An Interview with Jon Sandler

3:34 Luke F. Walton What's good everybody? Welcome back to Love Music More.

3:37 Luke F. Walton I am Scoobert Doobert. I'm joined by Jon Sandler from Great Good Fine Ok. What's good, my man?

3:43 Jon Sandler Hey, what's up, man? How are you? I'm good.

3:45 Luke F. Walton Great. I'm doing great. We're going to be talking all about everything from production, hitting the road, writing songs, singing your career evolution and kind of where you've been, where you're going. So excited to have you

3:56 Jon Sandler on All

3:56 Luke F. Walton the show.

3:56 Jon Sandler my favorite stuff.

3:57 Luke F. Walton All your favorite stuff. And we'll talk about music a little bit too.

4:00 Jon Sandler Perfect.

4:01 Luke F. Walton So first of all, where are you based now? What?

4:03 Jon Sandler How is your kind of journey post-COVID and things like that shaken up? Where are you in this current moment in time career

4:10 Jon Sandler Yeah, -wise so I location? was living in Brooklyn for 18 years. And when the pandemic happened, I stayed there. I was like, you know, one of those guys. And honestly, I thought I would live in Brooklyn forever. I was like the mayor of Brooklyn.

4:26 Luke F. Walton Yes.

4:26 Jon Sandler And then just recently, about six months ago, I decided to make the move to L.A.

4:32 Luke F. Walton Awesome.

4:33 Jon Sandler For a number of reasons. One, Luke and the rest of the band is out here. I was the holdout.

4:39 Luke F. Walton Yes.

4:39 Jon Sandler And then also just L.A. was just a bit more fertile for songwriting. You know, aside from the band, I do a lot of songwriting with other people and that's kind of like another thing that I love doing. And and that's kind of all happening out here and unfortunately not as much in New York for for pop. So so that was all part of it. But yeah, so that was a significant move for me.

5:07 Luke F. Walton Yes, no, definitely.

5:08 Jon Sandler Yeah.

5:08 Luke F. Walton And that makes a lot of sense with the songwriting angle. Yeah, the best songwriting sessions are, I'm a little biased, but are happening in LA in terms of just getting the people in the room, getting the vibes right and everybody's in town. So yeah, that is definitely, I get the pull.

5:24 Jon Sandler yeah yeah yeah speaking of brooklyn there was this ice tea that i always got out there that i just recently found at a place in la and it's this harney and sons

5:35 Luke F. Walton sweet i

5:36 Jon Sandler so i like so i have a little bit of brooklyn going on right now with you yeah

5:40 Luke F. Walton love it bring a little little piece of home um so i'm i'm so curious just in terms of kind of your musical arc so i know that um you kind of you kind of started with solo

5:50 Luke F. Walton work and then you developed into this duo i'm curious just kind of how that um first of all how that happened how you connected with luke and then the differences between kind of creative partnership versus um making music kind of on your own or with your own soul

6:07 Jon Sandler Focus. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I started writing songs when I was really young, like about nine years old.

6:13 Jon Sandler Oh my gosh. And this started performing in high school and then was in a band in college. And then after college, I knew pretty quickly that that I wanted to just be a musician and focus on that. So I did the whole like, you know, waitering and catering thing in New York and just playing gigs as Jon Sandler.

6:32 Jon Sandler uh and then i put together a band uh Jon Sandler and the fancy band with a few really uh good friends and amazing musicians and for a long time i was doing that and um i got signed to an independent label and i was touring and that was all uh going pretty well you know it was like it seemed like a good trajectory and i was starting to gain fans and that kind of thing um and then as the story goes my partner at the time this guy dominic

6:59 Jon Sandler um was luke's roommate around the corner from me in brooklyn so i met luke uh going over there to work with dominic and luke and i were just friends we worked sort of a little bit on a couple things together here and there but nothing significant and then one night we ran into each other on the street in manhattan and we were like we should try writing a song together let's do something you know how all

7:20 Jon Sandler Yeah, musicians yeah, yeah. and uh and that night he sent me a track uh and i wrote top line on it that night and it ended up being you're the one for me which was the first song we ever released and uh and that song started everything and so i kind of like you know we released it and it went super viral it

7:38 Jon Sandler Yeah. was uh number one on hype machine and all that stuff Yes. and from just from that song like not intending to start a new band or anything like that because like i said everything was going well Um, we got a manager and a booking

7:52 Luke F. Walton Yes.

7:52 Jon Sandler agent and a record deal offers and a publishing deal offer and all this stuff and Great Good Fine Ok was born.

8:01 Luke F. Walton uh did you have a band name before like like when did when did you start to be like okay this is the name this is the this is like turning into a project uh

8:08 Jon Sandler Yeah, good question. So Luke and I, I remember very vividly, we were doing a writing trip at Long Beach Island in New Jersey, this beach town.

8:18 Jon Sandler and we were like writing more songs and it became clear that we needed to like come up with a band name and

8:24 Jon Sandler Yeah. stuff like that and uh and so I don't know I had Great Good Fine Ok in the back of my head for a while as like potential cool band name

8:33 Jon Sandler Yeah. I I've obviously been asked this question a million times and I do not remember where I got that I have no clue how I came up with that but I told it to Luke And I think his exact words were, I don't hate it. And then it just stuck. And yeah, on that trip to the beach, we set up all of our Instagram account and all that stuff with the name and then it was kind of finalized.

9:00 Jon Sandler But yeah, that's kind of how the name came about.

9:04 Luke F. Walton Like that, like that. And that's so interesting too, just how quickly things can go when it's right.

9:10 Jon Sandler Totally. I mean, and both of us had been hustling in our own rights. Luke was doing a lot of production work and a lot of this and that and playing in bands. And I had my own thing was doing a million things. And so it wasn't lost on either of us how insane it was when it like went from zero to 60 because we didn't know that doesn't happen.

9:29 Luke F. Walton Right.

9:29 Jon Sandler It's like lightning in a bottle. And so we both knew to sort of in a way drop what we were doing and. and follow that path for a minute totally

9:38 Luke F. Walton and i think that's really good wisdom because i think there there there would be some resistance in some people like no no i want to be in my lane like i've got this thing this is what i want to do but the universe is telling you like no no change lanes get

9:50 Jon Sandler and

9:51 Luke F. Walton over here

9:51 Jon Sandler and i had a little bit of like soul searching to do because um because my other band were my best friends you

9:59 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

9:59 Jon Sandler know and they had put in a lot of time with me touring and writing songs and like all the rest of it and uh and yeah it was a little bittersweet because

10:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

10:07 Jon Sandler like obviously like I felt bad just being like well that's over for now

10:12 Luke F. Walton right. Totally.

10:22 Jon Sandler um and they all obviously understood and so but yeah someday it was tough

10:28 Luke F. Walton How in those kind of early moments did you navigate, like, these offers coming through, these people wanting to work with you? How are you kind of quickly making decisions about what team you were building and how to trust people?

10:41 Jon Sandler Right. Well, pretty quickly, I'll give you really the nitty gritty, which is Luke had this friend, Eric Wiener. I don't know if you know the Wild Honey Pie, the blog,

10:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

10:51 Jon Sandler but Luke had done some stuff. stuff with him um he's since become a great friend but uh luke sent our first song to him and he was actually like one of our first like people who was like this is real deal good um do you want me to like send it to this manager that like i think is the best manager i know and we were like sure so he sent it to this guy seth callan um and and seth reached out and was

11:18 Jon Sandler really eager to manage us he really in the one song and uh and so really quickly on we um we started working with Seth and he made making decisions a lot easier because he had been in this world for a while already was making bands that were pretty successful so he helped us make all the decisions

11:37 Luke F. Walton That's a really good point, too. And I think that's a really good little kernel of wisdom is you're fresh into something. If you can find somebody that can fill those gaps really quickly.

11:45 Jon Sandler totally yeah i mean i would have been if we didn't have a manager at that time i would have been completely overwhelmed i probably would have just said yes to everything like

11:52 Luke F. Walton Yes, exactly.

11:53 Jon Sandler that um so yeah he definitely helped us navigate but but most of it was no brainers you

12:00 Luke F. Walton Right.

12:00 Jon Sandler know because because

12:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:01 Jon Sandler the offers and opportunities we're getting we're all like like pretty high level shit like for for you know so we we knew that like we knew what was like a no-brainer yes you

12:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

12:11 Jon Sandler know

12:11 Luke F. Walton yeah, exactly. I'm always super curious about this, especially with bands that kind of take off on the first single. How do you then approach the next songwriting sessions? Like, are you trying to be like, okay, that's our sound, we need to use that as a nucleus and orbit around it? Are you trying to approach it free? Are you trying to recapture some of that magic? Like, how do you almost deal with that challenge?

12:34 Jon Sandler Um, it's a good, I'm trying to put my mind back to where

12:37 Luke F. Walton For

12:37 Jon Sandler I

12:37 Luke F. Walton sure.

12:37 Jon Sandler was in

12:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:38 Jon Sandler 2013.

12:39 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

12:41 Jon Sandler But in that time we did have we were working on more before everything happened we had already started working on more songs and they were all kind of in this synth pop world. So like you're the one for me quickly after we started writing not going home and by my side and say it all which are the four songs on our first EP and they were all very much in this world in this this world and

13:04 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:04 Jon Sandler what I don't know if it was. We were like, we must recreate the first song. It was just like the sound of the band that

13:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:12 Jon Sandler we were creating.

13:13 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

13:14 Jon Sandler And it was like both of us wanted to keep making stuff like that. And we felt like it was pretty like unique and obviously resonating with people. So those first few songs that all were definitely like sonically similar kind of happened organically. There wasn't I don't think there was much. thought that went into like trying to replicate the first song because we didn't even know what the heck we were yet

13:38 Luke F. Walton Right.

13:38 Jon Sandler we

13:38 Luke F. Walton Yeah, exactly.

13:39 Jon Sandler didn't know what was going to happen we didn't know like uh anything so yeah i think we just started writing more songs and they all were kind of similar in sound

13:48 Luke F. Walton In terms of, and this could be current as well, I'm just curious in terms of like how many tunes make the cut and end up getting recorded or released?

13:58 Luke F. Walton How is that working in the early days? How is that working now in terms of just like what goes

14:02 Jon Sandler Yeah, good

14:02 Luke F. Walton on?

14:03 Jon Sandler question. Not very many. We wrote a lot more songs than we release. And that's mostly because I'll give Luke the credit. He's a very tough filter.

14:17 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

14:20 Jon Sandler and he kind of like you know i can hear one of our songs and when we first write a song i always kind of love them i

14:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

14:26 Jon Sandler like both songs

14:27 Luke F. Walton right.

14:27 Jon Sandler really quickly and

14:28 Luke F. Walton Totally.

14:29 Jon Sandler i easily take a song to the finish line that maybe isn't our best uh work but luke has this very rare ability to know pretty right away whether it's a song that he wants to keep working on and uh and so yeah like probably for every

14:46 Jon Sandler every 10 songs i write one gets through um and then probably even fewer than that get finished you know we have a demo folder of songs that we got almost to the finish line that didn't come out so um yeah not not very many nowadays if we um we have a pretty good track record of like If it gets to a certain point, it'll probably come out at some point.

15:11 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, like a threshold

15:13 Jon Sandler Yeah, yeah, yeah, but. No, we do take it very seriously as far as quality control goes.

15:21 Luke F. Walton yeah yeah that's interesting how do you balance then kind of like the freedom to try stuff is that kind of does that give you your own kind of freedom where you know hey maybe only one out of these 10 so it's like try 10 very different things or like really see throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks

15:36 Jon Sandler Yeah, I mean, I'm constantly writing and I take big swings sometimes. i am locates them and

15:44 Luke F. Walton Uh

15:44 Jon Sandler he's

15:45 Luke F. Walton -huh.

15:45 Jon Sandler and he's he's not shy about telling me uh and i appreciate that too and it's given me a thicker skin and all that stuff um but uh yeah i don't know when i'm writing songs i'm not thinking about that i'm just writing songs that inspire me the best i can and then i'll bring them to luke or bring a concept into a writing session and if it goes and people like it cool and if it doesn't i don't care because

16:09 Jon Sandler We can't release everything anyway, you know, but yeah.

16:14 Luke F. Walton what does a writing session look like i know that you know maybe a listener's never written a song or never been a part of this like what can you walk through maybe i know they're different but maybe a few different examples of what it would look like getting some people in the room throwing ideas

16:27 Jon Sandler yeah

16:27 Luke F. Walton around perfect

16:28 Jon Sandler yeah totally well they're always kind of different um i'll give you like what the average looks like which is that um there's usually a producer in the room like luke who can engineer and make a beat and that

16:40 Luke F. Walton building the demo kind of a

16:42 Jon Sandler of track yep the musical components and then there are people in the room like what i do which is the lyrics and melody um and obviously like luke is uh you know good at helping with that stuff as well um and i give my two cents with the production but it's good during these sessions to kind of have like the roles

17:04 Jon Sandler um and so maybe in a session they'll be two producers and two songwriters um and so you can kind of tackle all parts of the song at once uh or you know any other any variation of that sometimes i'm the only songwriter and i'm kind of in the back by

17:23 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

17:23 Jon Sandler myself like soul searching and then i'll say an idea and uh you know luke or luke and another producer The producer will sort of look at me like.

17:32 Jon Sandler i don't know maybe um but uh yeah it's always different but basically it's just a group of people with the goal of making a great song uh that's another thing is sometimes in sessions people have uh goals like let's write for pitch you know let's write to get something in a tv show or commercial and let's write a concept like that or um let's write this definitely for this artist or definitely for

17:59 Jon Sandler definitely for us and like what I like to do is just kind of be like let's write a great song and

18:03 Luke F. Walton Yes.

18:03 Jon Sandler let's figure out what it's for after that's always kind of worked best for me yeah

18:09 Luke F. Walton I like that. I have more energy doing stuff like that too.

18:12 Jon Sandler yeah sometimes when you're too specific it's just you might have success doing that a lot of people do but it feels a little more hollow

18:20 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

18:21 Jon Sandler And yeah, I just I like the journey of it. Right. So like the more creative I can be, the better that journey is regardless of what the outcome is going to be.

18:32 Luke F. Walton Totally. And I feel like there, yeah, there's different types. I actually feel really bad at trying to write to like a brief, like a really narrow, like you will ingest song A and output song B that's going to sound very similar to song A. but not copyright infringement you're

18:49 Jon Sandler Yeah.

18:50 Luke F. Walton like i'm not i do not because i i usually go like oh that's cool like a shiny new toy or something and like go down a rabbit hole and you come out like this sounds like a different genre now it's like crap what have i done um

19:01 Jon Sandler Yeah.

19:01 Luke F. Walton but you know everybody's got their different strengths

19:04 Jon Sandler Yeah.

19:04 Luke F. Walton yeah

19:04 Jon Sandler And also like I'd rather be in a room writing specifically for a commercial than doing anything else, you

19:12 Luke F. Walton right

19:12 Jon Sandler know.

19:12 Luke F. Walton that's fair totally

19:14 Jon Sandler you know

19:14 Unverified whatever

19:34 Jon Sandler In a day, I'm happy.

19:35 Unverified Yes, I hear

19:36 Jon Sandler There's

19:36 Unverified you.

19:36 Jon Sandler a time and a place for everything.

19:38 Unverified I totally hear you.

19:39 Luke F. Walton So I go to a lot of live music and live music is very loud. And I'm a mix engineer. I want to be able to do this until I'm 80 and not have long-term hearing damage and tinnitus and all that stuff. So that's where you need earplugs. But those foam earplugs, they wreck all the music. It makes it all sound like that. Cuts off all of those high-end frequencies.

19:56 Luke F. Walton you can kind of like deal with the music that you're given which is really really fun comes with a carrying case and you're all set you know you're able to listen to music and then make music that night afterwards rather than having to rest your ears so minuet window they also have a version that is just static write it 17 decibels this other one is a little bit more customizable so check them out m-i-n-u-e-u-e-n-d-o m-i-n-u-e-n-d-o

20:47 Luke F. Walton and on their website you can find all the dealers that they work with or you can check them out on Amazon and buy them direct definitely recommend them I've been rocking them at shows and I just think that they're awesome so check them out do the right thing for your ears check out mini window

21:03 Jon Sandler And also the

21:05 Luke F. Walton surrounding yourself with people that have the different strengths you know like that that's one of the things if i'm doing a brief bass songwriting session somebody else is a little better than that then i can add i can bring my spice and then they can kind of like put it in the proper frame

21:17 Unverified Yeah. And in that spirit, like one of the things that I've learned since Great Good Fine Ok started is just how important collaboration is and how fun it can be. And more every year I feel like Luke and I are collaborating.

21:30 Unverified writing more with other artists and writers and musicians and uh and i love the outcome of that stuff i just love like getting other people's skills and life experience like on a Great Good Fine Ok thing and vice versa and so uh yes collaboration is fun totally

21:49 Luke F. Walton Yes. And I've noticed that I think that's been a really cool arc to your guys's sound and just songwriting everything like that. On that point, somebody like Alex Delicato, who was on the pod previously, so listeners might be familiar and if not, go check that episode out. I know that you've worked with him.

22:06 Unverified a little bit i'm just

22:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

22:07 Unverified curious kind

22:07 Luke F. Walton we love

22:07 Unverified of he's

22:07 Luke F. Walton Alex.

22:08 Unverified one of our great friends and uh and we worked with him on a lot of our early songs uh

22:14 Luke F. Walton Cool.

22:14 Unverified yeah

22:14 Luke F. Walton Oh, I didn't know that.

22:15 Unverified yeah um actually our one of our most popular songs right now on spotify is called could be us and he was the writer co-producer on that um yeah we love alex he's great uh Um, what else can I tell you? What was the question?

22:31 Luke F. Walton nothing i didn't really even ask you a question just

22:34 Unverified I just now kind of shout out.

22:35 Luke F. Walton yeah just a shout out and bringing him up and and what i was what i was really um

22:39 Unverified You want to know something funny, actually?

22:40 Luke F. Walton go for it no

22:41 Unverified I'm going to meet with him today.

22:43 Luke F. Walton way look

22:43 Unverified Yeah,

22:44 Luke F. Walton all

22:44 Unverified right we're going to mess around with some music.

22:46 Luke F. Walton Sweet. Tell him i say what up yeah so i'm curious so from the from the jump then you You guys were working together and now you've had a collaboration for over a decade.

22:59 Luke F. Walton When did you start adding in people like Alex or other kind of collaborators and how did that change the dynamic of the

23:06 Unverified yeah

23:06 Luke F. Walton band early on?

23:06 Unverified it's like like for our first i want to say like eight songs um we did everything mostly just the two of us then soon after that we started bringing people into it so very early on like um Yeah,

23:20 Luke F. Walton Okay.

23:21 Unverified I barely remember a time where we weren't collaborating with people. The trips we did actually with Alex, I think was probably in like 2015, something like that. So Luke was always someone who like before Great Good Fine Ok, I wrote pretty much all the songs by myself and like wrote the songs on guitar and sang them and would bring them to my partner Dominic who would help me make them a lot.

23:45 Unverified a lot better because he was like you know much more trained like my the luke role back

23:50 Luke F. Walton Okay.

23:50 Unverified then um

23:51 Luke F. Walton Yes.

23:52 Unverified but i was used to feeling like you know, my thoughts and my brain and very precious about my ideas and my songs and

24:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

24:02 Unverified didn't collaborate as much in the songwriting process. So I think Luke had a lot more experience with that. So he kind of introduced me to the beauty of collaboration with other musicians.

24:12 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

24:12 Unverified Yeah.

24:13 Luke F. Walton yeah, I totally get that. In terms of kind of you've had good longevity with the band. Danny was also on the pod at one point and then I haven't. I haven't met Carrie, but

24:23 Unverified Yeah,

24:24 Luke F. Walton just,

24:24 Unverified I went and checked out some of your other episodes and I was like,

24:26 Luke F. Walton yeah,

24:26 Unverified oh, it's all my friends.

24:28 Luke F. Walton the homies. Just curious about the longevity that you built there too, obviously with touring, but then also, you know, playing and having a drummer, which is like really

24:38 Unverified Yeah.

24:39 Luke F. Walton cool in addition to Luke because he also plays, but just kind of like having this. This community around the band, does that help feel like round it out more than just a duo now it's kind of like this. This unit of people, yeah.

24:52 Unverified Yeah, totally. I mean, Danny and Kerry, Danny Wilk and Kerry Clayton, we brought them on a long time ago and they've been our live band. And we actually just wrote a song with them that came out called Make This Moment Last. After all these years, it was actually the first song that like the four of us wrote together and produced together. So that was fun.

25:12 Unverified But yeah, I mean, it's awesome to have a little community like that around the. around the band um still luke and i do most of the stuff ourselves with the people and stuff like that but um certainly when like when it comes to touring when it comes to making videos danny and carrie are in a lot of those with us

25:28 Luke F. Walton Cool,

25:28 Unverified um

25:28 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah.

25:29 Unverified and it's great and they're like the best guys ever so we got really lucky there um as far as like your comment about longevity uh i think that's just about consistency you know and Um, just we keep doing it, you know, we keep writing songs, keep unlocking new levels, it feels like with our songwriting ability, new opportunities keep coming to the table that we do, we keep touring,

25:56 Unverified and it seems like we build a little bit every year. And like I said, this will be like the theme of this interview.

26:02 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

26:03 Unverified I'm about the journey, you know, more and more as I get older, I don't really care what happens.

26:08 Unverified I know what I want day to day look like to look like and as long as we're creating and procuring new things and developing new relationships with the band I feel like we're doing everything we can and we've just been doing that now for 10 years and it's like it keeps going so the universe kind of keeps rewarding us with like every time we kind of are getting discouraged and like Is this going anywhere?

26:33 Unverified Like something cool will happen. We'll get a new record deal. We'll get a new manager with some new ideas. You know what I mean? And so it stays fun and exciting.

26:42 Luke F. Walton That's interesting. Could you describe any of those ups and downs like moments where you feel like you get wind back into your sails? Have you had any of those recently that have kind of

26:51 Unverified Yeah,

26:51 Luke F. Walton done?

26:52 Unverified I mean, what comes to mind is just like how discouraging the DSPs can be right now. uh you know spotify spotify is so important uh important you know and and it's becoming less and less predictable and you can have less and you have less and less control over it um so when we work our asses off on a song which we do on every single song that people hear we like put our blood and sweat into

27:21 Luke F. Walton Yes,

27:22 Unverified like we

27:22 Luke F. Walton yes.

27:22 Unverified because like you said we don't just like we're definitely more of quality over quantity And every song is just like takes forever and it's much thought and

27:32 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

27:33 Unverified when we release it and doesn't really get any playlists and the streaming is fine, it can be discouraging, you know, and and it's hard not to feel that even though I know in my heart it doesn't matter, hard not to feel it. and so that stuff can can like knock you down if you let it

27:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

27:53 Unverified also just like you know a couple years ago we did a tour and there were certain cities where ticket sales weren't as good as the last time we city Interesting. and

28:03 Luke F. Walton Yes.

28:04 Unverified that is like feels existential when

28:08 Luke F. Walton Right.

28:08 Unverified you're touring band

28:09 Luke F. Walton Right.

28:11 Unverified but that i think that happens to everybody and

28:13 Luke F. Walton It does.

28:13 Unverified it inflows

28:14 Luke F. Walton Totally.

28:14 Unverified and it's a roller coaster and you never know why that happens you know um

28:18 Luke F. Walton Yep.

28:18 Unverified shows there were reasons why it happened it was like

28:21 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

28:21 Unverified oh what it's easter sunday tonight of course or stuff like that that kind of stuff like seems to always happen to us whenever we tour or like wait what the 1975 is playing one mile away right

28:35 Luke F. Walton Yes. Right.

28:35 Unverified right

28:36 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

28:36 Unverified exactly you know stuff like like that that uh but i think it's just like to be an artist nowadays is you have a thicker and thicker skin when it comes to stuff like that that feels discouraging um you know i said it reminds me of this amazing interview i saw with seth rogan where he was like The only thing I can tell you is the friends that made it didn't quit.

29:03 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

29:04 Unverified The friends that don't make it quit. So all I can say is don't quit. You know, I'm

29:10 Luke F. Walton yeah, yeah.

29:10 Unverified very heavily paraphrasing, but it always stuck with me. And I think it's so true. It's like if you just stay in it, like it's the only way this shit's going to happen and and you got to kind of keep a good attitude. And I'm lucky, you know, Luke and I are both lucky that.

29:26 Unverified Um, you know, aside from being musical partners that we really do feel like we're greater than the sum of our parts, we're like best friends and, and we're best friends with Carrie and Danny. And I think that helps as well.

29:39 Luke F. Walton Totally. And I like that too, because when you zoom in, things can feel really existential, especially like things like I want the graph to go up, not down or sideways. I want there to be more butts in the seats. I want there to be more excitement for every little thing. But then if you zoom out a little bit and you realize, oh no, there is more.

29:58 Unverified which

29:58 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

29:59 Unverified is

29:59 Luke F. Walton yeah,

29:59 Unverified maybe

29:59 Luke F. Walton yeah.

29:59 Unverified not relative to the thing i'm looking at Right. It's like the stock market,

30:02 Luke F. Walton Right?

30:02 Unverified you know, will

30:03 Luke F. Walton It's like the stock market.

30:04 Unverified always go down before it goes up again,

30:06 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:06 Unverified you know, always and people like you start selling when it goes down and those people are like idiots because you know it's gonna go up if you look at like 10 year graph

30:14 Luke F. Walton Exactly.

30:15 Unverified so um yeah i mean i've never really thought of that analogy but i guess that's kind of like

30:21 Unverified the world that's like everything in the universe has that same trajectory unless it goes down and some stuff does that too and you have to be wise enough to know when to jump off a dying a sinking ship but

30:36 Luke F. Walton Right.

30:36 Unverified that's a whole other skill set you know right

30:38 Luke F. Walton Totally. Totally. Or know when it needs a shot in the arm or a change of impact

30:41 Unverified right no

30:42 Luke F. Walton or

30:42 Unverified when it something. seems like it's going down and because there's a problem that you can fix or

30:48 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

30:48 Unverified not or if you need a pivot uh you know so yeah it's interesting yeah

30:52 Luke F. Walton That is, that is, I'd love to talk to you a little bit about touring because I, it's such an interesting thing, I think, from the artist fan perspective, because I see this narrative all the time where people go, oh, they don't make money on streaming, but they make it all on touring. And I'm like, I don't know, guys, I don't know if everybody's making their millions on touring or whatever.

31:13 Luke F. Walton I know there's a lot more challenges. challenges that people aren't aware of.

31:16 Unverified Yeah, I mean, I'll let people in behind the curtain that Great Good Fine Ok, who can sell three to 500 tickets in most cities in New York and L.A. and some other cities we can sell more than that. We don't really make money.

31:32 Unverified to make money you know we don't lose money we usually break about even maybe we make a little bit uh make enough to pay everyone well and still not lose money but um it seems to me that you need to be a band that can sell over a thousand tickets in every city to consistently make money and uh and there are way more bands in the world that cannot do that

32:00 Luke F. Walton That's a really high bar.

32:02 Unverified So,

32:02 Luke F. Walton That's a really

32:02 Unverified so

32:03 Luke F. Walton good one.

32:03 Unverified when people see their favorite small bands playing at venues that seemed like the bands are pretty successful, you know, in New York, a Bowery Ballroom, which is 500 people, they're not necessarily making money, which is why merch is so important.

32:22 Unverified There's a lot of times where we'll make just as much money selling merch as we did to got paid to play the show.

32:29 Luke F. Walton Interesting.

32:29 Unverified um and so yeah like i guess you know talking to the to fans and and whatever it's it's important to a go to those shows because if a band like us plays a show that's a three four hundred cap room and it's not sold out that's when you can really start losing money um and also just know that

32:54 Unverified touring is really like a gift that we want to give our fans um and nurture them and obviously like i love touring but to be completely honest like luke doesn't love it as much as i do um it's hard it's not for everybody i mean probably half the people who tour love it and half the people hate it and uh

33:18 Unverified And financially, it's usually like you'd make more money if you just stayed home. So it

33:23 Luke F. Walton Yes, right.

33:24 Unverified really is like. something to be you know cherished when when your favorite small band tours uh definitely give props to that band because they're not making money and it is a labor of love but still a label a labor you know

33:44 Jon Sandler you know.

33:45 Luke F. Walton Yeah. Yeah. And that's a great point. And it's a great point too on the merchandise because Yeah. Visit the merch stand of the small medium sized

33:53 Jon Sandler Yeah,

33:54 Luke F. Walton bands.

33:54 Jon Sandler it's really important to buy merch. It really does help. And I'm trying to think whatever what else I can say. It's all this is right on the tip of my mind right now because we haven't toured in a couple of years and we're touring the West Coast in April at the end of April for shows. Right.

34:14 Jon Sandler And that's another thing. If a band only plays four shows, you have less money to make back the one time costs,

34:21 Luke F. Walton Yes.

34:21 Jon Sandler you know, lights, transportation, paying the band. If you play 30 shows, you have a better chance of making money. If you play 100 shows, you have a way better chance of making money. But as people get older and as, you know, schedules change and all the rest of it. um shorter things make sense for bands but

34:40 Luke F. Walton Yes.

34:40 Jon Sandler it's even harder to make money that way exactly

34:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah, so it's even more compressed. There's like more leverage on each of those individual shows. Yeah.

34:47 Jon Sandler exactly um but like i still love it like even if we lost a lot of money i would still want to do it because because i love it and um but yeah we're trying to make it work and we're trying to experimenting with these short stints and you know

35:04 Jon Sandler There's nothing better than than live shows like that's my favorite thing to do and so it's just like, you know I don't think there's anything more important for a band to do. Mm-hmm.

35:14 Luke F. Walton Yeah, I hear that. And I also I understand the maybe the split between like the technical requirements of modern touring are pretty extreme to like the just

35:29 Luke F. Walton making sure that the tracks and playback and visuals and all that kind of stuff is all synced and i could so i could see how different members of the band might feel a little differently depending on what's

35:38 Jon Sandler Yes,

35:38 Luke F. Walton out of dial

35:39 Jon Sandler it's a great point that that stuff is not for the faint of heart.

35:43 Luke F. Walton yeah

35:43 Jon Sandler If we didn't have Luke in the band, I honestly don't think we could even do it because there are issues with tech stuff in every show and Luke is a genius and can always figure it out. but there are times where like i'll just catch a glimpse of what's going on

36:00 Luke F. Walton Yes.

36:00 Jon Sandler and feel like i'm gonna have like an anxiety attack and i need to just like step away and uh and thank god there's only been like one

36:09 Jon Sandler maybe two times where we never got it to work in this show it just kind of didn't happen um but usually yeah between luke and whoever we have doing uh sound i'll figure it out but that's a good point like for luke touring is more stressful than for me uh you know we have different roles on the tour we're both just as but

36:29 Luke F. Walton But yeah,

36:30 Jon Sandler his

36:30 Luke F. Walton important.

36:30 Jon Sandler stuff is more like You know, like

36:32 Luke F. Walton yeah please

36:34 Jon Sandler what,

36:34 Luke F. Walton work

36:35 Jon Sandler yeah,

36:35 Luke F. Walton yes

36:35 Jon Sandler like what cable isn't working out of the 90 cables on stage?

36:40 Luke F. Walton exactly and it's

36:42 Jon Sandler I

36:42 Luke F. Walton also it's just so chaotic and random like you'll you'll have something perfect in rehearsal you'll have something perfect in sound check and then you go to line check it's like that doesn't work anymore no one knows why no

36:53 Jon Sandler just, yeah, I can't even start to be the one to think about it.

36:58 Luke F. Walton exactly

36:59 Jon Sandler um but

37:00 Luke F. Walton yeah

37:00 Jon Sandler yeah that's a good point that everybody's role on the tours definitely dictates how much they like tour probably

37:06 Luke F. Walton probably that's one of the things that's that's hardest on on where i'm at in my career because i can't really afford anybody to help me out so when i play live i'm just one man band trying to figure out without fail there will be some technical problem that will happen right before i'm supposed to have downbeat and like i'll have everything

37:25 Luke F. Walton buttoned up and you know i've practiced and but then it's like oh somebody as they were switching bands over like kicked my um pedal and it's slightly ajar but i don't notice it and so i'm scrambling checking everything oh it's easy just re-plug that in and now perform entertain

37:43 Jon Sandler Yeah, yeah.

37:44 Luke F. Walton the people and it's like i just felt like a recording engineer with his hair on fire and now it's time to be a be a singer you know it's like such a brain just melt

37:54 Jon Sandler yeah man i mean another thing that that fans might not realize is like uh 20 you know 20 hours of the day is thriving schlepping

38:05 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:06 Jon Sandler setting up making sure everything works like stuff that is not fun like we joke we joke on tour that we're all professional drivers professional

38:14 Luke F. Walton Okay. Yeah.

38:15 Jon Sandler lighting guys and part-time musicians yeah

38:18 Luke F. Walton Yes, exactly. Exactly. The music part's free.

38:21 Jon Sandler yeah yeah and and it's really like uh that one hour on stage though is worth it you know

38:28 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

38:28 Jon Sandler if you love

38:29 Luke F. Walton right.

38:29 Jon Sandler me as much as I do or um you know other people who love performing it's all worth it but it is really hard to tour it is really hard it is uncomfortable most of the time yes

38:42 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:42 Jon Sandler 100

38:43 Luke F. Walton But it does make all the difference in the world when you're doing it with people that you really care about that are all rowing the same direction.

38:49 Jon Sandler and like it's just like such an experience when i'm on my deathbed this stuff i'll be thinking about

38:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:55 Jon Sandler are stuff that happened on

38:57 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:57 Jon Sandler these tours with you know with the band it's like and that's that's kind of what i'm about you know like eating up those experiences and the the experiences you have when you're on a tour like that it's just like like there's nothing like it you can't get that shit anywhere else

39:12 Luke F. Walton Yes, I totally agree. Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go onto the podcast screen, right? You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify.

39:34 Luke F. Walton Under there, it says rate show and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms, all this stuff.

39:41 Luke F. Walton stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and then a five star would really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode

39:59 Jon Sandler That was cool. Whatever YouTube was huge. This was before like, you know, TikTok and all this stuff.

40:06 Jon Sandler Then I started to feel like music videos weren't really that important and more important would be to make shorter, more content for Instagram and for TikTok, shorter little eye candy and clickbaity type stuff. Not saying that that stuff can't be good, you

40:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

40:25 Jon Sandler know, you can excellent

40:26 Luke F. Walton yeah.

40:26 Jon Sandler stuff like that. And then recently we signed a deal with a label. We had been independent for a few years before that. And there was music video budget again.

40:40 Luke F. Walton Oh,

40:40 Jon Sandler And

40:41 Luke F. Walton cool.

40:41 Jon Sandler so we started recently making more traditional music videos again. And they've actually been great for us. Really, our YouTube following has like got. got bigger the

40:55 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

40:56 Jon Sandler youtube videos were able to cut those up in cool ways and

41:01 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

41:01 Jon Sandler instagram content and tiktok content

41:03 Luke F. Walton for sure.

41:06 Jon Sandler So, all in all, I'm a fan of music videos now because

41:09 Luke F. Walton Mm

41:09 Jon Sandler you

41:10 Luke F. Walton hmm.

41:10 Jon Sandler get a really cool piece of art that you can put on YouTube and then you can use it for clickbait as well, kind

41:16 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah, yeah.

41:17 Jon Sandler of things. And I just think it's like, to your point, it's so fun to be able to actually like come up with a weird concept and execute

41:25 Luke F. Walton Right.

41:25 Jon Sandler it.

41:25 Luke F. Walton Yes, yes.

41:26 Jon Sandler And these days you can do that very cheaply, like these budgets I'm talking about are absolutely nothing. nothing but

41:33 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

41:33 Jon Sandler especially in LA you can find people that'll do amazing shit for next to nothing and that's been cool just like it's inspiring to have a group of people around you who are clearly helping to do this with you because they believe in you and they're inspired by the band and the idea they're not doing it for the money and and so neither are Luke and I and so it's fun to be surrounded by people like that you know

41:59 Luke F. Walton Totally.

41:59 Jon Sandler you

42:00 Luke F. Walton i like that how do you go about um you know sketching out these these ideas do you go to the person that's going to be the director and kind of like build out a storyboard do you just kind of location scout and get vibey shots like how do you kind of go about um like turning

42:14 Jon Sandler the

42:14 Luke F. Walton your idea

42:14 Jon Sandler label

42:15 Luke F. Walton into reality cool

42:15 Jon Sandler has like a music video middle woman kind of person who

42:19 Luke F. Walton sweet

42:20 Jon Sandler has a roster of directors and stuff and so for these last few we've kind of you've kind of just asked for treatments and

42:29 Luke F. Walton Nice. Yeah.

42:30 Jon Sandler he's reached out to the people who she thought would be cool for us and we get like four or five different treatments for a song and then usually what happens is we'll pick one that we kind of like and uh usually I'll like come in and like kind of molded into something that I like more that

42:51 Luke F. Walton Yeah, yeah,

42:52 Jon Sandler starts with that director's concept and keeps a lot of magic in what that was but also my own sensibility into it um as a side note I mean I don't do anything but I went to college for a film and

43:06 Luke F. Walton Cool. Okay,

43:07 Jon Sandler so

43:07 Luke F. Walton yeah.

43:07 Jon Sandler like I do like to be involved I kind of like I can tell really quickly what needs to be changed for

43:15 Luke F. Walton Hmm.

43:16 Jon Sandler it to get it all you know

43:18 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

43:18 Jon Sandler what i mean and

43:18 Luke F. Walton yeah, for sure.

43:19 Jon Sandler you know so so i like to get my hands dirty and get as involved as i can without you know uh you know muffling the collaborative spirit because i've also like learned sometimes i just have to take a back seat and let the director do their thing uh but yeah that's kind of been the process for the last few

43:39 Luke F. Walton that's cool and then in terms of do you feel like that helped give you like the right vocabulary or way to talk to a director and like a way that they would understand

43:47 Jon Sandler Um, sort of,

43:49 Luke F. Walton yeah

43:49 Jon Sandler I guess I've just made, I've seen enough videos and movies and

43:54 Luke F. Walton right

43:54 Jon Sandler learn about it and made so many myself that when I'm on set, I can quickly see something that I'm like, I'm going to be concerned about that later when I'm looking at an edit, you know, I'm getting better and better at being like, wait, that's going to be weird or we don't have that thing. thing that i'm gonna watch it in a month and say why didn't we get that

44:17 Luke F. Walton Yes,

44:17 Jon Sandler thing you

44:18 Luke F. Walton right.

44:18 Jon Sandler can kind of just sit there and think because a director like is has a billion things to think about

44:24 Luke F. Walton Totally.

44:24 Jon Sandler so um yeah i think sometimes it's helpful that i can just like stand there and like look at things and you know hopefully help with my comments without annoying the shit out of a director by saying too much

44:39 Luke F. Walton yeah i like that it's it's analogous to i think being in a music studio with um different people that have slightly different roles like the producer is looking for a certain thing but the recording engineer might be like you know i'm gonna throw a mic here just in case down

44:54 Jon Sandler right

44:54 Luke F. Walton the line

44:54 Jon Sandler yeah

44:55 Luke F. Walton it makes

44:55 Jon Sandler exactly

44:55 Luke F. Walton you want to scoot that

44:56 Jon Sandler but

44:56 Luke F. Walton in yeah

44:56 Jon Sandler like going back to like original question like I don't think film school actually like helped me be better at making music videos but it's like the other kind of of education, which is it's more of like the just being there and the experience you

45:10 Luke F. Walton yeah

45:11 Jon Sandler like absorb just a little bit of

45:13 Luke F. Walton something yeah

45:13 Jon Sandler that might help.

45:14 Luke F. Walton no totally i love that kind of learning too that like osmotic learning you're just like in it enough that's not really textbook learning it's just you can you can be like that That is a deficit that I have filled before with random.

45:29 Jon Sandler I mean, that's another thing that's like all of life is like it's all it's all getting as close to the 10,000 hours of stuff.

45:38 Jon Sandler as you can so you know i don't know if i'm near 10 000 hours of making music videos but i

45:44 Luke F. Walton that's a lot of hours

45:45 Jon Sandler definitely have hundreds

45:46 Luke F. Walton yes exactly you're farther along than i am um so the way that i like to end these this is my favorite little conversation uh ender is just asking you as broadly as possible why do you love music What is it that attracts you and puts energy into you to keep coming back?

46:05 Jon Sandler I

46:06 Luke F. Walton I wish know it's

46:06 Jon Sandler that I

46:06 Luke F. Walton a huge

46:06 Jon Sandler had

46:06 Luke F. Walton question.

46:07 Jon Sandler I wish I had had watched had seen you ask other questions I could have thought about that because that's such a big question.

46:14 Luke F. Walton I know. Take it wherever you want to go.

46:17 Jon Sandler Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess what comes to mind is like, I loved music when I was a little tiny kid, right before I knew that people think music's cool for some reason.

46:28 Jon Sandler It always was the thing that, you know, inspired me, excited me like that I wanted to explore that world. It was always the thing that like gave me the most joy. And it still does.

46:43 Jon Sandler of uh 100 000 hours of making music and so so um you know i i sort of can see music in a different way maybe than other people and it just is like so fulfilling you know it like

47:05 Jon Sandler I feel so lucky about that, too, because it fills so many voids that I know people are constantly trying to fill. And I think a lot of people feel the same as me about music. Obviously, music is arguably the most popular thing on planet Earth.

47:19 Jon Sandler a lot of people understand what I'm saying but uh yeah it's just like uh for someone like me who's most fulfilled when I'm creating making music is like the thing that's like the pinnacle of that and then listening to music um

48:03 Jon Sandler well it's their favorite thing there's something about it that's just like uh so next level you know how you can just like hear something that gives you chills how it's such like a mind body experience um yeah almost all of my most profound memories are attached to a song um or at a concert where a song is happening. So yeah, it's magic. And, you know, I guess that's it.

48:35 Luke F. Walton That's a great answer. And the reason why I like this is that it's like drying the circle around the arrow kind of thing. There's no real answer to this. It's so nebulous. It's such a big question. But I just think it's always... is indicative and informative. Everybody's different response to it, the way that they kind of dance around it, it shows this frame of this thing that is impossible to pin down.

49:01 Jon Sandler Right. Well, another thing that just came to my mind is it's like I wanted to make the analogy of like, why does it feel so good to experience love?

49:10 Jon Sandler You know, that would be so hard to explain and you could try to from like anthropological level and say, you know, like because, you know, being part of a community is safe and being outside and all that stuff. makes us feel safe and part of a community. Yeah, I don't know, connects people.

49:37 Jon Sandler I think there's something there that I'll probably be thinking about for the next few hours.

49:42 Luke F. Walton That's great. Yeah. And we can have you back and we

49:45 Jon Sandler Yeah,

49:45 Luke F. Walton can.

49:45 Jon Sandler we'll have a whole lot of conversation about why music is great.

49:49 Luke F. Walton I love it. Well, thank you, John. I really

49:51 Jon Sandler Yeah,

49:52 Luke F. Walton enjoyed

49:52 Jon Sandler no,

49:52 Luke F. Walton this

49:52 Jon Sandler thank you.

49:52 Luke F. Walton conversation. Anything else you'd like to leave listeners with or anything else you want to speak about?

49:56 Jon Sandler Just that we're touring in April on the West Coast, starting April 23rd in Seattle, ending April 27th in Los Angeles. And yeah, I couldn't be more excited. We got some cool stuff planned and a lot more music to come.

50:14 Luke F. Walton Perfect. We'll be sure to drop the episode right before the tour so everybody can get their tickets and come out. It's going to be a party.

50:22 Jon Sandler Thanks a lot, John. Great

50:22 Luke F. Walton Enjoy

50:23 Jon Sandler to be it. here. Bye.