All work and no play might make Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work makes Jack’s band a dismal failure.
Music, as even the dimmest bulb at a music conference panel will tell you, is a business. Even if you write the greatest album on planet Earth, if you want to survive as a band, someone on your team needs to have some marketing acumen.
Enter OurAfter, a band from the land of Dunder Mifflin that runs a more efficient office than Michael Scott could ever conceive.
“Our band is more than a band, it is a business,” explains frontman John Phillips. “Playing a show is only 20 percent of the work. The marketing, data collecting and networking is where the real work comes in.”
Short of hiring a consultant to show up at band practice and single out redundancies, OurAfter operates like a well-oiled corporate machine – a machine that peddles polished modern rock songs that temper The Killers’ ’80s dance flair with Fuel’s everyman post-grunge grit. It’s a product that’s served the band well. In its two-year existence, OurAfter has released a debut album, toured the East Coast and Midwest and shared the stage with everyone from Flyleaf to Everclear to Yellowcard. It’s been a dynamic ride that Phillips can only describe as “rewarding, absolutely rewarding.”
“This band has become a force on the Pennsylvania music scene within the last two years, and it is beyond what I could have ever expected,” he says. “We are thankful every day for the respect that we have been given.”
Phillips credits much of his know-how to his longtime association with UUU, a hugely successful cover band that, by nature, must place an emphasis on marketing and branding to distinguish itself from similar bands playing similar songs.
“I joined that band when I was 19 and I was very young and naive. The knowledge that the [band members] have is completely unsurpassed, which could be a reason why that band is as successful as it is,” Phillips explains.
“I still play with them actually. It is a great paycheck when it comes around, and I have no problem switching between the two. One is about art, and the other is about going out and making the donuts,” he laughs.
More of those “donuts” extended in OurAfter’s direction with the release a new EP, Tabula Rasa, in November. Regardless, the band has learned one more valuable lesson that will allow it to push forward, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.
“The art of connecting to your listener is the greatest key and accomplishment,” Phillips says. “We have had fans say to us how we have uplifted them in troubled times and gotten them to relate to us. Being a musician is more than having an ego and being on stage performing.