TGF interveiwed by rockinvasion, (video) Options

[SecretInsomnia]

Sorry if this was posted before!

http://www.rockinvasion.de/video/gracious-few

Duration: 10:20

Quite a nice and relaxed interview. The accent of the German interviewer is quite funny tho .

Chad says they're still planning to try to get into one room with the four LIVE members. That'd be in like... 3 months?

[Merica]

I find it shocking that an album as good as TGF's might be swept under the rug this quick. The whole world should listen to this fucking album. It's WORTH it.

[thefunkyredcaboose]

I find it shocking that an album as good as TGF's might be swept under the rug this quick. The whole world should listen to this fucking album. It's WORTH it.

I gotta be honest, that is all on the guys. I love what they do, but too many missteps were made in the first tour, and there has been no follow-up since. I really just don't think they realized how little name value they would take into the new band, and how different things would be than with Candlebox or Live.

When Appetite was picking up steam on the radio they needed to tour, tour, tour but at the height of its popularity the tour ended. I'm assuming that had to do with losing money. That sucks. They haven't been off the road for too long in general musical terms, but for a new band they have been off the road forever.

Think about this - when I was touring my band played around 80 shows a year. We toured as the four of us and our only cost was food and gas. That's a lot of cost, but even at the worst shows we generally made that back. We managed to turn a small profit playing shows that ranged from only 15-100 people.

If TGF had slimmed things down at the beginning - no tour manager, no huge bus, no stage crew, just take along yourselves and a sound guy, the tour could have been a lot more profitable for them. The cost to have all of those amenities could have been put into promotion for singles, posters in cities, and general use. They did a lot of slimming down to make the tour work, but the initial inflated ticket prices was a pretty big sign that it would be a struggle. Shoot, no one at Summerfest knew who they were because there was zero promotion. I was worried then.

Making a living doing this is very different than what I've done, but I think the same principles still apply. You slim down your touring outfit and put your money into promotion. Ed is able to do that naturally by getting a big slice of income at acoustic shows, for TGF it needed to happen in other ways.

For example - I talked with the owner of the Visulite before their Charlotte show. He told me about their touring contract and how many pages of stuff they had to mark through because they couldn't fulfill it. The venues they were playing were not the kind of venues that the guys , from Live especially, were used to seeing. That's just the way it is.

The life of a mid-level touring band is not a rock star life. It is all grit and work. They traded that when they decided to not brand themselves as being related to Live or Candlebox. I think the guys got part of the way there - the use of social media was strong, they really started to connect with their fans, and they definitely found a way to make the tour work - but, you've got to get all the way there to make it work.

I do hope the band will give it another shot, but the self-titled album is dead in the water unless they hit the road soon, or they are using this time to push songs at movies, tv shows, etc. etc. Shoot, it isn't hard to get your song on a TV show these days, you just have to either build the connection or foot the bill. They've talked about wanting to get on with a bigger band to tour - I hope they can do that, but I don't know how you show a bigger band that you can help their show by not touring yourself.

It isn't that the music isn't amazing - it's that no one knows it exists. Facebook, Twitter, etc. can't do that for you. Radio play, television spots, movie spots, and touring will.