New Brookland Tavern, Art Bar, Live at the Underground, and other Columbia venues, as well Tin Roof in Charleston and various frat and sorority gigs.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Our biggest struggle is not too dissimilar from the common struggle of modern musicians. The logistics and financial feasibility of making art is a tall hurdle today. Shortly after the band was formed, our lead guitarist David moved to Charleston to attend graduate school at the Medical University of South Carolina. He is both a two hour drive away from Columbia, and very busy with his studies. With the other ⅔ of our local members having jobs, and the other finishing up his last year of college, finding time to get together has been tough and has made scheduling gigs, rehearsals, and recording time significantly more difficult. Despite this, we make time to perform and record nonetheless and will continue to do so! Aside from the usual musician struggle of finding a way to pay the bills, the rest of our experience has been smooth sailing.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
We are a local rock band, known for our diverse repertoire of original music, with some songs sounding like they belong to a completely different genre than others. If you played them back-to-back for a stranger, they may not be able to tell that it’s the same band performing both songs. We’re most proud of our recording of our song ‘Wilt,’ as it best exemplifies the full range of our skills: song writing, musical performance, recording, mixing, and mastering. We specialize in a “lack” of specialization. The goal of the band has been to achieve a wide range of sounds, beyond the scope of the vague branding traditionally referred to as “rock”. We challenge ourselves to push the limits of what we can create, with the goal of building a fan base intrigued by how the next thing we produce will sound, rather than waiting for songs to be released which fall in line tonally with our existing discography. All four of our members enjoy different– sometimes even clashing– types of music and bring different styles and flavors to the table to create something we hope people will recognize as novel, and that resonates with them. For the future, we plan on creating full length albums with cohesive sounds and central themes, while being distinctly different from our other albums (a la King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, or Toro y Moi).
What sets us apart is our aggressive attention to detail and never ending efforts to better ourselves as musicians, song writers, mixing engineers, etc. The Industry has always been an autonomous entity with full agency over the entire creative process including performance, songwriting, recording, production, mixing, marketing, etc. Creating a fan base in the music industry via a lack of consistency is a difficult strategy, to say the least. To achieve this goal, we tirelessly refine our songs, the way we perform them, the way we record them, and the way we mix them. We look for all the ways we can improve our skills and pieces, to provide our audience with the best we can achieve and to create art which seamlessly aligns with our artistic vision, no matter the cost. This rigor of scrutiny can lead us to be quite critical of each other’s decisions, but we maintain an environment of welcoming critique. In this way, with differing artistic influences, creative tension is almost at the core of the band’s identity. In the end, it makes all of us better creatives and performers, capable of creating our best works, and giving our best performances. It makes our goal of genre blending and striving for atypical musical goals possible.
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
To take criticism in stride, from others and yourself. Not everyone is going to like what you’re doing, and that’s okay. Some people will always think there’s some way that things SHOULD be done, but many different paths can get you to the same end result— and in art, there is no correct answer, no way that it SHOULD be, only ways that it COULD be. And even when you feel you’ve missed the mark, it’s important to constantly look ahead, and to learn how to have fun making mistakes. While striving for quality, mistakes will happen, and being bogged down by them only makes future successes more difficult. At the end of the day, we’re making music. We’re not brain surgeons. It’s about connecting with your true self, connecting with each other, connecting with others, questioning your existence and finding the ways that make it meaningful. Always push forward, don’t look back, enjoy the ride.
