(bright music) ♪ Run, run, run away ♪ ♪ Run from all my doubts today ♪ ♪ Run, run, run away ♪ ♪ Run until I get away ♪ ♪ Run far to outer space ♪ ♪ I feel so good ♪ ♪ Run, run, run away ♪ ♪ Run away until that day ♪ ♪ Ba-Da-Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Boom ♪ - [Clark] Well, we all met at the School of Music here at KU.

That's how we all get started.

We were all in just several classes.

- [Ellie] Claire and I started the band, but Clark and I knew each other first.

I met Claire, and you know how all the college conversations go, and it's like, "What's your major?"

And she discovered that I was a Music Ed major.

And she was like, "I do jazz."

I was like, "That's crazy."

And so then Claire was like, "I play the bass.

You sing.

What if we started a band?"

And I was like, "I am going to text Clark Russell right now."

Claire met Daul and was like, "Dude, I know this crazy keys player."

And we came together and then we adopted Lisa.

- [Clark] Who is not present, unfortunately.

- [Ellie] We all had our individual path to being a musician before we became a band.

- [Clark] We all just jammed together a lot.

And eventually we were like, "Oh, we want to start playing music at any venues."

'Cause Lawrence is a really big music town and there's a lot of bands here and we've all gone out to house parties and other shows and whatnot, and we just wanna be part of the nightlife that's gigging around playing music here- - Nightlife, yeah.

- [Steve] What do I do as a musician?

Suck.

No, I'm kidding.

I am a bass player.

I am a guitar player.

I am a songwriter.

I've been doing music since I was 10, I think is when I started.

Started out singing, actually I think played piano before that.

Took piano lessons.

But I got a guitar for my 12th birthday.

My mom played piano, my dad sang.

And so, there was always music around.

My oldest brother always had records, and yeah.

I mean there's just a lot of different sources, and music just turned me on.

- I played guitar and piano, ukulele and I sing, and I write.

I mostly create slow pop ballads.

Sad alternative.

I started when I was 13.

That was when my grandma got me a piano for my eighth grade graduation.

And I was like, "Cool, I could do something with this."

And from there, that's when.

I had a guitar the entire time, never played it.

And then I picked it up and was like, "Ooh, I can do both of them."

The first song I made I think was on piano.

And I learned the C scale.

And then from there I just repeatedly play the notes in the C scale, like a space apart.

- I'm a pop writer essentially.

I write pop songs, but I can't play them well enough to make them sound like pop songs.

So I play them as fast as possible to hide that I'm not very good at it.

I like to call it power pop.

A lot of people would just say it's punk.

When I was a kid, my grandparents would always listen to old country music.

And from there, that got me into music as a whole.

I started making my own original music when I was about 12 or 13.

I started learning how to play guitar.

Yeah, I usually like writing about personal stuff.

I started getting more interested in being an active musician.

- I do a little bit of everything, like I book my own gigs.

I write all my own songs.

I produce all my own (indistinct).

I do all the business side of it too.

I handle everything.

And some of that, for lack of a better word, is that I don't have any other option.

Some of it also is because that's what I studied in college.

I studied Music Business, in case my dreams failed.

And also to know how to better represent myself.

Some of my earliest memories are music-based.

Like I remember in 2003 in my mom's Nissan Moreno, it's like the first clear memory I have is going to preschool singing Crocodile Rock by Elton John with my mom.

So, I just grew up with a deep passion for music, and just really enjoyed it.

I don't know, music was just always a part of my life.

- Actually, we started out as a band, I think it was about 2015.

We were hosting jam nights at Dickie Do Barbecue here in Sedalia.

We just played every Thursday night for a couple, three years and we decided, "Well, why don't we just get a band put together?"

So I played in a lot of bands that just did mainly covers, and sometimes they'd throw in a few originals and I really wanted to start doing my own stuff, and focus on that.

So whenever we started the Clay Clear Band, my whole focus was to move more towards originals.

We've added some new members and everything since then.

So, we've only been a band really for about three years, but we've been playing together for close to 10 to 11.

- [Jayson] I'm a songwriter, I'm a guitar player, keyboard player, all around the place.

I really like songwriting a lot.

I like the creative vision in being a writer.

I'd call myself an entertainer before I'd call myself a recording artist.

I feed off of what the crowd gives to me, and all I want to do is just take them away from whatever's been going on in their life for the next two, three hours.

When COVID started was really the first time I had a couple of songs that I had written, where I was to the point where I was ready to start releasing music.

And that's when I dove into that world.

- [Chris] I'd say the first time I really started making my own music was in college, where I was really figuring out a lot about who I am as an individual, what I stand for, what I want to talk about.

The first song I ever created front to back, produced, recorded was Pineapple Soda.

(mellow music) ♪ Shoes have fallen apart and they've got no soul no more ♪ ♪ Talk about my lack of dare ♪ - [Chris] I held onto that song for a year.

I made Pineapple Soda in 2016.

I thought it sucked 'cause I did not like myself very much.

It took a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine who made the graphic art for Pineapple.

Jay was like, "Yo, this is really good.

Put it out."

And I was like, "But I don't want to.

I'm afraid people are gonna make fun of me."

'Cause that's just how I felt.

That's why I wrote the song.

He drew up the whole thing, made the final product, sent me it.

He goes, "If you don't release it tomorrow, I'm gonna charge you my typical rate of 150 bucks for that."

And I'm like, "Okay, bet."

And in three days it went from like 100 plays to 1000 plays to 10,000 plays on SoundCloud.

And it sat and did nothing for about a year.

I used to work at a recording studio.

I would sweep the floors there just to be around music.

And one of my friends was like, "Yo, dude, did you see Pineapple today?"

And I was like, "What?"

He goes, "Dude, it got on Discover Weekly algorithmically for everybody."

And everybody's like, "Dude, the whole office is talking about your song.

Why'd you never tell us you put it out?

Dude, dude, your song's great."

I was like, "What do you mean?

Which one?"

I thought they were making a mistake.

2000 plays in a day, which I was like, "Oh, Spotify?

I made three whole dollars."

And yeah, one thing led to another and it kept building and building, my other tracks started getting noticed, but it did change my whole life.

It changed the whole trajectory.

I was like, "I can do this.

If I keep working on it, I can do the thing I love to do."

(Chris imitates trumpet) - [Clay] Here, recently, we opened up for Marshall Tucker and '38 Special at the Ozark Amphitheater.

This next song we're gonna do, little song called Searching for You.

(mellow country music) We did an all original set in front of, I think, they said there's around 3,500 people there, I believe.

And it was so cool to see and hear the people out there clapping along and singing along to songs that I wrote.

I never thought anyone would remember.

I don't remember the words to my songs.

I'm surprised anyone else does.

We got to meet a lot of cool people just doing this.

And it's crazy to think, the people that I know I wouldn't have ever have met without playing music.

I always tell everyone, "It beats digging ditches," but there's nothing else.

This is all I've ever done really was play music.

So I don't know what I'd be doing if it wasn't playing music.

Digging ditches every day.

♪ Worry, you're just searching for you ♪ - [Ronia] I used to be in school plays and they would have me make music for the play.

Sometimes lyrics and melody, sometimes they'd give me lyrics and would be like, "Okay, go make a song."

So I would play in that.

My siblings had a talent show at their school, and they sold me out for being musical.

So then the principal was like, "Will you play in our children's talent show?"

So I played that live.

It was so embarrassing.

They put me on the roster, and they had all children's names, and then they had my name and, "Big sister," in parentheses.

The intimidating part is that I don't, 'cause I definitely know I'm not the best singer, so I get nervous.

I'm just one of those people that sings well.

But I'm not special or unique.

So I'm afraid to get judged, which is something you're not supposed to be afraid of when putting yourself out there ♪ 756 days later ♪ - [Brady] Because I was in a band, a band called The Sock Puppets when I was 12, and it was just me and my friend, and we did a cover of The Who's My Generation.

It was really bad and I took it down.

It's privated now.

For a long time I was happy just writing these little personal songs and putting them on YouTube.

I only ever published like 10 out of 70 that I ever write, and I only ever actually started putting it out.

I wrote a lot of songs in like seventh to eighth grade, but the only time I ever started actually putting it out was probably ninth grade.

And that really came about when my first girlfriend broke up with me, and then I was like, "Oh, I'm sad."

And so, I started putting out a lot of music.

- There were a few times, but not very long lived that I had aspirations of being an artist, or part of a group that was trying to do that.

To me there's that innate part of creativity.

Either have it, or you don't.

And then you've got the craft of it that you just gotta learn, and you gotta do it by sucking and just doing it over and over and over, and you eventually get better.

You know when you play tennis, you want to play with somebody who's better than you, so you can pick up some things.

Same thing with writing music.

I was just in those circles with people and that's what we did.

We wrote songs and we sang them out, and we tried to get somebody to record them, and I was lucky enough.

Tim McGraw recorded one of my songs.

He was nobody at the time.

♪ Bartender, I may sit here on this bar stool ♪ ♪ All night long ♪ - A song called Give It to Me Straight was on his album Not A Moment Too soon, and it was Tim's first big breakout album.

His album before had sold maybe 30,000 copies.

And then this album that I was on exploded, and he sold 6 million copies.

I mean we were the number one album all genres for 26 weeks.

Half a year.

♪ While I sit here and cry ♪ - [Jayson] What you hear in your head when you write the song, and what actually comes out is two completely different things.

I think, as an artist, when you produce your own music, you try so hard to get it exactly the way you hear it in your head.

My music was first published in Springfield, Missouri.

When I was young, I really didn't put my voice out there, and was very voiceless about how I want my music to sound.

When I got up to Better Man Records, there's the song Who's The Fool, which is what the album's called.

♪ Whiskey helps ease his mind ♪ - [Jayson] I had just got done throwing the vocals down, we were all sitting in the mixer room just listening to the various takes and everything.

And then, I just kept listening, listening.

I was like, "Do we have a harmonica around here?"

And so, just threw one at me basically and they're like, "Go back in there right now."

And so, threw down a couple tracks and then, the look on all of our faces, as soon as we threw that.

That just increased it to become even better.

(gentle harmonica melody) - [Ellie] We started as more of a cover band.

We started by doing a lot of those rock style covers.

And so from there, we discovered, "Okay, we're playing in this rock field, we know that that's what we're good at.

How can we turn this into some originals?"

And so that's how we got started on Thrill Ride.

That song started as a journal entry, in one of my old journals that I had.

But I was like, "Pause.

I could write something about this."

'Cause something that I try to do when I am writing songs is I try to make all of them about personal narratives, because I feel like people tend to connect to music better when there is something that they can attach onto.

I presented a very small melodic idea with the lyrics.

Clark came up with this riff, they jammed to it a little bit and I recorded it on my phone.

I think I kept listening to it and I was like, "Okay."

I came up with a more complex melodic line, and from there we just hashed the song out.

♪ Late night, short talks ♪ ♪ High speed running from ♪ ♪ The cops ♪ - We kind of had the songwriting process.

Ellie would bring in the song.

She was like, "All right, guys, I got a song."

But we would hash out the song there, and we'd bring it and it was okay, it sounded all right.

But we found that the songs just sound the most full and most creative and inspired.

I think we definitely want to be a creative force of five brains coming together.

(indistinct singing) (lively rock music) - [Chris] You ever heard the old adage, "History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme"?

Music industry's no different.

If you look at the history of recorded music, an artist was different than a songwriter.

Then the whole novel idea of the recording artist became a thing, but labels didn't want to give up the power they had over all the songwriters who made all the songs that they were singing.

Then, when the recording artists and the band started becoming more of a thing, the labels bought them.

They eventually got to a point with the recorded music industry where it was, they were the gatekeepers of things.

- You had to get on a record label and then from there, you had to get on the radio, and then from there you had to be a hit with radio from just DJs.

Not the people, at that time.

It was just DJs wanting to hear the sounds, and if they liked it they'll play it more.

- [Clay] You always heard about getting your big deal, but you didn't realize all the other stuff you had to do because of that deal, like pay everyone back.

You have to pay that million dollars that they gave you back.

It's definitely changed to where people are understanding that now.

And a lot more independent artists are doing it themselves.

- You know, it's really expensive being independent.

That's what they don't tell you, 'cause I'm working with stuff I got at garage sales in my room.

This record I'm doing now, and I want to do a record rollout.

I want to build up hype, so then when I put it out, there's anticipation for it, instead of I'm just putting this out 'cause I did it, and I finally want people to hear it.

I funded the recording myself and I'm funding the pressings myself, instead of being independent on the recording end.

I got to work with my band producer that's worked on a lot of stuff I love to get the sound I've been wanting to get by myself for so long, but haven't been able to.

- It makes me angry sometimes.

It's good, 'cause I know I can break out through the internet, but so many people do things a certain way that it's to the point where I'm like, "It's so hard to break out now."

- Record labels or anything like that definitely get you to push you out to more people, and getting on the radio and all that sort of stuff like that definitely helps.

It's not impossible to do it on your own.

- I'm an attorney on top of a songwriter.

I was actually involved in some litigation at the time that the royalty rates were set for streaming services.

Frankly, Harry Fox and then the National Music Publishers Association.

So you had them on one side arguing for a penny rate, which nine and a half cents per copy sold.

And then you had DiMA, the Digital Music Association, wanting a percentage of revenue.

They were fighting it out in the royalty court.

And at the last minute, Harry Fox and the National Music Publisher Association caved and switched.

And at that moment, every music publisher and songwriter lost their ability to earn an income.

We used to make nine and a half cents per copy sold of a record.

Now, your tens of thousands plays on Spotify is to make a penny, and they can't survive.

- [Brady] That's a good thing about the resurgence of physical media.

The guy who owns Spotify, he's richer than Paul McCartney from The Beatles.

It isn't right.

It's milking people dry for doing what they love.

Because that's the only way to really make money doing it currently.

Money isn't everything, but working within those financial constraints really does stink sometimes.

- Pirating became a thing, and it completely destroyed the record labels' abilities to not only gatekeep the music they illegally owned, but to gatekeep people who were coming out organically, now that the access to creative tools was more widely available.

- I wanna put some songs out, but anything that I write, I'm afraid it'll get stolen.

And in America, copywriting laws, you can't get the money back.

You can sue them and be like, "That's mine," and the ownership is yours 'cause you put it out.

But if I wanted to get money that they made, if they profited off of it, I'd have to copyright it, and that costs money and I'm broke.

So now, I'm just keeping everything in a vault.

- For the first time ever with the internet, you had people with recording softwares at their house.

That was an unheard of idea.

- We shot a music video, recorded a song, all the biz, for free.

- It's a lot more democratized.

- [Clark] You can mix everything inside a computer now.

You don't need a huge studio with a huge board.

- When I signed with Better Man Records for a one year contract, they cared a lot about their artists.

They came from Nashville, and saw how artists were being treated.

He came back very determined not to let that kind of industry mindset be put on us.

- A lot of people can make music from their homes and do that, and be individual producers, and be independent artists.

As a band, we are very, very fortunate to have Clark, because not everybody has somebody in their band that not only is super familiar with their instrument but is super familiar with digital audio workspaces and things like that.

And so, the fact that we have Clark, who is able to do these things, makes it a lot easier for us to start getting our music out there, and to help us adjust into the way that music becomes popular now.

- The fact that I can make for 10 grand an album that used cost 400,000, I think that's awesome, 'cause you're not beholden to the record labels.

And little guy can get a great engineer and some good musicians and record a killer album.

That's awesome.

So it's a mixed bag.

- If someone were to reach out to me through the internet and was like, "We saw your stuff, we think you're great," I would probably do it.

I'd be like, "Yes.

Something."

I don't know how I'd get discovered any other way.

I was supposed to go to a music camp for musicians and there was gonna be managers there.

I was supposed to go for a week, and then COVID hit, and they canceled it.

And nowadays, every artist is gonna be found from the internet.

I don't know of any artists that are found from being discovered in a coffee shop or fun stories.

It's all, they posted on the internet, and then someone saw them, they signed them and they kept going.

- There's good things.

There's not so good things.

At the end of the day, the business is the business, and I'm gonna keep an optimistic look on it.

- I think now it's just completely different with the access of self-publishing.

- Think it can be said Samuel Colt was the great equalizer of men, now the internet has been the great equalizer of music opportunity, and opportunities elsewhere.

- Culture, with the internet, instead of becoming like there's a gatekeeper that tells everybody what's mainstream now became a million little streams that opened up the delta, where culture is hyper-segmentized now.

- I can just pull my phone out and pull up whatever style of music.

There's music for everybody's taste.

And that's pretty great.

- I think a big part of any musician is having that home base group of people who genuinely like your music, and just want to hear stuff like that, and want to be included in the sound like that.

I think music has that just emotional connection to change lives.

- [Clay] For me, that's the whole reason to play music in my opinion, is just to make people feel emotions.

(mellow country music) - [Steve] It is a very foreign world that old guys are having to figure out.

It's easy to get your music up.

It's navigating how to get people to listen.

- When you release a song, you've been sitting with that thing, connected with that piece for months.

You're tweaking it, you're fixing the mix.

You might rerecord it once or twice.

You might get a mix back and listen to that mix and go, "I want a different mix."

And then get it mixed again and then get it back.

You'll hear it over and over again.

You think that it's lame, when in reality no one's ever heard it before.

- The hardest thing is that I don't have a very big following, and I don't have a lot of connections.

So, I'll put clips out, and my Facebook friends will interact, so my family.

So it feels like I'm just putting it out to a group chat, rather than online for anyone to see.

- One of the harder parts about getting people to find and listen to your original music is finding venues to play original music at.

- [Clay] Especially a lot of venues look at your social media following and your page and everything that you're doing.

They base if they're gonna hire you off of that, 'cause you need a good following, 'cause that shows them that people know who you are.

- When I started writing music myself and putting it out myself, I just didn't expect anybody to care.

What I'd like to do is be able to play in other states and other areas, even if that means playing in a basement, which honestly I love.

I don't like playing on stages as much as I like basement shows.

Basements are so fun.

- To be honest, I do my thing.

Every Wednesday night, I do a 20 minute live show on Facebook.

Hey guys, it's Steve, it's Wednesday night.

Welcome to my music room.

If you like what you hear, please hit the share button underneath this video, share it with your friends.

And of course, if you don't like what you hear, please hit the share button underneath, share it with your friends and y'all can make fun of me.

I'm too old to care.

I'm not doing it with a mind to promote my music.

I like it.

It makes me happy to sit down and play music.

- As college students, we don't have a lot of time to really actively run our social media and whatnot, but we are trying our best.

So, definitely word of mouth.

And during our concerts especially, that's the time where we promote the most.

This next song, we played it live before, but it is the first song that we have released on all streaming platforms.

- But also though, we all just have a lot of friends.

- That is true.

- Claire has a lot of friends.

- Claire is our promoter.

- Claire has a lot of friends.

- Yeah.

- The way we promote our music, we just do it all ourselves.

A, it's cheaper that way, and B, if you don't succeed in something, then there's no one else to blame but yourself.

Then it's on you to do it.

Not putting it off on somebody else.

- What caused me to grow was that a lot of the people that I resonate with as creators resonated with my music.

And that really meant a lot to me.

And because of that, my music was shown and connected with creators that I valued.

So, it gained an audience of people who were just like me.

- Not so much trying to get it out to large quantities of people.

It's more to me, getting it out to the people who want to hear that kind of music.

- The family of musicians around here, and even to be broader, just in the state of Missouri that we've met, they've all been super supportive and they all support each other.

And that can be said about musicians really anywhere.

- I'm not a guy that's gonna do TikTok dances, and post every three seconds on Instagram.

When I have something, I'm gonna put it up.

At this point in my life, it's not about any illusions of fame or stardom, or making millions of dollars.

I do music 'cause I love it.

(mellow music) - People can find my music all streaming platforms.

It varies from YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, usually, mainly whatever you're listening to, I'm on there just under the name Jayson Orr.

- People can find my music on pretty much anything, I guess.

I have demos out on Spotify and stuff, under just Brady Roland.

When the record's out, just give her a listen, 'cause I'd really appreciate that.

- If somebody sees my YouTube video and they're like, "I want to follow her," my Instagram is Ronia Campbell.

- People can find my music as Hi, I'm Chris.

Hi, I'm Chris.

I make weird indie pop stuff.

If you want to know.

They can find it anywhere where there's music put out.

You can find it on TikTok, you can find it on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube.

- Look us up at clayclearband.com to see our schedules, or like us on Facebook and Instagram.

See our full schedule, see where we're gonna be at.

We'd love to see anybody and everybody in the show.

Just look up the Clay Clear Band.

You'll get us in your ears for however long you want us.

- You can find me on Facebook, you can find me on Instagram, both at Steve's Music Room, because nobody can spell Grauberger.

Got music up on Spotify, Apple Music, all that.

But that's sporadic.

Facebook I'm on every week, doing a 20 minute live show.

- Spotify.

- Spotify.

- Apple Music.

- Instagram.

- Pandora.

- Literally, we have- - BandCamp.

- We have a music video out on YouTube.

- [Daul] Go check out the music video.

- [Clark] You can find us everywhere.

It's just Indra.

We have Thrill Ride out right now, but we're gonna be releasing some more singles.

You can find and follow on social media, find our concerts and stuff.

- The person that you might be listening to that's famous and has millions of streams and views, or that band that's playing in the local bar, that could be the next big thing.

And the only way they're gonna get there is by other people supporting them.

- The most important thing that should be happening though is people keep making music, because they love to do it.

And if those right people keep succeeding like they have, those people will exist, and they're going to continue to change the culture for the better.

And we'll find a way.

We'll find a way, man.

♪ Everything's okay ♪ ♪ With you ♪ ♪ Everything's okay ♪ ♪ Ah ♪ (gentle guitar music)